Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, explains here why parents should take the results of the new Common Core assessments with more than a grain of salt.
They will be used in New York to determine whether students ages 8-14 are “college-ready.” Can you imagine that? A test taken by a child of 8 will tell you whether he or she is college ready!
Jersey Jazzman is really steamed about NY State Commissioner John King.
Is it because he wants to share the personal, confidential data of ll the state’s public school students with a marketing consortium?
Is it because he is pushing the Common Core standards without first determining how they will affect real children?
Is it because he came from the charter sector, from a no-excuses school with military discipline?
Or it because his own kids attend a lovely Montessori school that promotes respect, loving kindness, independence, critical thinking, and other things that most parents want for their children?
FairTest has been a watchdog for the testing industry for many years.
The latest news is that the SAT will be overhauled (again), this time to align it with the Common Core standards.
No big surprise, since the head of the College Board, David Coleman, was the lead player in developing the Common Core standards.
Fairtest reports that more than 800 colleges and universities no longer require the SAT for admission.
A test coaching industry has grown up to prep students for the SAT.
Thus, one’s SAT scores have become, more than ever, an indicator of a family’s ability to pay for test prep.
The FairTest newsletter reports:
“Responding to the College Board’s ongoing failure to address the exam’s flaws, the number of schools dropping the SAT has surged. Since 2005, nearly 90 colleges and universities have eliminated testing requirements for all or many applicants. That brings the total to more than 800. The test-optional list now includes 140 institutions ranked in the top tier of their respective categories by U.S. News & World Report.”
Tom McMorran was named Connecticut’s principal of the year in 2012. Here he offers a lesson to our nation’s politicians about the Common Core standards and high-stakes testing. Send this to your state legislators and your member of Congress and the Senate.
Tom sent the following comment:
It is time to school our politicians about CCSS and High-Stakes testing.
Here is a day in course level 101.
Tom McMorran
2012 High School Principal of the Year NASSP
Philosophy 101:
In order for an argument to carry weight and cause one not only (1) to believe it, but also (2) to take action based on that belief, the argument must have warrant. There is nothing subtle here. The weakest form of argument is some version of “I am in power and I say so…” Or, in any teen’s mother’s words: “Because I am the parent!”
When the person presenting the argument relies on some authority to shore up his/her argument, then we have a duty to test the reliability of the authority. In philosophy or rhetoric or simply argumentation this is known as an appeal to authority.
Last week Gina, Mary Ann, and I attended another workshop at the Connecticut Association of Schools (CAS). This is the body that is, in theory, an institution that is independent from the State Department of Education. The presentation was made by Dr. Diane Ulman, who is the Chief Talent Officer at the DOE. She was appointed by Commissioner Pryor.
As part of her presentation, Dr. Ulman reminded us that the Governor’s Council, The Gates Foundation, a range of other foundations and 46 states have signed on to CCSS. In other words, she offered an appeal to authority. Now, for an appeal to authority to work, credentials must be established. And any group that has a personal, financial interest in public policy must make their bias known. So, let’s ask a very basic question: Where’s the money? For Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, and other publishing companies the prospects are enormous. Smarter Balance, the private, for-profit company received half a billion federal dollars to develop the next generation of assessments, which will replace the CMT and CAPT and be administered in about 26 states. You may recall the President’s State of the Union Address; he all but bragged about the 4.3 billion for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding, and how it was amazingly inexpensive for the Federal government to get these 46 cash-strapped states to sign on.
So, when you hear the proponents of the Common Core State Standards and High-Stakes Testing appeal to authority, you have a duty to weigh the degree to which the authority has sufficient warrant to be believed. Here, let me try it: Elvis is still alive. Evidence? 50 million Elvis fans cannot be wrong.
Statistics 101:
Before meaningful inferences can be drawn from any data set, the researcher has a duty to ensure that the social phenomenon under consideration has not been conflated with other factors. In other words, if you want to give a test that measures the contributions of a teacher to a student’s growth, you must account for and guard against any other factor that might conflate with the primary inquiry. It works like this:
1. We want to know if the teacher’s skill as a reading teacher leads to observable reading skills in her/his students.
2. Therefore, if we give all students the same reading assessment, we should be able to conduct a comparison between teacher A’s students and teacher B’s students.
3. From that comparison we can tell if one teacher is better than another at teaching reading.
So, what’s wrong with that?
A. If the assessment was designed to measure student performance, it can only be used for teacher evaluation by an act of hopeful extension. If the assessment had been designed to measure teacher performance, then it could only be used to measure student performance indirectly.
B. In order for teacher A to be compared with teacher B, the context for all potentially confounding factors for the experiment must be the same. In other words, the only factor that can be measured is, in this case, reading.
