Our blog poet frequently favors with rhyme:
Privatize the planet
Privatize the planet
Plunder it for gain
Light the fire and fan it
Mine the golden vein
Privatize the water
Sell it to the poor
Privatize your daughter
Sell her as a whore
Privatize the wildlife
Charge a viewing fee
Like a Wall Street low life
That is what you’ll be
The superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Susana Cordova, resigned abruptly, and her departure was followed by finger pointing. Denver has been a hot spot for “reformers,” and it’s school board elections attract DFER, “Education Reform Now,” and other big-money donors from out of state.
I asked Jeanne Kaplan, a former DPS board member, to explain what’s going on. She sent me her comments and a statement released by the Colorado Latino Forum.
Kaplan writes:
In spite of the cacophony of adulation from education reformers there is no evidence that Susana Cordova has been pushed out by the Board of Education. Susana Cordova left in the middle of the school year in the middle of a pandemic because Susana Cordova wanted to leave for reasons unknown. (Ms. Cordova has been silent so far except for her initial letter of resignation). Was the Board at odds with her and her reformer staffers? At times, yes, but that should be expected when education reformers consistently sought to thwart the decision of the people and the mandate to the Board through two election cycles. In fact an argument can be made that these education reformers are in fact the reason for Ms. Cordova’s exit, for it is they who have sewn chaos and dissent within the District.
Since Ms. Cordova’s announcement reformers have gone into a full court press to push a story line that says, “Mean board pushed out a local woman of color superintendent. Bad Board would not work with superintendent” with a clear undercurrent message: “ board needs to be replaced.” Letters of support and social media postings for Cordova have poured in from a former and the current mayor (both of whom it should be noted are strong education reformers), education reformer extraordinaire, Arne Duncan (former Secretary of Education), 14 former DPS women school board members, historically reform oriented organizations like Donnell-Kaye, A+ Colorado, and a myriad of other smaller reform organizations. Again, with no evidence the “superintendent pushed out by the board” storyline has become the storyline. But is this case? Or is this just a last ditch effort for education reform to continue to push to be the driving philosophy in Denver? Or, are one or more of these scenarios possible? Is this
o An attempt for mayoral control of Denver’s public Schools?
o An attempt to lay the groundwork for a no holds barred school board election cycle in 2021 where the current board is blamed for the chaos?
o An attempt to blame teachers for her exit?
o An attempt to blame Susana for the failures of Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg?
o A subtle attempt to undermine Denver’s women school leaders, since the Superintendent, Board president and Board vice president are women? And finally,
o Did Susana’s departure lead to the departures of her education reformer staffers, Mark Ferrandino and Jen Holladay, or did their impending departures lead to Susana’s departure? The Colorado Latino Forum, whose mission is to increase the political, social, educational and economic strength of Latinas and Latinos, just released a statement regarding the current situation. CLF has documented the situation and speaks for many of us. Thank you to the Board of Directors for the honesty and bravery.
Statement Regarding Resignation of Denver Public Schools Superintendent Susana Cordova
The sudden resignation of DPS Superintendent Susana Cordova has sparked a small but politically powerful group, led by Mayor Michael Hancock, to decry Cordova’s resignation as a far-fetched racist and sexist conspiracy — a charge so outrageous that it can not go unchallenged. Therefore, the CLF Board is compelled to set the record straight with several facts omitted by the Mayor in his campaign to smear duly elected Board of Education members, who, unlike Mayor Hancock and his wealthy allies, are unpaid public servants.
First, Superintendent Susanna Cordova resigned last week of her own accord. According to her public announcement, she is taking a high-level position at a school district in the Dallas, Texas area. Ms. Cordova will benefit from a hefty pension from the DPS budget that will allow her to comfortably transition into a presumably well-paying new salary. However, unlike Ms. Cordova, many under-paid teachers and their students will continue to languish during a pandemic without adequate resources, such as basic internet access for remote learning. Further, their parents will continue to financially struggle to secure adequate childcare, and to make ends meet. It is disappointing that the Mayor does not express the same level of outrage for these teachers, students and their families.
