Andrea Gabor has some good ideas about what the new Secretary of Education must do.
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for education secretary, Miguel Cardona, will face a host of pandemic-related challenges that have disproportionately affected the nation’s neediest students. In addition to learning setbacks, the prolonged isolation has caused social and emotional trauma.
The challenges will continue to mount once the Covid-19 crisis is over.
Government resources will be strained at all levels, and continued Republican control of the Senate would likely limit extra funding available for K-12 education.
In the absence of significant support for state and local governments, beyond the money included in any year-end stimulus package, Cardona, who has been Connecticut’s education commissioner, will need to concentrate on closing funding inequities between poor and affluent school districts in order to avoid the kind of educational setbacks that followed the 2008 recession.
Although recent data indicate that the learning losses this fall, compared with the same period last year, have not been as dire as predicted, those results likely mask high numbers of missing kids — children who lack technology for online learning or whose parents are unable to supervise their remote schooling.
States and localities are responsible for the lion’s share of spending on public education; yet, as of 2015, only 11 states had funding formulas where high-poverty schools receive more funding per student than low-poverty schools, down from a high of 22 in 2008.
When states cut back on their share of aid during the Great Recession, school funding came to rely increasingly on local property tax revenue, benefiting districts with high property values and hurting those where the values are low.
Though it may sound counterintuitive, an important first step the new administration can take to improve educational equity is to abandon the regimen of annual standardized tests that has dominated federal educational policy-making, especially under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Under the best circumstances, standardized tests do little to measure actual achievement, let alone improve it; indeed, the relentless focus on English and math in every grade from third through eighth has shortchanged the teaching of science at the elementary level as well as civics. Given the difficulty of administering tests during a pandemic, any results obtained next spring are likely to be more flawed than ever.
Eliminating or sharply curtailing standardized tests would save states as much as $1.7 billion and allow districts to reallocate resources. For perspective, that is over 4% of the $39 billion the federal government spends on K-12 education, based on 2018 figures.
Instead, districts could administer diagnostic tests developed by local educators that provide quick feedback for teachers. (The typically long lag time on standardized test results means teachers can’t easily tailor instruction to student needs.) Testing by the National Association of Educational Progress, which is considered the nation’s report card, provides “the ideal gauge” for measuring Covid-19’s impact on students and should not be canceled; NAEP provides state-by-state comparisons and takes demographic criteria like race, income and disability into account.
Cardona should also see to it that the Education Department rewrites the eligibility rules for supplemental federal funds that are meant for the poorest schools. These so-called Title 1 funds constitute the largest share of federal education spending. One major flaw with the Title 1 formula is that under current rules, 20% of the money meant for poor students, or about $2.6 billion, ends up in districts with a higher proportion of wealthy families (partly because large, more affluent districts often have enough poor students to qualify for the aid). Changing the funding formulas could be politically difficult if it means taking money away from better-off districts — a problem that could be mitigated by stimulus funding now being debated in Congress.
The new stimulus bill approved by Congress calls for about $54 billion in funding for K-12 schools. The Biden Education Department should ensure that it isn’t zeroed out for other uses by the states, as Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York did with $716.9 million in education benefits from federal stimulus aid last spring. Cuomo’s cuts shredded the part of the budget that provided extra funding to districts with comparatively low tax bases.
Instead, federal money should be used to reward states that promote funding equity, as well as local desegregation efforts — ideas Biden has endorsed. States that could benefit include California, which has a 10-year blueprint to expand early childhood programs and pre-K, and Arizona, where voters just approved a ballot measure to raise money for educator salaries by taxing the state’s highest earners.
Working with other government agencies, like Health and Human Services, and rewriting Title 1 rules could help tap additional funding for community schools, turning them into hubs that provide counseling, basic medical services and food. A recent study found that providing such “wraparound services” in New York City schools, for example, increased attendance and graduation rates, as well as some test scores.
Similarly, by working with the Federal Communications Commission and advocating for changes in telecommunications tax policy, the Education Department could help improve the internet infrastructure in vast swaths of the country, urban and rural, where well over one-quarter of children live in households without web access. Poor internet service has proved an enormous educational liability during the pandemic. Government could raise $7 billion in additional revenue for improving broadband services if it reversed the prohibition on taxing existing internet services.
