Archives for category: Common Core
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

California Teacher on Common Core Test

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2013 //
35

From a teacher in California:

“Our class had the “privilege” of taking the ELA SmarterBalance test for common core 4th grade. It was horrible. There were split screens, essays to type (our students have no keyboarding experience) and things to click and drag. So in addition to getting students ready for the CC standards, we will need time for computer and keyboard lessons AND we will need the updated technology in time to get our students familiar with it.

“Oh, and let’s not forget that in CA we are still expected to teach for the CST [California Standards Tests] next year…no transition time to Common Core. Ridiculous!”

Categories California, Common Core, Testing

Teacher in New York: It’s Time to Fire John King

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2013 //
17

Yesterday I called for John King’s resignation.

This teacher says John King should be fired.

Here are her reasons:

“A New York Teachers Letter on the Failed Leadership of John King

I am dismayed by the leadership provided by John King, Education Commissioner of the State of New York. He is deliberately creating a testing and curriculum that penalizes children – especially children with emotional illnesses and learning disabilities. I have spent my summer working with students who cannot graduate because they have not passed one of the five required Regents or RCT exams. These students have met all other local requirements and have passed the other four required Regents/RCTs – and would have passed the last remaining exam had the cut scores not been raised recently.

“Certainly, it is a lofty goal to want all HS graduates in NY State to achieve superior academic performance at the A+ level. I have been teaching HS English for 30 years and each year I hope that this will be the year that each of my students achieves an A in my course. It has never happened. Until we can eliminate emotional illness, learning disabilities, poverty, and other sources of family strife, this is unrealistic.

“I am dismayed by the changes made to the current HS Regents exams and the proposed Common Core Regents exams. Labeling 70% of our elementary students as failing is atrocious. BUT, preventing students from earning a HS diploma is shameful. This spring, the cut scores were raised on the Comprehensive English Regents. This shift resulted in failing grades for a number of students who would have passed the exam a year earlier.

“Simultaneously, the questions were more difficult and the readings were more complex than on previous exams. This shift was unannounced and therefore unfairly penalized hundreds of children and also prevented many of them from earning a diploma. In addition, the US History and Global Studies readings have also increased in difficulty. I might not object if the tests were more difficult in Social Studies content, but the tests are more difficult in reading complexity. The result is that students who have passed the English Regents or RCTs are failing the US History and/or Global Studies Regents or RCTs because they do not read well enough – not because they don’t understand Social Studies concepts. One of the first things I learned in my education courses is to determine what it is I am trying to assess and then to create a question that assess the appropriate learning. My students are weak in vocabulary and reading comprehension – yet they have all passed the Regents and/or RCTs in HS English. Why must their score on the US History exams be based on their documented disability in reading?

“The newest proposed version of the English Comprehensive Regents will be given in June of 2014. John King proudly announced that this exam is modeled after the AP exam in English Language and Composition. Really? The AP test is our new benchmark for college and career readiness? The AP test is the bar for our graduation requirements? Why?

“I used to believe in the integrity of the Regents exams. I no longer believe that the NY State exams are valuable, worthwhile, or educationally appropriate. The new Common Core curriculum – along with the modules and activities crafted by Odell Learning (promised – but not delivered) – is not a curricular improvement. None of this is best practice. None of it relies on current research. None of it has been field tested. None of it is proven. It is all snake oil. I am ashamed to be part of this sham. Commissioner King is not only overseeing this disaster; he is proud of the fact that 70% of our students will be labeled failures.

“I am no longer interested in “building a plane in mid-air.” I want to teach children. I want to expose them to fiction. I want them to be creative and engaged. I want them to fall in love with learning (preferably through literature) the way that I love learning. I, however, do not love this new way of learning (and teaching.) I do not love watching kids cry. I do not love hearing them as they call themselves stupid after failing a Regents for the third time. I will not love making the phone calls later today that inform children and parents that they have failed a Regents – again”

Susan Murphy Oneonta, NY

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Testing

NYC Teacher: The Common Core Standards Are Broken and Can’t Be Fixed

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2013 //
33

This letter was written by a New York City teacher to his union president.

“I am writing as a loyal union member and as a special education teacher in a middle class ethnically diverse neighborhood who knows a lot about testing because I spent nearly two decades assessing disabled children as part of a school assessment team.until this Mayor deemed my psychometric skills to be worthless Nevertheless, under my belt is a lot of graduate level coursework as well as thousands of hours of field experience in administering and analyzing valid and reliable norm-referenced educational assessments.

