Archives for the month of: April, 2019
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New York: Computer Foul-Ups Delay State Testing—Again

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
7

Numerous studies have shown that students do better on paper and pencil tests than on computer tests. For the record, the tests are a massive waste of time. But students often get lost online. They scroll up and down. They lose their place and their train of thought. Online testing is so flawed as to be useless.

Some states, like Tennessee, have had computer testing ruin the whole testing process.

Yet MaryEllen Elia clings ferociously to computer testing because she just plain loves it. She believes in computer testing no matter how much it fails.

Parents are sick of it. 

Many know that it wastes students’ time, steals instructional time, and wastes millions of dollars.

Wise parents Opt Out.

Computer testing is so yesterday.

 

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Technology

DeVos Continues D.C.’s Mad Obsession with Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
25

 

Betsy DeVos’ team warned Arizona that it could lose $340 million in federal funding if it persists in offering options to students taking standardized tests. The state has to pick one test for high school students—either the state test, SAT or ACT-or it may lose Title 1 funding for disadvantaged students.

Leave aside the fact that the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test. Leave aside the fact that all standardized tests are normed on a bell curve to produce “winners” and “losers” and are completely misaligned as high school tests of competency. Leave aside that using these two commercial tests is a multimillion dollar windfall for two private testing corporations.

The federal government should not be holding any state hostage over its decision about how or whether to use certain tests. It should not threaten to withhold funding for the neediest students to force states to do what the U.S. Department of Education or Congress prefers. Congress should use its powers to protect the civil rights of students, not to interfere in how to educate students, a subjectwhereit is woefully and demonstrably ignorant.

This is a stellar example of federal control of education, which was banned by federal law in the early 1970s. Using a standardized test to judge the “success” of every student will predictably rank students by family income with only rare exceptions. The students from low-income families will cluster at the bottom, along with children English-learners and students with disabilities.

This spring, Arizona allowed its districts a choice of offering the ACT, the SAT, or the state’s traditional test, the AzMerit test, at the high school level.  ESSA allows states to offer districts the option of using a nationally-recognized college entrance exam in place of the state test, but first they must meet certain technical requirements.

For instance, states must make sure that the national recognized exam (such as the ACT or SAT) measures progress toward the state’s standards at least as well as the original state test. They also must make sure that the results of the nationally-recognized exam can be compared to the state test. And they have to provide appropriate accommodations for English-language learners and students in special education. All of this is supposed to happen before the state ever allows its districts the option of an alternate test…

The department has other, big concerns about Arizona’s testing system. The state passed a law allowing its schools a choice of tests, at both the high school and elementary level. That is not kosher under ESSA, which calls for every student in the same grade to take the same test, in most cases, Brogan wrote.

What’s more, Arizona hasn’t had a single high school test for several years. Instead, students are allowed to take one of three end-of-course math and reading/language arts tests, Brogan’s letter says. The failure to offer students the same test statewide is the reason the state has been put on high-risk status.

The state needs to pick one test for high school students, Brogan says, or it may lose federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students. It’s up to Arizona to decide whether the single test is the AzMerit, the ACT, the SAT, or something else.

Congress needs to abandon its belief that tests improve outcomes and that it can use federal funding to force uniformity of testing. NCLB proved that this theory was wrong.

After almost 20 years of failure, after a decade of flat test scores, isn’t it time for the members of the Congressional education committee to reflect on the bad ideas they have been promoting and figure out that it is time to stop compelling states to adopt harmful practices? Don’t they know they are still inhaling the toxic fumes of a failed NCLB? Or do they still believe that there was a “Texas Miracle”?

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

Anthony Cody Reviews “Wisdom and Wit”

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
4

 

Garn Press published a collection of my most significant essays.

The book brings together essays that would otherwise have been lost to posterity. 