Finally, Cardona’s department can offer states matching grants to shore up community colleges, which receive far less per-pupil funding than four-year colleges, yet serve as a stepping stone to the middle class for low-income students. This will be especially important during a post-pandemic downturn when community colleges are likely to face large cuts and would provide a much more targeted boost for poor students than a broad program of forgiving college loans.
Just before the pandemic, at least a dozen states were still financing schools at well below pre-2008 levels; student test scores and graduation rates suffered as a result. The lessons from the 2008 recession, when high-poverty districts lost $1,500 in spending per pupil, three times the loss in affluent districts, suggest that unless both the Education Department and the states distribute money more equally, the damage to poor districts will be long-lasting.
To me this issue is the canary in the coal mine. We’ll get a very good idea what the next four years will be like. I’m sorry to say that I fully expect the tests to move forward (“without consequences”). I’ll be happily surprised if waivers are granted.
Would love to be pro-active in stopping them!
Good advice and shocking that nearly $2 billion of the annual federal budget is spent on standardized testing. I would guess that local district that love testing, like mine, spend a portion of their own budget on data collection and testing.
Teachers, unions and other education advocacy groups can say the same thing as Andrea Gabor – and it is interpreted as whining or that teacher’s are avoiding “accountability” measures. Sad to say it is taken more seriously when it comes form a business writer.
I live in a “bougie” area in MD. Our district lives and dies by the data and the scores of these stupid tests….it drives our expensive real estate market. The parents here would NOT know what to do without the scores/data and the competition and inequity that is fosters. The parents in this area truly believe that their children are so much smarter than other children based on scores….like there is some magic “smartness elixir” that has been added to the drinking water in our area SMH!! Teachers don’t dare speak out and the local school board is verbally threatened (by the bougie parents!!!) every time they try to take a stand for what is right for children and teachers. It’s a horrible place to be a child….. yet we rank really high in US News and World Reports “Greatest Places to Live”….based on using the school system testing data!!! It’s a vicious cycle.
I can relate to your post so much. Our district may not be as intense as what you describe, but there is some if it. I feel like our admin at the top fuel some of it too – there is an agenda.
Why do some higher income families go the route of Waldorf and Montessori and others love the data and testing and competition?
Interesting question. My hi-income NJ suburban town is kind of ‘Montessori/ Waldorf’ (those place highly in PreK choices); there are plenty of pushy parents, but topics are usually keeping classes as small as possible, & offering a wide range of ed options under the pubschsys roof. The school system didn’t need NCLB testing, it already had the usual measures to prove its competitive chops [grad & coll adm rates, & caliber of colleges grads went on to]. The sch supt tried unsuccessfuly to get us waived from some iteration of state-imposed stdzd testing yrs ago on the grounds that our students would just ace them anyway, thus a waste of $$ & curriculum time. We may be this way because many come here from NYC looking for a lower-stress lifestyle. Part of NYC denizens’ stress is worrying about which selective pubschs their kids will get placed in, & the fact that it will likely be far from home base.
It sounds like you have good leadership at the top – it makes all the difference.
Is it correct that only 40% of education $$$ comes from the Fed Gov’t AND that most of that $$$ is for Title I? If so, why are State Education Depts. mandated to test every single child? I’m not saying that we should test only children/schools receiving Title I funds, but it’s really just stupid and wasteful…..and illegal? Making children perform like seals in a testing “circus show” for tax dollars that are rightfully allocated for them in the first place is extortion. States bending over backwards to satisfy Fed wants/mandates for such a small amount of money is ridiculous. I wonder if Jimmy Carter would do a “Do Over” now that he knows what his big accomplishment has done to skewer public education?
Some states have jumped on the bandwagon and made similar policies, not just for federal money, but because they think it’s best practice. And some districts are run by people who similarly subscribe to these beliefs (test / data craze is best practice). I have seen administrators sell their ideas to local school boards because there has been so much written to back it up – if the federal government subscribes to this practice – it must be something that is evidence based and the right thing to do – right?? You and I may know better, but it’s easier for some people to understand numbers and graphs, than the complexity that is public education and learning.
The federal government contributes about 10-12% of most school budgets. Most is for Title I (poor kids).