“Therefore, based upon a lot of research and reading, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement that the Common Core Standards were developed by educators and that these standards represent a valid instrument to determine if a student is college or career ready.. The Common Core Standards were not developed by educators. Many of those who developed these standards are deeply involved in the corporate educational reform movement. Many articles I have read about its development stated that the developers basically worked backwards and often disregarded some basic tenets of child development. Furthermore, we are taking on faith standards that have not even been longitudinally tested. We are basically taking on faith that these standards will make students college or career ready. We all know that so many reforms in the past half a century failed because, like the Common Core, research was lacking. Where are those “open classrooms” or the “New Math” of my childhood? Both were just fads, just as I believe the Common Core is a fad, that led to no significant educational achievement.

“I, and many others, could only accept the efficacy of the Common Core Standards if there were real research over a number of years showing that students who learned by a curriculum derived from these standards had higher achievement than those students taught by a more traditional curriculum. I have a sense that many of your rank and file teachers are unwilling to put their careers on the line based on standards that I feel was developed with a political agenda. The agenda is to convince the American people that our present public school system is a failure and that only a privatized charter-based system is the way to go. A system, that will in the end, destroy our progressive union movement.

“Any assessment in which only 25% to 35% of students can pass is invalid. A valid test is standardized in such a way that it creates a bell curve. These assessments do not come even close to creating a bell curve. Instead these assessments look more like cliffs. Many students are set to fall off such a cliff–especially students with disabilities. Special educators are taught that to help students with learning challenges, one must start where they are at. One does not start at the bottom of an unclimbable precipice. I work with many students who have, through no fault of their own, significant language impairments that make this curriculum impossible to master. What will become of many of these students when they reach 8th grade and modified promotional standards terminate? How many times are we willing to leave back such students and destroy their self esteem before we realize that what is really needed are many vocational programs that will serve the needs of a very diverse disabled population? There is a big difference between a high IQ child with minor sensory problems and one who may have a severe language impairment which results in a borderline IQ. Sadly, this curriculum will result in many special education teachers, like me, who are willing to work with the latter child, being punished by someday being rated ineffective because of an invalid assessment based upon invalid standards that work against the educational needs of such children.

“Every child needs to reach their potential. Unfortunately, I see these Common Core Standards setting up roadblocks based upon a student’s economic class, language proficiency and disability. Those born economically advantaged will either go to private schools or charters exempt from these standards or whose parents have the resources to get them the extra tutoring needed to pass these tests. Those children born to parents who do not have the resources will end up in schools that will not have the funds necessary to create the academic intervention services needed to compensate for their parent/guardian’s inability to afford the extra tutoring needed to pass from grade to grade.

“Our focus is completely wrong. These standards are broken and unrepairable. I fear, in the end, it will lead to the dismantling of our system of public education and social stratification in this great nation. In the 18th century, our founding fathers created a flawed constitution called the Articles of Confederation that they realized was unworkable. But they were smart. They scraped the document and started anew. Many of the best and brightest, at that time, got together, and through compromise and negotiation, came up with something workable. They came up with a constitution that was flexible enough to change with the times. These Common Core standards are unchangeable stone monoliths that block our way to creating a society and nation that has always believed in education as the great leveler as well as creator of economic opportunity and social mobility.

“Let us think before we jump!”

Categories Common Core, New York, New York City, Special Education, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Schneider: My Experience Teaching the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2013 //
12

Mercedes Schneider often writes analyses of politics in Louisiana and elsewhere and statistical critiques of studies. She has a Ph.D. in statistics and research methodology.

But she has a day job. She teaches English in high school because that is what she loves.

Recently she has been immersed in learning the Common Core standards.

Here is her account of her experience with them.

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching

A Warning to the Anti-Common Core Group in New York

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
117

Three days ago, I posted about a new group formed to stop Common Core in New York.

I watched and saw vehement arguments among the comments, especially about the extent to which the group was bipartisan or nonpartisan.

The group is called Stop Common Core in New York State. Here is the link to the website: www.stopccssinnys.com or www.stopcommoncoreinnewyork.com. It has a FB group page https://www.facebook.com/groups/607166125977337/

A reader contacted me offline and said she watched part 1 of the group’s video and was disturbed to see the narrator refer to Linda Darling-Hammond as a radical progressive and a friend of Bill Ayers. I want to disassociate myself from these words, and I think the new group should as well. I don’t know whether she is a friend of Bill Ayers, and I don’t care. She is my friend, and I respect her and her scholarship.