But wait, Tienken, Lynch, Turnanian, and Tramaglini have something to say about this in “Use of Community Wealth Demographics to Predict Statewide Test Results in Grades 6 & 7.”
Here’s the very short version: If you tell these researchers three out-of-school demographic variables, then they can tell you a New Jersey school system’s 6th Language Arts scores on the New Jersey Assessment of Knowledge for grade 6 (NJASK6). Tell them (a) the percentage of lone parent households in the community, (b) the percentage of people with advance degrees, and (c) the percentage of people without a high school diploma, and they can plug those data points into a formula that will predict the scores within an acceptable range.
If confounding factors such as a town’s wealth are predictors of performance, then how can we use a reading assessment designed to measure a student’s performance in order to decide whether or not a teacher has effectively taught the skills or knowledge measured by the test?
Here is another wee complication: In New York the APPR rating system that is a year ahead of Connecticut’s uses a growth over time model, which sounds great. But, if you are the unlucky teacher who earned the highest rating in your first year and then for some reason you “slipped” to proficient in your second year, you have not shown growth over time, have you?
Economics 101:
The foundation of the CCSS argument has been negative comparisons between international assessments of 15 year olds in which Americans appear to come out near the middle of the testing range. The argument runs like this: The future economy needs 21st Century Skills. Other countries are out-scoring us, therefore the strength of our economy is threatened over the next few decades.
But, if we recall our faculty reading of Yong Zhao’s Catching Up, or Leading the Way, we recall that there is an inverse relationship between performance on a standardized international assessment and productivity over time. Yes, that’s right. The same group of 14 yr olds who came in dead last in the First International Math Study (TIMS) is now a group of the 60-somethings who control the American economy, which is still rated among the top three most productive economies according to the World Economic Forum.
So, to make the international comparisons look bad, the proponents of this argument have to place the USA into a comparison with the 58 countries for which there is competitive data. Yikes, it looks like the mid-21st century will be dominated by Bulgaria; didn’t see that coming, but that’s what the tests show. If, on the other hand, one compares the US to the G-20 or G-7 Economies, the negative comparisons cease to be statistically valid.
Also, let’s just pause for a minute here and consider the PISA study of 15 year olds. You have to be 15 to take the test. So, if an American kid averages 170 days of school attendance a year, and among those days are mid-years, finals, and field trips, then let’s say there is a good chance for 140 days of instruction. But Asian countries regularly offer up to 240 days of school, so let’s knock off twenty and call it 220. Should an American student be able to compete with his/her counterparts in math? Well, actually, even on the much-vaunted PISA fully one out of four students performing at level five, the highest level, is an American.
So, if we follow the scores-to-economics argument, we would be likely to engage in behaviors that promote success on a test, but this will lead to lower creativity and productivity in the adult world!
Sociology 101:
Campbell’s Law: 1975 “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social process it was intended to monitor.”
Here is what Nichols and Berliner have to say at the end of a comprehensive examination of NCLB and high-stakes testing: “We are going to do something unheard of in the history of academic research. In this concluding chapter, we are not going to call for more research. There is absolutely no need for new research on high-stakes testing! Sufficient evidence to declare that high-stakes testing does not work already exists.” (2006, Collateral Damage, p. 175).
CONCLUSION:
1. I am NOT saying that we should have no standards. I am not saying that a standards-based curriculum is a bad thing; in fact, I am in favor of it.
2. I am NOT saying that we shouldn’t desire excellence for all students. I am not saying that all students should be able to have meaningful adult lives.
3. I am NOT saying that teachers shouldn’t link their performance to student achievement. I am not saying that we should avoid standardized assessments.
I AM SAYING that the worn out application of so-called hard-nosed business practices (which I do not believe business men or women apply to their own concerns) have any place in a school. I AM SAYING that there is a better way, and it is for all of us educators to embrace our responsibilities as professionals and act from Informed Professional Judgment. I AM SAYING that we can either define ourselves or accept the so-called reform that is happening to us.
It might be that we have to acknowledge and optimistically embrace the following proposition: The High School Structure that has served us so well is not broken; it is obsolete, and it is time for us to transform it!
Tom
By now, everyone has been duly warned that the new Common Core tests will be “harder.”
The passing rates are expected to drop by 30%.
Advocates of privatization are excited and hoping the bad news will encourage parents to abandon their community schools.
Entrepreneurs are poised to sell stuff when everyone is desperate for the latest new thing.
But what about the kids?
This teacher describes what she sees in her classes: fear.