One of the best critiques of Race to the Top came from the NAACP and other civil rights organizations in 2010, which complained that it was outrageous to have a competition for states, to require them to adopt untested policies, instead of spending the money where it would do the most good for the neediest students.
http://schottfoundation.org/resources/civil-rights-framework-providing-all-students-opportunity-learn-through-reauthorization-el
Obama reacted to the complaints (this appeared in EdWeek):
President Barack Obama is forcefully defending his signature education initiative, the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which has come under fire from civil rights groups that worry the competitive nature of the program creates a system of winners and losers that could hinder schools serving poor and minority students.
In a speech Thursday to the National Urban League in Washington, the president offered a rebuttal to such criticism, saying the steps the program encourages states to take, including lifting caps on charter schools and using student data to inform teacher evaluation, are the right ones. He called the initiative “the single most important thing we’ve done” on education.
“I know there’s a concern that Race to the Top doesn’t do enough for minority kids, because the argument is, well, if there’s a competition, then somehow some states or some school districts will get more help than others,” Mr. Obama said. “Let me tell you, what’s not working for black kids and Hispanic kids and Native American kids across this country is the status quo. That’s what’s not working.”
Mr. Obama specifically addressed concerns about the competitive nature of the program, saying that even students in states that aren’t tapped for a grant under Race to the Top will benefit from the policy changes state lawmakers enacted as they tried to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, 31 states so far have adopted a new set of common academic standards, developed as part of an initiative to set more rigorous expectations for all students. Some critics contend those guidelines would actually water down standards in some states.
And Mr. Obama made it clear that he doesn’t want to see wholesale changes to the Race to the Top program, which two congressional panels recently voted to extend for an additional year.
“I’ll continue to fight for Race to the Top with everything I’ve got, including using a veto to prevent folks from watering it down,” Mr. Obama said.
The president also explained his administration’s policies on teacher quality, which have called for states to link teacher effectiveness to student achievement, to improve classroom instruction, and to help inform teacher evaluations, tenure, and retention decisions.
I taught in a middle class district that also had poor minority students. My district used its Title 1 allocation for direct services to students that required supplementary instruction in reading, math and ESL/ENL.Title 1 funds partly funded teachers’ salaries as well as materials used for instruction. The district paid about 65% of salary for the teachers that worked with the Title 1 students. I would not call my district “affluent.” The vast majority of people in this suburban NYC community are police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers along with a small number of other professionals with higher salaries. A typical home owner in this area pays about $12,000 to $15,000 in property taxes. Frankly, working people are already struggling to pay for property taxes even with the current cap.
If Title1 is retooled to cut middle class districts out of receiving any Title 1 funds, districts may then try to fail to identify these students. The unwillingness of school districts to identify needy students is already a problem in many school districts in through out the South and elsewhere. I do not believe giving all Title 1 funds to urban areas while ignoring poor students that attend middle class makes sense. Poor students need more services regardless of where they live. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not an answer.
Instead of pilfering funds from middle class school districts, perhaps cities like New York could appraise commercial real estate at full value, or put a real estate property transfer tax on properties that sell for more than $1 million dollars. It is time to get the wealthy invest in our students instead of trying to make the middle class to pay for changes to how Title 1 funds are allocated.
While it is possible to argue with some of the revenue shifting Gabor mentions here, this is EXACTLY the right kind of post for the interregnum between nomination and the launch of the Biden administration.
Cancelling testing for 2021, and allowing another year to re-think how we assess student progress in useful, non-punitive ways is a do-able thing. We’re going to need to evaluate what has happened to all our students, in the meantime, and–one hopes–re-think the ways we educate all kids, equitably, once the pandemic fades (notice I didn’t say ‘ends’).
Let’s start writing lots of these recommendations from our expertise as classroom practitioners, rather than fighting over whether 5 years in the classroom is ‘enough’ or flyspecking things Cardona’s said or done or whether someone else would have been a better choice. We really won’t know what kind of Secretary Cardona is until the work begins. And there’s a LOT of work to be done.
It is especially valuable that Gabor writes at the Bloomberg site, which is read by business people not so much by educators.
Agreed, Diane! Thank you, Ms. Gabor!!!!
Grateful to Andrea Gabor and hope she influences others who have a real voice and power in education policy.