Second, when selecting former superintendent Tom Boasberg’s replacement, Board members with close ties to the Hancock administration ensured that Cordova, as Boasberg’s protege, was the sole finalist after an expensive and superficial national search process. However, these same political insiders are now demanding an “independent” community engagement process — an opportunity that they denied to public education advocates during a succession of politically-connected superintendents dating back to over fifteen years. It is worth noting that neither Boasberg nor Bennet had education backgrounds, but were selected anyway over strong community objections.
Third, to blame teachers for hastening Cordova’s departure is irresponsible and mean spirited. Last November, the remaining Hancock-aligned board members opposed the teacher’s strike. These politically connected insiders also opposed raises and better working conditions for teachers while funneling increased resources to charter schools. For more than a decade, the Boasberg-Hancock-Cordova alliance forced overworked teachers to take a backseat to multimillion-dollar construction projects, while a corporate-backed board siphoned an increasing share of the $1.4 billion dollar school district budget to expand charter schools while destabilizing our public education system.
Fourth, Hancock — like most career politicians — is facing the end of his political reign due to term limits. The influence he once had to control DPS through mayoral appointees who held dual positions on the school board and within city government is coming to an end. It explains his outrageous Trumpian letter that mirrors some of the dysfunction in Washington politics. We wish to state unequivocally that Denver taxpayers would be better served if Mayor Hancock focused on managing the unprecedented crises facing
the City of Denver including the pandemic, racial unrest, economic recession and deepening housing crisis rather than interfering with the business of the DPS board.
Fifth, CLF dispels the myth that there is a monolithic Latino group that speaks for the interests of all Latinos in Denver, including the signatories of recent letters to the media from the same small circle of usual suspects. Given that, we strongly object to the Mayor weaponizing race and gender to smear volunteer school board members composed, in part, of dedicated people of color. Screaming “racism” and “sexism” by politically connected wealthy insiders hurts the movement for racial, social and education justice. If the Mayor wishes to go there, CLF reminds him that the staff of outgoing superintendent Cordova t hreatened striking teachers, who were disproportionately Latinas, with deportation.
Further, we remind the Mayor that an inequitable system of economic disparities and institutional racism continues despite having a Latina superintendent according to statistics from the DPS and the Colorado Department of Education websites:
Laura Chapman recently wrote about the policy of holding third grade students back if they didn’t pass the third grade reading test. One result of this initiative is to raise fourth-grade reading scores on state tests and NAEP.
She writes:
There is a national read-by-grade three campaign. The practice of holding students back a grade is not new, but in the olden days it was never based on test scores alone and certainly not based on scores from national tests. I am no expert in reading, but I have learned to question how questionable policies proliferate.
Right now, The Annie E, Casey Foundation is a source of the national “Read by Grade 3” campaign. It is financed by about thirty other foundations and corporations. You can read about the investors here: http://gradelevelreading.net/about-us/campaign-investors
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is also the source of widely cited and dubious research about reading. For example, the Foundation sponsored “Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation (2010, updated 2012)” by Dr. Donald J. Hernandez, sociologist at Hunter College (more recently at the University of Albany, State University of New York). I find no evidence that this study was peer-reviewed. https://www.aecf.org/resources/double-jeopardy/
In this study, the rates of failure in grade three reading were based on scores from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition subtest. This test has 84 items said to increase in difficulty from preschool to high school. It is an oral reading test that includes items such as matching letters, naming names, and reading single words aloud.
To quote directly from the PIAT manual, the rationale for the reading recognition subtest is as follows: “In a technical sense, after the first 18 readiness-type items, the general objective of the reading recognition subtest is to measure skills in translating sequences of printed alphabetic symbols which form words, into speech sounds that can be understood by others as words. https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/nlsy79-children/topical-guide/assessments/piat-reading-reading-recognitionreading
The author of Double Jeopardy then invented a way to treat scores on this oral test of reading “readiness” as if comparable NAEP scores for proficiency. But, NAEP reading tests are not administered until grade four! Moreover, according to NAEP, “Fourth grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to integrate and interpret texts and apply their understanding of the text to draw conclusions and make evaluations.”
