https://www.nysape.org/nysape-pr-opt-remains-strong.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 9, 2019
More information contact:
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
Kemala Karmen (917) 807-9969; nys.allies@gmail.com
New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE)
Opt-Out Remains Strong Despite the former Commissioner’s Scare Tactics; Room Continues to be Made for Whole-Child Initiatives
The New York State Education Department released this year’s grades 3-8 test scores and opt out numbers at the end of August. Once again parents and educators searched in vain for justification for the millions of dollars spent on a testing system that has done little to improve student success or restore confidence and trust in our state’s education department.
After decades of testing, there remain significant gaps in results between Black and Hispanic students and their White and Asian peers, between economically disadvantaged and economically advantaged students, and between students with disabilities and nondisabled students. Continuing for another few decades on the same exact path of expensive and excessive tests hoping for different outcomes is a disservice to children and our society.
Although the outgoing Commissioner was able to slightly reduce the rate at which parents refused participation in the assessments, she accomplished this through fear and intimidation, urging district administrators to use whatever tactics necessary to increase participation rates. We documented these abhorrent tactics as we learned about them, here. In the end, these tactics didn’t work as most schools did not meet the 95% participation rate.
“The gap is still growing after far too many years. It’s time to own this and admit that annual testing in two subjects with draconian stakes attached haven’t helped the kids whom the tests are supposed to help. Instead let’s look to create real ways to help kids in underserved groups — with proven actions, backed by research. Let’s take the enormous taxpayer funds spent on destructive testing and invest instead in what we know works: food programs, after school care and programs, small classes, fully staffed school health offices—and so much more,” says Lisa Litvin, parent, former President Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Education and former Co-President Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA
Kemala Karmen, a founding parent member of NYC Opt Out, adds, “Not only does the so-called achievement gap remain, the whole notion is controversial and backward. To quote Ibram X. Kendi, historian and author of How to Be an Antiracist, ‘What if different environments actually cause different kinds of achievement rather than different levels of achievement? What if the intellect of a poor, low-testing Black child in a poor Black school is different—and not inferior—to the intellect of a rich, high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if the way we measure intelligence shows not only our racism but our elitism?’ Our state would do better to focus on ensuring that all students start with equal opportunities rather than annually trot out test scores that merely reflect an uneven starting line.”
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters points out that “with all the considerable money and time spent on these tests, and the anxiety they have provoked in children, the state hasn’t been able to devise a valid or reliable assessment that gives any useful information either to districts or teachers about how to improve instruction or the conditions of learning.”
“Consider the harm to our students with special needs and to English language learners,” reasons Jamaal Bowman, principal of CASA Middle School (Bronx, NY) and candidate for Congress for the 16th district. “Well over half are considered ‘far below grade level’ each and every year. These tests are flawed single measures that do not consider the complexity and diversity of intelligence. Our kids are so much more. Let’s create a system of progressive pedagogies like Montessori and Reggio Emilio that helps them to prove it.”
Jeanette Deutermann, parent of two, and founder of Long Island Opt Out said, “The New York State Assembly bowed to unexplained pressure exerted by the NYSUT Leadership and blocked legislation–that the Senate had already passed–that would have codified protections for students who opt out. In doing so, they failed to ensure even the most basic protections for student and parental rights; ALL parents have the right to decide whether to allow their children to participate in high-stakes testing without fear of district retaliation. We urge NYSED and the Board of Regents to use the opportunity for a new Commissioner and new direction to move away from test-based education policies, and call upon elected officials to act now to protect students and parents who choose to opt out in EVERY district across New York State.”