I don’t think anyone is “fighting” about only 5 years in the classroom. It was an observation that he may not bring rich insight to the job. And yes, agree, teaching currently practicing are doing a LOT of work now and will continue to do so.
“teachers currently in the classroom” not teaching.
Georgia on my mind, these days. As the stimulus bill amply illustrates, with the Republicans in charge of one of the houses of Congress, the nation is ungoverned and ungovernable.
The standardized testing is invalid, has had no effect on achievement gaps, is useless pedagogically, has led to dramatic distortions in curricula, perpetuates inequity, diverts major resources of time and money and energy from important tasks, and is abusive to children.
But I doubt seriously that the standardized testing mandate will end until the major teachers’ unions get behind massive demonstrations to end it. Until they do, they are complicit.
The 1.7 billion is an old number (it’s probably around 2 billion now) and counts only the money spent on direct contracts for state high-stakes standardized testing. It does NOT include the costs for
computers to take the tests on and of the associated software, networking, and maintenance,
proctoring the tests,
practice tests and benchmark tests,
testing facilities,
curricular materials, print and online, that have been remade to be test preppy,
data chats, data walls, reporting to teachers and parents
administration of the tests and practice tests and benchmark tests and reporting
So, the cost is MUCH higher than that 1.7 billion. And, of course, there’s the OPPORTUNITY COST of all that time spent on the tests and the test prep, which reminds me of these lines from a poem by Richard Brautigan:
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jessie James
for all the time they stole from me.
This is real and true. I see it up close and personal. The amount of money spent on testing tech, software, data collection software. Software specifically designed to evaluate teachers. Once this tech and software is purchased – at a high cost – the district admin must justify it’s continued use, even if they know it’s not really valuable – lest they look like they made poor choices with tax payers money.
The “opportunity cost” is the saddest of all. It truly takes away from learning at the elementary level (I can’t speak to other levels) – no matter how an administrator can talk their way through it.
I have said this before on this blog, but when a professional discussion is had between the elementary teachers in our district and admin, the ultimate response is that we are shirking our responsibilities and do not want to be held “accountable.” To put this in context, we are in a high performing district. I cannot tell you how dedicated, professional and hard working my colleagues are from coming in many weekends and staying late to prep (not currently b/c we are not allowed in the building on the weekends) to constantly coming up with work-arounds to try to make learning fun for our students despite the emphasis on data and assessment.
Do we really expect that a person who has pushed resuming testing in his own district during a pandemic is going to do anything but the same as Secretary of Education? It’s really not about children, but profit and politics. Doing what’s right is not even an afterthought.
I agree, Don. That’s why I’m hoping the outcry will come before rather than after the decision. The choice to maintain testing for 2021 (and surely beyond) is being telegraphed to us. I like the idea of getting the national unions — which are typically far too late in realizing what is happening — to express important points NOW.
It’s disaster capitalism. We know the playbook. Big business will take advantage of working people while we are at our weakest. Teachers and parents have been working our tails off for months. Additionally, justifying a strike in the immediate wake of 2020 would be near impossible. And I don’t know about other cities, but the 2019 teachers strike-settling collective bargaining agreement currently in place in my district, second largest in the country, does not allow us to be involved in a walkout until after 2022. And also remember, the Red4Ed lightning rod named DeVos will have slunk back into the shadows.
The opposition to public education knows that strikes will be difficult and that if high stakes are temporarily suspended as the tests go forward, there will be minimal resistance. It’s the stakes that fuel the OptOut Movement. They will continue the testing, collect their money and data, and when people complain, they will say they can’t do anything to change the law. Cardona and Biden actually have a big hand in carrying out and reauthorizing the ESSA, but they will claim ignorance and get away with it. And they will toss around meaningless platitudes about bridging “achievement” gaps to deflect criticism. And get away with it.
There are ways, limited ways, but ways to fight the testing. There are actions we can take. The most effective collective actions are class actions in which we speak to courts and legislative bodies on behalf of the needs of our students. We’re the good guys. Gabor is right, we need to address the social and emotional needs of our students this year. When the opposition talks about learning gaps, remind them that the tests are socially and emotionally abusing the children with wrongful interference in the work teachers need to do this year. Do it in court. My strong teachers union here in Los Angeles is currently moving and class filing against my district for adding standardized tests this year. Testing is taking away our students’ time with us and each other. More moving. More filing. Action. Class action. That is the way at this time.