The author appropriated the standard for proficiency in NAEP, grade four, to make make judgments about the necessity for read-by-grade three policies based on an oral test in grade three. The study is not worthy of the publicity it has received.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation also financed a related study by Lesnick, J., Goerge, R., Smithgall, C., & Gwynne J. (2010). Reading on Grade Level in Third Grade: How Is It Related to High School Performance and College Enrollment? The executive summary, page 1 states: The results of this study do not examine whether low reading performance causes low future educational performance, or whether improving a child’s reading trajectory has an effect on future educational outcomes.”
So what was the take-away from this study?
The major conclusion, executive summary, page 4 is: “Students who are better prepared for a successful ninth grade year are more likely to have positive future outcomes, regardless of third grade reading status. The sooner that struggling readers are targeted for supports, the easier it will be to ensure that students are progressing on course toward strong performance in ninth grade, high school graduation, and college enrollment. NOTHING SUPPORTS GRADE THREE AS THE MAKE OR BREAK YEAR. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED517805
I looked at “Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children” published in 1998 by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. The brief discussion of grade retention on 280-281 did not support the practice of grade retention. It also noted that grade retention policies differed in several ways. Simply repeating the same grade is not the same as repeating the grade with substantial and well-placed help. There is a single reference associating grade retention based on poor reading skill with dropping out of school. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf
Please look again at the Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored “Read by Grade 3” campaign.
Parent advocate Carl J. Peterson writes here about a charter school in Los Angeles that figured out to game the system for more money and space.
He writes that “Citizens of the World” collects signatures of parents who are not likely to apply for the school and uses them as expressions of intent to enroll.
A Facebook post by Jirusha Lopez, the principal of COW’s Hollywood campus, provides some insight into how this charter chain scams the system. While the estimate of attendance is supposed to be based on students who have expressed a “meaningful interest” in the program, Lopez took to social media to ask parents to sign a Prop 39 form even if they had no plans to attend the charter school. In fact, she promised that completing the form would “not impact your family’s plans for what school you would like to attend or currently attend.”
While Lopez seems to think that the collection of these signatures is a “fun game schools get to play each year”, it is actually part of a legal process. By submitting names of students who never expressed any interest in attending the school, COW committed fraud against the students of the LAUSD. The district needs to take this action seriously and hold the charter chain responsible, to whatever the greatest extent possible might be. Additionally, all data provided by COW to the LAUSD needs to be audited by the Inspector General to ensure that there are not any other cases of inaccurate information being submitted.
As anyone who read my book Left Back (2000) knows, I have long been persuaded of the value of phonetic instruction for early readers. I was a friend of the late Jeanne Chall, who began her career as a kindergarten teacher and eventually became a Harvard professor and the nation’s most eminent reading researcher. Her 1967 book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, should have ended the reading wars, but they continued for the next half century. She understood that both sides were right, and that teachers should have a tool-kit of strategies, including phonetic instruction, that they could deploy when appropriate.
In recent years, proponents of phonics have termed themselves champions of “the science of reading.” Even though I support phonics instruction, I find it misleading to use this term. Learning to read is one of the most important experiences that children have in their lifetimes. Of course, teachers should know how to teach students how to decode words. Of course, teachers should use reading and writing instruction together. Of course, teachers should introduce children to wonderful literature. Of course, of course, of course.
But teaching reading is not science. Good reading teachers use their knowledge, judgment, skill, and experience. They are not scientists. They are reading teachers.
The “science of reading” sounds to me like “the science of play,” “the science of cooking,” “the science of pedagogy,” “the science of love,” “the science of finding the right mate,” “the science of tennis.” You can take it from there.
Reading is not chemistry, biology, physics, or mathematics. Some children will learn to read before they ever start school, because they sat on the lap of a parent who read the same books over and over, with love, delight, and enthusiasm. Many children do need systematic decoding instruction and phonemic awareness. Reading teachers know which children need which approach.
Just as there is no “science of history,” “science of literature,” or “science of government,” there is no “science of reading.” I would go farther and ay there is no “science of teaching science.” Science is based on hypothesis and evidence, but teachers will find a variety of ways to teach science. Good teachers, whatever their field, rely on the knowledge and judgment gleaned from practice, study, and experience. With time and good teachers, all children will learn to read.
This afternoon, President-Elect Biden introduced his first Cabinet picks, all of whom are highly qualified and experienced. None is remotely controversial.
Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that he would oppose them all.