It contains many of the articles I wrote for Huffington Post Articles from 2010 to 2018; many articles that were published in The New York Review of Books and NYR Daily; several articles that appeared in widely disparate publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Detroit News, The Washington Post; a speech that I delivered to the Modern Language Association about the Common Core  from  2014; and a number of posts that appeared on this blog.
Happily, Anthony Cody reviewed the book here.
The publisher, Garn Press, prepared the following links to introduce the book and perhaps to entice you to buy it.
I am happy to see my scattered essays gathered in one place.
All royalties, should there be any, will be donated by Garn to the Network for Public Education Action to continue its important work.
Visual Press Release – Enhanced
Categories Education Reform

California: Palo Alto Superintendent Offers Bribes to Students to Reduce Opt Out Rate

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
19

“

 

Last year, a majority of juniors at Palo Alto High School did not take the state tests. State law protects the right of students to opt out. The tests have no value other than to prop up the testing regime.

Now the district superintendent, in an all-Out effort to break the opt out, is pulling out all the stops and offering prizes and awards to students who take the tests. 

“All juniors at Palo Alto High School will be required to participate in the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress this year, in an effort by the school board to assemble a higher participation rate, according to Supt. Don Austin.

“The Palo Alto Unified School District is offering incentives to students who complete all of the CAASPP examinations next week, according to an email forwarded to Paly parents by Assistant principal Tom Keating, from Superintendent Austin.

“Through a raffle, students will be able to win student parking permits for the 2019-20 school year (which usually cost up to $100), athletic passes for the 2019-20 school year, 2018-19 yearbooks or VIP parking passes to the 2019-20 graduation ceremony.

“Regardless, all students who complete all of the testings will win one item of Paly “swag,” according to the letter.

“Last year, only 40 percent of Paly juniors completed the test, compared to the 95 percent required participation rate, Austin stated in an email to parents on Feb. 28.

“In the email, Austin stated that although parents are highly encouraged to permit students to take the exam, parents or guardians are able to submit a written request to the principal of their student’s school to excuse their child from any or all parts of the CAASPP summative assessments.

“Compared to Henry M. Gunn High School, which had a parent-guardian exemption percentage that fell from 64 percent in 2016  to 28 percent in 2017, Paly has a previous history of having an abnormally low attendance record compared to other schools, according to an article by Palo Alto Online. 

“In the email, assistant principal Keating also stated that one of the major benefits of taking the exam is state recognition and awards upon graduation. Students are able to earn three additional awards or seals with the completion of the exam.”

The local paper claims that the tests are “mandatory.” But they are not.

Opting out is legal! 

Categories California, Opt Out, Parents, Students, Testing

Albany Times-Union: Save the Pep Rallies for What Really Matters, Not for Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
13

 

The editorial board of the Albany Times-Union editorial board is one of the wisest in the nation. It understands, as few other editorial boards do, that the annual standardized tests are a waste of instructional time that do nothing to help students. Their only error in this editorial is to assume that the tests measure school performance. They don’t. They measure school demographics, which can be obtained without the testing.

The editorial board objects to the state and districts’ efforts to bribe or threaten students to take these useless tests.

 

Which word or words best describe some schools’ approach to last week’s state English tests for grades three through eight?

(a) misguided

(b) disappointing

(c) both of the above

Take out your No. 2 pencil and bubble in (c). New York has been working hard to make testing better. But last week’s reports of how schools are incentivizing test participation show we have a long way to go.

Some schools.. have dangled a deal in front of their students: Take the statewide English and math tests and you’ll get out of taking your core subject finals in June. Other schools have promised pizza parties if enough students take the tests or have held pep rallies to encourage them. 

Still others have taken a sterner approach, pressuring parents or doing away with “refusal rooms” for students whose parents opted them out…

All of these approaches are troubling.

Let’s recall what the tests are for. They aren’t a measure of children’s progress. They’re a measure of schools’ performance. They’re not designed to help the kids who take them, at least not directly. The results don’t even arrive till the next school year…

Instead, these assessments — mandated, along with a minimum 95 percent participation rate, under federal law — have warped the curriculum, chipping away at social studies, science, art, even recess, in the push to provide more English and math instruction. Emphasizing standardized tests over regular classroom work — yes, including final exams — is a distraction from real education.

