Now here is good news!
The new superintendent of the Boston Public Schools Brenda Casellius announced a reduction of district tests.
This does not affect the state-mandated tests, but it is a welcome acknowledgement that students need more instruction, not more testing.
School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has announced a moratorium on district-mandated standardized tests, according to a Sept. 19 memo to school leaders.
To read the memo, click here.
“For this school year, we will take a pause in requiring that schools administer specific assessments,” the memo says.
It also announces an end to “End-of-Year” district assessments in English Language Arts and math, and says BPS will stop giving the Terra Nova standardized test to students in grades four and five. That test has been used to decide which students should be invited to Advanced Work Class (AWC) for the following year. The Terra Nova will still be given in third grade as a gateway to AWC in grade four.
The memo does recommend continued use of certain reading tests and district assessments that are used to evaluate students’ academic progress during the year. “Administration of these assessments is highly recommended,” Cassellius wrote, “but completely optional.”
(MCAS tests are not affected by the new policy because they are mandated by the state, not BPS.)
Cassellius says one reason for the new policy is to “shift attention from executing the status quo to … reflecting upon our practice.”
This is a welcome contrast with New York City, where a spokesperson recently declared that there would be four additional off-the-shelf standardized tests each year, to prepare for the state tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great news. The new superintendent is doing what is possible. But what we desperately need is to end the federal standardized testing mandate, and we need the unions to get some sense and start campaigning for that. It’s time the unions listened to Bonnie Raitt: “Let’s give them something to talk about.” They could end the standardized testing nightmare, or they can continue to sit on the sidelines like cowards.
When I read about people reducing the number of high-stakes standardized tests, I always think, “Well, that’s like reducing the number of bank robberies one is committing or the number of times one hits one’s child or spouse.” Yes, that’s a good thing, but. . . . can we talk about the overall behavior?
If the leaders of our teacher’s unions believe that high-stakes standardized testing is a good thing, then they are not smart enough to be running those unions.
If they think that those tests are terrible for kids and teachers and curricula and pedagogy but don’t want to lose the support of the Vichy teachers and administrators who support the testing, then they are cowardly and hypocritical and aren’t leaders.
And, of course, if the reason for their inaction is the funding they get from powerful oligarchs, then they are not only cowardly but corrupt.
The unions could take actions that would bring about a swift end to the federal standardized testing mandate. It’s long, long, long past time that they did so.
It’s easy to understand why administrators have the kids take practice tests. Why? Well, doing so familiarizes kids with the formats of the state tests, and if success on these is tied to graduation or to promotion to the next grade level, as it often is, then arguably one has to try to help the kids game the tests. But that’s sick and sad, isn’t it? Far better to resist–to declare that one’s district will be a test free zone. But that, of course, comes at a great, great cost. Certainly, poor schools CAN’T do this. No administrator should be put into such a position–between the Scylla and Charybdis of these choices.
It’s important for district-level people with a conscience to resist, resist, resist the standardized testing cancer that has so debased curricula and pedagogy. Eliminate testing where possible. Use the position as a bully pulpit to argue against the federal testing mandate. Ban test preppy curricular materials. And so on. But it takes a very brave administrator to do this.
“Brave” administrators don’t last long in our district.
Yeah. Jeez. There’s a lot of that.
This is great news! And just a start. She has the power to eliminate a K2 test (Kindergarten 2 is for five-year-olds) that is highly inappropriate. Last year they began giving a literacy test on an iPad with headphones. If she hasn’t put a stop to this already, I hope it’s next on the chopping block. Superintendent Cassellius has many progressive ideas. I have high hopes for her and the district!
T.S. Eliot took the title of one of his greatest poems from medieval (and older) tales of a waste land, a land under a curse, awaiting a savior to lift it. The Greeks had their own version of this. Their word for such a curse, usually due to a sin that had to be expiated, was a “miasma.” That’s what we see at the beginning of Oedipus the King–the people have come to the king because there is some sort of curse on the land. Babies are stillborn. Cows aren’t giving milk. Crops are failing.
Well, high-stakes standardized testing has been just such a curse on K-12 education landscape. Most teachers and administrators passionately hate the tests (though many do secretly, afraid of what open contempt for the tests might cost them professionally). Of course they do. Only the complete idiots think that these tests are a good idea.
I have been longing for the emergence of a union leader who would actually lead his or her teachers in a war against the tests, who would serve as the liberator, who would bring the tests down, who would lift the curse that has laid waste to our curricula and pedagogy and stolen the chance for a humane education from millions of kids over many decades now.
To be an education “leader” and not committed to working, every day, to end the testing is criminal. It’s malfeasance on a Trumpian scale.
I am highly impressed — and jealous. I want liberty and justice for my students too.
Hip hip hooray to our new superintendent, Dr. Brenda Cassellius!
