As readers are well aware, the federal law called the Every Student Succeeds Act continued the mandated annual testing of students in grades 3-8 in reading and math (as well as one high school test) that was the heart of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002. The Secretary of Education is allowed to grant waivers to states that ask not to give the tests. Last year, as the pandemic closed most schools, Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a blanket waiver to all states. She vowed not to do it again.
During the campaign of 2020, candidate Joe Biden publicly and unequivocally pledged to abandon the tests. He seemed to understand that they were not producing useful information and were squeezing out valuable instruction and subjects that are not tested.
Education Trust, led by John King, who was Obama’s Secretary of Education in his last year in office, created a campaign to demand that the Biden administration refuse all waiver requests and demand that everyone be tested, despite the pandemic. Education Trust, and most of the organizations that signed its two letters, are heavily funded by the Gates and Walton foundations.
The decision not to allow waivers, bowing to the EdTrust campaign, was announced by Ian Rosenblum, a low-level political appointee who previously worked for Education Trust New York and was an advocate for high-stakes testing. His boss was John King, who sent the pro-testing letters. The decision was made before Secretary Cardinal was confirmed. My guess is that the decision was made by Carmel Martin, who was an influential testing advocate in the Obama administration, then worked for the neoliberal Center for American Progress. She now works in the Biden White House as a member of the Domestic Policy Council. If I am wrong, I hope she corrects me.
Laura Chapman reviews the chronology here.
Thank you for all who helped to produce this rapid response and effective use of only two of the many databases for tracking the role of money in shaping policy.
I think it may be useful to put a timeline around some these flows of money and federal policies.
MAY 2020. Guidance for ESEA section 8401(b)(3)(A) testing waivers were published in May 2020 and almost every state or comparable jurisdiction requested and received these waivers for the 2019-2020 school year, well before the full force of the pandemic required large scale changes in schools. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/19/2020-10740/notice-of-waivers-granted-under-section-8401-of-the-elementary-and-secondary-education-act-of-1965.
FEBRUARY 3, 2021. The Education Trust sent a letter to Dr. Miguel Cardona. This was after his nomination but before his confirmation on March 1. This letter was signed by 18 organizations in addition to the Education Trust. Find the letter here. https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Joint-Letter-to-Dr.-Miguel-Cardona-Urging-Rejection-of-Waivers-to-Annual-State-Wide-Assessment-Requirements-for-the-2020-21-School-Year-February-3-2021.pdf
The February 3 letter ends with two footnotes. The first is for McKinsey & Co.’s data about achievement before schools closed and the transition to remote learning began. This analysis includes “epidemiological scenarios” for learning loss (in months) for students who are white, black, and Hispanic. As usual, Mc Kinsey & Co. cares about the economic value of test scores “We estimate that the average K–12 student in the United States could lose $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings (in constant 2020 dollars), or the equivalent of a year of full-time work, solely as a result of COVID-19–related learning losses…. This translates into an estimated impact of $110 billion annual earnings across the entire current K–12 cohort.” https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-student-learning-in-the-united-states-the-hurt-could-last-a-lifetime
The second footnote refers to a Bellwether Education report justifying their use of “crisis” rhetoric about school attendance data. The report estimates that about three million school-age children had difficulty engaging in or accessing education in the spring and fall 2020. That estimate was based on data from multiple sources, including media reports.
I hope Dr. Cordona understands that McKinsey & Co and Bellwether Education are not great sources of trustworthy information about public schools. https://bellwethereducation.org/publication/missing-margins-estimating-scale-covid-19-attendance-crisis.