Thank you, Ms. Gabor, for being one of the few journalists wise enough and concerned enough to take up the egregious testing and the woefully insufficient Title 1 funding.
I was just watching MSNBC with Shaver Jeffries as a spokesperson for the Biden administration. He announced that in order to provide more equitable education, the Biden administration will invest in a multi-billion dollar TESTING PLAN! We need to get ready for lots of pushing and protesting. It is discouraging that Biden would start out in Silicon Valley and DFER’s pocket. We can expect from Cardona the exact same type of personalized learning garbage that he bought for Connecticut. This is disappointing that they already have a plan to impose this before they are even installed, and none of this was ever mentioned as a Biden plan during the election. This is another Democratic bait and switch.
Jeffries simply mentioned a testing plan. Is it possible he is referring to Covid testing in order to open schools, even though he did not clarify what he was saying? I hope this is the case because it is too early to announce major policy shifts like this one.
Phew! Thank you retired teacher, for your 2nd post…. when I read your first post I was ready to open a bottle of wine and finish the rest of the Christmas cookies. I think it must be testing for Covid so schools can open safely.
To tell you the truth the interview was one of those one minute ones. Jeffries barely had time to make all his points that he ran through quickly. He went from opening school to equity to testing, and he did not state Covid testing. He also mentioned tripling Title 1 funds, and that was the end. Because I heard equity and testing I was thinking of Cardona’s recent comments about testing, but Jefferies was more likely talking about Covid testing, at least I hope that is what he is trying to say.
Frankly, I am more concerned about seeing a DFER like Shavar Jeffries as a spokesperson for the Biden administration. I tried to locate the clip to see if that’s how he was identified. If so, we’re looking at Obama’s Third Term when it comes to public education.
DFER has been busy touting their 2020 “accomplishments.”
Here’s one:
“Engaged Biden Campaign on Innovation, Charters and Resource Equity
Throughout 2020, DFER and our partner organization ERNA have engaged with the Biden campaign to advocate for both resources and reform—and has been a leading voice on the continued need to support public school choice options. Over the summer, DFER pushed back against the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations on both charters and annual, summative assessments, as well the lack of commitment to diversity within higher education. We have continued to elevate the voices and perspectives of parents and educators of color to the incoming Administration. Additionally, Vice President for K-12 Policy Charles Barone was instrumental in shaping POLITICO’s analysis of Democratic support for public charter schools, and corrected misinformation on Trump’s and Biden’s stances on charters. Our team has also helped shape coverage around choice in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.”
DFER is disingenuously playing the identity card to the detriment of our public schools and the families they serve.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
https://dfer.org/blog/dfer-highlights-2020-in-review/
DFER picks were all blocked! Cardona is not a DFER guy. Probably doesn’t even know what DFER is.
Andrea Gabor says “Testing by the National Association of Educational Progress, which is considered the nation’s report card, provides “the ideal gauge” for measuring Covid-19’s impact on students and should not be canceled; NAEP provides state-by-state comparisons and takes demographic criteria like race, income and disability into account’.
I do not think that NAEP is anything close to an ideal gauge for measuring Covid-19’s impact on learning.
NAEP has posted a schedule of tests to 2029. These tests have two main purposes.
One is to show long term national and state test scores in reading and math for students at AGES 9, 13, and 17, and/or selected Tribal Urban District Assessments (TUDA). Results from those tests over time are supposed to represent national “progress” or not. Results from these age-based tests were to be published in 2020. This the first year of the pandemic when school policies were unstable, teachers were improvising on how to provide instruction and more.
Those AGE-based tests are scheduled to be available again in 2024 and in 2028. In my opinion, nothing in the forthcoming political or educational policy environments (federal, state, local) will be stable enough for statistical wizards to find “representative samples” for trustworthy generalizations.
Another purpose of NAEP tests is to provide a snapshot of selected performances by representative samples of students, not the entire population of students in the nation, state, or district. These tests are given to samples of students in GRADES 4, 8, and 12 and for Reading and Math with results customarily published for the the nation, states, and districts.
This to say that NAEP tests are tied to skills in Reading and Math. Writing has been postponed. The only clue to the content in these tests is buried in some of the published examples of results and the so-called Assessment Framework for each test.
