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Teacher: No Time For Teaching, Only Testing

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
55

This teacher laments the explosion of testing in school, which has reduced or eliminated time for play, recess, and activities. This is the brave new world of Common Core and PARCC:

H/she writes:

“The Common Core and PARCC will ruin education as we know it..And, of course, it is all part of the overall plan. My school starts PARCC this next school year. My 2.5 hour paper and pencil test (in only one subject).. will be replaced by three (3) two hour “tasks” in February. (My students will have to sit down at a computer THREE times at 2 hours each in February.) I’m not done yet….In May my students have to sit down at the computer for two (2) hour tests on the computer. My 2.5 hour paper and pencil test is now replaced by 10 hours of testing for only one subject. My students will also do the same amount of testing in three (3) other subjects. My students now will be completing 40 hours of testing on a computer in a given year. Oh, and my students are only 11 and 12 years old. They yearn to go outside and play kickball and basketball at recess. But, they have no recess. They only have 10 extra minutes after they finish lunch to play outside.

“I was blessed to teach in the what I now know were the “good ole days” of yesteryear. I dearly miss and mourn for those years. I was able to teach through fun and meaningful learning activities! We had TIME! (: As I go through my files over my almost 30 year career in the same subject and grade level, I don’t begin to get the material taught and covered as what I used to. I have thick files of learning activities that I never get to anymore. The curriculum director at our school has already said that he has no clue how he will get all that testing done for all of our kids. He said there is a 4 week window in February and April/May, so students will be gone at different times in my classroom. It will be a nightmare.

“It’s a shame that Pearson has to take away the childhood of our children, so they can earn their millions. I teach children. They are children. They love to run, play, draw, make faces, jump up and down, play tag, tease each other, hide, run around, make jokes, and enjoy being a child. With all of these hours of testing, I will not have time to teach anymore. The test preparation for a 2.5 hour test was bad enough, but this is totally ridiculous. Then, take the time to read over the Common Core and you will laugh to yourself. In Language Arts, they will be teaching adverbs to 3rd graders, with not much more emphasis on it after that. I think they know the Common Core will be the bullet that finally kills all public education in the U.S. The kids will not score well on this silly curriculum, which will be recorded on the teacher’s evaluation . . .and teachers will be let go. Yes, it’s all a part of the sad overall plan. It’s evident that the Common Core was created by people who knew very little about the developmental stages of our children. No one ever mentions Piaget anymore. It’s all so sad. But, Sasha and Alieah don’t have to follow these communist socialist education rules. Do they?”

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Pearson, Standardized Testing

Politico: AFT Opens Up Common Core Debate

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2014 //
90

Stephanie Simon of politico.com reports that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has invited members to debate the Common Core standards at the organization’s convention in Los Angeles.

Until now, Weingarten and the AFT have strongly defended the standards. But she has been reconsidering their value over the past 15 months. In April 2013, she said in a major speech in Néw York City that the standards should be separated from high-stakes testing because there had been inadequate preparation for them—little or no professional development, materials, or other necessary tools. In Néw York state, implementation of Common Core testing was hurried and slipshod. The passing marks were set so high that 70% of students failed–failure by design.

The Common Core standards have recently been in free fall. The Gates Foundation–which paid over $2 billion to write and promote the Common Core–has called for a moratorium on using the results for punishing teachers. The Chicago Teachers Union flatly rejected the Common Core standards. State after state have dropped the standards or the tests or both.

Now Weingarten is inviting members to weigh in.

Simon writes:

“The American Federation of Teachers will open its annual convention Friday morning with a startling announcement: After years of strongly backing the Common Core, the union now plans to give its members grants to critique the academic standards — or to write replacement standards from scratch.
It’s a sign that teachers are frustrated and fed up — and they’re making their anger heard, loud and clear.

