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Arthur Goldstein: Who Failed in New York?

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
12

Arthur Goldstein, a New York City high school teacher, has a great article in today’s Daily News lambasting the Common Core and the tests based on the Common Core.

Goldstein writes that if he gave a test and 70% of his kids failed it, his principal would be outraged at him.

He wonders why state officials predicted high failing rates and then–voila!–the failing rates were as high as they predicted.

He scoffs at those who say that Common Core is the salvation:

“Are our kids failures? Have schools and teachers failed? Have parents failed?

If there is failure, it’s on the part of those who set the curriculum. It’s those who hired teachers and ran schools. It’s those who boasted of the very successes they now paint as worthless.

If anyone has failed, it’s the very people who now tell us Common Core is the answer to all our problems.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/common-core-tests-answer-article-1.1420940#ixzz2bOfM4eu0

Categories Common Core, Klein, Joel, Testing

Arne Duncan: Will He Resign?

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
88

In his comments at a press conference about the collapse of the New York test scores, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said,

“Too many school systems lied to children, families and communities,” Mr. Duncan said. “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable as educators.”

Since he used the term “we,” it means that he too is accountable for the lying and debacle in New York, where it was revealed that 70% of the students couldn’t pass the Pearson-made Common Core test that Duncan funded.

Does he really mean “we”?

If he holds himself accountable, will he resign?

After all, he has been Secretary of Education for five years, and he can’t escape accountability.

New York adopted the  Common Core and the tests because it won Race to the Top funding, Duncan’s signature program.

Duncan pushed Common Core. Duncan pushed the testing.

Duncan is right. He too is accountable for the children’s low scores.

Now, what will he do about it?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, New York, Testing

Leonie Haimson: Don’t Believe the New York Scores

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
13

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and administrator of the New York City parents’ blog, wrote this analysis of the new state test scores:

Dear parents: As you may have probably heard, the new state test scores were released to the press and they are disastrous.

Only 31% of students in New York State passed the new Common Core exams in reading and math. More than one third — or 36% — of 3rd graders throughout the state got a level I in English; which means they essentially flunked. In NYC, only 26 percent of students passed the exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math – meaning they had a level 3 or 4. Only 5% of students in Rochester passed.

Though children’s individual scores won’t be available to parents until late August, I urge you not to panic when you see them. My advice is not to believe a word of any of this.

The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence. They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.

Here are five reasons not to trust the new scores:

1- The NY State Education Department has not been able to produce a decent, reliable exam with a credible scoring system in at least ten years. That’s why there have been wild gyrations from year to year in the percent of students making the grade. For example, 77% of NYS students were at level 3 or 4 in English in 2009; this dropped to 53% in 2010 and 31% now. The last two years of exams created by Pearson have been especially disastrous; from the multiple errors in questions and scoring on the 2012 exams (including the infamous Pineapple passage) to the epic fail of this year’s tests – which were too long, riddled with ambiguous questions and replete with commercial logos for products like Mug Root Beer. Top students were unable to finish these shoddy exams, and many left in tears and had anxiety attacks. To make things worse, the exams featured reading passages drawn straight from Pearson textbooks which were assigned to some students in the state and not to others.

2- For nearly a decade, from at least 2003-2010, there was rampant test score inflation in NY state, with many of the same people who are now supporting the current low scoring system claiming with equal conviction that the earlier, rising test scores showed that NYS and NYC schools were improving rapidly. The state test score bubble allowed NYC Mayor Bloomberg to coast to a third term, renew mayoral control and maintain that his high-stakes testing regime was working, when the reality was that, according to everyone who was paying attention, the exams had gotten overly predictable and the scoring too easy over time. At the same time as the state exams showed huge increases, scores on the more reliable national exams called the NAEPs showed little progress. In fact, NYC made smaller gains on the NAEPs than nearly any other large school district in the country during these years.