“I have been chatting with my classes explaining that we expect the tests to be tougher and that we are taking our best guesses as to how to best prepare them. They (6th graders) have looked at me incredulously and asked, “You mean you don’t know what is going to be on the test?” I have used the “good, better, best” terminology this year to help them ramp up the rigor in vocabulary, reading, and their writing. I replied, “I expect higher than “best”….(for the level they can be prepared for). They looked stricken. They expect me to know and to be able to help them prepare. I know in my heart they think I am letting them down. I have never been a teach to the test teacher. I am flummoxed by this unbelievable plan of teacher destruction.
“What has been completely lost in all of this is the students. They are going to have to sit and struggle with these Ela tests for three days knowing by the end of the first day that they are not doing very well. Imagine what this will feel like to our plucky special education students whom we have supported throughout the year. Or, how about the ESOL kids who are valiantly interpreting every thing they read in a second language. Their reward? They will do the same the following week for the math tests. Highly regarded teachers have been in tears trying to understand how to convey very abstract mathematical concepts to our concrete thinking 6th graders. Rigor is important but not at the expense of known developmental benchmarks. The sample sent out by the State Ed. Dept. for Ela had reading passages at levels more than four or five years higher than our middle schoolers read.
“Who said yes to this? Who said yes?! And even more importantly, how will this end?”
The Rochester Teachers Union is running an ad campaign against the Common Core testing.
The state education department predicts that scores will drop by 30 percent.
“It’s a setup for failure,” said John Pavone of the Rochester Teachers Association. Teachers are worried they will be evaluated based on a curriculum that was rolled out this year. “They’re going to blame me if the kids can’t pass the test and the kids can’t pass the test. It’s set up in such a way that you can’t pass the test.”
Marc Tucker has published what he says will be the final round in his debate with me.
He noticed that I never actually responded to his first two posts. I printed the views of others.
I have not debated him because I don’t see how it is possible to debate a hypothetical.
OK, we can debate whether the moon is made of green cheese, but I am too busy to debate that.
Or we could debate whether test scores will go up or fall if we give every student access to medical care.
But we won’t know until we try.
He thinks the Common Core standards are fabulous; I don’t know whether they are good or not because they have never been field-tested. He doesn’t see the necessity of field-testing, but I disagree. You don’t impose new standards, new tests, and new everything without some advance knowledge about their consequences.
Do we know if they will improve students’ knowledge and understanding of math and reading and other subjects? No.
Do we know if they will widen the achievement gaps between students of different races and students from high- and low-income families? No, we do not.
Do we know if they are developmentally appropriate for children in K-3? No, we do not.
Wouldn’t it be useful to know these things before we change everything? I think so, Marc does not.
I don’t understand how we can debate a topic in which we know so little.
Here is what I do know.
The most reliable predictor of test scores is family income.
The Common Core will have no impact whatever in changing the scandalous proportion of children who live in poverty in this nation. Nearly a quarter of our children are living in poverty, as compared to far smaller proportions in other societies. If we were to make a dent on that number, bring it down to, say, 15%, that would have a bigger impact on test scores than Common Core. But that is just my guess.
The common wisdom, repeatedly predicted by state superintendents, is that test scores will drop by 30% or so when the Common Core standards are assessed because the tests are “harder.” This will feed the corporate reform narrative that “our schools are failing.” They will use the new stats to attack public education and demand more vouchers and more charters and more privatization. The entrepreneurs are eagerly awaiting the moment when the bad scores are announced, as it will give them new opportunities to sell their edu-schlock.
The fact that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, was an original member of the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst–the corporate reformers’ attack machine against public education–is no comfort. The other members of her original board were Jason Zimba, who wrote the Common Core math standards, and a third person, who worked for Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners. In other words, Rhee’s board was the same as the Common Core leadership.
There, Marc, I debated you.
Twice MarcTucker wrote blog posts saying that I was wrong about the Common Core. In his second post, he challenged my assertion that parts often standards were developmentally inappropriate, and he cited experts (but not teachers) who agreed with him.
Here, Susan Ohanian responds to Tucker:
:
Arguing about the content of the Common Core State (sic) Standards is a dangerous diversion, steering us away from the important question of Who decides?
I don’t accept the premise of the very existence of these standards, but leaving that point aside, I do have a question for the “leading scholars” of the Validation Committee of the Common Core State (sic) Standards. Looking at their very impressive credentials, I don’t see any mention of elementary school teaching experience.