“The AFT will also consider a resolution — drafted by its executive council — asserting that the promise of the Common Core has been corrupted by political manipulation, administrative bungling, corporate profiteering and an invalid scoring system designed to ensure huge numbers of kids fail the new math and language arts exams that will be rolled out next spring. An even more pointed resolution flat out opposing the standards will also likely come up for a vote.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/american-federation-of-teachers-common-core-108793.html#ixzz37B0IG6ju

Categories Common Core, Resistance, U.S. Department of Education, Unions

Reader: That Nonsensical Moratorium on High-Stakes

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2014 //
12

The Gates Foundation called for a two-year suspension of the high stakes evaluation of teachers–ratings and rankings tied to student scores—but not a moratorium on the testing. A reader writes:

“If there is a moratorium on the evaluations connected to the tests, then there is no point in continuing the tests either since the sole purpose of the tests was to attempt to measure growth for the purposes of the evaluations. The real reason the evaluations are being suspended is that there simply cannot be any remotely accurate growth measures to base them on while the CC$$ is being implemented. This moratorium is like saying we will suspend the use of nails but are still required to swing the hammers and hit the wood. And, once the CC$$ is being ramped up and many more teachers see it’s problems manifesting themselves, such as it being developmentally inappropriate for K-3, will the moratorium be extended while that and any other problems are being solved? How will they be solved, with the input of teachers as should have been the case from the beginning? Or not? Hard to say since it is a copy righted product.”

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

The Excellent But False Messaging of the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2014 //
54

Have you ever wondered about the amazingly effective campaign to sell the Common Core standards to the media, the business community, and the public? How did it happen that advocates for the standards used the same language, the same talking points, the same claims, no matter where they were located? The talking points sounded poll-tested because they were. The language was the same because it came from the same source. The campaign to have “rigorous,” “high standards” that would make ALL students “college and career-ready” and “globally competitive” was well planned and coordinated. There was no evidence for these claims but repeated often enough in editorials and news stories and in ads by major corporations, they took on the ring of truth. Even the new stories that reported on controversies between advocates and opponents of the Common Core, used the rhetoric of the advocates to describe the standards.

This was no accident.

Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reported that the Hunt Institute in North Carolina received more than $5 million from the Gates Foundation to organize support for the brand-new, unknown, untested Common Core standards. Organizing support meant creating the message as well as mobilizing messengers, many of whom were also funded by the Gates Foundation.

In Layton’s blockbuster article about how the Gates Foundation underwrote the rapid adoption of “national standards” by spreading millions of dollars strategically, this remarkable story was included:

“The foundation, for instance, gave more than $5 million to the University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by the state’s former four-term Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, to advocate for the Common Core in statehouses around the country.

“The grant was the institute’s largest source of income in 2009, more than 10 times the size of its next largest donation. With the Gates money, the Hunt Institute coordinated more than a dozen organizations — many of them also Gates grantees — including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council of La Raza, the Council of Chief State School Officers, National Governors Association, Achieve and the two national teachers unions.

“The Hunt Institute held weekly conference calls between the players that were directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation. They talked about which states needed shoring up, the best person to respond to questions or criticisms and who needed to travel to which state capital to testify, according to those familiar with the conversations.

“The Hunt Institute spent $437,000 to hire GMMB, a strategic communications firm owned by Jim Margolis, a top Democratic strategist and veteran of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns. GMMB conducted polling around standards, developed fact sheets, identified language that would be effective in winning support and prepared talking points, among other efforts.

“The groups organized by Hunt developed a “messaging tool kit” that included sample letters to the editor, op-ed pieces that could be tailored to individuals depending on whether they were teachers, parents, business executives or civil rights leaders.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the advocates for the Common Core standards have the same rhetoric, the same claims, no matter where they are, because the campaign was well organized and well messaged.

What the campaign did not take into account was the possibility of pushback, the possibility that the very lack of public debate and discussion would sow suspicion and controversy. What the advocates forgot is that the democratic way of making change may be slow and may require compromise, but it builds consensus. The Common Core standards, thanks to Gates’ largesse, skipped the democratic process, imposed new standards on almost every state, bypassing the democratic process, and is now paying the price of autocratic action in a democratic society.

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

“Data Is Fool’s Gold of the Common Core”

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2014 //
37

Common Core standards are usually described in the mainstream media in idealistic terms, using the positive and affirmative messages to sell the idea to the public. Doesn’t everyone want “high standards?” Doesn’t everyone want every single student to be “college and career ready?” Doesn’t everyone want students to be “globally competitive”? Of course. These claims, though untested and unproven, sound poll-tested.

Can standards be both “common” and “high”? If they are truly high and rigorous, won’t a sizable proportion of students fail? Can a single set of standards make everyone college and career ready? How do we know? What does it mean to be “globally competitive” with nations where educated people are paid a fraction of our own minimum wage?