Jake Jacobs, co-administrator of the NY Badass Teachers Association, sums it up: “New York’s testing policy is still highly flawed and scientifically invalid for high-stakes decisions. Students are trained to guess at answers they don’t know, eliminating bad choices and then basically just gambling. Each year, thousands of scores fall right on the borderline of passing/failing, meaning lucky or unlucky guesses determined all these outcomes. Because the tests also do not account for home circumstances, from private tutors to neglect or abuse, they are not a reality-based method for diagnosing or improving obstacles to learning. Most absurd of all, the state is still using test scores in math or ELA in the evaluations of teachers of other subjects. I teach art, but have had math scores in my annual evaluation since 2013 as part of district-based ‘compliance’ agreements. And as ever, the formulas used to calculate the scores are secret, as is the process by which the proficiency levels are set, aka the ‘cut scores.’ Who cares about minor fluctuations in scores when the tests are still unverifiable, still grossly inaccurate, and still ignoring the factors that matter most?”
Please click on these links to download the 2019-2020 Opt Out Letter:
English version & Spanish version
NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition of over 70 parent and educator groups across the state.
I have a question:
HOW was PEARSON, a British Company, given MANY contracts to TEST, TEST, TEST American students?
Yvonne, I suspect economy of scale and lobbying has something to do with it, but for the record NY State has replaced Pearson, using a more homegrown test vendor (Questar) for the last several years. It hasn’t made much of a difference. Problems with the tests remain, unsurprisingly.
As I recall, a top official at Pearson moved to Questar. No difference.
Why did NYSUT oppose protections for kids and parents opting-out?
Ask Jeanette Deutermann. The media portrays opt out asa tool of the unions, but that’s absurd. The unions have not supported opt out parents.
If the teacher’s unions actually got behind ending standardized testing and the Common [sic] Core [sic], these things could actually happen. Imagine, a national standardized testing strike. One can dream!
Questar….that name always reminds me of a bad, 1970s science fiction movie….you know, one with tacky costumes, cheap special effects and super-cheesy dialogue.
Wait a minute, that’s US…..the world we’re actually living in now, on the eve of 2020 is, God help us, like one big, bad 1970s science fiction movie -come to horrific life….with the leading character, that reality TV star, sort of businessman, known as….
No…I had a long day in the classroom. It’s a Monday. I can’t even type those four letters…..
Gonna go water my flowers….
Whoa… I was walking across the road towards my pumpkins and I realized….the horrible, orange dude’s surname has FIVE letters. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I’m either quite tired or I really don’t like that guy…or both. I guess I equate him with a four letter word.
John, you stumped me with that four-letter word.
I also remember Pearson being caught wining and dining education officials to push for contracts, and paying a $7 million fine. They had a separate foundation that was not supposed to promote their for-profit products but that’s exactly what they did. At the time, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman directed the settlement money to a Carnegie-funded teacher recruitment organization.
The 2019 results in New York were, for 3-8, 45.2 percent of students scoring proficient in ELA and 44.5 in Math.
You will remember that NCLB set a goal of 100 percent proficiency of US students, in reading and math, by 2014. Organizations like Achieve and the CCSSO, and hundreds of astroturf shill organizations funded by Ed Deform oligarchs interested in selling more computers and software, sold politicians and Vichy collaborators in state education departments on three ideas:
That high-stakes standardized testing would introduce accountability into US K-12 education.
That this accountability would lead to better outcomes, enabling US students to compete favorably with students from the rest of the world.
That this accountability would close achievement gaps.
So, here we are. It’s 2019, and fewer than half of students are proficient by the Deformers’ own measures.So much for the efficacy of these Deforms.
US state departments spend 1.7 billion dollars annually on contracts alone for these state tests. That breathtaking number does not include the billions more spent on computers to take the tests on, test prep materials, practice and benchmark tests, curricula that have been revised to be test preppy, the portion of administrators’ and teachers’ salaries that go toward creating data walls and holding data chats and meeting with parents about test scores and proctoring tests and so on, and much, much more.
Takeaway 1: BY ITS OWN PREFERRED MEASURE OF EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES, testing-and-standards-based accountability has UTTERLY FAILED. It has not improved outcomes. It has not closed achievement gaps. We’ve been doing this crap for decades now, and it doesn’t work. Clearly, unequivocally, it doesn’t work.
Takeaway 2: But it has vastly dumbed down ELA curricula and pedagogy and, in math, has led both to developmentally inappropriate instruction in the early grades and to hopelessly futile lock-step standardization and regimentation of grade-level instruction in high-school, without respect to–in fact, with utter obliviousness to–individual students’ readiness for that instruction.
