Archives for the month of: May, 2020
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David Kristofferson: The AP Problem Was Caused by the College Board’s Server and Bandwidth, not by Student Browsers

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
34

As I noted in the previous post, thousands of students who took AP exams found that their submissions were rejected. The College Board claimed that the fault was in the students’ browsers. It was, of course, blameless.

David Kristofferson–teacher, scientist, IT expert–clarifies the problem. The fault was with the College Board’s overloaded server and bandwidth, not the students’ browsers.

Every students, everywhere in the world, was expected to take the exam at exactly the same time, even in the middle of the night. Everyone was given a five-minute warning before the exam timed out. Every student had a countdown clock in front of them. Almost every one of those students (one million?) hit SEND at the same time.

Kristofferson writes:

One should not blame students for continuing to work a bit longer given these instructions. I heard reports from one of my students who uploaded successfully with 3 minutes left on the timer. Students who went beyond that time point may have encountered increasing difficulties as the system bogged down. This might vary depending upon the number of exam takers on each AP exam.

In fact, students told me that there is a Practice demo that they did try in advance of the actual test.

Undoubtedly, because there was not a load on the system when they tried the demo, they found that the upload went quickly and were lulled into thinking that it would be similar on exam day. That might be naive on their part, but considering that these students were taking a high-stakes abbreviated exam with a countdown timer staring them in the face the entire time, it is easy to understand their motivation to try to gamble at the end. Of course the College Board can say that they were warned as in the block quote above.

Students were warned not to wait until the last minute to submit their answers.

But note once again the imprecision of the warning! Why did the system not tell them on screen to STOP WORK NOW AND UPLOAD IMMEDIATELY OR YOU RISK LOSING ALL CREDIT FOR THIS PROBLEM. ???

Why didn’t the College Board (which gets around $3 billion a year in revenue – it is not a fly-by-night startup with no resources), after initial reports of problems last week, add more server and network bandwidth capacity??

This is an example of what happens when the American public education system is turned into a high-stakes testing system like the Chinese gaokao and other similar national tests in Asia.

Our country made tremendous advances after World War II in educating our citizens, and during that time we put a man on the Moon, began the computer revolution and the Internet; U.S. scientists won numerous Nobel Prizes, and we led the world in R&D and patent applications…

Unfortunately our local high school district and others around the country continue to think that AP is a “high quality curriculum,” when in fact its main purpose is to be purposely difficult and trap-filled to spread out the scoring curve. It fulfills that mission admirably, but this does not mean that AP is an effective learning program. There is no denying that many people think that AP is an essential route to college. However private schools are increasingly dropping this system, and we should too.

I was in high school during the era that preceded high-stakes testing. There was the SAT, but no one practiced for it, no one was tutored. It was a test that students took “cold” because the College Board assured the public that coaching would not change your score (not true, so now we have a major test tutoring industry for the SAT and for AP tests). There were no graduation tests, at least not in the Houston public schools; high school graduation depended on passing the required courses in English, science, mathematics, and social studies.

It is past time for our policymakers to step back and ask bluntly why we subsidize a massive testing industry that determines our children’s futures but is riddled with glitches, errors, and flaws.

Categories Education Reform

Mercedes Schneider: The College Board Blames Students for Its Botched AP Exams

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
51

By now, almost everyone knows that the College Board offered a shortened version of AP exams–only 45 minutes–and that thousands of students took the exams at home, online, only to have their answers rejected. When asked about this phenomenon, which was so deeply upsetting to the affected students, the College Board responded that the problem was the students’ browsers. Some students (including one who commented on this blog) pointed out that they took more than one AP exam, and their answers were accepted for one exam, but rejected for the second or third.

Mercedes Schneider writes that something is wrong with the College Board, not the students’ browsers. This is not their first technical failure, nor is it likely to be the last. The College Board says that 99% of the students who took AP exams submitted their answers successfully, but we have to take their word for it.

Should we?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Testing

Annie Abrams: Privatization Vultures Are Circling Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
15

Writing in the New Republic, New York City public school teacher Annie Abrams warns about the vultures circling public schools during the pandemic, hoping to make remote learning a feature, not a temporary emergency measure.