FEBRUARY 22. On this date Ian Rosenblum, “Delegated the Authority to Perform the Functions and Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Elementary Education” announced “guidance for state testing” with particular attention to the conditions required if waivers of any find were requested. Note that Dr, Cardona has not yet been confirmed as Secretary of Education. I have yet to discover how he was granted authority (or grabbed it) to assert national policy on testing for the 2020-2021 school year. It is worth noting that Rosenblum’s prior employer had been The Education Trust, (New York). Here is the Guidance letter.https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/stateletters/dcl-assessments-and-acct-022221.pdf
FEBRUARY 23. In no time flat, The Education Trust sent this second letter to the U.S. Department of Education, titled “Response From Civil Rights, Social Justice, Disability Rights, Immigration Policy, Business, and Education Organizations to the U.S. Department of Education’s Updated Guidance on Key ESSA Provisions in 2020–21.” This letter was signed by 30 organizations in addition to the Education Trust. This letter emphasized that local assessments were not suitable for accountability:
…
”We want to be clear: The Department must not, as part of its promised state-by-state “flexibility,” grant waivers to states that would allow them to substitute local assessments in place of statewide assessments or to only assess a subset of students. By design, these local assessments do not hold all students to the same standards and expectations. They do not offer appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities or English learners, as required under federal law for statewide assessments; they are not peer reviewed to ensure quality and prevent bias; and the results of these assessments will not be comparable from district to district.”
In effect, the only accountability measures that matter to The Education Trust and those who signed on to these letters are features of a factory model of education. Standardization is the ultimate criterion for data entering into decisions about federal policy. This factory model is also positioned as if the primary way to address equity and civils rights. We must “hold all students to the same standards and expectations.”
The February 23 letter also articulates a clear distain for assessments most likely to be meaningful to teachers, students, and parent caregivers; namely teacher and district developed evaluations of learning with these judgements student-specific, curriculum relevant, informed by face-to=face conversations and providing a meaningful pathway for guiding students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From Education Trust letter to Us Department of Education
“By design, these local assessments …are not pee-er reviewed (preferably by economists in suits ) to ensure bias and prevent quality”
Fixed.
Bill Gates in the center performing pee-er review.
Parents should encourage their children to opt out. Testing students was never the purview of the federal government except for when they were providing funding as for Title 1 or individuals with disabilities. In many school districts federal dollars account for a small amount of the budget. NCLB was an example of federal overreach, and now the feds allow billionaire foundations and corporations to subject young people to flawed assessments in order to collect data. It is a sad state of affairs when billionaires dictate policies that impact the lives of children. Dr. Cardona needs to stand up to the failed test and punish policies that have undermined public education for the past twenty years.
As soon as they find those huge gaps, they will pivot and blame the teachers for this mess. Not a germ, not the test, not the technology, not poverty. Teachers. Waltons have weaponized test data forever, why stop now when you’ve got the chance to get your grubby hands around Covid-flavored H-bomb of test data?
teachers are costly: teacherless classrooms make somebody more profit?
This explains some of the reasons for Biden’s Dept of Ed stealth appointments does it not? Biden appointed top officials in his Dept of Ed who have significant conflicts of interest & agendas hidden behind social justice & civil rights rhetoric.
Charles SIler’s interview exposed how the Democrats & Republicans crafted propaganda on edu privatization in his interview with Diane & Jennifer Berkshire (posted here on Mar 5). Social justice & civil rights misinformation and distortions are a key facet of Democrats ed reform “success” stories.
If you listen to Democrats on ed reform, their policies can do no wrong & outcomes always improve for poor children of color. That Democrats’ ed reform rhetoric about successful outcomes rarely matches reality is of no concern.
Curious that someone in the White House–not Cardona or Marten–is filling in jobs in the Department of Education, but not the Assistant Secretaries, all of whom need Senate confirmation.
Wonder who in the White House? My guess is Carmel Martin, who worked in Obama-Duncan, defended high-stakes testing and charters, then worked at CAP, neoliberal Dem think tank.
The “flexibility” Texas is offering on standardized tests is…. a two week delay.
I knew the claims that they would be “flexible” were baloney.
They call themselves “accountability hawks”, which means, I guess, they’re at war with our childrens’ schools. Absolutely ridiculous that we’re paying thousands of public employees to wage war on our childrens’ schools. Ludicrous.
In Texan, flexible means “able to twist the meaning into a pretzel”
We’re all supposed to pretend there’s some “scientific” process playing out here, that they’re all poring over “data” and working hard on “flexibility” geared to each state.
Just nonsense. They’re planning on jamming in the same testing mandates they always use with a 2 week delay.