Takeaway 3: The vast costs of all this testing could be incurred, instead, by programs to address actual root causes of failure to succeed in school, including poor prenatal care and early childhood nutrition, systemic poverty, and substandard extra-school environments/lack of wraparound services and environments.
Takeaway 4: In time, people become inured to craziness, and it becomes the new normal. As the anthropologist Ruth Benedict never tired of pointing out, behaviors of no utility or even of negative utility often become cultural norms and persist as long as the negative utility isn’t sufficient to bring about utter collapse.
Standardized testing and the puerile Gates/Coleman “standards” have been a vampire sucking the life out of US K-12 education for far, far too long now. Put a stake in them.
Oops, sorry. The 2019 results were as follows for 3-8: ELA, 45.4 percent, Math, 46.7.
Well said, Mr. Shepherd.
Testing is simply measurement, and measurement does not change outcomes for students. It does not matter how much data collected, or many data chats educators have. It order for scores to rise, the assumption has to be that lazy teachers are not providing their best work to students and districts. Testing will “scare them straight!” The truth is teachers are generally doing their best, often in difficult situations. The other truth is that more than half of public school students live in poverty.
The student scores will fall according the bell shaped curve generally according to income despite teachers’ efforts. That is what the research is telling us. Getting the US to spend over 1.7 billion on useless testing is one of the all time great scams of the testing industry. Will we ever stop repeating stupid?
Years ago, I had an office in Massachusetts with a big bay window in the lobby overlooking a porch and a marsh. I heard a repeated thumping and went to investigate. Standing on the porch was an enormous sea gull who was fighting with his own reflection in the glass. He would slam his head into the “other bird,” stagger back, and then repeat this. I had to chase him away to keep him from killing himself. Well, this is what we are doing with the state testing and the Common [sic] Core [sic].
“Testing is simply measurement….”
Paging Dr. Swacker … Paging Dr. Swacker……
Dienne77: You’re right. A better statement: Testing is presumed to be measurement.
Hi Bob Shepherd,
In my advocacy work, I have occasionally been asked to cite a monetary figure for testing costs. Would you kindly point me to the source for your $1.7B figure? I’d love to have something concrete to cite. Thx in advance.
This is from a Brookings Institution report, 2012. But the figure is probably still pretty good because the requirements are the same. If anything, like everything else, the costs have probably risen. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/11_assessment_chingos_final_new.pdf
In December of 2016, Pearson (ofc) published an article, based on this report, entitled “Is 1.7 Too Much to Pay for Assessments?” Its answer, ofc, was that these are a great bargain. LMAO. I have long suggested that the company change its motto to “Pearson, Not Persons,” and that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation adopt the slogan “All your base belong to us.”
Thank you
Love your analysis, Bob. Also love the NY people who speak truth to Ed Reform.
Bob do you [or does anybody] know whether “proficiency” in state accountability stats still means NAEP proficiency, i.e. prox B+/A-? – If yes, why the h don’t they use the “basic” score?] Or is it meaningless, in that each state establishes “cut scores” every year? (i.e., cannot compare one state’s results to another.)… Of course there’s also the meaningless inherent in changing test vendors every few yrs (ie., can’t even compare own state’s yr-to-yr results)… And the ultimate meaningless of these measurements (cf D Swacker cites).
meaningless, in that each state establishes “cut scores” every year. And everything else you mention and more.
In New York, if you graph the cut offs, they jump around from year to year like a gerbil on methamphetamines. And in ELA, certainly, the scores are close to meaningless–they simply do not validly and reliably measure what the purport to measure. You take an incredibly general ability like the ability to make inferences from text, and ask one or two multiple-choice questions that have the student make some sort of inference from some random snippet of text, and you have validly measured this skill GENERALLY? Of course not. The very notion is absurd. It’s all such a scam!!!