She cites the recent comments by Governor Cuomo about the seeming obsolescence of “all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?” And, of course, his invitation to Bill Gates of all people to “reimagine education” in the state. She might have also cited any number of statements by anti-public school individuals like Betsy DeVos and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which supports every kind of school except public schools.

Abrams knows that distance learning cannot replace the person-to-person contact that happens in physical classrooms.

Meaningful education is built on connection, and fostering relationships requires proximity. This is what a classroom does. It’s a space for students to establish relationships while experimenting with being in public. And while we don’t yet know the details of Cuomo’s plan, there’s reason to be suspicious. The Gates Foundation’s top-down approach to education reform, along with Cuomo’s history of supporting charter schools, inconsistency around unions, and exclusion of New York City educators from the project’s council, suggest a deeply undemocratic push to defund and privatize the public school system.

American public schools—“all these buildings, all these physical classrooms”—are cultural spaces as much as they are physical locations. Cuomo’s reimagining threatens to flatten public education into informational transaction, turning teachers into tech support in the process…

It’s clear students, at least, understand much of what our political leaders can’t grasp about public education. My students miss the dynamism and zaniness that define a classroom of adolescents, and they miss momentary escape from their defining roles at home. They know what school is, both what they’re there to do and what I’m there to do with them. When I write college recommendations, I ask students to submit a questionnaire reflecting on our time together. Last year, one said, “Writing became something you encouraged us to do when we felt most confused or frustrated, times when I was most likely to give up on doing something. I began to see writing as a way to convince people about the things that meant a lot to me.” Reading students’ faces, peering over their shoulders, and responding to their frustrations and their breakthroughs is integral to helping them match tools to occasions. This sounds saccharine, but it’s real. Those relationships are harder to cultivate on a screen.

The privatizers are choosing a moment of economic catastrophe to pitch their siren call to make distance learning permanent. It is cheaper, but it is not better. As we have seen from the dismal results of virtual charter schools, online “learning” is horrible.

Abrams argues that remote learning can never replace the learning that occurs in physical classrooms:

The American public school classroom should be an empowering space. A weird, messy, vital place of experimentation and collaboration. Public schools facilitate that opportunity for students, to think both critically and imaginatively and to agree on some kind of common reality. In the best cases, public education helps students situate themselves among broader communities than they may otherwise encounter while building civic trust. It helps them become adults, slowly, clumsily, day by day. There’s no app-based replacement for that.

She knows it. I know it. But do the politicians know it? Their current plans involve slashing the budgets of public schools at a time when the schools need to cut class sizes to protect the health and safety of students and staff.

Think about the massive tax cuts of December 2017 that lowered the taxes of wealthy individuals and big corporations. Think about the corporate handouts tucked into the Coronavirus Relief program. Then ponder why our political leaders are about to cut billions of dollars from our schools and our children.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Technology

NYC: Carranza Says He Can’t Cut $34 Billion Budget

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
15

Ricard Carranza, NYC Schools Chancellor, says he can’t cut the schools’ $34 billion budget. He says has has cut the budget “to the bone.”

Advocates don’t agree.

“There is no fat to cut, there is no meat to cut — we are at the bone,” Carranza testified Tuesday at a City Council budget hearing.

Education advocates and DOE staffers say his claim belies the bureaucratic bloat and bonanza of pay raises and promotions that have exploded during the tenures of Mayor de Blasio and Carranza.

“It’s just inconceivable there’s not waste in that budget,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Clearly there are more savings that can be made by cutting unnecessary contracts, consultants, and the mid-level bureaucracy, which has more than doubled in spending since de Blasio took office in 2014….”

The city has proposed $827 million in DOE cuts, including slashing school budgets by $285 million. This would reduce arts programs, counselors and social workers in needy districts, and college-prep for high schoolers. The DOE would also put off new classes for 3-year-olds, installation of air conditioners, and rat extermination.

“Students are going to feel bigger class sizes … the reduction in services, the reduction in enrichment activities,” Carranza warned.

Instead of slashing programs that impact students, critics say, the DOE should chop away at the vast array of high-salaried supervisors, consultants and contractors who do not work in schools or directly serve kids.