I’d ask when was the last time any of them was shut up in a room with twenty-five eight-year-olds–or twelve-year-olds. A teacher offers books to students based on the actual classroom reality of that minute. Case in point: I taught third grade in a school that rigorously classified students into high readers, middle readers, and low readers. My first year there, I taught, at my request, the “low readers.” A few months into the school year, an Amelia Bedelia title offered a phenomenal breakthrough reading experience for more than half the class, and so the next year, I started out the year with Amelia Bedelia. For that group, also classified as “low readers,” but significantly more able, Amelia was ho-hum history, something they’d enjoyed in second grade. They immediately showed me they needed something with more meat. So we jumped into Beatrix Potter and Beverly Cleary. Different kids need different books at different times. And you can’t decree this ahead of time.
Ten years teaching seventh and eighth graders showed me this same truth again and again. After he claimed he’d read every book in our classroom, including two sets of encyclopedia, I shoved Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop at fifteen-year-old Keith and commanded, “Read this!” Keith, a boy usually on the move–never still–sat motionless for the entire period–at first because he recognized my ‘she who must be obeyed’ mode but then because he got hooked into the book. When Keith finally closed the last page, his expression was one of puzzlement. “I did it. I read this book. Seriously, Miz O. I read it. For real. You wanna hear me?” Throughout the rest of year, whenever things weren’t going well for Keith, he’d say, “How would you like to hear that Hop on Pop book?” and he’d pull up a chair and calm himself by reading a few pages out loud. And he asked those magic words, “Did that Dr. Seuss write any more books?” He ended the year having read more than one book.
In a video produced by the Council of Great City Schools ($8,496,854 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), self-proclaimed Common Core architect David Coleman orates that all students need rigorous texts and he offers advice to the student, like Keith, who is several years behind: “You’re going to practice it again and again and again and again. . . so there’s a chance you can finally do that level of work.”
Those words show Coleman’s chilling disregard for the individual needs of individual students and this is the thread that runs throughout the Common Core imperatives–approved by the august committee referred to by Marc Tucker.
As any teacher worth her salt can do, I offer individual, idiosyncratic stories about individual idiosyncratic kids’ special connections with books. I was lucky enough early in my career to be hired as reading teacher in a program funded by the New York State department of education in the name of innovation. My boss there was himself a reader, and we decided to take the state at their word and be innovative. He let me use the book budget for voucher chips redeemable at a local bookstore. Every month I gave every student a chip good for the purchase of one paperback book. I took kids on a tour of the store the first time. After that, they were on their own. Their choices were remarkably smart. From time to time I was able to dip into the voucher chest and buy multiple copies of high interest titles such as Soul Brothers and Sister Lou and J. T., for group reading. When state inspectors came to see what caused standardized test scores to soar, they asked, “What program do you use?” I replied, “We read a lot of Shel Silverstein”–because my boss had told me we must never let the very conservative school board know how we were spending the book budget. I kept the secret for the fifteen years I worked in the district. Now I tell it as tribute to an administrator who believed in the power of books.
I saw this same ability to make good choices when I taught the “low readers” of third grade. In the Spring we won a Scholastic contest in which the prize was 100 free books. I handed out catalogues and told the kids they each got three choices–two to keep for themselves and one for the classroom library. No standards committee could have chosen as well as those kids did. No teacher savvy about reading could have done any better.
The issue here is not which “informational text” (what a pompous, ignorant term, as though fiction and poetry didn’t provide critical information) is assigned or which grade gets drilled on apostrophe use. The issue is Who decides? The decision should be local and never allowed to fossilize. The truth of the matter is that universal standards can’t apply in a single classroom, never mind across the country. The issue is trusting teachers, trusting kids, and trusting them to find the books they need. The Common Core trusts nothing but computerized programs that train teachers and kids to do what they’re told.
Marc Tucker and others scoffed when I said that the Common Core standards should have been field tested in a few districts and states before they were imposed on the 46 states.
No one knows whether they will improve achievement. No one knows if they will widen or narrow the gaps between different groups. No one knows if the awkward mapping makes sense. No one knows if he standards are developmentally appropriate for the various grades. No one knows whether the standards are realistic or whether they were designed for students bound for IvyLeague colleges.
I think it would be useful to know answers to these questions in advance, before the nation spends billions of dollars on new materials, new tests, new professional development, and new technology for the online assessments.
I have a deep concern that the standards are meant to be so “hard” that many children will fail, and the privatization movement will gain new fodder for its campaign to smear American schools.
This reader understands my concern about the failure to field test the new federal standards before they were imposed:
“As a teacher who came to education from the software industry, there was one phrase that struck a nerve with me: “the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.” If there is one thing we can learn from business, it is that rolling out a new product in great numbers without field testing it thoroughly is a fool’s game at best and organizational suicide at worst. Companies who gamble this way often find themselves in bankruptcy.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 