Repeat. No student takes the whole test. No report includes all students in the nation, state, or district.
In 2021, NAEP test results—national, state, and district– will be available for grades 4 and 8 in Reading and Math. National results only will be only be available for grades 4 and 8 in Civics and US history.
In 2023 NAEP national test results should be available for Reading and Math in grades 4, 8, and 12 with state-level results for Reading and Math and TUDA districts only at grades 4 and 8 ( for comparisons among states). In addition, national results should be available in Science, Technology and Engineering Literacy.
I do not think that there is any reliable national or state-wide gauge for determining the impact of this pandemic on individual districts, schools, or students. Covid-19 and the mutations showing up are not constrained by state boundaries. Resources for schools are unknown even now and vary by state.
I will not continue this intended reminder about the estimated performances of samples of students on parts of any NAEP test.
My point is that there is much that students have learned (or not) that is better mapped and more useful for instruction and policy-formation than NAEP tests.
I have not seen NAEP tests as “an ideal gauge” for anything since the late 1970s when I was among a handful of people invited to develop items for the first tests in the visual arts (and music) and subsequently, participated in commenting on the results. Since then. the most useful part of the NAEP tests, in my opinion, are the background questions that tap information about in-school and out-of-school learning, the character of instruction, and more.
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/calendar.aspx
Laura,
There are two different NAEP tests. I think you are confusing them.
One is for grades 4 & 8. This is Main NAEP.
The other is for ages 9, 13, and 17. This is called Long-Term Trends NAEP. The LTT NAEP uses the same questions that were used over many years.
The virtue of NAEP is that is a sampling. Main NAEP changes with changes in curriculum.
They are different tests with different results.
There are no consequences for any student, teacher, or school.
NAEP provides as much information as we need or want. We don’t test to test every child every year.
I am aware of the differences in the two tests, and that no child is tested every year. I thought I had made that clear. My information came straight from the NAEP website.
The best part of NAEP is there are no consequences for any student, teacher, or school.
Even so, the press, elected officials, self-appointed reformers, and those who are uniformly critical of teachers have a field day with the results.
They have a field day only because they think “proficient” means grade level. It does not! Proficient is like an A. Advanced is an A+.
Only those with a political agenda distort the results.
What they should notice is that there has been zero improvement for the past decade.
NCLB + Race to the Top + Common Core + ESSA= Zero.
LisaM: I love your reference to “bougie” areas! I, too, live in a “bougie” northern suburb of Chicago (not on my teaching salary, but from husband help/income). However, there is not that “must give the tests” pressure. A community church, in fact, showed the film Race to Nowhere which was co-sponsored by the high school. The very cool (he was my daughter’s Freshman Journalism Teacher) Principal spoke passionately about why it was so important to NOT pressure kids & to let them BE kids.
&–a latter principal & 5 other feeder school, K-8 principals–wrote to the head of the IL State Board of Education, asking him to waive testing for the elementary schools, as he had done for the high schools (because the kids were already taking the ACTs or SATs).
The principals made the point that they weren’t asking this because their schools were endangered by low test scores–quite the contrary, our schools were all in the top 10 highest test scorers in the state.
No response–can you imagine–to principals from a “bougie” area? Nada. Zip.
Pear$on u$ed to have it$ midwe$tern headquarter$ in a nearby also “bougie” ‘burb. I had tried to organize a march, much like the one Class Size Matters had in Manhattan, but no luck. Wish Indivisible existed then–I know they could have made it happen!
Anyway, this is really the time for all good women & men to come to the aid of the kids…& not any party.
When the powers that be have an agenda – there is nothing you can say that will get them to listen to reason. That’s why meaningful change has to happen at the top – with Biden and Cardona.
& THAT’S why the PRESSURE. IN.THE.STREETS.
Thank you all for reading and for the vibrant discussion. As I mentioned on Twitter, this was my first column for Bloomberg where reader comments weren’t overwhelmingly anti-teacher. Not sure what that means…At any rate, Diane, thanks for reposting.
And thank you for being a voice to the business community and many others.
You probably know that NAEP tests have been cancelled for 2021.
This is dated November 25.