The DOE employs 1,189 educrats making $125,000 to $262,000 a year. All have desk jobs at Tweed Courthouse or in borough offices, records obtained by The Post show. Of those, 50 execs take home $200,000-plus — more than double the 21 at that salary level in fiscal year 2018.

That does not count Carranza, who collects $363,000.

Despite the army of six-figure supervisors, the DOE still pays high-priced consultants.

The DOE just inked a two-month, $1.2 million contract with Accenture LLP to advise the chancellor on school-reopening options, including a mix of classroom and remote learning.

Accenture staffers bill up to $425 an hour. That’s on top of another three-year Accenture contract costing the DOE $1.7 million a year for management advice.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, New York City

My Pandemic Appearance on the Samantha Bee Show

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
55

Thanks to a recommendation by my good friend Andy Hargreaves, I got a call from the Samantha Bee Show, which interviewed me about education and the pandemic. Here is the link. I will make a confession: I have not seen it yet. I hate to watch myself on television. I have a mental image of myself looking younger, much younger (like, 35-40), and on television every line shows, especially when you are living in a borrowed house and have no make up.

The interview took an hour. The segment is probably three minutes. I don’t know.

Let me know what you took away, other than how old I look. Don’t mention that.

Categories Education Reform

Dr. Michael Hynes and I Will Talk Next Wednesday: Join Us!

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
7

On May 20, I will ZOOM with Dr. Michael Hynes, the most interesting and inspiring superintendent I know.

Mike Hynes is superintendent of the Port Washington school district on Long Island, In New York.

He is a visionary. His new book—about educational leadership—is Staying Grounded.

He truly believes in whole-child education. He supports the parent opt-out movement. He believes that what matters most is children’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being. He is passionate about play, calm, mindfulness.

Mike is my choice for the next state superintendent of New York. What a wild thought! Imagine a major state led. Y a man who knows the harm done by standardized testing! Imagine a state willing to lead, instead of follow.

Join us on Wednesday May 20 at 7:40 pm EST to watch a discussion sponsored by the Network for Public Education. Space is limited to 100. Everyone else can watch a livestream on NPE’s Facebook page.

Categories Accountability, Creativity, Education Reform, Joy, Network for Public Education, New York

SPLC: Southern States Slowly Remove Confederate Symbols

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
2

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on the status of Confederate monuments and symbols.

This subject may not be uppermost on your mind in the midst of the pandemic, but it remains a sore subject in the South, where most of these memorials are located. They are an affront to African American citizens and to anyone else who recognizes the injustices of the antebellum South and the continuing racism of the present.

Categories Education Reform

Two Christian Leaders Speak Out Against Public Funding of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
13

Recently Trump promised Catholic leaders that if he is re-elected, he would fund Catholic schools.

These two Christian leaders explain why that’s a terrible idea.

Valerie Strauss introduced the essay:

Late last month, President Trump had a phone conversation with Catholic leaders, educators and others, during which he promised to seek federal financial support for parochial schools to help them weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to Crux, an online website that focuses on news about the Catholic Church.
Trump also declared himself the “best [president] in the “history of the Catholic Church,” according to Crux, which quoted from what it said was an audio recording it had obtained of the call. And he promised to keep supporting issues that are important to the Catholic Church, such as opposition to abortion.

Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, have been supporters of expanding alternatives to traditional public schools, especially programs that use public funding for private and religious school education. The first school that Trump visited as president was a Catholic school in Florida in 2017, and he has repeatedly praised state programs that use public funding for religious school expenses…

The authors are Meli Barber, vice president of DignityUSA, a Boston-based organization that focuses on LGBTQI+ rights and the Catholic Church; and Charles Foster Johnson, founder and executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, an independent ministry and outreach group that comprises nearly 2,000 pastors and church leaders from across Texas.

Barber and Johnson write, and I quote only a part of their excellent essay:

By redistributing taxpayer funds to private religious schools, voucher programs threaten marginalized students, religious freedom, and public education. We are also deeply concerned about religious leaders from many traditions, including our own, who would accept or promote voucher funding for private religious schools.
As leaders in national Christian organizations, DignityUSA and Pastors for Children, we advocate for the universal education of all children provided and protected by the public. Voucher funding for Catholic schools violates this public trust.