Another way to view the Common Core standards is to see them as part of an integrated system of standards, tests, and teacher ratings that generate data. This data can be used to award bonuses, fire teachers, close schools, and identify students for remediation or college admission. The underlying assumption behind CCSS is that all children, if exposed to common standards, will learn at the same pace.

This post challenges the data-driven approach to school reform. “Data,” it says, “is the fool’s gold of the Common Core.”

He writes:

“Teachers should strive to meet the individual needs of their students, not the “needs” of standards or tests. There should be high academic expectations for all students, but to expect everyone, regardless of ability/disability, to meet those standards simultaneously and in the same way is foolish and inherently unfair.

“Standardized tests are toxic for the Common Core and they are the primary reason for the botched implementation efforts around the country. These tests do not generate comprehensive or reliable data regarding constructivist learning that is called for in the Learning Standards….

“The Common Core testing regime is more about satisfying data-driven enthusiasts’ ‘thirst” for more data, than it is about cultivating students’ thirst for knowledge.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented data collection “gold rush”, while the validity and reliability of this “fool’s gold” is of little concern to those who are mining it.

“The “college and career readiness” mandate or mission of the Common Core is misguided and not in the best interest of all our students. There are many “paths” to trade and vocational careers, and they don’t all go through college.

“Since the Common Core Standards were designed to serve and support the college and career readiness mandate, they are seriously flawed and deficient.

“A more inclusive and appropriate mandate such as readiness for “adulthood and employment” would better serve the academic, social, and emotional needs of all our students. Rather than simply “correcting” the inadequate Common Core standards, they should be reconstructed and redesigned from the ground up.”

Categories Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Students, Testing

Paul Horton Chastises the Chronicle of Higher Education about the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2014 //
17

The Chronicle of Higher Education regularly publishes laudatory articles about the Common Core standards. Paul Horton wrote a letter to the editor. Here it is:

 

http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/common-core-standards-are-the-tip-of-a-corporate-iceberg/

 

Common Core Standards Are the Tip of a Corporate Iceberg

 

To the Editor:

 

In response to recent several columns that embrace the Common Core Standards as a way to prepare students for college (“Use the Common Core. Use It Widely. Use It Well,” The Chronicle, June 10), I beg to differ.

 

There are several reasons why I am concerned about the Common Core Standards, along with virtually all teachers and professors I know:

 

1. They are the product of a push by private foundations acting in the interest of multinational corporations to colonize public education in the United States and in other areas projected be developed as core production and assembly areas in the emerging global economy. A recent Washington Post article using a well-placed source within the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation essentially confirmed what many critics have suspected: that Bill Gates effectively controls the Department of Education in the United States through his former employees who serve in leadership positions within the Department of Education. Our education secretary also does a lot of listening to Michael Barber of Pearson Education. Although Mr. Gates and Sir Michael, as well as other reformers, are doubtless well intentioned, they view the colonization of K-12 education in this country and elsewhere as a “win-win.” In their view, the quality of education will improve with greater accountability, and they will make billions creating and delivering accountability for students, teachers, and education schools. To implement their plan, they are willing to jettison all ideas of collective responsibility for public education in a classic privatization pincer move: Chicago School of Economics ideas of “free choice” and “free markets” are used to legitimate privatization through virtual control of the editorial boards of major papers—the Murdoch chain, the Tribune chain, The Washington Post (now run by a neoliberal libertarian), and The New York Times—as well as center-liberal media like PBS and NPR. Money is funneled into NPR and PBS by organizations that support privatizing school reform in the name of “support for education programing.” A Gates-funded Washington consulting firm, GMMB, works 24/7 to sell the Common Core Standards and all other elements of the Race to the Top mandates that call for more charter schools, a standardized-testing regime, and value-added assessments of teachers based on this testing regime. Likewise representatives of the Washington-based Fordham Institute work together with GMMB to send weekly talking points to major editorial boards and education reporters to ensure that representatives from an “independent foundation” are relentlessly quoted. Not surprisingly, the Fordham Institute is hardly independent, and is heavily subsidized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Michael Bloomberg, and the Broad Foundation, and many more funders of privatizing education. While GMMB attempts to control the discourse in the country’s major media outlets (Arne Duncan’s past press secretary is helping to coordinate this propaganda campaign within GMMB), McKinsey sells Microsoft and Pearson packages to fit the Race to the Top mandates. The Los Angeles Independent Schools boondoggle that packed Pearson Common Core Curriculum lessons within Microsoft tablets and software is the wave of the future. Districts are sold packages that they cannot afford to comply with federal mandates that are pushed by private multinational corporations. What I am attempting to describe is the tip of a corporate iceberg that amounts to corporate control of education policy with very little participation of classroom teachers, parents, or school boards. The idea that the Common Core Standards are the product of a democratic process is simply misrepresentation of fact—a big lie that GMMB, our education secretary, Bill Gates, Pearson Education, and the Fordham Institute propagate. What many rightfully be called corporate-education reform has bypassed the democratic process. For this reason alone, university faculty and administrators should not support the Common Core Curriculum and the Race to the Top.

