The New York State Board of Regents received a grant of $100,000 from the Gates Foundation to hire a consultant to evaluate its testing illness. The Regents hired Achieve, an organization devoted to standardized testing and it’s proliferation. In addition, Achieve was deeply involved in the development of the Common Core.
After hearing outrage from constituents, the Regents broke ties with Achieve and replaced them with California-based consultant WestEd.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hiring a fox to guard the henhouse?
Makes perfect sense — for NY Regents, at least
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When I was growing up in NY Safe, one actually had to have a brain to be a member of the Regents.
If all the stuff they have done in recent decades is any indication, that is no longer true.
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Ny State, not Safe
Self correct is a piece of garbage produced by a nitwit programmer .
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SomeDAM Poet,
You are so right.
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I was wondering about the intelligence of the regents myself. Do they not “keep up” with the educational landscape? I read this stuff and think, “What were they thinking?” I guess the sad fact is that they weren’t.
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Hiring a wolf after firing the fox to help out at the hen house?
Or is the new hire a better, more developmentally appropriate vehicle for children?
I say either way, decouple test scores with labeling schools. And don’t test every year. Increase resources to schools and prevent poverty before it even enters the schools by supporting families with appropriate social safety nets.
This is the decades long byproduct of Reagan, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. This is also the byproduct of civic indifference and ignorance.
But those four guys: They are four fools, each a different color, flavor, style, image, texture, appearance, PR persona, and each is just as tricky, deceitful, recklessly disconnected, and plutocratic as the other. They may be four very different peas, but they all belong in the same putrid pod.
Anyone in the mood for a political revolution?
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yes, especially when the word “guard” means “strategically and deeply plunder”
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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Government needs to listen to what the people want. Now that some pro-reform representatives have been voted out, it is becoming harder to fool the people. Voters are tired of the status quo so they are becoming more vocal. Activism is good for democracy and our public schools.
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Amen.
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We should break all ties with the Gates Foundation, worldwide. Burn the Bridge.
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Gates burned his own bridge when he met (repeatedly) with Epstein and flew on his plane.
Gates may well be the ONLY one who believes his claim that he did it “Because Epstein knew a lot of rich people.”
I’m pretty sure Melinda does not believe it.
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The leaders of standards-and-testing-based Education Deform are
a. those who profit from testing or
b. those who profit from serving those who profit from testing
Testing people are authoritarians. They want a world weighed and stack ranked with them at the top of the stack. They understand one thing: power. And they understand money because, of course, money is power.
They aren’t going to listen to reason. You can explain until you are blue in the face. . . .
why the standardized tests, particularly in ELA, are tortured and invalid and pathetically incomplete measures;
how extrinsic punishment and reward systems are demotivating for cognitive tasks;
why their puerile, backward “higher” standards aren’t higher;
how “standards” and testing have distorted and trivialized and rendered incoherent our curricula and pedagogy;
how the testing mania has robbed a generation of students of humane education;
how all this testing madness hasn’t closed achievement gaps;
how it hasn’t improved educational outcomes by the testers’ own preferred measure, test scores;
how universal “standards” kill innovation and encourage the emergence of monopolies;
why a diverse, pluralistic society and economy doesn’t need students identically milled and measured;
how the testing mania validates and promotes inequity via the Rosenthal Effect;
how high-stakes standardized testing sickens kids, creating stress and depression and leading, in some cases, to physical illness and suicide;
how accountability-based systems undermine educators’ prime directive, which is to produce intrinsically motivated, lifelong learners.
NONE OF THAT WILL MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. Authoritarians do not listen to opponents’ arguments. They dismiss them prima facie. They know better because they have authority and power.
They understand one thing: power.
They understand one thing: power.
They understand one thing: power.
The Federal Standardized Testing Mandate and the stupid state tests will not end until teachers and parents take it to the street. It is the responsibility of teachers’ unions to lead this.
Until they do, they are complicit in child abuse and in the distortion and devolution of schooling.
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The ‘they’ in “Until they do. . . ” includes all GAGA Good German teachers and administrators (adminimals) who implement the standards and testing malpractice regime.
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Don’t drag Lady Gaga into this.
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One thing I have noticed is that there are collaborators that have risen to the highest positions in schools. Those disgusted with school and it’s testing direction have gradually given way to those who can maneuver around the system or live through it, and another group which has immersed itself in the idea of testing and arisen from the baptism converted.
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Refuse to use Pearson products, any Pearson products, until they get out of the testing and teacher evaluation businesses.
Opt out.
Organize anti-testing rallies.
When legally possible, expose the sloppy, ridiculous test questions.
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The whole point of the testing madness in America was to sell a lot of tests and computer systems for testing and stack ranking. That’s why a computer mogul paid to have a single set of national standards created to key test scores to.
The testers have failed by their own preferred measure, test scores. Even Vichy collaborators at think tanks where thinking tanks now grok this, dimly. I’m looking at you, officers of the Fordham Institute for Payment of Big Bucks to the Officers of the Fordham Institute! I’m looking at you, Achieve Stack Ranking of the Proles!
So, get ready for Phase Two of the assault of US education, the one in which they attempt to create a National Curriculum–a Gates/Coleman style bullet list of what every child must learn and a national Curriculum Commissariat and Thought Police to enforce this. Forget that we are a nation of independent, free teachers, scholars, researchers. Forget that students are not widgets to be standardized. Forget that with standardization comes monopoly and mediocrity.
A National Curriculum Thought Police and curricular materials gatekeeper. Coming soon to a former democracy near you.
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The oligarchs understand one thing: power. And they understand how you get it: centralization of command, coercion, and control.
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They dropped Achieve and chose another fox to guard the hen house. Great.
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And, of course, the money came from the grand puppeteer himself, Master Gates. Gosh. Golly. Gee. Wonder what its conclusions will be? Stay the course. Stack rank those kids! Script those teachers. Command. Coerce. Control.
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Achieve also spawned the K to 12 Next Generation Science Standards; a reprise of the debunked, ineffective, and failed inquiry/discovery methodologies. A return to treating novice learners as pretend, proto-scientists despite a complete knowledge void in their long term memory banks. A senseless retention of soft skills over content knowledge; an approach that will turn off the very students that traditional standards/curricula interested and motivated. The decision on the part of NYSED and the BOR to adopt Achieve’s NGSS was unwarranted and reckless. They threw out the baby, the bathwater, and the bathtub for no good reason and will rue the day that they did.
A plea to all members of the NYS Board of Regents:
DROP NGSS before it’s too late.
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NGSS update: kids continue to hate science at our middle school. Before NGSS science was a popular subject. Now it’s “boring” and “confusing”.
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Why would any kid like walking into a science class and have their science “teacher” ask them to figure it out. Putting the burden on kids who are ill-equipped to do so is a great way to crush natural curiosity and interest.
Another Big Fail for Inquiry Learning:
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Out of the frying pan and into the fire!
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WestEd?
WestEd is all in for the gig economy. It is hiring many online and “flextime” workers see https://www.flexjobs.com/jobs/telecommuting-jobs-at-wested
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If I had known they were looking for a “testing consultant” I would have applied for the $100k. I would have finished my report in less than a day or two, the fastest $100k I ever earned. Guess what my recommendation would have been?
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Our schools tests compulsively. I see zero benefit.
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Nice! Thanks for sharing.
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