NAEP has three levels, basic, proficient, and advanced. The NY test has four, with Level 2 being “Partially Proficient” and Level 3 being “Proficient.” I would not hazard to add to the already absurd numerology related to the NY tests and other high-stakes standardized tests any kind of grade-level equivalence calculation.
Thanks, Bob!
I copied your excellent example of one way ELA tests are useless into my bank of quotable ed quotes 😉 It’s really a nutshell for the ELA tests in general [if based on CCSS-like stds], as so very many of the “stds” [/”skils”] listed are in fact “incredibly general abilities” which cannot be measured by a few multiple-choice Q’s.
“What if different environments actually cause different kinds of achievement rather than different levels of achievement? What if the intellect of a poor, low-testing Black child in a poor Black school is different—and not inferior—to the intellect of a rich, high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if the way we measure intelligence shows not only our racism but our elitism?”
This statement is what I believe from decades of advocating for poor ELLs. Not only do ELLs face language barriers, they face cultural differences as well. Standardized tests are designed to measure what it is assumed middle class Americans should know. They do not account for cultural differences. Poor students and foreign students do not have the same access to the body of knowledge and experiences that middle class American students have. Testing students for reading a math is a narrow lens through which to judge students, teachers and schools. I have seen numerous examples on standardized tests that assume students taking the tests have a middle class background. I have seen many intelligent, competent students do poorly on tests because of language and poverty. I have often thought if we tested students on how to get coconuts from a palm tree, my students would be in the “gifted” group. If we tested students on how to make a toy from an old tin can, my students would excel. If my female students were testing on embroidery, their scores would be off the charts. Standardized tests are culturally biased! They are an indicator of racism and elitism.
The subject of this post is perfect for these comments:
I just read an article about the comedian Kenan Thompson (longest cast member of SNL who is always hilarious), & here’s an apt quote
“‘He’s also pitching new projects, citing the dearth of black-owned production companies making comedies. “It’s almost like the SATs,'” Thompson says of the limited opportunities for comedic actors of color such as himself. “Like I have to do great at a test that doesn’t really suit my upbringing & what I’m familiar with.”‘
Wow–that says it all…
Well, almost–also, this apt tidbit from the comic strip, “Frazz”:
Student to teacher: Would you like to purchase the extended warranty? If I get any ?? wrong, I’ll replace them w/the right ones.
Teacher: Why should I pay you to fix something you’re supposed to get right in the first place?*
Student: I don’t know. But clearly somebody somewhere thought it through & came up w/an answer.
*That’$ a good que$tion for Pear$on!!!
Oh, Bob, adding to your comment at 3:50 PM (& also paging Dr. Swacker!):
YES–I have been saying a NATIONAL testing strike for years. Just.EVERYONE. WALK.OUT. Sponsored by the NEA & the AFT (ha, ha…or not).
Anyway, the rank-&-file CAN do this.
& I am paging Dr. Swacker to make his usual comment about “GAGAs.”
If EVERYONE walked out, just what could the powers that be do to millions?!
It’s a national scandal that the national unions have been collaborators in Education Deform. It’s time for them to fix this. And if they actually did a 180 and started leading the struggle against standardized testing, they would have overwhelming support from parents and teachers. They could end this nonsense, and if they did so, this alone would majorly revitalize the union movement in the US AND vastly increase union cred and power.
It’s shameful that they have not committed to doing so.
Shameful and stupid.
Attention NY parents: Next Generation Science Standards and companion tests in grades 5, 8, and HS are on the way! More unnecessary disruption courtesy of the reformers from Achieve. Only two more years and your 10 year old kid will be subject to Common Core-like science standards and assessments that will absolutely boggle his tiny under-developed pre-frontal cortex.
They can’t leave anything alone.
Especially their bank accounts!
Thanks….many similarties with Houston…BR
Billy R. Reagan
(713) 795-9696
(832) 215-8877 cell
If anyone is interested in supporting Jamaal Bowman’s grassroots campaign, fully backed by people, without taking corporate money, here’s the page to donate to his campaign. He’s doing incredible work in this space, and having a voice like that in US Congress would be incredible
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jamaal-launch?refcode=redirect