One reason he gave was that they had Ivy League educations. On Twitter, one of the many responses was a list of Trump Cabinet members who had gone to Harvard, Yale, and other Ivies. Trump went to UPenn, an Ivy, and Jared Kushner’s dad gave Harvard $2.5 million to grease his entry to Harvard.
Will the race to grab the Trump know-nothing base, e.g., the race to the bottom, encourage Senate Republicans to block any appointments Biden makes? That would create a constitutional crisis and destroy Biden’s Presidency before it begins.
I recently had the pleasure of reading Kevin Welner’s terrific new Onion-like book, “Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable.” In tweets, I described Kevin as the Stephen Colbert and Groucho Marx of American education. Kevin and I had fun discussing the book on a Zoom sponsored by the Network for Public Education. (WATCH: Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Kevin Welner). Kevin has pledged all royalties he earns to the Network for Public Education. I hope you will watch, then buy the book, which makes a great holiday gift! To give you a feel for the book, here’s a new piece Kevin just wrote.
Perilous De-DeVos-ing Cleanup Is Underway
The Biden education transition team today assured a worried public that it is carefully following established procedures for the clean-up of the U.S. Department of Education. “The de-DeVos-ing process is indeed grueling, but all necessary precautions are being taken to assure a safe and complete mission,” said spokesperson Darcy Wiggins.
Four years of policy contaminants are reported to have been strewn throughout the Department at a level that sources insist must have been either intentional or extraordinarily reckless. “In the Title IX area alone, we found a spill of transphobia and a release of toxic masculinity all over the sexual assault regulations. That latter one may take years to fully mop up.”
There are also said to be large vats of voucher policies piled up in storage closets, but they haven’t yet broken containment.
Additional dangers, however, remain. According to a member of the transition team we spoke with, an unknown amount of policy contaminants may have been transported a mile northeast, to the chambers of several Supreme Court justices who seem determined to release the policies on the general public at the earliest opportunity.
Here is a photograph of the Biden transition team in the midst of De-Vos-ing contents of the U.S. Department of Education.
You may recall the iconic painting of little Ruby Bridges, a first-grader, who was the first African American student to enroll in a previously all-white segregated school in New Orleans. If you don’t, be sure to read this article, which tells what happened to the William Franz Public School.
Three scholars–Connie L. Schaffer, Martha Graham Viator, and Meg White–tell the story. The three are also the co-authors of a book titled: William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resilience, and Recovery in New Orleans, which I am reading now and expect to review.
They write:
If that building’s walls could talk, they certainly would tell the well-known story of its desegregation. But those same walls could tell another story, too. That story is about continued racism as well as efforts to dismantle and privatize public education in America over the past six decades.
When little Ruby Bridges enrolled in November 1960, she was escorted by four federal marshalls. Crowds of angry whites jeered day after day. Parents of the white children in the school withdrew their children and sent them mostly to private segregated schools.
Racism drove many white families from the neighborhoods near the school and other areas of New Orleans to abandon the city. White enrollment steadily declined throughout New Orleans’ public schools, dropping more than 50% between 1960 and 1980.
By 2005, only 3% of the students enrolled in the city’s public schools were white – far below average for midsize American cities.
Racially segregated, underfunded William Frantz Public School suffered through the imposition of standards and accountability in the 1990s, which did nothing to help the school, but did result in its being labeled a “failing” school. By 2005, the school board voted to close it.
In 2013, the school reopened as Akili Academy, a charter school directed by a private corporation. The authors wonder whether the public school system that Ruby Bridges dared to desegregate, overseen by an elected board, is “a relic of the past.”
I am a 1956 graduate of San Jacinto High School in Houston, Texas. The school no longer exists; it is now part of the campus of Houston Community College. When I attended San Jac, it was a thriving community of about 1500 students. Most of the teachers were old-timers. There were many clubs for after-school activities and many sports teams. We were known as the Golden Bears. As a senior, I was editor of the yearbook, the El Oroso. When my older sister went to San Jac, she was a “Golden Gaucho,” which was a girls’ marching group. The school was racially segregated, but it had a program for students with disabilities, which was unusual at the time. After the Brown decision was announced, I went to see our principal, Mr. Brandenburger, to ask why our school had not integrated. He told me that if we did that, all the black principals would lose their jobs. He did not mention that we had a very rightwing school board who opposed desegregation. I have many fond memories of San Jacinto. I am on the mailing list for alumni and saw this story by a woman who graduated 12 years after me. I was so moved by her story that I asked her for permission to put it on the blog. There is a message here about public education and its potential to change lives.
