Peter Greene skewers Betsy DeVos’ unsubstantiated claims about the meaning of the disappointing NAEP scores.
Don’t believe her when she says that 2/3 of students are “below grade level” in reading. NAEP proficiency is not “grade level.” NAEP even posts that statement on its graphs. This is what NAEP says as a note attached to its graphs:
“The NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade-level proficiency, but rather competency over challenging subject matter. NAEP Achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution.” The fact that Secretary DeVos and her staff ignored this warning raises the question of whether any of them actually read the NAEP report, or whether they simply skimmed it looking for numbers to make American schools look bad.
DeVos uses every opportunity to bash public schools, even with falsehoods. Especially with falsehoods.
Betsy knows plenty about falling NAEP scores. Under her powerful influence in Michigan, that state’s NAEP scores plummeted.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DeVosense
DeVosense is nonsense
Meaningless drivel
Betsense is wetsense
Wet as a sniffle
I always love listening to Bet$y speak her “mind”. Everything she says makes privatization look so bad to so many and makes it impossible to fraudulently frame charters as being progressive, her words are like a soft, cool breeze upon my forehead. Don’t stop, Bet$y, don’t stop.
The Kiss of Griz
Betsy’s like a grizzly’s kiss
Planted on my neck
How I long for kiss like this
Death, but what the heck
TAGO! Poison for the poisoner as well as the poisoned.
I knew she would double down. This privatization “experiment” was never an experiment. It had a predetermined outcome. They would work to replace public schools and invent new “governance” with little or no democratic or public input and with or without “results”.
The answer is always more charters and more vouchers. It has to be. They don’t have anything else to offer that fits within the ideological constraints.
It’s a shame for students in public schools but I’m not sure it matters. Ed reform is completely irrelevant to 90% of them anyway. The only thing they see is “testing season” because that’s the only part of the agenda that applies to 90% of schools. That and budget cuts, of course.
You can’t pay these people to lift a finger on behalf of students in existing public schools- I know because we are paying them- thousands of them- and they offer absolutely nothing of value to our students. They’re professional public school critics and charter and voucher promoters. That’s the job.
They don’t call her “Double down DeVos” (and her boss, Triple Down Trump) for nothing
essential recognition: the privatization experiment had a PREDETERMINED outcome
“The fact that Secretary DeVos and her staff ignored this warning raises the question of whether any of them actually read the NAEP report, or whether they simply skimmed it looking for numbers to make American schools look bad.”
Is there really a question about this? The existence of scores, and the suggestion of their significance makes anyone engaged in societal debate skim the scores for support for their own argument. This is the pernicious aspect of testing. The data live beyond their significance.
A fellow teacher told me of a student whose IQ she knew to be low in the normal range. Steeped as he was in the understanding of geography, history, and economics, he competed successfully in some national competition. The significance of the IQ number was still hard for her to discount. Instead of calling the score tripe, she sought for meaning in it because she is trained to do so.
Creating data often moves the conversation away from where it should be. In teaching, that should be whether students seem to be interested in the subject, or willing to do the work to learn whether they are interested or not.
“This is the pernicious aspect of testing. The data live beyond their significance.”
Which includes the possibility that they have no significance at all.
But unfortunately, few seem willing to go there, instead operating within the standard overton window of acceptability.
The young boy yelling “The emperor has no clothes!” Is simply ignored.
In this case, the young boy is Duane Swacker.
How about “The emperor has no clothes and his innards a spilling all over the ground. And his head has exploded a la Mars Attack Martians-Ack ack ack ack ack!!”
I would argue that everything has significance in relation to its own reality. The presence of a number means that a student sat for a test. That was the behavior that produced the number if there were no malfunctions in processing the clicks and marks, or some other process that was related. The data as a reflection of intellectual activity is made more problematic by the contrast between the reality of the process vs the perception of this reality by a public that does not always think of the process I ways that relate to the reality.
If a test takers chooses answers at random with the flip of a die and just happens by pure chance to choose all the “right” answers, that”s the reality but it has precisely ZERO real significance, since “significance” implies with regard to what the test maker deems important.
And the problem, of course, is that the test maker can never distinguish between the situation in which a student got all answers “correct” by pure chance and the one where they got them ” right “because they knew the answers (or at least which answers the test makers were looking for)
In the advent that a test taker chooses to random-answer test items, the significance of the action is completely lost on the people who see the resulting number as evidence of the complex behaviors we call learning. Guessing is a significant action, but it is undetectable by a test score.
You notice that event was changed to advent. auto correct is now ruled by those who wait for the coming, I suppose.
“I would argue that everything has significance in relation to its own reality.”
Interesting! I would argue that everything has NO significance in relation to its own reality. The significance lies in a human interpretation of that reality, nothing more. So that without Homo Supposedly Sapiens nothing has any significance to anything not related to an individual consciousness (notice I didn’t say human consciousness.)
Lest those who despise philosophy (thinking and communicating without the benefit of an ultimate proof) laugh off this discussion, it really does get to the heart of the teaching and learning process as unless something is significant to the learner, it probably will not be learned unless by force and mental violence.
Has a single high profile ed reformer looked at their own work as a result of these scores or is it just yet another opportunity for public school bashing and agenda promotion?
They’ve been in charge for the last 3 presidential administrations. No accountability at all for the “accountability hawks”? Instead we get another stern lecture and doubling down on privatization?
Half of Detroit schools are privatized. They moved the goalposts again and now they need 100%?
You know, I don’t mind if it’s ideological. They’re permitted to be opposed to public entities and labor unions. That’s a belief and they’re allowed to hold it.
Just stop saying it’s about education. It’s not.
When they were pushing more testing on California public school students Jerry Brown wrote a funny veto where he asked when we reach “testing nirvana”. When do we reach charter and voucher nirvana?
I’m not an expert but perhaps we should try hiring some politicians and public employees who actually support public schools and the students who attend those schools.
Having opponents of public schools running public school policy probably ends badly for public school students. We seem to be stuck with two “choices”- we can have ed reformers who neglect and ignore public schools or we can have ed reformers who actively work to eradicate public schools.
Is there some reason we have only two bad choices? What if we hired from outside the echo chamber?
Maybe ed reformers can understand the bad position public school families are in this way- you know how Elizabeth Warren put out a plan that doesn’t expand charter schools and all of ed reform rose up in righteous protest and anger?
That’s what ed reform governance is to public school families. The people who come out of this “movement” don’t support our schools and yet they run education policy and this has been going on now through three consecutive presidential administrations.
When do students in public schools get an advocate in government? Charter schools have them. Vouchers have them. DeVos spends every work day promoting charters and vouchers and bashing public schools. If the US Department of Education spent every workday promoting public schools and bashing charters and vouchers would ed reformers object? Sure they would. Warren hasn’t even been elected yet and they’re objecting.
When do the unfashionable public schools get one? How did 90% of students end up as a disfavored afterthought and why are our students only important in terms of their political utility to sell charters and vouchers?