 

2. As a teacher at a school that prepares students for colleges and universities, I know that the Common Core Standards will not be the best preparation for the next level. I have taught in large public high schools and at one of the best independent schools in the country. I have seen education from many different angles. I was a teacher in Texas in 1985 when the standardized testing regime that we now associate with Race to the Top and the Common Core Standards was first instituted. This regime failed in Texas and it has failed everywhere it has been tried. Whatever one may think of the Common Core Standards on paper, because they are tied to a standardized testing regime, they will fail. The literature on this issue is voluminous, but our current educational-policy makers simply ignore it. Teaching to standardized tests narrows the curriculum and results in teaching to the test. Administrators will encourage drill-and-kill exercises to increase test scores and will be forced to allocate precious resources and time to preparing for standardized tests. Here in Chicago, principals are letting go of essential school staff—counselors, librarians, art teachers, and others—to pay for tutoring and the computers that will be used to assess students. As a graduate student at the University of Texas in the mid 1980s, I taught a section in a remedial reading and writing program for freshmen who did not read and write at a college entry level. We made our courses as interesting as possible by assigning the nonfiction of Larry McMurtry and Robert Graves. But what I discovered when I talked to my students was that kids did not write enough in high school for two interrelated reasons: Their classes were huge, and they were assessed by multiple-choice tests because their teachers had difficulty grading class sets of 35-40 papers as a portion of five class loads of 165-180 students. Consider that the assessments administered to measure the Common Core Standards will be either multiple-choice questions or algorithm-scored short essays that require regurgitation. To adequately prepare students for college, they need to be challenged with books and documents, contextual understanding and textual understanding. The Common Core Standards emphasize the textual understanding of documents and the diminution of creative writing and contextual analysis beyond a given document or passage. While intratextual analysis certainly has its place in any classroom, the Common Core comes close to reinstituting the dragon that many professors in the humanities have worked hard to slay—“the New Criticism.” The Common Core Standards and assessments seek to bring the dead dragon back to life! Most of the Humanities professors I know here at the University of Chicago and elsewhere think this is laughable. The reaction typically is, “this is stunningly ignorant, but I want to write, not refight these ridiculous battles.” The Common Core Standards seek to teach literacy, but in doing so, they neglect developing essential tools of critical and contextual analysis that are predictive of college success, the development of the ability to produce a complex essay or research paper (a paper that goes beyond what an algorithm can assess), and the development of ideas about social or civic responsibility that run counter to the core value of neoliberalism: “get what you can for yourself, nothing else matters.” This notion simply does not jibe with what I am hearing when I am visiting colleges with my rising high school senior son where the emphasis is all about service. What I have heard at every college visit is that admissions officers have determined that standardized testing does not predict college success. The challenges that a student takes on and is able to overcome and the rigor of the courses that a student takes are much better predictors of college readiness. Because the Common Core Standards, curricula, and assessments focus on literacy, multiple choice tests, and essays that regurgitate key words, they do not adequately prepare students by developing analytical abilities every college professor I know wants to see. The Common Core Standards prepare students in areas that experience issues with literacy for work at the community-college level. Applying this one set of standards to all American students represents a national policy error of catastrophic proportions.