Pep rallies for an exam? Why not a pep rally to encourage, say, participation in the science fair? And bribes and cajolery are not the tools of a system that’s working correctly. They’re signs that we’ve lost sight of what’s really important. Hint: It’s not increasing a school’s test participation rates.

And perseverance and resilience? Better for children to learn to persevere through a long-term project like a science experiment or a poetry portfolio; better to learn resilience through a chance to revise a tough math worksheet or the challenge of presenting in front of the class. Perseverance certainly isn’t taught by tests plagued by the kinds of computer glitches we saw last week, which only raise kids’ frustration and parents’ ire…

Save the pep rallies for things that really count.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Real Education, Standardized Testing

An Oxymoron: “Diverse” Online Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
12

 

A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Toronto reported on the extent to which online charter schools have racial diversity. Benjamin Herold wrote about the paper in Education Week. 

This struck me as an odd finding, because online instruction by definition is delivered by computer tostudents at home. There is little, if any, face to face contact among students.and since students may be spread across an entire state, the opportunities to interact with others is minimal.

There may be “diversity” in the school’s purported enrollment, but this would be diversity without integration. Students could be enrolled in a “diverse” virtual school yet never encounter a student of a different race.

Herold wrote:

“While full-time online charter schools nationally enroll a relatively high percentage of white students, there are significant variations in enrollment patterns by state, according to new research presented today at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, being held here.

“In Colorado, for example, the enrollment of online charters is just 36 percent white, compared to 54 percent in brick-and-mortar traditional and charter schools throughout the state, according to University of Alabama assistant education professor Bryan Mann.

“Online charters in Arizona, Nevada, and South Carolina, meanwhile, enroll significantly higher percentages of white students than do brick-and-mortar traditional and charter schools in their states.

“Most states have majority-white online charter school populations with less diversity than … other schools. However, there are states where students experience more diverse environments in online charter schools,” Mann wrote in a paper presented at the conference, titled “Whiteness and Economic Advantage in Digital Schooling: Equity Considerations for K-12 Online Charter Schools.”

 

Categories Education Reform, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Virtual Charter Schools

Washington Post: White House Photos Show Trump in a White Male World

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
53

David Nakamura wrote in the Washington Post about the regular release of photos by the White House showing Trump surrounded only by white people. He should have added, only by white men. Trump’s only black cabinet member, Ben Carson, rarely appears in White House photos. Seldom is there a woman in the informal gatherings.

The monochromatic gatherings are a stark contrast to the increased and increasing diversity of the population,  and an even starker contrast to the Obama administration, which featured diversity among its appointees and invitees.

”In picture after picture, emanating from the most exclusive corridors of American political power, Trump is seen with a team of aides and advisers that is almost exclusively white — a vivid, if unspoken, statement of the distance between the president and wide swaths of a nation that is growing increasingly and rapidly more diverse.

“To a degree, the photos are simply a reflection of what is already well known: Trump lacks racial diversity among his senior staff and Cabinet. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has been the only African American in the top ranks of the administration since the departure in December 2017 of White House senior adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former reality television star.

”But for a president whose agenda has centered largely on undoing the legacy of his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, the procession of daily images has served to reinforce the notion that the era of the nation’s first black president is over.

“The backdrop to this visual representation of Trumpism is ‘Make America Great Again,’ a nostalgic longing for a period in which whiteness and white people didn’t feel threatened,” said Eddie Glaude Jr., chairman of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. “For eight years, we had young Americans from all walks of life looking to the seat of American power and seeing a black family and seeing diversity in all its fullness occupy the White House. In some ways, just as Trump’s policies have sought to erase Obama’s policy legacy, the images coming out of the White House aim to erase eight years of the visual black presidency.”

“The images range from official events and bilateral meetings to informal social gatherings among the president’s staff. They are taken by news photographers, White House staff photographers and Trump aides, who post the shots on social media.”

Categories Education Reform

Tim Slekar: A Podcast about Survivors of School Shootings

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
3

Tim Slekar produced a podcast about school shootings and their aftermath.