What San Jac Means To Me
By Annette Mazur Zinn, ‘68
zinn802@sbcglobal.net
I know I sometimes sound a little too passionate about San Jac, but there’s a reason for it. My circuitous path to where I now find myself gave me an appreciation for education, my classmates, teachers and others that I am forever grateful for.
As the eldest of 7 siblings, I grew up with a tremendous amount of responsibility. During the day, I was a surrogate Mom and, at night, I made money by cleaning offices and scrubbing bathrooms. My family was homeless most of the time, so attending school was not a priority. But I always wanted to go. I missed a lot of school starting in elementary school. My homeroom teacher at George Washington Junior High told me, “Education is the key to freedom.” At the time I had no clue what that meant, but I never forgot her words.
Somehow, I finished junior high and made it to Reagan High School. I attended when I could, but I was truant much of the time. I remember hiding from the truant officers because I knew that if I was caught, someone would go to jail. I suspected it would be me!
The Reagan years were especially hard because of my difficult home life and the stress and embarrassment that resulted. I had impetigo infections on my arms and legs, hair lice, dirty clothes that didn’t fit, and cockroaches sometimes crawled out of my school bag. I finally decided that I couldn’t stay at Reagan. I was too ashamed and embarrassed. Someone told me about San Jacinto High School.
Somehow, I managed to transfer, even though I didn’t know where the school was or how I would get there. It seemed like a world away. I got on the bus. When I began at San Jac, I didn’t know anyone. I was overwhelmed and afraid I would not last. During one of my truancy periods my counselor said, “If it’s true what you said about your home life, and you don’t move out, you’ll NEVER graduate!”
Fortunately, a friend offered me a place to stay. I continued working to support my family, but I began doing whatever I could to graduate. No one in my family understood why I needed to finish school.
Fortunately, for me, the San Jac students were more forgiving than those at Reagan. I kept doing childcare/housework and going to school when I could. I cleaned offices at night and lived with the constant threat that I would not have enough hours to graduate. At the same time, I wanted to be “normal”. I tried to make up for lost experiences and joined as many groups as I could – drama, speech, choir, and library club. Tim Zinn, a San Jac student, helped me tremendously with moral support, bus fare, and even lent me his yearbook so I could collect autographs. I graduated!
In the years that followed I married Tim and graduated from The University of Houston. In 1978, Tim and I separated and I became a single mom. Our daughter, Tara Zinn, was 7 at the time. I knew I had to set the right example for being independent and self-sufficient. Ultimately, I applied to graduate school at The University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH). Afterwards, I became an epidemiologist and then took a regulatory position at Intermedics, Inc. where I was responsible for obtaining approvals for cardiac pacemakers worldwide.
I applied to law school and graduated from South Texas College of Law in 1992. I practiced law for a few years – including business, intellectual property, immigration, personal injury, family, and criminal cases – and even had a murder case! Ultimately, I went back to medical devices at Cyberonics, Inc., where I was responsible for obtaining approvals for neurostimulators worldwide and handling legal matters. I also taught FDA-law for three years at University of Houston and started my Ph. D in health law/policy at UTSPH. In 2008, I began a career as a regulatory adviser for medical product start-up companies and finished my Ph.D. I also began volunteering in educational institutions and mentoring students, including my daughter, who just graduated from South Texas College of Law!
So, to my San Jac family, I owe so much — because of San Jac — I’ve had a rich life of learning and opportunity. I will be passionately and forever grateful!
Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether the mandated federal tests should be administered this spring. When the pandemic was first acknowledged last March, Betsy DeVos offered waivers to states that wanted to suspend the testing. Although Biden has publicly expressed disdain for standardized testing, there has been no hint of whether he will appoint a Secretary of Education with instructions to do as much as DeVos did in deferring the annual testing.