 

3. The Common Core Standards must be viewed as a part of a larger effort to de-skill teacher K-20 teaching. Many within the professoriate are very skeptical about MOOCs. Believe it or not, MOOCs, the Common Core Standards, and Race to the Top are a part of the same floating ice-block. I just spoke to a friend of mine who is a professor at Columbia. He tells me that the professoriate is splitting between the one percent—typically, law, medical, and business professors who make money outside of the academy—and the lowly humanities professors who don’t bring in the big value-added bucks. But the number of non-tenure-track and non-benefitted professors has grown exponentially during the last twenty years. As state legislatures begin to demand value added measure for university professors and the new federal plan to encourage “reform” in higher education kicks off, the professoriate is beginning to hear the same sorts of messages that K-12 teachers have heard for twenty years. When the chancellors of major universities begin to send messages embracing the Common Core Standards like those recently published in The Chronicle, my guess is that the same foundations that are pushing for K-12 reforms are beginning to push for undergraduate education reforms. The Gates Foundation has sponsored a lot of research and dozens of named professorships, and when the Gates Foundation wants a heavily funded university on board with Common Core, it can make itself heard very easily. After all, the Gates Foundation seems to have a great deal to say about who is admitted to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences recently. While the big foundations that have the potential to add a great deal of value to major public and private institutions put the word out that some grants might not be granted to institutions that do not support the Common Core and state and federal pushes for college and university reform, they sooth our system chancellors with the siren song of plenty of money for research in exchange for public support of the whole program that will ultimately reduce the cost of labor on campus. Once courses are MOOC-ed and the rights sold, courses can be traded, bought and sold on markets. Once the scripted Common Core lessons are mandated, taught, and assessed, the value of teaching declines as teachers become as interchangeable and as cheap as computer tablets. Whatever can be digitalized, can be cheapened. University faculties, graduate students, and teachers need to understand that they must stand together because administrative and union leadership is already bought or is presently under a great deal of pressure.

 

That The Chronicle could publish so many articles in support of the Common Core Standards and about the “IT Takeover” of higher education should serve as a wake-up call. The one percent in academe, those who are closely tied to foundations, think tanks, politicos, insurance companies, and multi-national corporations, are ready to sell the rest of you out. Next the professoriate will see attempts to standardize and digitalize your teaching and assessments. Then, when your digitalized evaluations fluctuate with the abilities of the students you teach, your wages will be garnished. College and university educators will no longer be permitted to scare students out of classes with impossibly demanding syllabai; they will be asked to put up and shut up as their workload increases and as your salaries and benefits (pensions anyone?) decline. The Common Core Standards as a part of the Race to the Top do for K-12 education what a new round of reforms propose to do for higher education. The reformers seek to reduce the costs of teaching to create a profit margin for potential investors and markets for big education vendors. This is the brave new world that all K-20 educators face. We must learn to stand together.

 

Paul Horton
History Instructor
University High School
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
Chicago

Categories Common Core, Education Reform

New York: An Insider’s View of the Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2014 //
33

This personal report about setting the cut scores for New York’s Common Core 11th grade ELA test was written by Dr. Maria Baldassarre Hopkins, Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Nazareth College. The cut score is the passing mark.

Professor Hopkins writes:

My name is Maria, and I am not a psychometrician.

There. I said it.

Apparently it took me a while to get it through my thick skull. I was reminded no fewer than three times at the cut score setting for the new Common Core aligned ELA Regents Exam that I am, indeed, not a psychometrician.

“Mary, are you a psychometrician?” I was asked when I made one of my frequent requests for more information.
My name ain’t Mary. And, no, I am not a psychometrician.

Last year I wrote critically of the cut score setting process for the 3-8 Common Core assessments. I was astonished when I was invited back for the 11th grade iteration after expressing blatant disapproval of NYSED/Pearson’s gamemaker role in the Hunger Games of academic achievement. You might wonder why I chose to go back. In addition to the camaraderie of some of New York’s finest educators and the Desmond’s delicious bread pudding, I prefer being at the table in the event that I might bring some modicum of sanity to an otherwise batty process.
Once again, I was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement which limits me from disclosing any secure test materials, including “all oral and written information … relating to the development, review, and/or scoring of a New York State assessment.” On the other hand, Commissioner King emphasized the importance of participants going out and talking about the cut score setting process, as well as encouraging our colleagues to participate in the future. While it may be my close reading skills at fault, I’m not entirely clear on where “secure test materials” end and “talking about the process” starts. I haven’t been dragged into court yet, so I think we’re good. Still, I will err on the side of caution here by not divulging any actual conversations or actual data to which I was privy. Read closely, friends.
Oh, I almost forgot–you should totally get on one these panels if have the chance.

