John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, posts frequently about education in his state.
States Are Ratcheting Up Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders
NPR’s Starr draws on experts like Pedro Noguera, Nell Duke, and Diane Horm, while explaining how short-term benefits of 3rd grade retention “dissipate over time.” She also cites Marty West, a Big Data researcher who sidesteps the anxiety imposed on children and pressure on teachers to increase pass rates through ill-conceived instructional practices, and says that Florida’s well-funded mandatory retention law doesn’t hurt students’ graduation rates. Neither does West address states like Oklahoma, with chronic underfunding of education.And that leads to the first slippery slope created by Florida’s willingness to scale up punishments for young children and their teachers in order to improve student performance. At least it invests more than $130 million per year on its reading sufficiency act. When Oklahoma legislators, who were often persuaded by Jeb Bush’s public relations campaign, passed its reading act, they intended to invest $150 per struggling reader, but they only came up with $6 million, which was enough for only about $75 per student. It took six years to find money for about $153 per student.
For First Time, ‘Read or Fail’ Law Is Fully Funded. Will It Reduce Retentions?
In NPR’s second report focusing on Tulsa Ok., Starr shows the benefits of well-funded, holistic pre-kindergarten instruction. Oklahoma and edu-philanthropists fund such classes for 4-year-olds; nearly 3/4ths of Oklahoma students enroll in pre-k. And, next door to a comprehensive pre-k partnership, the majority-Hispanic Rosa Parks Elementary School illustrates the promise of partnerships for improving public schools. It is a part of the Tulsa Union community school system which so impressed David Kirp that his New York times article that featured Rosa Parks was entitled “Who Needs Charters When You Have Schools Like These?” Oklahoma Among States Setting Higher Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/who-needs-charters-when-you-have-public-schools-like-these.htmlA Rosa Parks elementary teacher explained the dilemma schools face regarding kids who aren’t on track to pass the high stakes 3rd grade test, “Very early on, we have to put them on a plan if we think that they’re going to be held back in third grade for a test.” Unfortunately Starr didn’t have time to dig into those plans the way that Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has done. It leads to the second slippery slope created by high stakes testing for 3rd graders.
Palmer cites a librarian who explained, “‘RSA allows two years of retention, and two years in third grade would be worse,’ she said. ‘They would be completely destroyed.’” And that raises the question about the risks educators can/must take in order to not completely destroy their students.
The Oklahoma Watch’s study of federal data showed that 2,533 3rd graders were retained in 2015-16. Worse, she found that “repeating a grade is actually more common in kindergarten and first grade,” and “the high-stakes third-grade test appears to drive many of the early retentions.” Oklahoma retained 3,977 kindergarteners, and a total of 10,345 students in the kindergarten through 2ndgrades.
These retentions were not evenly spread across the state. Next door to Tulsa Union, the Tulsa Public Schools, for instance, has about 2-1/3rds as many students as Union. The TPS retained 823 students through kindergarten and second grade, or more than 4-1/3rds as many. We can only hope that the edu-philanthropists who fund worthy early education programs, as well as their opposite – the corporate reform policies of Deborah Gist’s TPS – will realize how and why those two approaches are the antithesis of each other..
Palmer also touched on the third slippery slope when she explained the benchmark assessments that are used in predicting failure on the end-of-year tests. She writes, “Schools also rely on computerized benchmarking programs to glean more information on students’ skillsets and how they compare to other students their age.” But, to say the least, they are “not an exact science.” This leads to crucial, potentially life-changing and risky decisions being made by parents and teachers using data on a computer screen that they acknowledge they don’t understand.
Lastly, the dehumanizing slide down into systems where the punitive is seen as normal, even for our youngest students, might or might not have been predictable. Twenty years ago, the reward and punishment of kindergarteners would have seemed despicable. Market-driven reform may have begun as a way to force teachers to comply. Then it was dumped on teenagers. Now, when such stressful incentives and disincentives are imposed on 5-year-olds, it doesn’t seem surprising to read Big Data studies that claim that those who fail tests in the states with the most funding for competition-driven reform may not be damaged as much as previously thought …
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Early data collection along with dire test and punish consequences crafted by politicians are harmful to young children. I taught many students that were “slow starters,” not slow learners. There is a big difference. Young children exhibit a great variation in development, even among middle class students.
The research on retention is clear. These students are more likely to drop out and become part of the criminal justice system. Labeling and punishing students instead of supporting and encouraging are wrong. As bad as test and punish is for all students, it is so much worse and wrong for students that are just starting their academic careers. We need to end the abusive use of data collection with young children as the resultant labeling can have negative consequences for a students whole academic career.
Do not believe anything that Big Data says! They are not looking out for the well being of young children. They are modern day head hunters, and each child represents $, nothing more.
I call them “techno-pr****.” They really have NO CLUE, but getting $$$$$ for warped out notions…ALL about profits…the parasitic economy.
Correction: a student’s whole career.
I have but one comment: @@%&@%#(%@#%@#%@#*(!!!!!
Agree, Bob….#$&*@🤮
I am not a reading specialist, but I know that hype about “read by grade three” is from the Anne B. Casey foundation, in a vintage 2010 report. In that report, the writers push “read by grade three” with multiple references to test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and multiple uses of the term “proficiency” as the standard for students to meet.
This Casey report ignores the fact that NAEP scores indicating “proficiency” are in no way equivalent to grade levels.
The Casey report is not only filled with dire warnings about the fate of children who do not read by grade three but ramps up the rhetoric to say in effect, that the nation’s economy and security depends on NAEP scores at the beginning of grade 4.
Because the Casey report says that the fourth grate NAEP test is given at the beginning of grade four, the writers conclude that all third graders should be able to do all of the following so they can score at the “Proficient” level on entering grade four.
They should (as third graders) “be able to integrate and interpret texts and apply their understanding of the text to draw conclusions and make evaluations.
When reading literary texts such as fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction (third graders soon to be) fourth-grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to identify implicit main ideas and recognize relevant information that supports them. Students should be able to judge elements of author’s craft and provide some support for their judgment. They should be able to analyze character roles, actions, feelings, and motives.”
When reading informational texts such as articles and excerpts from books, (third graders soon to be) fourth-grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to locate relevant information, integrate information across texts, and evaluate the way an author presents information. Student performance at this level should demonstrate an understanding of the purpose for text features and an ability to integrate information from headings, text boxes, graphics and their captions. They should be able to explain a simple cause-and-effect relationship and draw conclusions.
NAEP scores are developed independently for each subject. Results cannot be compared across subjects. Further, NAEP “Proficient” means competency over “challenging subject matter.” This is not the same as being “on grade level,” which refers to performance on local curriculum and standards. NAEP is a general assessment of knowledge and skills in a particular subject.
BUT, here is the rub. A reading test has content and if the referents and subject matters in the reading test have not been encountered and made familiar to students…. then you have a test what????
Find the Casey report here
Click to access AECF-Early_Warning_Full_Report-2010.pdf
Find NAEP descriptions of “basic,” “proficient,” and “advanced” here https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/achieve.aspx#2009_grade4
WOW. This nation depends on this! Holy crap!
“NAEP is a general assessment of knowledge and skills in a particular subject.”
NAEP suffers all the conceptual foundational (onto-epistemological) errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudgings identified by Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted seminal dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” that render the usage of any of the results to be COMPLETELY INVALID or as he puts it “vain and illusory”.
Garbage in, garbage out.
To use NAEP scores for anything dealing with the teaching and learning process from policy implementation to student, school or district evaluation to . . . is ludicrous and risible, inane and insane, and unethical and immoral.
To hell with the NAEP.
I will boast that my daughter is very proficient as a reader and a writer. She always has been. The description of what third graders are supposed to be able to do is silly. Many of the behaviors described are becoming more pronounced now, but deciding if a student exhibits this behavior is complex. The tests are not up to the challenge. Teachers in large classes cannot do it either.
I posted the original article at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Cruel-Policy-of-Punish-in-General_News-Cruelty_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis_For-profit-Education-190720-769.html#comment739879
with this comment, which has embedded links at th above address.
When Bush created his All Children Will Be Left Behind Act, he set up the testing industry to flourish, and set the stage to put a lie in place! If the schools in the 15,880 school systems in 50 states, could be labeled ‘failing,’ then all that taxpayer $$$ could be pockketed
When a child tests poorly, the teacher can be blamed. Then all the real, experienced professionals can be sent out the door, and novices from TFA (Teach For America– for a year or two, before quitting) can come and go and never get tenure.
When the school fails, then public taxpayer money can got to charter schools– which have not. shred of oversight or accountability, so when they fail, and the kids lose, the hedge funds and privateers get to keep the Realestate , the computers etc… and we the people foot the bill.
I mean, just look at California Charter schools in California band together as an embattled group, agitating for hostile takeoverof the Public Commons. They serially convene, dissolve and reform a plethora of working groups to bombard public schools with “messaging” and disinformation. The groups as well as charters themselves of course, drain resources from schools, necessitating capital (monetary and human) defending what should be protected by the people, for the people.
To grasp the big con, imagine that hospitals tire of paying successful, experienced doctors and instead. replace them with the competent ‘medics’ who do such a good triage job in the ambulance.
I mean, who needs experience when doing a really difficult procedure… like planning the learning objectives for the year for a child, or 40 human children?
A snap. Just follow the Gates curriculum. After all billionaires know what LEARNING looks like and what is required for a human brain to acquire a skill… like comparing this to that (analysis) and deciding what to do next (hypothesizing and predicting). Why give the professional teacher-practitioner authority in the practice we call a classroom? Why pay them a living wage, so they can pay back their college debt, and lead the kind of life they deserve for the service they give this nation –preparing the next generation to THINK so they can make good decisions.
Heavens, NO! Thinking citizens? Gimme a break. They might not believe the earth is flat– as millions do, or that Congress members are allowed to complain.Thinking citizens will not cheer and support a president who destroys everything we had, and every ideal we stand for, a man who acts like an unprincipled, cruel, mentally unbalanced, incompetent child.
Billionaires like the Waltons need to control the debate. Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to drive their agenda on education and other issues. Now, they have created a lobbying group to push even more. Let these wonderful people push testing our 5 year olds, and our 3 year olds. They know what the schools need… in order to fail!
It truly is a national disgrace. The superintendent of my local school district, Brian Poe, is a collaborator of the worst sort. He pushes testing like a grifting evangelical pastor. I recently learned he is on the executive board of Fordham funded and inspired entity with the Ohio School Boards Association called The Alliance for High Quality Education, which is—and this is from their website—“is a Council of Governments made up of approximately sixty Ohio school districts –– mostly high-performing, high tax effort, above average wealth districts –– dedicated to the concept that school funding should be the State’s number one priority, that education is the single, most important factor for ensuring sustained economic growth in the state, and that objectively determined, stable, adequate funding levels are the only way to guarantee appropriate educational opportunities for all of Ohio’s youth and satisfy the state constitution’s “thorough and efficient” clause..” How many buzzwords can you fit into a sentence like that?
Earlier this year I wrote this letter to the editor of a local community paper. I was published but nary a word of interest came from other parents. Part of the problem is that the PTA is a complicit ally in the back pocket of Poe and the teachers union is satisfied when crumbs are thrown their way. And although our school board is elected, it is a mix of corporate insiders and dolts. Meanwhile children here and everywhere suffer. Here’s the letter:
Twice in past school board meetings, Copley-Fairlawn School Superintendent Brian Poe nodded in agreement when I characterized letter grades used by the state of Ohio to rate schools and districts as useless. So imagine my dismay when I read he is “proud” of higher third grade standardized test scores (Copley-Fairlawn students excel on state test, 12/27/2018).
Mr. Poe should know that mandatory standardized testing does not in any way inform how or what students learn or the quality of instruction in schools. Standardized tests are arbitrary, meaningless measures designed to make children sources of corporate profit made possible by federal and state education policies and implemented by pliant administrators and school boards.
I submitted nine questions to the CF school board at the June 26, 2018 meeting asking the administration to clarify the costs—fiscal, class time, teacher preparation, other program sacrifices—of implementing standardized tests. Instead, the school board directed Mr. Poe and board attorney John Britton to respond in an email dated July 16, 2018 that they would not do so because I sought “to quantify that which is not quantifiable, measurable, or measured by the District.”
More disturbingly, Mr. Britton wrote that Ohio law “does not require [districts] to undertake research, perform calculations, or tabulate data” of what he characterized as my “largely philosophical questions.” In other words, neither the state or the Copley-Fairlawn school leadership seems interested in evaluating the effectiveness or impact of testing policies on schools, teachers, and students.