3. The truth is that the new cut scores that determine the different proficiency levels on the state exams – which decide how many kids “pass” or are at Level 3 and 4 — are arbitrary and set by Commissioner King. He can set them to create the illusion that our schools are rapidly improving, as the previous Commissioner did, or he can set them to make it look that our public schools are failing, as King now is doing, to bolster support for his other policies.

4. The primary evidence that Commissioner King now bases his overly-harsh cut scores upon is that the results are mirror the percent of students who test “proficient” or above on the NAEPs. Yet while the NAEPs are reliable to discern trends in test scores, because they remain relatively stable over time, the cut scores that determine the various NAEP achievement levels are VERY controversial. See Diane Ravitch on how the NAEP’s benchmarks are “unreasonably high”; or this article that reveals that even the National Academy of Sciences has questioned the setting of the NAEP proficiency levels, and how many experts believe that level 2 on the NAEPs – or basic — should be used instead to estimate which students are on track for college:

Fully 50% of 17-year-olds judged to be only basic by NAEP ultimately obtained four-year degrees. Just one third of American fourth graders were said to be proficient in reading by NAEP in the mid-1990s at the very time that international assessments of fourth-grade reading judged American students to rank Number Two in the world.

In fact, by using NAEP levels as support for his cut scores, King is either confused or disingenuous about what these levels really represent.

5. So why are King, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein and the billionaires like Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch who are pulling the strings so determined to prove that more that 69% of the students throughout New York State are failing? This is the Shock Doctrine at work. Naomi Klein has observed that when you scare people enough, it is easier to persuade them to allow you to make whatever radical changes you want, since the status quo will be perceived as so disastrous.

In the case of Commissioner King, Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, they would like to convince parents that their corporate agenda, including a steady diet of developmentally unsound standards, the Common Core’s rigid quota for “informational text” and overemphasis on testing, and their favorite policies of closing schools and firing teachers based on test scores, expanding charter schools and online learning, data-mining and outsourcing educational services to for-profit vendors will somehow improve the quality of education in our state, even though there is little or no evidence for any of these policies.

NYSED has even tried to persuade parents to accept their unethical plan to share the personal data of the state’s children with inBloom and for-profit vendors by saying this will help ensure these students are “college and career ready.” (By the way, as Politico reported last week, North Carolina became the fifth state to pull out of inBloom; now only New York, Illinois, and Colorado are still involved, and Massachusetts is sitting on the fence.)

Joel Klein, who wrote an oped for Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post this morning, appropriately entitled the The Good News in Lower Test Scores, now heads Amplify, Rupert Murdoch’s online learning division, which is the largest contractor for inBloom. For Klein and Murdoch, the drastic fall in state test scores is indeed good news, because it will help them market their computer tablets, data systems, and software products to make more profit. In the case of Pearson, the world’s largest educational corporation, more schools will now be convinced to buy their textbooks, workbooks, and test prep materials, as 900 NYC schools have now done – in hope that their students may do better on the Pearson-made exams, that may even include the same reading passages as happened this year.

Rick Hess, the conservative commentator at Education Week, revealed the motives behind the promoters of these exams in a column called the “Common Core Kool-aid”:

First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes… Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace “reform.” However, most of today’s proffered remedies–including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move “effective” teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds–don’t have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about….Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the “reform” agenda.

My advice is not to let this ruin your summer or your view of your child’s school. When you receive your children’s scores, do not allow the results to wreck their self-confidence. These new Common Core exams and harsh proficiency levels are meant to scare parents.

To achieve their ideological ends, politicians, billionaires, and educrats are not only willing to define your children in terms of their test scores, but also to redefine them as failures – to help them implement their mechanistic, reductionist, and ultimately inhumane vision of education. It is all a high-stakes game, carried out by people with little thought about how these wild test score gyrations affect the self-esteem of the children whose fate they claim to care about.

For an eloquent critique of the callous thinking at work, please also read Carol Burris, NYS principal of the year, in today’s Washington Post, and Diane Ravitch, on the political motives of the people who are setting these standards.