Linda Darling-Hammond is one of the most respected education scholars in the nation. If the anti-Common Core group hopes to build a nonpartisan coalition, it should avoid insulting people like Linda and stick to the facts.

Categories Common Core

Anthony Cody: Lessons from the NY Test Debacle

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
15

Anthony Cody has written another brilliant column, this one explaining the lessons of New York’s disastrous Common Core testing, in which 70 percent of the state’s children allegedly “failed.” I say allegedly because this was failure that was designed and manufactured by State Commissioner John King. King predicted what the scores would be before the students took the tests. How did he know? He decided what the passing mark would be.

In his column, Cody draws certain lessons from the New York debacle:

The biggest mind blower is that this whole project has been sold with the idea that its proponents are pushing “college for all.” Orwell taught us that in the future, those in power will use “doublespeak” to disguise their intentions. This feels like a classic case of double speak. We have been told a string of falsehoods, leading to a huge lie.

Falsehood number one: Our future economy needs many more college graduates. There is very little evidence to support this and lots to the contrary.

Falsehood number two: Common Core Standards were developed by educators. Demonstrably false. See this post of mine from 2009 describing the process then under way to write the standards.

Falsehood number three: The Common Core tests somehow predict who will succeed in college. See Carol Burris’ analysis of how these tests were written.

Falsehood number four: This high stakes testing machine will somehow decrease inequity and create more opportunities for poor and minority students. In fact the achievement gap on these tests is proving to be even wider, reflecting the powerful influence underlying social conditions have on student performance.

As wealth has become ever more concentrated, and social mobility has declined, it is ever more important to create a social rationale for that inequality. People who are disenfranchised and deprived of meaningful opportunities must somehow be convinced that their second-class status is THEIR FAULT. It is because they have not applied themselves in school, not learned to be “critical thinkers,” that they are stuck in minimum wage jobs. Inequities must be rationalized. The sorting will occur. It must be explained so that it is accepted and not rebelled against.

Read the whole column. Cody nails it.

 

Categories Common Core, Privatization, Testing

NY Test Score Collapse: What Now?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
55

What should happen next in New York after the Common Core testing debacle?

I won’t share my thoughts here, which are strong, but instead share the views of an experienced educator. Jere Hochman is superintendent of the Bedford Central school district in Westchester County. This is what he concludes:

“Schools have always used standards, designed curriculum, taught kids, and assessed learning and acknowledged there is a lot of room for improvement. Still, SAT, ACT, and AP participation and scores are up as is college attendance and hundreds of thousands, millions of student success stories.

“But after the “Nation At Risk Report” in the ‘80s and other critiques going back to the late ‘90s, politicians and CEOs saw an Achilles heel that would advance their interests on the backs of kids and teachers while ignoring administrators and local school boards. Well intended efforts to “level the playing field” and “a new civil rights movement” were about as sincere as billionaires using the momentum of sincere Tea Party activists and the same billionaires converting the original Peace Corps mission of Teach for America into a business model to bust unions and segregate and oppress kids.

“Since 1999, since 2009, and since last spring, many of us have written about the attack on public education in the form of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the most recent New York reform measures. While trying to make them work and being supportive, protecting local norms and curriculum, and making the best of bad laws, this week the politicos and CEOs chicken little mantras came home to roost.

“So What?
“After numerous position papers, calls for cost-benefit analyses, pleas to slow down, and cries for communication; the convoluted efforts of Race to the Top became the proverbial and overused perfect storm: unproven college and career ready standards, excessive standardized testing, and a rushed teacher and principal evaluation plan. And, the storm hit this week when kids became collateral damage of tests that said, “You used to be smart – not so much now.”

“Yes, “We told you so.” We told you so when NCLB was railroaded under the shadow of 9/11. We told you so when we pointed out that RTTT was just the carrot version of the NCLB’s stick approach. We told you so when we illustrated APPR was not “building the plane while flying it” but rather a train wreck about to happen. We asked for information, explanations, test samples, and definitions. We asked for seats at the table, time, communication, and input.

“So, here we are. We hold our students to high standards and we have the data and work products to prove it. We hold ourselves to high professional standards. Maybe we needed to be hit over the head with a two-by-four to get our attention to high academic standards and meaningful professional evaluation. So, yes, you got our attention but then kept hammering away. And, all the while, you diverted funds from our schools and championed segregated, regimented, uniformed, information regurgitated charter schools.