Yet, somehow Mr. Poe is able to quantify “areas that need improvement [to] exceed expectations.”
On October 19, 2017 the West Side Leader published the position statements of the three candidates who were eventually elected. All three of them cited “transparency” as one of their top three priorities.
After a year of being in office, not one of them has followed through. Their statements have proven to be empty rhetoric. They seem to not understand that the most basic function of elective office is to be responsive to constituents.
Perhaps they can tell us if a 14 percent increase in 3rd grade test scores that supposedly measures “students’ reading skills” is worth the costs in diminished reading and recess time or less emphasis on subjects not covered by standardized testing such as the arts, physical education, and social studies.
Are the funds, time, and pressure put on students and teachers worth more than hiring more teachers, having smaller class sizes, or develop a broad range of curriculum choices that serve all students, regardless of cognitive, physical, or other needs?
Perhaps they can explain just exactly what “providing ongoing training to teachers” means. If the ultimate goal is to turn teachers into virtual assembly line workers using pre-packaged lesson plans, then the logical next step is to get rid of teacher education and certification. Loss of respect for professionals and autonomy puts unneeded pressure on teachers and students alike.
The greatest irony is that no American over the age of 30 was ever subjected to standardized testing that determined the fate of them or their teachers’ careers. Yet somehow, this nation’s public schools are the foundation of the most powerful economy and the source of its innovative spirit.
Indeed, the pair of standardized tests most may be familiar with, the SAT and ACT, have now been rejected by more than 200 colleges and universities as bases for determining admissions.
Rather than facilitate the implementation of failed and destructive policies and fads, perhaps the CF schools administration and board can once again focus on diverse needs of every student by letting teachers teach and creating better environments to promote the joy of learning.
They know full well that the quality of schools and education of every student cannot be distilled into a letter grade or number.
Focusing on making some false number the goal, something Mr. Poe is “proud of”, is not my expectation as a parent or citizen. I would hope that parents who willingly give of their time to raise funds for schools, serve on PTA councils, and make sure their children can participate in extracurricular activities would join me in wanting to know more about how standardized testing is harming our district.
Thank you for naming Mr. Poe as one of those willing to sacrifice the children to the testing gods! Far too many times to many people pussy foot around afraid scared sh##less to open identify those who implement these malpractices.
We need many more people to expose those who harm students.
I decided to take your advice on this Duane after trying to keep one anonymous a while ago. Many of you around the country may remember the case of Kelley Williams Bolar, the mother of two students who enrolled them in an adjacent school district and was later prosecuted and fined (and whose father died while serving in prison for his role). The case is recounted in Noliwe Rooks’s Cutting School. This is the district where it all happened. When I asked Poe at a recent school board meeting if the district was still paying private detectives, he equivocated. I asked if the effort to join with other districts to recoup the losses the district had due to charter and ECOT-related losses and avoid similar ones in the future, he came back with “adminimal speak.” Now I understand that his hope for future renumeration from Fordham and its allied interests explains his relationship with the so-called Alliance for High Quality Education and high stakes testing.
Refresher on Williams-Bolar example of segrenomics: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/434051-story-of-mother-sentenced-to-jail-for-enrolling-child-in
Wow. Self serving, eh! I feel bad for the students in your district. I’m assuming you don’t teach in that district?
Parent.
Your tale illustrates the process privitazation wants to take. They want to make the process of education so oriented toward testing that only those who make their peace with it can remain in education. That way public education really does become something they can do, either by selling the latest computer program or starting the latest private school funded by public means.
Now that we are two decades into testing, most of the people who were not comfortable with it have retired or quit, leaving those who do not know any better, both in administration and the classroom as well.
Yep, on target as usual. Here’s a story from Louisiana that confirms your thoughts. Have a sickness bag available before reading:
https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_da0862a2-aa4b-11e9-8fa2-27f9f6a05786.html
Thanks for the link. Sounds like every education article I have ever read. Duane better not read this article. Their use of the word, measurement, over and over again might cause a cranial explosion. As for me, I feel resigned to live in pretetual pseudoscience. To quote Vonnegut, so it goes.