Concern #1: Students are not PLDs
An important early step in the cut score setting process happened in February when educators from across the state were brought together to craft Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs) that would be instrumental in determining cut scores. PLDs are statements that say what a student at each level of proficiency should be capable of doing under each standard.
For example, imagine anchor standard 11 said the following: “Analyze the body language of a person trying to persuade you to resign from a task after you have asked too many questions.” PLDs would be statements that say what a student at each level (2-5) is capable of. A level 3 PLD might say: “Analyzes body language adequately and correctly;” a level 4 might say: “Thoroughly analyzes body language in a way that is both correct and lightly nuanced;” a level 2 might say: “Inconsistently analyzes body language and with some inaccuracy.” Do you get the picture? Essentially, each standard is broken up into 5 proficiency levels.
PLDs, along with Ordered Item Booklets (OIB) are the tools of the trade for cut score setters. An OIB is basically the test booklet from the June 3rd administration, but instead of questions ordered as they appeared on the actual exam, they are ordered from least to most difficult. The only factor accounted for in the ordering is the number of students who answered each question correctly. A lot of students got it right? Easy question. Not many students got it right? Hard question. Text complexity of passage, plausibility of multiple choice options, level of questioning—you know, the stuff that makes questions hard—are of little consequence.

For the purpose of cut score setting, PLDs become groups of “students.” As we move through the OIB attempting to place a bookmark on the last question a “Level 3” student should be able to answer correctly, we ask ourselves: “Based on the PLD description, should a student at this level be able to answer this question?” Yes? Move on in the book. No? Place your bookmark on the last “yes.”

The problem is that PLDs are not actually students. PLDs are arbitrary, almost meaningless statements that are made up very quickly by people who, for all intents and purposes, have little inclination what will be done with them after students take the exam. So we end up having hypothetical conversations like this one that inform where we place our bookmarks and, therefore, what the cut score becomes:
Jane at Table 1: Man, this question is super hard because–Broca’s Brain?!

Come on, how many 11th graders would actually understand the message here? I am going to say a Level 3 probably won’t get this right.

Dick at Table 2: No, this text is grade level appropriate. I just asked that state ed person in the corner and she said so. Our PLD says right here that a Level 3 student understands grade level texts. So, no, it should not be too hard. A Level 3 student should definitely get this question right.

Let me say this one more time, this time in response to imaginary Dick at Table 2: PLDs are not students. They are broad categories that can be interpreted differently by every single person that reads them. Even if, as a student, I fall squarely into the Level 3 category for my ability to understand a grade level text, that does not necessarily mean that I am able to distinguish between the very subtle nuances presented to me in the multiple choice options. It does not mean that there is a multiple choice option that approximates the (correct) answer I came up with on my own when I read the question. It does not mean that I have had the lived/linguistic experiences necessary in order to comprehend the nuances of the figurative language, even if I have a good sense of what the text, taken as a whole, is saying. For Dick, none of that matters. Because PLD. (View the test in its entirety here and assess the difficulty level for yourself).

PLDs do a good job making general statements about what a kid can kinda do in a vague sort of way. What they do not do is assuage the subjectivity of individual bookmarkers. They are also terrible at representing the complexity of actual students and attending to the myriad and layered complexities involved in answering each and every question on the assessment.

But take this with a grain of salt. I’m no psychometrician.

Concern #2: Setting Cut Scores on a Test that is Not Fully Operationalized
As it turns out, psychometricians aren’t big on anecdotal evidence. But here’s what I know, anecdotally speaking. Not all 11th graders in NYS took the new regents exam. Districts were given the choice of whether they would administer the test or not. Some districts chose to opt out all together while others administered both the new and the old tests. My concern was one about the representative nature of the sample upon which we were basing our cut score decisions. Based on the demographics of students who actually took this new test, would it be possible to draw a sample that was representative of all 11th graders in NYS? Were various demographic groups, including (but not limited to) Latino and Black students, students with disabilities and English learners accurately represented in the test data that would be informing the cut score setting process?

I had a difficult time imagining how that was possible. Perhaps it is because I am not a psychometrician, or maybe it was just pragmatics. Would school districts be willing to tender the expense of test proctors, graders, and substitute teachers, along with the loss of precious instructional time, on a test that they knew full well their students were not prepared for? My sense was that it would be mostly higher achieving students and wealthier districts choosing to give this test. If that is true—and I have been assured by NYSED staff that it is not—then the sample is skewed toward students who are expected, statistically speaking, to perform pretty well. All I could think during the cut score setting was that If our cut score was based on data skewed toward higher achieving students, everyone else will be at a grave disadvantage for years to come. They will be expected to perform to a bar set by predominately successful students. Unfortunately, though I asked, I was not permitted to see any data that reflected the demographics of students tested. I was assured, however, that the details of the sample would be provided in the cut score report.