“Now What? In order to be part of the solution that raises standards and expectations constructively, uses professional evaluation, and fair and meaningful testing, demand that the Board of Regents and Governor

“Re: CCSS and State Testing

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on State testing
2. Implement State testing only in transition grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 beginning in 2014-2015
3. Utilize transition year testing as benchmarks for student and cohort progress in multi-year clusters and review of curriculum implementation and alignment
4. Analyze 2013 tests and result for validity, reliability, and grade level match
5. Provide opportunities for teachers and principals to analyze all test questions, results, and standards for alignment and gaps
6. Utilize 2013-2014 to field test common core standards aligned state tests
7. Provide an extensive comment period reviewing PARCC assessments and other testing options

Re: APPR

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on the 40% tested subject and local assessments component of APPR
2. Utilize 2013-2014 to concentrate on rubric application confidence and inter-rater reliability
3. Utilize 2013-2014 for school districts and BOCES regions to field test local assessments
4. Provide irrefutable evidence for the use of Value-added measures or declare the application ceased

Re: RTTT, CCSS, State Testing, APPR, and State Reform Efforts

1. Report a complete expenditure review of RTTT funds
2. Provide a cost-benefit analysis of all components of CCSS, APPR, and state testing
3. Provide irrefutable evidence of privacy assurances on all aspects of data collection
4. Develop a revised timeline leading to 2014-2015 implementation with bi-weekly communications to the field
=

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Reader: What We Learned from the New York Test Score Debacle

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
20

The first Common Core test produced a massive decline in test scores across the state. Charter schools fared even worse than public schools, with many dropping by 50 percentage points in their proficiency rates.

This reader read the handwriting on the wall:

 

“These test scores emphatically highlight the failure of vision that the corporate reformers bring to the table.

What scares me is the tremendous profit motive that drives and informs so much of what is happening in education. It’s as if capitalism, as a system, has its own needs and agendas that operate outside any kind of moral frame- work. Those who stand to gain, like hedge-fund managers, Rupert Murdoch styled billionaires, the industrial complex built up around curriculum and assessment, and the many charter chain operators are all aligned to push data driven, high stakes testing, and privatizing education with very little awareness or concern for the real implications that the free market has on public education.

I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that they are dismantling a free public education system that is premised on equity, and established along with the founding of our democracy. They are replacing it with, well-connected, chain charters that don’t even address the needs of students and communities whose needs are highest. (These get counseled out, or lack the self efficacy to opt in in the first place.)

These “reformers” under-write politicians, thus gaining undemocratic access and influence. They own media outlets and know how to shape the national conversation. They tell us teachers suck, not poverty. They tell us teacher tenure undermines student achievement, not chronic underfunding of low-income school districts. They tell us that the labor movement and unions are a threat to our economy and to our way of life. When, in-fact, unions helped to establish and stabilize our middle class with the five day work week, the eight hour work day, a living wage, and more. They tell us public schools are failing when, in fact, every assessment, and decades of studies demonstrate that poverty is hurting children, not public schools. They tell us they know how to fix education, though they have been “fixing” it with charters and vouchers for over a decade, while sucking the life out of, low income, public schools with little to show for all their bluster.

They are still waiting for superman.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Testing

A Hero Principal Speaks Out Against Absurd State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
19

Anna Allanbrook, principal of PS 146 in Brooklyn, is not afraid. She is one of the remaining veteran principals in a city that has ruthlessly pushed out veterans and replaced them with teachers who have only a few years experience. Allanbrook is 58. She remembers what it was like to be an educator before the state and city leaders became obsessed with test scores.

Her school is highly popular. Last year, 1,538 students applied for 175 openings. Teachers love the school and seldom leave. In contrast to many of the charters, where staff turnover is 40-50% every year, only 4% of PS 146 teachers leave annually.

In a New York Times article by the experienced education writer Michael Winerip, Allanbrook recognizes the absurdity of the state testing regime.

Allanbrook is here added to our honor roll for her courage in telling the truth about a state testing system that is not only unreliable and erratic, but is reckless with the lives of children and teachers.

“As a senior principal I feel a duty to speak honestly about what’s going on,” she said in an interview. “By my age, my position is relatively safe; I feel like I’ve learned a lot and should express what younger principals and teachers are too scared to say.”

“At 58, she is part of a generation that remembers when standardized testing did not dominate. She says from the time she started teaching in the 1980s, there has always been a place for testing to help assess student performance. But she worries that over the last decade, tests have superseded a teacher’s judgment.

“The P.S. 146 fourth-grade classes where 94.9 percent were proficient in math last year? This year, as fifth graders, only 25.6 percent of those same students passed. How did such gifted fourth graders become such challenged fifth graders? The problem isn’t the fifth-grade teachers, she says. Last year, with the same teachers, 83 per cent of fifth graders passed.