Below are links to articles about the scores, and the NYSED website.

Talk to you soon,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/pressRelease/20130807/home.html

Click to access 2013ELAandMathemaitcsDistrictandBuildingAggregatesMedia.pdf

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
leonie@classsizematters.org
http://www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com

Categories Common Core, New York, Pearson, Testing

New York Times Loves High-Stakes Testing, No Matter How Absurd the Scoring

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
6

The New York Times editorial board, which has uncritically endorsed every bad piece of legislation or policy that is based on high-stakes testing, warmly endorses the absurd results of the Common Core tests in New York. It echoes Secretary Duncan in asserting that the tests prove how terrible US public education is.

The Times displays its ignorance of the scoring rubric, in which Commissioner John King decided to align New York’s test scores with those of NAEP.

Any student who is not proficient has failed, according to the inexperienced Mr. King.

King seems not to know that the NAEP definition of proficiency does not demonstrate grade level performance, but a very high level of achievement representing superior performance. In everyday terms, proficient on NAEP is a solid A.

But in John King’s world, anyone who is not proficient has failed.

If New York continues to use this definition of proficiency, in which anything less than an A is failure, the majority of New York students will be failures forever.

This is a recipe for killing public education and destroying children’s lives and crushing teacher morale.

Are you listening, editorial writers at the Times?

Categories Common Core, NAEP, New York, Testing

Those Phony, Misleading Test Scores: A NY Principal Reacts

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
55

Katie Zahedi is principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, which is located in upstate Dutchess County. She is active in the association of New York Principals who bravely oppose the State Education Department’s educator evaluation plan based mostly on test scores. Zahedi has been a principal and assistant principal at her school for twelve years. The views she expresses here are solely her own and not those of the district or her school. Suffice it to say that she is a woman of unusual integrity and courage, who is determined to speak truth to power. She wrote this piece for the blog in response to the release of the Common Core test results in New York, in which scores collapsed across the state.

Katie Zahedi writes:

Days before the release of embargoed New York Common Core test scores, laced within comments/double talk about “higher standards”, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined Commissioner John King in assuring New Yorkers that lower scores on the Math and English Assessments were expected.  The NYSED claims to have formulas to account for all sorts of nuanced variables so maybe they will produce one for the testing fiasco called the Bunkum Conversion Table!

What the public may not understand in the midst of today’s controversy is that when a test yields 80% (of a particular cohort) of students passing over a 5 year span, and scores suddenly drop to below a 35% passing rate, that the problem is probably unrelated to student performance. In fact, the last two years of tests produced by the NYSED have been rife with mistakes, missing tables needed for computation, and confusing and misleading questions.

The failure rates on the NYSED site are dissimilar to reported numbers in the 8/6/13 New York Times, leaving principals unsure how the data is being or will be manipulated for public reporting.  What is immediately clear is that the NYSED is out on a limb with its political machinations of student test data.

Historically, up to 15% of my students have been scheduled for Academic Intervention Services (AIS) for remedial help. Now, thanks to “higher standards”, those students’ needs are obfuscated by the new facts that nearly 70% of my students have been identified (by a state test) to be in need of remedial math.

I shouldn’t complain since I serve as principal of a high performing middle school. Last year our 8th graders (the same cohort described above) won the New York State Math League Award for 1st place in Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Putnam and Rockland Counties, which is the reason that up to 70% of my students will require special pull-out classes designed to work on “their weaknesses”. After all, that is much better than many New York schools having 80-90 % failure rates.

Sitting around a table with my fellow administrators, our astonishment was somehow normalized in the run-off of a year saturated in convoluted, nonsensical, time-consuming and expensive directives from the NYSED. After disbelieving stares, I said “people, we have a responsibility to directly address the individuals responsible for this fiasco”.  Educators are a hearty bunch so after a brief pause we got back to work on compliance.