I hope they just get on with the tests so schools can submit the results to the ed reform lobby and then get some actual work done.
For example “wind turbine” means “Green Raw Deal designed by AOC to crash the state power grid in cold weather”
The problem is, when the scores are inevitably lower than last time, the Reformers will blame the “year long teacher vacation” that the unions called for on account of the pandemic.
And then they will require teachers and students to work 26 hour days until the “covid gap” is bridged — or until the sun becomes a redgiant star and engulfs the Earth, whichever comes second.
As soon as low-level political appointee Ian Rosenblum publicly released that announcement of testing, educational journalists should have been getting him AND Biden himself (via press secretary Jen Psaki) on record as to why this policy was in direct opposition to what Biden had campaigned on.
It’s a failure of journalism that lazy journalists report the story as “Biden changed his mind” or “Biden lied” without one iota of curiosity or work ethic to ask “why did Biden change his mind” and then follow up with questions about whether that reason for changing his mind was sound.
I want to know what rationale Biden himself gives for why he “lied”.
Oprah Winfrey’s very revealing interview with Meghan and Harry demonstrated what journalism could be and also how awful the reporting of the entire DC/NY/education journalism establishment is. It’s called listening and follow-up questions. And it doesn’t have to be in a nasty way but it does need to be in a persistent way.
For example: “We broke our promise about testing because we decided that pandemic required us to know where students were in their learning”.
Lazy education journalists: “great we just transcribed your words and we’ll print them because we accept without question that these perfect tests are perfect judges of students”
Real journalists: Please explain exactly how taking a single standardized test will do that. Are you saying the Biden administration now strongly disagrees with colleges like Harvard and Berkeley and U. of Michigan that judging a student’s learning entirely on the results of a single day exam taken only once is ridiculous? Is the Biden Administration advocating that students’ learning IS whatever they show on their one day exam because that is the absolutely the ideal way to know what public school students learn?
And the question that lazy education journalists never ask: If this state test is the perfect measurement of a child, why haven’t private schools been opting into this test when they could be doing so? Why does the Biden Administration reject the obvious explanation that the schools that parents pay $50,000 year for their kids to attend know these tests are useless or they would be requiring their students to take them?
There is a direct correlation to the huge expansion of charter schools that dump children who don’t do well on state tests, and the emphasis on state tests being the sole measure of a student and school. Education journalists that haven’t noticed this are either lazy, gullible or just not very good journalists. They could use a lesson from Oprah.
All good points, NYCpsp. I have often said that some talk show hosts–Seth Meyers, for example, & Stephen Colbert has done so, too, as well as others (Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah*)–do a better job of correctly questioning their guests & obtaining real answers.
Ironic, isn’t it? The msm can’t report the truth as well.
I guess that’s what “send in the clowns” really means!
*John Oliver is the champ at reporting the truth!!
I love John Oliver, too!
This is Joe Biden and his agenda. What can one really expect? Differently when it comes to education, other than LGBTQ and college rape issues? It’s Obama reboot 2.0.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Better than Trump. I agree and get it. And now . . . .
What can you expect with Biden?
You can expect that the voices of Bernie Sanders and AOC will be listened to if they use their bully pulpit to ask these questions. Unfortunately, they do not. When progressives start making this an issue, there will be change, just like in 6 weeks there is already change from the Trump administration on environmental issues. I think saying “what can you expect?” excuses all politicians who are not being real champions for public education when they could be.
I saw that in NYC when de Blasio tried to do things for public school early in his tenure, the right wing Republicans attacked him and the conservative Democrats joined in, which I expected. But what I didn’t expect is that there would be no progressive politicians who loudly had his back — it seemed to me that they decided that the progressive issue that de Blasio was getting attacked for supporting was too controversial and it was much easier just to remain silent.
I’m waiting for the progressive wing in Congress to become very loud champions for public education when it matters most. I don’t think public education needs Susan Collins’ type politicians who only stand up for important things when it it is easy, and remain silent when it is hard.
