Leonie Haimson looked closely at the score declines on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and was disappointed to see the outpouring of false prescriptions. She was critical of claims that students needed to make up for lost time by being subjected to longer school days and weeks.
The best response, she argues, based on years of research, is to reduce class size and give students the attention and care they need to make up for lost time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
another thought is to abandon the concept of the fake test and build success, step by step, based on demonstrated proficiencies. This would make failure a part of the learning process as students would move swiftly on their pathway to success.
“In mathematics, the progress made in the past 20 years in performance improvements was lost,” said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho, during a press conference at Aragon Avenue Elementary School near Cypress Park in Northeast Los Angeles, and LAUSD Board Member Tanya Ortiz Franklin followed, “We know we lost some ground. We have a lot of work to do to recover from the pandemic.” — LA Daily News, September 9, 2022
An 8 year old third grader cannot lose 20 years of instruction progress on a mathematics test. She has not had 20 years of instruction to lose. So, in mathematics, LAUSD Superintendent Carvalho is failing. He is not doing mathematics correctly. What he is doing is junk math, and he is using that junk math to tell the working class that we must add an extra 20 years of work to our current workload. And he added days to the school year without negotiating with anyone to spit in our faces and call it rain. He wants to add hours to the school day as well.
What really happened was that LAUSD took instruction to the screens during the pandemic, and failed to get off the screens when we returned to the classroom. Students learn more from hands on and face to face experiences than from online education platforms and constant over-testing. We did not lose performance improvements; we lost our memory. Leonie is right. We will not improve with more of the screen time status quo with more hours added to our days and more days added to our years. Adding work reduces productivity. We need to stop over-testing and get back to teaching with lower class sizes and teachers who make more than 17% less than similarly educated professionals in Los Angeles.
Well said. Bureaucrats rarely really know what is happening in classrooms. Teaching in a social setting by a trained, compassionate human is far superior to online instruction.
Carvalho is deeply mediocre, oxymoronic as that may be.
Time to stop
hoping for the best, in my opinion. Carvahlo is Deasy.
How to make sense of the NAEP scores.
#BustEDPencils Pod.
Learning Gains: An Alternative Truth!
How to stop the “pearl-clutching” over NAEP scores.
Listen Now: https://civicmedia.us/podcast/the-report-card-talk-sept-6/
We all want a first class education for our children. But as a teacher, I am only paid for 1/2 hour of preparation a day. If we want better, then we need to be given the time enough time to prepare the best materials and activities for our students. For elementary at least, maybe shorten the school day by two hours to provide the needed prep time for teachers. Then increase the number of school days to include 11 months of instruction for students. It would increase teacher pay, help children to retain more and a shorter day would help them with their attention spans.
Teachers in the US have less prep time than those in other industrialized nations. With the teacher shortage many teachers are losing prep time to cover other classes. The lack of prep time is built into the system. We should build more prep and collegial collaboration time in the school day, but, of course, it never seems to happen.
The best response, Leonie Haimson argues, based on years of research, is to reduce class size and give students the attention and care they need to make up for lost time.
While I agree that reducing class size and giving students the attention and care they need in the classroom, is important, I think it is second to:
Reading outside of classrooms!
Why should students read outside of school?
“The amount of free reading done outside of school has also consistently been found to relate to growth in vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal fluency and general information. As reading skills improve, students are better prepared to comprehend other classroom reading materials and subjects.”
The next pull-quote is for parents/guardians:
“Reading books aloud to children (as early as possible – even before they start to talk as in infant) stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word.”
https://www.k12dive.com/spons/3-benefits-of-independent-readingand-how-to-make-it-work-in-your-classroom/504563/
If children do not learn how to love reading from their parents well before kindergarten, the odds are against them that they will keep up in class and fall further behind as the K-12 years fly by.
If my mother had listened to the “experts” (when I was seven years old in 1952, during my second year in 1st grade) that I was too retarded to learn how to read and write, and she made no effort to make sure I learned to read and write at an early age at home since the school system gave up on me, my life would have been dramatically different than it is now.
Thank you, mother, for ignoring those idiots!
Once I learned to read and loved reading, I read thousands of books before graduating from high school. As an avid reader, sometimes reading two novels a day while ignoring school work and teacher lectures, I was a horrible student. Since most grades are based on a combination of test scores and turning in the assignment class work and homework, I barely graduated from HS with a 0.95 GPA. I scored horrible on tests and did not do most of the classwork or homework. I didn’t have time since my choice as an avid reader was to read books to fill those hours.
But when I decided to go to college after serving in the US Marines and fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s, and had to take a test to determine if I was capable of doing college work, my reading score said I was reading at a college level.
By the way, my mother mailed me paperback books when I was in Vietnam. She knew what I liked to read. In the military in combat, we are not fighting all the time. We actually have downtime inside our base camps and my choice was to read the books my mother mailed to me to fill that downtime.
“NAEP Score Declines Unleash Wave of False Prescriptions”
Garbage in, garbage out! or Crap in, crap out!
Yes, it’s that simple!
When one mis-identifies a problem in any process, whether it be the teaching and learning process, the manufacturing process, a cooking process, etc. . ., the proposed solutions/prescriptions are almost 100% guaranteed to be false, bad, harmful, deleterious, absurd, inane, insane, etc. . . .
Reduce class size so the classroom teacher can give more one on one time to each child.
The idea of adding schools days or making the school day longer is ludicrous.
REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED EDUCATION in INDIANA has failed! CUTTING teacher pay, harassing teachers with RIDICULOUS and wasteful PAPERWORK and REGULATIONS has only caused teacher’s to leave the teaching profession! The MITCH DANIELS MINDSET that “teacher’s are overpaid, glorified babysitter’s,” must STOP!
Teaching to a test, is time wasted…STOP the useless testing!!
Unqualified REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR’S and LEGISLATOR’S push for VOUCHERS, STEALING INDIANA TAX PAYER EDUCATION DOLLARS, and allowing UNREGULATED NON-PUBLIC schools, with NO REGULATIONS, must be addressed and STOPPED!
It is obvious how unintelligent Carvalho is. He tries to sound erudite by using big words, but always he always blows it by using them in a goofy way. How did he get through the Board’s hiring process? Are they that dumb? Carvalho is 100% bureaucrat. He hasn’t a clue what to do. The whole thing is just really sad.
I was stressing “always”.