NAEP scores will be released April 18. They have already been released to state Superintendents so they can study their state’s scores and get their press release ready.
The 2015 scores were flat. Some states saw declines. This was widely viewed as a rebuke of the test-obsessed federal policies of the previous 15 years. Intensive test prep produced gains, but they had come to a halt.
Mercedes Schneider writes that Louisiana John White is already worried and has sent out a pre-emptive letter complaining that the scores may have been pushed down by NAEP’s switch to online testing. This is not a statement by a man who is looking forward to the score release. He is already making excuses.
White, a Broadie who got his start in TFA, has promised dramatic improvements. He has promoted charters and vouchers. He has hailed the New Orleans “miracle.”
We watch for the NAEP release.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
John White = Charter Member of the Hall of Education Infamy
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Mercedes’ blog post (including White’s letter): https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/louisianas-2017-naep-scores-must-not-be-pretty-john-white-writes-to-nces-prior-to-2017-naep-release/
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Hi Diane–“sent out a pre-emotive letter” is an amusing typo. Joanne
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Thanks for catching my typo!
When I write a post late at night after an Easter dinner for 25, it is amazing there are not more typos, especially when the computer insists on autocorrecting.
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I also forgot to add the link to Mercedes’ post:
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I’d like to see a comparison of reformy states versus those states who didn’t adopt market-based reforms and compare overall net growth.
I know, for example, Virginia didn’t adopt the whole ed reform menu. There must be some others.
Ed reformers are never going to do a comparison like that, though.
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Nebraska is another non-reform state.
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CUE Peter Cook, to jump on in and do damage control.
For those who don’t know, Cook is the Sean Spicer / Baghdad Bob of Louisiana’s charter school industry.
To fully understand this comparison, here’s a video likening Spicer to Baghdad Bob (otherwise known as the “Iraqi Information Minister”):
Spicey, we hardly knew ye.
I don’t have time to find it right now — too busy lesson planning for the remainder of the school year on this Cesar Chavez Day / day off — but there’s a video of Peter Cook claiming that the teachers unions “spend billions (plural) annually (every year, year after year)” propagandizing against charter schools.
Seriously. Cook REALLY said that. On video.
That claim is sort of like Michelle Rhee’s claim that, in one year, she took her students from the 13th percentile to the 90th percentile on standardized testing.
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I just found the Peter Cook video, and my quoting of him / my memory — to be fair to Cook — was off by one digit, or by one multiple of ten.
COOK said “hundreds of millions”, not “billions”, which is still a ludicrous claim.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
( 9:17 – 9:59 )
( 9:17 – 9:59 )
PETER COOK:
“Obviously, first and foremost, there’s the teachers’ unions, who obviously see charter schools as a threat, and they have a lot of money to spend, and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars (???!!!) every year, year after year, funding a vast constellation of organizations from these (sarcastic) community organizations that pop up out of nowhere that are all-of-a-sudden opposing charter schools.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Pete, if you’re out there reading this, I’m open to being corrected.
If you can provide a link to a relevant pdf, or point us to some link or document that definitively verifies your highly unlikely “hundreds of millions every year, year after year” claim, then bring it on, Baby!
Put up or shut up.
And if you can’t put up, you should tale this opportunity to rescind that comment (or take back that lie?) publicly.
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In this case I agree with John White. The move to computerized assessments was a huge blunder on the part of NCES and will put at doubt the accuracy of the NAEP scores and more importantly the trend lines — which are the ONLY semi-reliable source of information we have about achievement trends for states and districts. As a result of the attempt to “adjust” for the fact that students now taking the exams on computers, the results have been delayed for many months and I have little faith in the NCES being able to do this in accurately.
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“. . . and will put at doubt the accuracy of the NAEP scores. . . ”
Why, it just may do that! (Said in a Midwestern slow country drawl).
But who cares when the NAEP SCORES and any usage of them are COMPLETELY INVALID*. And since NAEP SCORES are COMPLETELY INVALID, by definition they are also COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE as in the onto-epistemological world of psychometrics validity precedes and is necessarily vital to determine reliability.
NAEP scores can be accurate without being valid and/or reliable but, again, without the validity all else is, as Noel Wilson puts it “vain and illusory”.
*For a short reading in which Noel Wilson proves the invalidities involved in standardized testing please read and comprehend his “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review”
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
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I’m just curious why those same people who use computers for depersonalized learning then turn around and blame those same computers for low test scores…..Oh wait that is what education reformers do.
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Well, all good adminimals, even the topdog state adminimal believe in “getting out front” to “direct” the conversation when the conversation makes them and their policies look bad. One doesn’t get to be the head blowing in the wind state adminimal without plenty of practice in bullshittery.
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Why don’t we call for what it is. Charters are big money for Wall street. We are on the path for the destruction of public education. Government policies are enforcing the haves and the have not’s concept. Guaranteed poverty and guaranteed riches for the elites. Teachers are marching because their state governments are destroying public schools and there lives. Call if for what it is. This governor is no more trembling because the newspaper’s will make up some story to put the low NAEP scores in a positive light. After all Mr. Duncan wrote that everything was just doing find in the education arena. People are begging for funds to run there classrooms but everything is going well. The fake world with its very dangerous consequences is alive and well.
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