Biden is Biden. He didn’t campaign as a progressive. But that doesn’t explain why politicians who are progressive are not louder champions of public schools. Too often they seem like Susan Collins, and speak out only when it is easy, not hard. They are not like that when it comes to the environment and social justice issues, so it is clear that public school supporters still have some work to do to convince them that education issues involve more than just saying they support teachers unions and are against for profit charters.
There’s a longer game in play here, not just short term profits and defense of the testing industrial complex. They are (surprise, surprise…) looking to acquire data that can be massaged and lied about to prove that learning loss is serious, measurable, caused by unions and teachers, and solvable by reform. Let no crisis go to waste, use everything but the “squeal”. Even though parents have seen the realities of the difficulties and failures of remote instruction, the online schooling that occurred as a result of the pandemic will likewise be defended by deflecting the blame for all that onto teachers and the online platforms their districts used. Survival of the fittest for the tech sector.
It’s worth recalling that the Democrats in the Senate (including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) were insistent on keeping the testing mandate in the Every Student Sucksseeds act.
I agree with you that it is worth recalling that. But it is the “why” of it that we need to address, because just “recalling” it serves no purpose.
I don’t believe for one minute that Warren and Sanders wanted the testing mandate in ESSA because they wanted to make test companies rich or because they were getting donations from privatizers or because they wanted to punish teachers or kids.
The “why” is that these two good politicians were ignorant of the issues because (frankly) I don’t think the intricacies of the public education debate are all that interesting to them and they had other issues that were more important to them.
I can understand that because I was ignorant myself about many of these issues. Non-profit charters seemed like good ideas, testing seemed like a good idea, etc. etc. And I considered myself a progressive.
I changed my mind because I read Diane’s excellent and informative blog and many other things about public education and realized that the misleading rhetoric from the ed reformers was hiding all sorts of truths that made me rethink my position on charters and testing.
But if the only thing I had heard was union teachers saying I was a tool of corporate interests or pro-Wall Street or someone who wanted to destroy public schools, I would probably have remained ignorant of the real issues because hearing false accusations aimed at me instead of fact-based arguments would just have convinced me that those who supported public schools had no facts on their side and that’s why they call me names. Because I am not any of those things.
The Republicans are not interested in fact-based discussions. They will throw out multiple falsehoods to support what they want and they often do that knowingly, not in ignorance.
But while some Democrats may do that, too, there are many Democrats who I may not agree entirely with on policy who believe in fact-based discussions. But the big tragedy of public education is that those conversations almost never ever happen. And that benefits the right wingers who don’t want them to happen.
But progressives with bully pulpits can make those conversations happen. Bernie did that with college education. AOC did it with the Green New Deal. Warren did it with financial reform. I wish there was someone with their public profile who would do that with public education. And maybe that would address the “why” of why Sanders and Warren supported testing. They did not yet understand the truths that made their position on testing the wrong position to have.
I have no idea why.
And I don’t like to speculate.
Sometimes it’s important just to remind people.
Or inform the ones who might never have known to begin with.
SomeDam Poet,
If I didn’t follow education issues closely and you “reminded” me that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were insistent on keeping the testing mandate in ESSA, I would say “fine, I like those politicians and they are smart progressives so having the testing mandate in ESSA must be a good idea.”
I’m not sure why you assume that is helpful, but whatever.
In my opinion, “informing” people is telling them what the issues are and provide good arguments for why they should support or oppose something. If the only information people get is “Bernie and Warren supported ESSA” or “evil corporate democrats want to reopen schools because they want teachers to die”, I don’t think public schools are going to survive.
And it’s shame because the facts are on our side. But you have to make the case to people, and that case isn’t made by saying “everyone who disagrees with us is corrupt and a Wall Street tool”. That’s the right wing playbook but they have to do that because the facts aren’t on their side! So they demonize anyone who disagrees.
Public school supporters really do have the facts on their side, if there was a way to make sure that the public knew those facts instead of the false narrative of failing public schools and wildly successful charters that is being pushed. And that takes someone with a loud bully pulpit to stand up for public education, the way AOC stood up for the Green New Deal.
“everyone who disagrees with us is corrupt and a Wall Street tool”.
Where did I say that??!
Ha ha ha .