While not representing the views of my school district, I submit that we ought to take a look at the core problem.  We have a duty to speak truth to power (and his best friend: money) and hold the NYSED “accountable” for the failures that they are producing. The NYSED is need of internal reform. Straight up, my school is not in need of full scale revision and neither are most schools in New York. All schools should run in a constant state of improvement led by experienced principals and struggling schools need investment, support and a team relationship with a partner school that is successful. 

Mistakes like the fiasco of the NY State Assessments are to be expected when individuals who are scarcely qualified to apply for an assistant principal role in a district like mine are appointed to lead the state and federal education departments! Unsurprisingly, much time and public money will be wasted by well-meaning people who are appointed to important posts based on political association and/or possession of inordinate amounts of money.

The NYSED is a stately and dignified building that is waiting for benevolent and wise leadership. Doing his best, John King is working hard, holed away with privately hired “fellows” who are young, overpaid and fabulously confident considering their profound lack of experience in teaching and school administration.  Regardless of the plausibly good intentions of NYSED leadership, it is objectionable for New York State to allow the normal process of schools to be interrupted and for principals and teachers to be distracted from their important work with students to try out the half-baked ideas of politically appointed newbies. Whether on the state or federal levels, the appointment of individuals with insufficient experience in public education, should be discontinued.

If the name of the game is accountability for higher standards, let’s require that all appointees to state and federal leadership roles possess the education and experience required to serve with wisdom and dignity.

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

Bloomberg Hails the Collapse of City’s Test Scores as “Very Good News”

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
116

Despite the fact that the new Common Core tests showed that only 26 percent of students in New York City “passed” the new state tests in reading, and only 30 percent in math, Mayor Bloomberg hailed the sharp decline in test scores as “very good news.”

The scores were especially grim for black and Hispanic students, as well as students with disabilities. The achievement gaps on the tests were very large.

“In math, 15 percent of black students and 19 percent of Hispanic students passed the exam, compared with 50 percent of white students and 61 percent of Asian students.

Students with disadvantages struggled as well. On the English exam, 3 percent of nonnative speakers were deemed proficient, and 6 percent of students with disabilities passed.”

Despite the drop in scores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared on Wednesday at a news conference just as he had in years when results were rosier. He rejected criticisms of the tests, calling the results “very good news” and chiding the news media for focusing on the decline. He said black and Hispanic students, who make up two-thirds of the student population, had made progress that was not reflected in the scores.”

The mayor saw the upside of the scores. The lower the scores, and the higher the bar, he reasoned, the harder students would work to improve their test scores in the future:

“We have to make sure that we give our kids constantly the opportunity to move towards the major leagues,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Common Core, New York, New York City, Testing

Arne Duncan: We Lied to Our Children and Now We Tell the Truth: “You Failed!”

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
145

The scores are out for New York, and they are devastating.

The story in the New York Times reports:

Across the city, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.

The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving.

City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures, saying that a decline in scores was inevitable and that it would take several years before students performed at high levels. Under the old exams last year, the city fared better: 47 percent of students passed in English, and 60 percent passed in math.

Statewide, 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math. Last year, 55 percent passed in reading, and 65 percent in math.

Some educators were taken aback by the steep decline and said they worried the figures would rattle the confidence of students and teachers.

When you read these figures, please bear in mind that the State Education Department determined what the passing score would be.

This was a judgment call, a political calculation.

Arne Duncan defended the collapse of test scores as a good thing, Now we are telling the truth about the failure of public education, he says.

The kids didn’t fail.

The State Education Department failed.

The New York State Board of Regents failed.

They are in charge of education in New York.

They decide on curriculum, instruction, standards, teacher qualifications, and allocation of resources.

They have failed, not the students.

They should be held accountable.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, New York, New York City, Testing

Paul Horton: Stop the Devastation of the Common Core Tests!

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
21

Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago Lab School, where President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and Arne Duncan sent (or in the case of the mayor, send) their children. He is a passionate defender of common sense in education and an articulate critic of the current corporate reform movement. As a historian, he understands the nation’s historic commitment to support public education. He also understands that the Obama administration has abandoned any recognition of the historic principle of federalism that limits the U.S. Department of Education’s ability to direct or control curriculum and instruction. This letter was addressed to State Senator Kwame Raoul in Chicago.

State Senator Kwame Raoul

Suite 4000 Chicago, Illinois; 60654

August 6,2013

Dear Senator Raoul,

We know from every measure that the Wilmette-Winnetka, Niles, Hinsdale, and Naperville schools are excellent. They are the highest achieving public schools in the state of Illinois. Their average SAT and ACT scores and the percentage of students enrolled in AP classes, not to mention exemplary performance on AP tests, makes these districts respected by competitive colleges all over the country. Indeed, there is a national competition for graduates of these districts. Why do we need another measure that we cannot afford? Why are we going to pay Pearson Education millions of dollars for products that will force many exemplary schools to lower their standards?

You will see what a massive fraud the Common Core Curriculum is when these schools are forced to lower their standards to teach Common Core and then their achievement will be denigrated by invalid measures designed to make all public schools look bad. When the New York public schools were required to take Pearson Education developed tests this spring, dozens of exemplary schools and districts that have similar profiles to the Illinois public schools mentioned above, received substantially lowered school ratings. The same thing happened in Kentucky last year: scores went down in the best schools, and scores reflected preexisting conditions in underserved schools and communities.

Shame on the public officials of this country for turning their backs on the Northwest Ordinance, a document that precedes the Constitution in American history and law! The Ordinance made an historic commitment to public education. Federal and state governments have turned their backs on public schools because of their dependence on Wall Street funding for political campaigns. How can we allow this to happen?

If Bill Daley is the Democratic nominee for governor and he plans to support the current state school board, I will vote for the Republican candidate if the nominee will do something about Superintendent Koch, Common Core, and the PARCC assessments. Superintendent Koch received paid trips from Pearson Education and the state then hired Pearson to develop its Common Core standardized tests.

I am a life long Democrat whose family has proud connections to the Civil Rights movement in the South. This administration and its operatives like Mayor Emanuel, have all but abandoned the country’s historic commitment to public education. When will an element within the Democratic party of Illinois stand up for common sense in Education?

Senator Raoul, you have stood very bravely in defense of teacher pensions. Can you stand up for the teachers and parents of Illinois, and buck Mayor Emanuel, Secretary Duncan, and the Democrats for Education Reform who seem more interested in attracting Wall Street money to Democratic campaigns in exchange for support of school privatization? Alderman Burns (the President’s local political protégé) will not do so for obvious reasons. I hope that you will consider a run against the plutocrats who currently control the Democratic Party in Illinois. The citizens of Woodlawn where I live are sickened by what is happening to their neighborhood schools. An insurgent candidate for governor could gain the support of disaffected Democrats of many stripes.

All the best,

Paul Horton

History teacher

Categories Chicago, Common Core, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Obama, Testing, U.S. education

Joel Klein Admits His Failure, Says It is a Good Thing

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
19

In this article, Joel Klein acknowledges that scores across New York state, obviously including New York City, will be devastatingly low.

He was in charge of the New York City public schools from 2002, when he was selected by Mayor Bloomberg, until January 2011, when he was succeeded by the ill-fated publisher Cathie Black.

During his tenure, Klein boasted every year of “historic gains.”

The mayor was twice re-elected because of those alleged “historic gains.”

Klein traveled to Australia and persuaded the Minister of Education Julia Gillard that there was a New York City miracle, and she fell for it. Now Australia is copying the New York City model of test, test, test, test.

Now, Klein tells us that the students for whom he was responsible didn’t learn much at all, and that the new test scores will show just how terribly they are doing.

Australians might well ask if they can abandon the Klein plan now that its failure is evident even to Klein.

Having failed to improve achievement in New York City over his long tenure in office, he has found the answer that eluded him: the Common Core standards.

This is the miracle cure we have all been waiting for.

Is there any evidence that the Common Core standards will improve test scores?

No, the evidence is that they cause test scores to plummet, as they did in Kentucky–by 30 points–and as they have in New York.

Will they lead to higher achievement in the future? No one knows.

 

 

Categories Common Core, International, Klein, Joel, New York, New York City, Testing

An Open Letter to Tom Torlakson

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2013 //
8

A teacher in California sent this letter to State Superintendent Tom Torlakson. California recently announced that it was prepared to spend $1 billion implementing Common Core, although the state’s public schools have not recovered from the billions of dollars cut during the Schwarzenegger era.

Here is the letter:

August 1, 2013

Dear Superintendent Torlakson,

Thank you for your commitment to increasing funding for California’s six million public school students, working tirelessly to improve education in the Golden State, and for being an uncompromising advocate for teachers.

Your efforts have not gone unnoticed: last year, esteemed education historian Diane Ravitch wrote in her blog, “California has another great asset in its State Superintendent Tom Torlakson… He is one of the most enlightened–if not THE most enlightened state education chiefs in the nation. He understands that rebuilding the public system is a high priority.”

I am a high school English teacher at Edgewood High School in West Covina where I teach in our school’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and serve as our IB Diploma Programme Coordinator. My involvement with the IB curriculum reinforces the core pedagogical beliefs I acquired while earning my MA at Claremont Graduate School twenty one years ago: children learn best when they are given the latitude and guidance to discuss and discover ideas and experiment via engaging learning activities. Deep learning is achieved via authentic, teacher-designed assessments.

While I admire the performance-based nature of the Common Core State Standards, and while the SBAC assessments do indeed require students to engage in performance-based tasks, I am gravely concerned by the exponential increase in high stakes testing that will no doubt accompany the SBAC assessments. I am alarmed by the developmental inappropriateness of the CCSS, particularly at the elementary level.

I suggest that you and your staff personally take the SBAC practice tests that can be accessed online. I believe that the length of the tests and their developmentally inappropriate demands will more than give you pause– you will become as fearful for our students’ wellbeing as I am.

Additionally, I am highly concerned about the significant cost of preparing for and administering the SBAC tests. Doug McRae, a retired executive in the testing field, projects the final cost of Smarter Balanced tests at close to $40 per student– triple what California is currently paying. It is no secret that many districts lack the bandwidth and hardware required to administer the SBAC assessments. As a result, cash strapped districts will be forced to divert funding that would otherwise be spent on students into upgrading their infrastructure to prepare for this next incarnation of high stakes testing.

Lastly, and most importantly, nearly one in four children in California live in poverty. It is well documented that the real crisis in education is the pernicious effects of poverty—socioeconomic status and school and test performance are inextricably entwined. The money spent on this brave new world of SBAC high stakes testing will make it impossible to provide the wraparound services that we know will improve the lives of poor children and therefore improve their educational experiences and outcomes: food security, health services, counselors, quality before and after school daycare, well-stocked and staffed libraries. The list goes on and on.

Last May, I proudly accompanied a group of my colleagues to the ceremony where you celebrated our recognition as a California Distinguished School. In your address, you fondly reminisced about your experiences as a science teacher, taking your students on field trips. At another point, you received enthusiastic cheers when you asked, “Who would like to see the arts back in California classrooms?” Unshackling our schools from the overwhelming financial burden of SBAC assessments will once again allow field trips, music and the arts to become a reality in California public schools.

In closing, I ask you to secure your legacy as a principled State Superintendent who unwaveringly advocates for that which is best for children. Please follow the lead of other State Superintendents who have chosen to withdraw from SBAC and PARCC assessments, and let’s allow the money our taxpayers opted to allocate to public schools go to those who are most deserving: our children.

Thank you for your consideration—

Warm regards,

Jeanne Berrong

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Common Core
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