On June 23rd, SED released their cut score report. In it, they break the sample down into several demographic categories and illustrate that the percentage of students in each category in the sample is similar to that in the population. Despite anything one can learn in Statistics 101, never do they give the number of test takers in the sample. The sample can be 10,000 students or it can be 100. These percentages actually tell us nothing about whether or not test results of the sample can be generalized to New York’s population of 11th graders.
While there is no way to tell from the data SED eventually provided, it is possible that the sample is not skewed. After an hour or more of asking for data about the sample, speaking with several SED folks who each gave me different answers about the sample and reasons that I would not be permitted to see any data (ranging from “it’s secure” to “we don’t have it” to questioning the legitimacy of my request due to my non-you-know-what status), everyone eventually got on the same page. By the end of our last day, the group was on message: the sample is representative.

But, even if this is true, it doesn’t actually improve the situation. Students across the board were underprepared for the exam having had only one year of Common Core-aligned instruction. Because this is a test they were not actually prepared to take, difficulty levels were inflated (remember: they are based only on the number of students who answered each item correctly) causing the cut score to be set relatively low. As years progress and as students have more experience with the Common Core, they will inevitably perform better. All of this cut score nonsense will be long since forgotten, and we will all sing the praises of Commissioner King for increasing graduation rates through his tireless pursuit of high standards. Of course, this type of score manipulation is not new. In 2013, chances o f 11th graders’ success on the Regents were diminished by 20% thanks alone to score conversion charts. Now that I think about it, that event set the stage really nicely for the necessity of speedy reform.

Regardless of the sample, this was a test students were not actually prepared to take. Cut scores should have never been set for the next who-knows-how-many-years based on a pilot run. Period.

Even a psychometrician should know that.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Carol Burris: How “Reformers” Inflate College Remediation Rates

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2014 //
44

In the television series called “The Wire,” there is an episode dedicated to “juking the stats.” Since it is a program about the police, criminals, and the drug trade, “juking the stats” means that the officials were able to manipulate crime data to show that crime was up–requiring more police–or down–showing their success in slowing a crime wave. Now we know that the corporate education reform movement has become expert at “juking the stats” to make public schools look bad so that the “reformers” can privatize them.

 

Many years ago, David Berliner and Bruce Biddle wrote a book called The Manufactured Crisis, describing how certain think tanks and government officials were manipulating data to make it appear to the public that the schools were in crisis. A gullible media, loving sensational stories about the “failure” of our schools, reported the “reformer” claims without bothering to check facts.

 

The corporate reformers of our day thrive on their own manufactured crisis. They seize upon any factoid to make schools and teachers look bad. They ignore the compelling facts that our schools are underfunded and overwhelmed with the problems of children in poverty. The corporate reformers’ solution to the problems they identify: More testing, more privatization. They think that students get smarter if they are tested more often, so more tests. They assume that privately managed schools must be superior to public schools, despite clear evidence that they do not produce better results and–unregulated and unsupervised–many are vulnerable to corruption, nepotism, self-dealing, and fraud.

 

In this article, Carol Burris shows how the college remediation rate has been shamelessly inflated by corporate reformers intent on advancing their agenda of privatization. Chief among those who have overstated the remediation rate is Secretary of Education Duncan, who said in Massachusetts that the college remediation rate was 40% when it was about half that number. As she demonstrates, one “reform” think tank announces the “crisis” of a 40% college remediation rate, and others soon repeat it until it becomes conventional wisdom. But it is not true. Like almost all the data trotted out by the reform crowd, it is inflated to promote their political agenda of privatization. Or they use their doctored stats to promote the Common Core, even though there is no evidence whatever that Common Core will make every student “college and career ready.” The campaign for Common Core increasingly looks like an advertising gambit that promises that your clothes will be cleaner than ever, your teeth will be whiter than ever, your weight will drop in a matter of days, if only you use this product.