My view: Resumption of standardized testing is completely ridiculous in the midst of a pandemic. The validity of the tests has always been an issue; their validity in the midst of a national crisis will be zero. They will show, even more starkly, that students who are in economically secure families have higher test scores than those who do not. They will show that children in poverty and children with disabilities have suffered disproportionately due to lack of schooling. We already know that. Why put pressure on students and teachers to demonstrate what we already know? At this point, we don’t even know whether all students will have the advantage of in-person instruction by March.
If anything, we need a thorough review of the value, validity, and reliability of annual standardized testing, a practice that is unknown in any high-performing nation in the world. We are choking on the rotten fumes of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Here is a letter sent by several organizations in support of high-stakes standardized tests.
Politico wrote yesterday:
TESTING TIME — A major test awaits President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Education secretary. The question is whether to waive federal standardized testing requirements this spring for K-12 schools for a second year or to carry on, despite the pandemic. There’s no easy answer.
— A host of education and civil rights groups say statewide testing will be important to gauge how much students have fallen behind during the pandemic, particularly for the most vulnerable kids. Even before the coronavirus, “The Nation’s Report Card” revealed children across the country have fallen behind in reading, with the largest drops among lower-performing students.
— Statewide testing will “give us a snapshot, if an incomplete snapshot, of what happened this year. How close did students get to the standards?” said Brennan McMahon Parton, director of policy and advocacy for the Data Quality Campaign.
— Teachers unions and standardized test opponents, however, say this isn’t the time. “Battle lines are being drawn,” said Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, a group that opposes what it calls the misuse of standardized tests. “The vast majority of parents and teachers think it’s ridiculous to believe that you can get meaningful results from a standardized test in the middle of a pandemic.”
Andrew Ujifusa writes in Education Week about the battle over whether to resume standardized testing as mandated in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
Pressure is growing for schools to get some kind of relief from traditional standardized tests as coronavirus cases reach new highs, and education officials in at least a few states are responding.
In Washington, President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will have to decide whether to grant states waivers from federally mandated tests soon after he takes office Jan. 20. But the validity and usefulness of tests during the pandemic has been a concern for months. And at this point, states are clearly not content to wait for input or leeway from any new U.S. Department of Education leadership about the issue in general.
This kind of momentum isn’t universal. Utah recently announced that it plans to forge ahead with its regular standardized exams. “We believe there’s actually an increased need for us to be able to attain data that can inform and enlighten us about the impacts of this pandemic on student learning,” state Assistant Superindendent Darin Nielsen said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Last summer the Council of Chief State School Officers stressed that while state leaders must be “nimble and innovative” in what tests are used and what they’re used for during the pandemic, “Assessment tools must continue to play a key role in our education system.” On Friday, a coalition of groups including the National Urban League, UnidosUS, and the Education Trust called on the federal government not to grant waivers from exams because “our families and communities cannot afford to go two years without knowing how well our students are doing in school.” The groups also hailed recent federal guidance on assessments and accountability released in October.…
“At the end of the day, there’s going to be an asterisk around any 2020-21 [test] results if they’re given,” Stephen Pruitt of the Southern Regional Education Board told our colleague Sarah D. Sparks in July.
Even more than an asterisk, the pandemic should underscore that the traditional standardized tests mandated by federal law simply haven’t worked as desiged, and push the Biden administration and others to rethink the entire system, said Joshua Starr, the CEO of PDK International, a professional association of educators.
“This is the time to actually challenge the assumption that the state testing regimes will give us what we want,” said Starr. “I have no confidence that state standardized tests this year will do that. I don’t know that they’ve ever done that, and they certainly won’t do it this year.”
While Starr said that formative assessments, for example, could be useful to students and educators. But he said that in general, given the pandemic’s clear and disproportionate impact on underserved students and communities, education leaders should move straight into directing more resources and support to students and families in need, without depending on tests to do so.
The ability of tests to discern trend lines in a typical fashion has also been disrupted beyond the point of being useful, including for accountability, said Daniel Koretz, a research professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who focuses on assessments. And more broadly, he said, potential disruptions for students at home and other factors unique to the pandemic present an environment that tests simply can’t control for.
“Even for diagnostic testing, there is a pretty high risk I think that we would not be able to trust comparative data,” Koretz said, adding, “I wouldn’t want to see what little instruction we’re able to give kids now consumed by test prep.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 