James Woodworth PhD, Commisssioner
“ I have determined that NCES cannot at this time conduct a national-level assessment (20 U.S.C. 9622(b)(2)(A)) in a manner with sufficient validity and reliability to meet the mandate of the law. Too many students are receiving their education through distance learning or are physically attending schools in locations where outside visitors to the schools are being kept at a minimum due to COVID levels. …The change in operations and lack of access to students to be assessed means that NAEP will not be able to produce estimates of what students know and can do that would be comparable to either past or future national or state estimates….Further, if we attempted to move forward with a collection in 2021 and failed to produce estimates of student performance, we would not only have spent tens of millions of dollars, but also will not by law be able to conduct the next grades four and eight reading and mathematics assessments until 2023.”
Other and excellent reasons are included along with maps that help to depict the problem.
https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/commissioner/remarks2020/11_25_2020.asp
Thank you for bringing these matters to the attention of the business community. On the matter of NAEP tests, i tripped on this while fact-checking my comments.
James Woodworth. Ph.D. Commissioner of the National Bureau of Education Statistics said on November 25 this year:
“I have determined that NCES cannot at this time conduct a national-level assessment (20 U.S.C. 9622(b)(2)(A)) in a manner with sufficient validity and reliability to meet the mandate of the law. Too many students are receiving their education through distance learning or are physically attending schools in locations where outside visitors to the schools are being kept at a minimum due to COVID levels. …The change in operations and lack of access to students to be assessed means that NAEP will not be able to produce estimates of what students know and can do that would be comparable to either past or future national or state estimates….Further, if we attempted to move forward with a collection in 2021 and failed to produce estimates of student performance, we would not only have spent tens of millions of dollars, but also will not by law be able to conduct the next grades four and eight reading and mathematics assessments until 2023.”
Woodworth’s memo includes other reasons to delay these two tests, including the risks when NAEP subcontractors enter schools. He also includes a map illustrating the statistical difficulties in sampling caused by the COVID-19.
He also says: “State assessments, however, generally use existing school staff and equipment; thus, eliminating this additional risk associated with NAEP. Therefore, while having nationally comparable NAEP data to estimate the impact of the COVID pandemic on educational progress would be ideal but impossible, there is still an opportunity to get solid state-by-state data on the impact of COVID on student outcomes. This state-level data can serve as a bridge until Spring 2022 when NCES will likely be able to conduct the national NAEP assessment in a manner that has sufficient validity and reliability.”
I fail to understand how state assessments can be used as if a gap-filler for NAEP tests. State tests purport to measure achievement of required knowledge and skills as set and defined by each state’s content standards. These tests comply with the ESSA requirement for annual statewide assessments of reading/language arts and mathematics to all students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as well as in science at least once in each of grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12. https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/commissioner/remarks2020/11_25_2020.asp
Even so, there are no laws mandating common academic standards (or tests) among the states. in spite of the efforts of funders and fans of the Common Core and their associated tests, those standards are more dead than alive and in any case, state legislators have authority on these matters.
https://www.ncsl.org/ncsl-in-dc/task-forces/policies-education.aspx#Common_Academic_Standards
Diane, I was responding to retired teacher’s comment mentioning Shavar Jeffries as a “spokesperson for the Biden administration.” In seeking to verify that information, I tried locating the actual video clip from MSNBC, but couldn’t find it. Has Jeffries somehow become embedded in the upcoming Biden administration?
What we do know is that Jeffries is currently the president of DFER, which is touting Biden’s election as a win as part of their 2020 highlights. They’re also bragging up their sponsorship of the Presidential Debate in South Carolina, the one where seats were sold at Super Bowl prices of up to $1,750 apiece. Which also might explain the unprecedented hailstorm of boos Bernie Sanders received at that debate.
One might want to also unpack DFER’s agenda for Mr. Biden’s first 100 days.
Here is DFER’s first recommendation:
“➜ On Day One, the Biden administration should announce that it supports
and will resume the administration of annual statewide summative
assessments for Spring 2021.”
Click to access 100-Days-K-12-Ed-Policy-Brief-Final.pdf
Eleanor, I misunderstood. DFER is a huge problem for the Democratic party, because they have plenty of campaign cash to throw around and all of their ideas are horrible: Supporting high=stakes testing; anti-union; evaluating teachers by test scores; opening charters and defunding public schools.
If DFER ever seriously considered education research, it would immediately disband.