 

When will the reformers target the root causes of low academic performance: poverty, segregation, and inequitable allocation of resources? Ever.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Higher Education, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

A Teacher’s Hopes for Lily

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2014 //
69

This just in from a member of NEA from Massachusetts who is at the Denver convention. She hopes that Lily Eskelsen, the new president, will be a champion and fighter for kids, teachers, and public schools. Is she THE ONE? Will she stand up to the phony “reformers”? Will she fight for democratic control of the schools? Will she tell the plutocrats to use their billions to alleviate poverty instead of taking control of the schools?

I think Lily has it in her. Until proven wrong, I am placing bets that she will stand up fearlessly for what is right, that she will tell Arne Duncan to scram, that she will tell the billionaires to get another hobby.

Here is the message from one of her members:

My comment is awaiting moderation on Lily’s Blackboard.

Here it is.

Lily, thank you for posting this opportunity for substantive engagement on the Gates question.

I’m an activist NEA member in Massachusetts, in a low income district heavily engaged with the policies Bill and Melinda have imposed through their legislative interference and advocacy lobbying, with the compliance of the outgoing Massachusetts Teachers Association leadership.

MTA and NEA compliance directly aided in the imposition of Gates-backed corporate domination in my Commonwealth’s public schools, in my school, in my actual classroom, and over the actual living students I teach.

The (false) distinction you make between Gates’ imposed “standards” and the accountability measures he demands for them will allow the NEA to continue to take his money, and I’ll admit that almost chokes rank-and-file teachers who live and work under his heel. I am going to argue that you to can make a decision of your own, when you take office, to give that money back to him.

First, I’d like to offer congratulations on your succession to the presidency of NEA. The Representative assembly that voted you in brought with it a new activism and determination, and voted in resolutions which break sharply with the previous administration, of which you were a part. We look to you with great hope, holding our breath against it for fear of disappointment.

The Common Core standards can’t “stand on their own merit”. They were backwards-engineered to warp the teaching of language and literature into assessment readiness, with its own novel testing vocabulary. strung together with the bogus Moodle diagram you inserted in this page. The aligned WIDA tests that are now being imposed on ELL students, from the earliest grades, will steal the short and precious window of their childhood. People are tweeting me that those children can’t wait while you do your homework and find that out.

We’re fighting right now for schools in New Bedford and Holyoke that are already being taken over. They were full of living children, just a few weeks ago when we left them. What will we find in August?

We’re asking you to become the courageous and powerful leader of an engaged and mobilized union. I know you saw and felt the hall rise to its feet behind these initiatives. That felt different and deeper than the hearty applause for your victory, did it not?

Bring us to our feet: give back the Gates money.

The website I linked for you is an Education Week column describing the actual effects of the Gates Foundation’s profit-centered philanthropy model in the third world. It’s the responsibility of Americans to become aware of it, when we take money from American corporate philanthropies and allow them to pursue their profits internationally under the subsidy of our tax code.

Why Arne Duncan needs to listen to Bill and Melinda | Li…
I do not hate the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I know it might seem strange to have to make that statement, but such are the times we live in.
View on lilysblackboard.org
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Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Unions

Utah: AIR’s Absurdly Long Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2014 //
55

Why should Common Core tests require 8-10 hours? Does anyone know? Why should third graders, 8 or 9 year-old children, be expected to sit for eight hours of testing? This is nuts!

This from a teacher in Utah, responding to a post called “Good Riddance to Common Core Tests.” Let the parents know. They recognize child abuse.

“And it’s not just the SBAC or PARCC that are long and awful. Utah went with its own CC testing, created by AIR. The 7-9 grade students at my school were forced into NINE 70 minute testing sessions per student, and MANY students took much longer than that. This included TWO major essays. There were several topics instead of one: how can you reliably compare students who wrote essays on different topics? The essays required reading several articles and then formulating and writing the essay. The test designers estimated that the expository essay would take a total of 30 minutes to read the articles and write, and that the argumentative essay would take 60 minutes. The tests were not timed, so theoretically the kids could take weeks to write the essays, and some did. No one, including the extremely talented, high-level writers, could finish the essays in the short time the test makers estimated, which, in my mind, calls into question the entire enterprise and the entire test writing company. ALL of us who work with students KNEW that these essays would take far longer than the estimated times. So if this company really knew how to write tests, how is it that they so grossly underestimated the time these essays would take?

“I have tried to let parents know how ridiculously long these tests are. I have now been told that I cannot do that, or the state will take discipline against my license. So how do parents even know what is being done to their children?”

Categories Common Core, Testing
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