Two survivors of the Parkland mass shooting committed suicide, as did the father of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook.

Tim describes the podcast:

“Parkland, FL mother Rosemarie Jensen.  Rosemarie’s son survived the Stoneman Douglas school shooting and talked to us last year about that day.  In this interview Rosemarie talks about the aftermath of living “after a school shooting.”  Last week two “survivors” committed suicide.  But WHY?  And what’s being done now?

“Educated Educators Talking Education:Joanna Rizzotto talks to us about life inside the classroom “after school shootings.” Are we making it safer or simply adding to the anxiety of children and teachers.  Plus we talk to Dou Vang—currently a substitute teacher— who quit teaching after being “shot” during an active shooter drill.“

Categories Guns, Guns in Schools, Safety

The Real Crime in Higher Education: Not Gaming Admissions but Underinvestment in Public Universities

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
85

 

Alan Aja, Joseph Entin, and Jeanne Theoharis identify the true crime in higher education: the abandonment of public higher education by the states and the federal government. The three authors are professors at Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY).

They write:

The biggest scandal in American higher education today is the staggering disinvestment in public universities like CUNY, even as politicians and the public pay lip service to abhorring the inequalities in higher education. What would it mean to view as scandalous the well-documented decline in federal and state funding of public universities across the country over the last 25 years, at the same time students have been expected to shoulder the cost of those “missing expenditures” through tuition hikes (amid other persistent cuts to federal and state financial aid and vital support services)? What would it mean to view self-declared “education governor” Andrew Cuomo of New York as a part of the problem for the ways he has underfunded public universities in the state and to see members of the public who allow this as his accomplices? What would it mean to see the scandal that the broken ceiling exposes as part of a larger systemic problem directly tied to the current state budget’s continued underfunding of CUNY (which once again this time around, fell dramatically short)?

Nearly a quarter of a million undergraduates attend the City University of New York, and they are caught in a vicious bind. Tuition for CUNY — which was free until 1975 — has risen by 31% since 2011. It now stands at $6,730 for full-time students at CUNY’s senior colleges on top of the high costs of housing, food, transportation, books and other personal expenditures in New York City, where the majority of students attending CUNY come from families with incomes of $30,000 or less.

At the same time, CUNY’s per-pupil funding declined by 18% between 2008 and 2018.

Think of it. Students used to be able to enroll in a public university at minimal cost, or none at all. Now, they are saddled with debt for years after they finish college–if they finish. As Sara Goldrick-Rab wrote in her prize-winning book “Paying the Price,” the main reason that low-income students drop out of college is not because of their lack of motivation or ability, but because they can’t afford to pay the costs.

 

Categories Funding, Higher Education, Students

Julian Vasquez Heilig Advises Berkeley Chancellor About Wendy Kopp, TFA, and Free Sppech

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
44

 

 

Julian Vasquez Heilig considers the protest against Wendy Kopp’s selection to give the commencement address at Berkeley. 

The chancellor of Berkeley responded to protest by saying that the institution does not disinvite controversial speakers.

Heilig points out that the legislature is currently considering a proposal to ban TFA’s inexperienced teachers from schools that enroll low-income students. Berkeley students don’t know that and won’t learn it.

He counters that students should be prepared to consider different views. That’s free speech.

“While I believe it is important that we protect constitutional free speech, I also believe that educational leaders must promote dialogues rather than monologues when discussing controversial topis— this approach allows the power of ideas to prevail. As an educational leader, I have participated in Cambridge-style debates, attend workgroups at the American Enterpise Institute (until they couldn’t handle my free speech) and even participated in a mock trial at the Libertarians Freedom Fest. So for me, it’s malpractice for educational leaders to allow monologues instead of dialogues when there are controversial topics at hand.”

Berkeley will hear Kopp’s self-praise but will not learn why California’s oldest and largest civil rights groups support a bill, AB 221, to exclude TFA from schools that serve their children. Why not a debate?

 

Categories California, Education Reform, Teach for America
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