The whole idea that punishing little children for not reading “fast enough” will somehow “make kids read better” is disgusting. But not one of these evil researchers puts the phrase like I just did.
If they did, everyone would realize what an evil thing is being done to children. And I’m sorry, but any researcher who justifies this kind of abuse is evil.
Second the evil part!
These people are not legitimate researchers because the latter do their research only after they gave obtained consent of the human subjects involved and only after the research has been approved by a scientific ethics board..
Much of the so called “research” being done these days is done without consent and without consideration by real scientists.
Yes, SDP. Why not just call them studies like they are?
Because they are attempting to hide their opinions behind a pseudo-scientific sheen of supposed scientific validity.
Marty West??? Hmmmmm. . . . . .
Where have I heard that name before?
Oh, yeah, now I remember. He was one of the twelve or so panelists along with R. Hess and JP Greene and other edudeformer cheerleaders at the Show Me Institute’s (Rex Sinquefield’s-Missouri’s Gates wannabe-hard core right wing stink tank) “Failure to Fixes” conference in KC, MO in May of 2017. The one where all the panelists combined had a total of 7 1/2 years experience teaching in public schools and those were divided between Greene-4 yrs and the supe adminimal from KC Public Schools who had 3 1/2 years public school teaching experience. I don’t believe any other panelist had ever taught in K-12.
But hey, they are the experts who, after cheerleading, promoting and otherwise telling everyone that we needed disruptive innovations, standards and testing malpractices, test based teacher evaluations and other edudeforms, were bemoaning that there prescriptions weren’t working. Why? Of course it had to due with public school teachers not faithfully implementing those edudeforms. So now they, the obvious experts, now had to come up with “fixes” for those “failures”. I didn’t hear anything new whatsoever just more of the same shit spewing from their pie holes. Why would anyone listen to West?
About the only good thing was that the conference was free.
“Lastly, the dehumanizing slide down into systems where the punitive is seen as normal, even for our youngest students. . . .”
Here is Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.” (in Educational Standards and the Problem of Error)
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Wilson’s dissertation can be found at: https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/577/700
“it doesn’t seem surprising to read Big Data studies that claim that those who fail tests in the states with the most funding for competition-driven reform may not be damaged as much as previously thought … ”
And it’s not surprising that the claim is utter bullshit. Using completely invalid data to say anything about anything is wrong, unethical and immoral for the harm it causes to students.
Again, quoting Wilson, this time from his A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43 :
“To the extent that these categorisations are accurate or valid at an individual level, these decisions may be both ethically acceptable to the decision makers, and rationally and emotionally acceptable to the test takers and their advocates. They accept the judgments of their society regarding their mental or emotional capabilities. But to the extent that such categorisations are invalid, they must be deemed unacceptable to all concerned.
Further, to the extent that this invalidity is hidden or denied, they are all involved in a culture of symbolic violence. This is violence related to the meaning of the categorisation event where, firstly, the real source of violation, the state or educational institution that controls the meanings of the categorisations, are disguised, and the authority appears to come from another source, in this case from professional opinion backed by scientific research. If you do not believe this, then consider that no matter how high the status of an educator, his voice is unheard unless he belongs to the relevant institution.
And finally a symbolically violent event is one in which what is manifestly unjust is asserted to be fair and just. In the case of testing, where massive errors and thus miscategorisations are suppressed, scores and categorisations are given with no hint of their large invalidity components. It is significant that in the chapter on Rights and responsibilities of test users, considerable attention is given to the responsibility of the test taker not to cheat. Fair enough. But where is the balancing responsibility of the test user not to cheat, not to pretend that a test event has accuracy vastly exceeding technical or social reality? Indeed where is the indication to the test taker of any inaccuracy at all, except possibly arithmetic additions?”
Test, punish and Big Data are all products of reform. None of these bad ideas has a stamp of approval from teachers. Some ambitious administrators with authoritarian personalities suffer from Stockholm syndrome. They accept this garbage. Plus, some schools have been infiltrated by TFA leadership. It is education malpractice.
Children are on different developmental schedules and have vastly differing backgrounds. Elementary schooling must accommodate this. Test them to death and punish them early on, and predictable, dire results will follow. Anyone who doesn’t understand this should be allowed nowhere near a school and certainly is not qualified to make decisions that affect schools, teachers, kids, and parents.