Unlike Laura Perille, our last supernintendo, who was the CEO of an hedge fund umbrella group of fauxlanthropies and privatizers before being appointed to by Mayor Walsh, Cassellius is a lifetime educator. She has pressed the pause button on the donneybrook called BuildBPS, a 10 year plan to shutter our schools. She has said she’s not afraid to ask for more funding. She has stated that she will not implement policy changes until she has had time to complete a listening tour, hearing from families, advocates and teachers and staff!
But her heresy on testing already has her in the sights of the Walton-friendly state board of education, which currently has three members linked to the Waltons – Jim Peyser, Martin West and Amanda Fernández. A fourth member, Margaret McKenna, stepped down from the board recently; she had been president of the Walton Foundation 2007-2011. Governor Charlie Baker appoints the board, and the Waltons funded his Koch-linked Pioneer Institute.
The state MCAS scores were recently released and DESE is looking to justify its charter love in the usual way – by insisting test scores show something of value. Here’s Citizen for Public School’s executive director Lisa Guisbond’s take:
“Since its inception more than 20 years ago, MCAS has failed to make any progress on its primary goal, which was to eliminate achievement gaps by race, income, language, and disability. Why, after more than 20 years of failure, would we keep trying an intervention that has proven to merely reinforce historical beliefs about differences in intelligence by subgroup?” said CPS Executive Director Lisa Guisbond. “Massachusetts is holding onto an old race-based testing policy to sort students. It is no wonder, then, that the state has some of the largest gaps in achievement by race, income, language, and disability in the nation. It is time for Massachusetts to join the multiple other states that are exploring alternative ways to assess school quality and student learning in ways that uplift all students, particularly those who have been historically marginalized, and that place a premium on bringing back the natural joy, passion, and curiosity of learning.”
https://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/cps-statement-on-2019-mcas-results-mcas-not-about-real-education-equity-or-justice/
DESE’s reaction? Threaten to take over Boston’s public schools – or at least some of them.
“The sobering results of the most recent state education assessment make clear that Boston is still failing too many of its children. For a rich city, swimming in tax revenue from new development, that’s nothing short of a scandal.
Out of the 104 Boston schools the state assessed, it found that 42 of them require targeted or broad-based intervention . Only 14 BPS schools were “meeting or exceeding targets,” according to numbers released Tuesday. The assessments are based on standardized test results, along with factors like absenteeism and graduation rates.”
It’s worth noting, MA BESE granted a waiver to Perille when the mayor installed her as superintendent last year despite the fact that she wasn’t even qualified to serve in the position of a substitute. Now, they’re wringing their hands because poor black and brown kids have low test scores – not something they can easily lay at Cassellius’ feet.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2019/09/24/bps-gets-needs-improvement-from-state/uLgvRpfTFSfVQC0rriPmyJ/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter
Of course it’s impossible to compare MCAS scores from year to year; aside from their uselessness in giving us any actionable information, we’re on about our fourth iteration in as many years, (a PARCC hybrid, thanks to the late, former Ed commish Mitchell Chester, who held a dual role as president of PARCC) and they might be administered on computers or on paper.
Two things have been consistent, though. One are the intensely high needs of Boston students – poverty, English not the home language for more than half of them, 1 in 5 kids with an IEP. (Remember some not small number of children have their bases loaded with all of these factors.) The second is the detrimental, deliberate underfunding of the schools for the past five years under Mayor Walsh, whose heart beats for charters.
It’s interesting that the Globe seems to go after Walsh, as they led the cheers for him when it came to cutting financial support. Could be because the Barr Foundation now underwrites the paper’s educational reporting. Cassellius was absolutely not the choice of the foundations; they were pushing for Broadie and Chief for Change alumna Marie Izquierdo. Barr funds the privatizers and collaborates with the Waltons; UMass professor Maurice Cunningham has the details here:
http://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2019/06/27/the-boston-globe-barr-foundation-marriage-and-the-rise-of-philanthro-interest-group-journalism/
For exactly all the reasons Boston’s advocates of public education are cheering our new superintendent, the privatizers want her head on a platter. They should know we’ll have her back.
Thanks, Christine, for this informative update!
Thanks, Bob, for your huge contributions on Diane’s blog!
Is it not astonishing what a great job Diane does of keeping us all abreast of what’s going on in American education? It’s AMAZING that she does this so well without any staff to help her. She’s quite the phenomenon. Blows me away.
The millionaires and the billionaires cannot ever come close to those of us who volunteer for the mission.
This is what Diane’s new book is about!!! I can’t wait for people to read it. Soooooo inspiring!!!!
And NYC is ready to add more, to their shame. Agree that Diane is a national treasure.
One of the few advantages of being old is that you give up wanting anything and you speak honestly, which terrifies everyone
I bet you were like that when you were in your first decade! We’ve heard about you climbing out the window of your Wellesley dorm after curfew!
Just testing the system! There was no place to go other than back into the front door of the dorm.
I’d be okay with that as an epitaph : She was always testing the system.