For decades, DignityUSA has advocated for policies that respect the inherent worth and dignity of LGBTQI+ people. Public schools educate all students, in keeping with the inclusive vision of education laid out in the U.S. Constitution and Title IX. The U.S. Constitution “guarantees all people, including LGBTQ people, ‘equal protection of the laws,’” and Title IX “provides important protections to LGBTQ students.” According to the National Coalition for Public Education, directing public funds to private voucher programs could put the civil rights of LGBTQI+ students at risk.

Pastors for Children has long raised concerns about how vouchers harm religious liberty. These programs force the nation’s religiously diverse taxpayers to fund religious education we may disagree with. The differences between our traditions are crucial, and none of us should be compelled by federal or state governments to fund schools that promote religious teachings that violate our conscience rights.

I urge you to read their essay in full.

Categories Freedom, Religion, Separation of church and state, Trump

Arthur Goldstein: Will Mitch McConnell Destroy Our Public Services?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
16

Veteran teacher Arthur Goldstein fears that Republican Senator Mitch McConnell will use his power to destroy public services in New York and other states whose revenues have been devastated by the pandemic.

He writes:

If we want to continue to get care when we’re sick, give our children education, and have police and firefighters to protect us, we’re going to need a federal bailout that devotes real money to real people, as opposed to corporations. It seems like common sense, but common sense seems to be the least common of all the senses.

In NYC, where I work, it took decades to recover from the teacher shortage that followed 1975 layoffs. Students sat in classes of 50 or more. We now know that class size is not merely an educational priority, but also a health priority. Can you imagine trying to social distance 50 students in a classroom?

Not everyone considers that worth worrying about. According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we may or may not get federal aid for actual working people in states and communities. Evidently, before we consider such frivolities, we need to protect businesses that compel people to work in an epidemic. Perish forbid, says McConnell, they should be held responsible when their employees get sick or die. This notwithstanding, Americans who worked their whole lives in expectation of a pension are not a priority for McConnell. This is a curious value.

I’m not at all sure why business takes priority over people. We’ve bailed out big airlines and big hotels. Evidently McConnell and his BFFs need to travel and stay somewhere, and roadside inns just won’t do. Even as tens of millions of Americans find themselves newly without jobs or health insurance, we’ve made sure Wall St. didn’t feel too much pain.

McConnell himself need not worry. Aside from whatever money he’s accrued during his Senate career, he’ll be getting a fixed pension of $139,200 a year, courtesy of US taxpayers. .I’ve yet to hear him say that Congressional pensions ought to be cut or rescinded, despite massive red ink in the federal budget. So why, then, is he so hard on states having trouble meeting their obligations?

The answer, of course, is that these states are blue states. The GOP Senate appears to believe states that didn’t vote for them don’t deserve to be helped. Therefore it’s okay for them to go bankrupt. Then they won’t have to bother with unimportant things like paying pensions or providing health service for unimportant people who don’t add value to Wall St. We’re talking about, teachers, cops, firefighters, nurses, among others who seem to matter not at all to McConnell.

But if Congress refuses to help states, it will harm ALL states, not just blue states. It will even hurt Kentucky, McConnell’s home state. Teachers, police, fire fighters, all public sector workers will be harmed.

Keep reading.

Categories Funding, Health, Safety

Prestigious Medical Journal Blasts Trump as Incompetent

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2020 //
47

The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, called on Americans to replace Trump for his grossly incoherent response to the pandemic.

One of the world’s oldest and best-known medical journals Friday slammed President Trump’s “inconsistent and incoherent national response” to the novel coronavirus pandemic and accused the administration of relegating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a “nominal” role.

The unsigned editorial from the Lancet concluded that Trump should be replaced.
“Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” said the journal, which was founded in Britain in 1823.

The strongly worded critique highlights mounting frustration with the administration’s response among some of the world’s top medical researchers. Medical journals sometimes run signed editorials that take political stances, but rarely do publications with the Lancet’s influence use the full weight of their editorial boards to call for a president to be voted out of office.

The death toll in the US has passed 85,000 and continues to rise.

Categories Health, Safety, Trump
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