“Neither the 94 percent or the 25 percent reflects reality,” Ms. Allanbrook says. In the 1990s, when students took the tests, she says, results weren’t distorted by test prep. “You got a clearer sense of a child’s strengths and weaknesses,” she says. “What could parents possibly learn about their child’s abilities from such crazy results?”

“Here’s one way to think about it: Suppose your worth was measured by how much money you earned for a company, but the fellow who kept track of everyone’s earnings periodically forgot how to count.

“During the last decade, she has watched as state officials have repeatedly thrown out test results or rejiggered them.”

The state education department cannot be trusted. The test scores do not show what students know and can do. The scores do not show–as Arne Duncan claims–that the adults have been “lying” to the children. The results show that the adults in charge are incompetent.

As an aside: Welcome back to Michael Winerip, the nation’s most knowledgeable education beat reporter, who was inexplicably switched by the New York Times from covering education to writing about The Boomer generation. Every once in a while, he manages to write a column about education that reminds us how much we miss him.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing

Revised: UFT: Call Arthur Goldstein at Once!

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
8

[I am reposting this article because the formatting was not clear the first time round. Arthur was quoting the linked article, but I did not set off the quoted sections correctly. My mistake, not his. I think I got it right this time.]

 

Edwize, the house publication of New York City’s powerful teachers’ union, just published a strange and somewhat incoherent article, saluting the collapse of test scores and the arrival of Common Core, which is sure to return authority to teachers and end teaching to the test. Got it? Neither do I.

Here is what high school teacher Arthur Goldstein says about this essay:

A rather incredible piece is up at Edwize right now. It makes several assumptions about Common Core tests that are tough to comprehend. Commenting on the as yet untested and unproven standards, the writer ventures:

“And here’s the thing: these are the very skills educators want to teach and have had to forego in favor of test prep.”

I’m certainly glad that’s clear to the writer, who I very much doubt is a working teacher. Personally, I like to teach kids to love to read. This will help them greatly when they face more challenging reading tasks later. All the Common Core analysis, according to teachers I actually know and speak with, is making their students crazy. Even their quickest and brightest students are pressed for time and find it difficult to even answer the questions in the time allotted.

The assumption that this will preclude test prep, particularly considering the increased volume of testing due to Common Core, is nothing short of preposterous. Couple that with the fact that value-added measures will determine whether or not teachers keep their jobs, and you don’t have to wonder very much how those of us who actually have to work feel about them.

There is then some largely incomprehensible nonsense about forcing “accountability to grow up,” and placing “standardized tests back to their rightful, and less overblown, place.” How we are supposed to accomplish that when there are more tests is an utter mystery to me. And “accountability,” from all I read, tends to relate to ways to fire unionized teachers more than anything else.

“So less than a third of students meet standards. Well, what else do we know? How do students perform on social studies projects, lab work, art and music, sports, leadership activities, group tasks, or community service? What 21st century skills do they have; what ones need to be developed? What are the best models for teaching those skills? What can students tell us about what they do and don’t understand and what helps them learn? And how do we measure those?”

This is the same writer who told us paragraphs ago that Common Core Standards were the very things we wanted to teach. Now, apparently, we are checking their art, music, and leadership activities, none of which are measured by the tests that could very well determine whether or not working teachers are fired.

Why can’t we assess students that way?

One big reason is that we’ve supported not only the Common Core, with its additional layer of testing, but also taken part in crafting a law designed fire teachers based solely on test scores. I have no idea whatsoever why we’ve done that. I would love to assess students in the ways the writer suggests. But there’s now a gun to my head, and I’ll certainly be fired if my kids don’t get sufficient test scores, likely as not on tests that have little or nothing to do with what my kids need to learn. Creative and carefree assessment does not remotely seem the way to go here.

“It would be a relieve if tests became more the province of educators.”

It would be a “relieve” indeed. On this astral plane, Common Core adds to standardized testing and makes that more difficult. Furthermore, there is now a NY State law that prohibits us from grading standardized tests of our own kids. Much to my disappointment, I can’t recall my union objecting to that at all. In fact, working teachers, who know their classes even better than Meryl Tisch or John King, should be testing our own classes and making judgements about our own students.

Sadly, Common Core takes us even further from that. This article, sadly, does not remotely address the concerns of working teachers. Anytime UFT leaders or writers would like to speak to me, they need only reach out. I only wish they had done so sooner.

I’m a real working teacher, and I hear from others each and every day. I’m not at all averse to sharing.

Categories Common Core
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »