Archives for category: Common Core
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What Is HANY and Who Funds Them?

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2016 //
19

HANY is High Achievement New York. It has mounted a very costly campaign to oppose the opt out movement and to support high-stakes testing and the Common Core.

 

Who is funding their expensive campaign to maintain the status quo?

 

Fortunately, blogger and former teacher Deb Escobar has done the research and provides the answers. This will come as no surprise to readers of this blog. HANY is funded by the Billionaire Boys Club.

 

Who is the Man Behind the Curtain? Why, it is Bill Gates!

 

But he is not alone.

 

The purpose of this post is to pull back the curtain and let you know who is funding this massive campaign that aims to fix our “broken” system. Because, you know, it’s all for the children. Let’s start with their coalition members, beginning with Arva Rice, President and CEO of the New York Urban League, who previously was affiliated with Paul Tudor Jones (yes the hedge fund guy) and his Robin Hood Foundation.

 

Then there is New York Campaign for Achievement Now (NYCAN), part of the larger 50-state education reform group. The funding stream for 50CAN includes Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bush Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, and the Walton Foundation, among others. A veritable who’s-who of big money in the education reform game. The NY chapter adds more money from Gates, along with Bloomberg Philanthrophies, Kenneth M. Hirsch and William E. Simon.

 

Include Association for a Better New York, founded by real estate tycoon Bill Rudin. Their self-stated goal is to “promote neighborhood revitalization.” AKA gentrification. AKA keeping their fingers on the real estate prize in NY.

 

Coalition member Parents for Excellence in Bethlehem has bought the Common Core Gates funded spin. Co-President Kim Namkoong is a parent, also a mathematician and computer programmer. She is a face for the “How is My Kid Doing?” campaign that is funded by – you guessed it – the Council for a Strong America folks and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bethlehem Parents for Excellence has a lackluster website (a surprise considering Namkoong’s stated occupation) that does not list its donors. They advocate for common core and testing.

 

Membership includes reformy groups Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. Educators4Excellence, also funded by the Gates Foundation, is comprised of anti-union young teachers, many of whom are alumni of Teach For America. See ed blogger Jonathan Pelto’s research on the group here. StudentsFirstNY is that pro-charter, pro-voucher group that shares its physical address with New York Charter queen Eva Moskowitz’ organization. NYS Families for Excellent Schools also shares that same address and is a hedge-funded PAC for education reforms.

 

The corporate reformers are a cozy group. There are not many of them, but they have so much money that they pop up again and again, singing the same tired old song. Test your children (not mine); put your children in “no excuses” charters (not mine); testing will make everyone smarter; the harder the tests, the smarter everyone will be and the more the achievement gap will close.

 

Evidence has nothing to do with their campaign. They do what the Man (or Men) Behind the Curtain want them to do.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Ken Bernstein: Hillary is Poorly Informed about Education Issues, But I Will Vote for Her

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2016 //
66

Ken Bernstein is a social studies teacher in the D.C. area who has received numerous awards for his dedicated service. He writes extensively and blogs regularly for The Daily Kos. He is a deeply thoughtful and intelligent person who is passionate about teaching and public service. In this post, he analyzes Hillary Clinton’s views on education and acknowledges that she is woefully out of touch. Although Chelsea Clinton attended public schools in Arkansas, she enrolled in Sidwell Friends when her father became president. That was a full decade before the advent of high-stakes testing introduced by No Child Left Behind. Thus, Clinton has no idea how testing has spun out of control and become the master of education, a giant tail wagging the dog.

 

Not only her remarks on testing ill-informed, but so are her remarks about Common Core. Clearly she has no idea why opposition to Common Core is bipartisan and why so many parents and teachers oppose it. It would not be hard to find out why, but her education advisors don’t seem to know or haven’t shared what they know. I wish I could sit down with her for half an hour, but I don’t know how to make that happen.

 

Most puzzling is her insistence that she would have her children or grandchildren take the tests. She must know that she is saying this on an interview on Long Island, where more than 50% of parents opted out. Did she think she would win hearts and minds by belittling the parents who refuse to subject their children to meaningless tests? They are meaningless for reasons I stated in a post a few days ago; they have no instructional value as teachers learn nothing about what children know and don’t know. All they get is a score and a ranking for each child. That is not diagnostic. What is the point of learning that your child “failed” to meet the standard, but no one knows why? Also, some savvy parents have been informed that the passing mark was set so high that 70% of the children are supposed to fail. What parent would find that acceptable?

 

Her affection for charters is as ill-informed as her affection for testing and accountability. How could she take the endorsement of the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions and at the same time praise non-union charters (more than 90% of charters are non-union)? The biggest funders of charters fund them because they are non-union. Will she, as president, continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the expansion of non-union charters? Someone should ask these questions.

 

Ken writes:

 

If by now you have grasped that I am not happy with this part of the interview with Newsday, you are correct. Were education the only issue on which I decided who to support for the Presidency, I might have real reservations — provided there was a candidate who showed a deeper understanding. In fact this cycle there is not, in either party, of ANY of those who were ever in the race.

 

Further, on almost all of the other issues important to me, Hillary Clinton’s experience, understanding of government and international issues, makes her far superior to anyone else who sought the Presidency this cycle.

 

I knew I would not be completely happy with her approach to education at the time I decided to support her….

 

I hope that when she becomes President, as I believe she will, Hillary Clinton will make sure that she includes the voices of teachers in (a) who she picks for Secretary of Education, (b) how her administration shapes it educational policy.

 

I know from others how good a listener Hillary Clinton can be.

 

I hope very much that she will apply that skill set and listen to different voices on education, because what I read in this interview with the editorial board was disappointing.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform, Politics, Testing

More than 100 California Researchers Call for Moratorium on Common Core Assessments

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2016 //
24

More than 100 university-based education researchers in California called for a moratorium on Common Core testing. 

 

Among many excellent point, the group’s statement said:

 

The rhetoric surrounding the CCSS is not supported by a compelling body of research. For example, the CCSS is often presented as a way to enhance rigor in public schools. However, state-level standards varied so widely that no definitive statement can be made as to whether the CCSS is more or less rigorous. Proponents have argued that the CCSS ensures that all students receive an equal education, but even the courts recognize that high expectations without adequate resources can further disadvantage the students in most need. Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set of curriculum standards, including those like the CCSS, will either raise the quality of education for all children or close the gap between different groups of children. Therefore attaching high-stakes testing to the CCSS cannot be the solution for improving student learning.

 

Yet California is moving forward with high-stakes tests, tied to these unproven, untested standards.

 

Based on those test scores, any number of high-stakes decisions may follow, including student promotion or graduation, teacher evaluation and compensation, school closure, and possibly the withholding of federal student financial aid for teacher-preparation programs (as proposed in the draft of the federal Teacher Preparation Regulations of Title II of the Higher Education Act, scheduled to be finalized and released around the time of this writing), all of which are decisions using scientifically discredited methods, namely, the use of value-added modeling that purport to attribute gains in test scores to such factors. Perhaps not surprising, in California, public approval for implementation of the CCSS has declined 17% in just one year, with more voters now opposing the CCSS than supporting them….

 

Testing experts have raised significant concerns about all (SBAC, PARCC, Pearson) assessments, including the lack of basic principles of sound science, such as construct validity, research-based cut scores, computer adaptability, inter-rater reliability, and most basic of all, independent verification of validity. Here in California, the SBAC assessments have been carefully examined by independent examiners of the test content who concluded that they lack validity, reliability, and fairness, and should not be administered, much less be considered a basis for high-stakes decision making.18 When asked for documentation of the validity of the CA tests, the CA Department of Education failed to make such documentation public. Even SBAC’s own contractor, Measured Progress, in 2012 gave several warnings, including against administering these tests on computers.

 

Nonetheless, CA has moved forward in full force. In spring 2015, 3.2 million students in California (grades 3-8 and 11) took the new, computerized Math and English Language Arts/Literacy CAASPP tests (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress). The tests were developed by SBAC, and administered and scored by Educational Testing Service. Scores were released to the public in September 2015, and as many predicted, a majority of students failed (that is, were categorized to be below proficient). SBAC itself expected that pass rates would go down, and would be particularly low for certain groups, including English-language learners (who make up over 22% of the enrollment in CA public schools), whom SBAC predicted would see an approximately 90% fail rate….

 

Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing, also reduces the quality of education and student learning, engagement, and success. The impact is also on student psychological well-being: Without an understanding that the scores have not been proven to be valid or fair for determining proficiency or college readiness, students and their parents are likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about academic potential.

 

All in all, this is an excellent statement. Policymakers in California should read it and take it seriously.

 

 

Categories California, Common Core, Testing

Checker Finn: Why Donald Trump Might Set Back Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2016 //
21

Checker Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute fears that the election of Donald Trump would be a disaster for education reforms like charters, vouchers, higher standards, harder tests, and test-based evaluations. Republicans might lose control of either or both houses of Congress. They might see governors and legislatures retaken by Democrats.

This is the best argument–maybe the only argument–I have heard for Trump. Can you imaginary the social reactionaries that Cruz might sweep in? We would go backwards a century.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Politics

John Thompson Forecasts the End of the Corporate Reform Era

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2016 //
21

Dr. John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma City, anticipates the collapse of corporate reform in this outstanding post. He gives much of the credit to the opt out movement, which stood up to political and corporate power to protect their children. Who ever thought it was a great idea to subject 9-year-old children to 8 hours of testing? Who thought it would be a good idea to fire teachers if test scores didn’t go up every year? Who thought it was a good idea to drain resources from public schools and give them to privately managed charter schools?

 

Parents certainly didn’t. They refused to be bullied by school officials and politicians.

 

Thompson writes:

 

“Three cheers for the Opt Out movement! When the history of the collapse of data-driven, competition-driven school improvement is written, the parents and students of the grassroots Opt Out uprising will get much – or most – of the credit for driving a stake through the heart of the testing vampire.”

 

Thompson thanks Tom Loveless for pointing out that all of these alleged reforms have not produced the promised miracles. But he faults all those who continue to believe that testing, punishments, rewards, and competition improves education.

 

But he gives Loveless a demerit for continuing to accept the premises of corporate reform.

 

“One cheer for the Brookings Institute’s Tom Loveless, and his discussion of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and for noting the failure of CCSS to raise student performance. Okay, maybe he deserves 1-1/2 or 1-3/4ths cheers for his resisting changes to the reliable NAEP tests in order to please Common Core advocates, and for concluding, “Watch the Opt Out movement.”

 

Loveless notes that “states that adopted CCSS and have been implementing the standards have registered about the same gains and losses on NAEP as states that either adopted and rescinded CCSS or never adopted CCSS in the first place.” He then gets to the key point, “The big story is that NAEP scores have been flat for six years, an unprecedented stagnation in national achievement that states have experienced regardless of their stance on CCSS.“ Now, Loveless says, “CCSS is paying a political price for those disappointing NAEP scores.”

 

“The big story, however, is the failure of the entire standards-driven, test-driven, competition-driven model of school improvement. Loveless is free to adopt his own methodology for his latest research paper on education reform but he deserves a “boo” for continuing to reduce complex and inter-related processes to a bunch of single, simple, distinct, quantifiable categories….

 

“Loveless, Brookings, and other reformers deserve a loud round of boos for pretending that the failure of Common Core standards is unfair and/or regrettable. On the contrary, the political and educational battle over national standards is a part of the inter-connected debacle produced by a simplistic faith in standards and curriculum; bubble-in accountability; and the federal government’s funding of teacher-bashing, mass charterization, and the top-down reforms of the last 1-1/2 decades.

 

“While I appreciate Loveless’s candor in acknowledging that the stagnation of NAEP scores in the last six years is unprecedented, his focus on standards misses the other big points. These realities have not been lost on the grassroots Opt Out movement….

 

“Perhaps we’re seeing the last days of the education blame game. Maybe Loveless and other pro-reform analysts will give up on trying to pin the rejection of their policies on parents and teachers. As parents refuse to allow their children to take the tests, it will become even more impossible to set cut scores, meaning that it will become even more impossible to claim that systems can identify the children and adults who supposedly should be punished for their scores. Once the punitive parts of school reform are repudiated, little or nothing will be left of this unfortunate period of education history. And, the Opt Out movement will deserve the credit it is granted in closing that chapter.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Failure, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Jaime Franchi: Why New York’s Opt Out Movement is not Going Away

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2016 //
15

Jaime Franchi of the Long Island Press has established a reputation for in-depth reporting on education. She does it again, with a comprehensive analysis of New York’s opt out movement.

After the historic opt out of 2015, where some 240,000 students did not take the tests, Governor Cuomo made a concerted effort to tamp down parent anger. He appointed a task force to make recommendations about the Common Core standards and tests, which John King had botched. He promised that the tests would have no stakes for students or teachers, at least for a while. The state commissioner took steps to alternately warn and placate parents.

Despite the efforts to court parents, the opt out leaders decided they were being played. They thought the moves by Cuomo were a facade. And they determined to continue their fight in 2016.

No one knows whether there will be more or less or the same number of opt outs. What matters is that parents across the state realize that there is power in numbers. They cannot be ignored.

Categories Common Core, New York, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Standardized Testing

The Mainstream Media Are Terrified of Opt Out Parents

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2016 //
35

Norm Scott, a retired New York City teacher, blogs at EdNotes Online. He posted today the onslaught against opt out in the mainstream media in New York City. Norm taught in low-income schools for many years. He was also the producer of one of the first anti-reform films: “The Inconvenient Truth About ‘Waiting for Superman.'”

 

 

I seriously doubt that any of the people who wrote these articles understand that the tests provide no useful information to teachers or parents. I wonder if any of them have school-age children. Teachers are not allowed to see the answers or to learn what their students got wrong. Parents get nothing more than a number (1, 2, 3, 4) and a percentile ranking. Do we really need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rank students yet learn nothing about their instructional needs? Do they know that the tests were designed to fail the majority of students? Can they explain why?

 

 

Norm Scott writes:

 

 

Every single link in today’s Rise and Shine is an assault on Opt-out.

 

 

Eva Moskowitz: Opt-out movement will leave students unprepared
“I really believe in the tests – I seem to be the only one left standing,” the Success Academy CEO said Friday afternoon, against the backdrop of thousands of children singing to pop songs whose lyrics were changed to extoll the virtues of learning and test preparation. Read more.

 
And follow up with these:

 

 

With state tests set to begin Tuesday, some are predicting that the opt-out movement will continue to grow, even though the consequences of those tests have diminished. Wall Street Journal

 
Plenty of New York City principals and parents still see the tests as a normal, and even helpful, part of a child’s school experience. New York Times

 
Some teachers have gone further in encouraging students to opt out by sending anti-testing information home to parents. New York Post

 
The nonprofit High Achievement New York has launched a counter-campaign, with the tagline “Say Yes to the Test.” New York Daily News

 
Al Sharpton says he opposes the opt-out movement because the test results help shine a light on educational inequality. New York Post, Politico New York

 
Upper West Side parents are still worried that opting out will hurt their children’s chances of admission to a selective middle school. DNAinfo

 
Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz said Friday that she seems “to be the only one left standing” supporting state tests, just after thousands of her students gathered for a “slam the exam” pep rally. Chalkbeat

 
Three Success Academy charter schools didn’t have copies of the tests last week, worrying school officials. New York Daily News

 
Editorial: Parents, you’ve been heard. Now have your kids take the damn tests. New York Daily News

 
Editorial: It’s “pathetic” to see education leaders across the city and state pander to the opt-outers. New York Post

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Media, New York, Opt Out, Testing

Hoax: Laura Chapman on Ohio’s Phony Review of Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2016 //
21

Laura Chapman, who lives in Ohio, has written extensively on this blog about the defects of the Common Core standards. She notes here that the state of Ohio is pretending to review the CCSS. But they have made the review so difficult that few parents or educators will be able to make their views known to the state. This cannot be an accident.

 

 

Chapman writes:

 

 

Common Core is up for review in Ohio, sort of.

 

 

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) only wants comments from the public that will tweak specific standards, not reasoning that might warrant dumping them all. The press (in this case the Newark Advocate) repeats the myth that the standards were developed by a broad coalition and correctly raise the bar for U.S. students, who often lag their international counterparts.”

 

 

The ODE only wants to know which standards need to be tweaked and according to a spokesperson, the current review has nothing to do with controversies.

 

 

ODE has set up a website for “feedback” relevant to three questions:

 
1. Are these standards still appropriate for the students in each grade?
2. Do these standards still reflect what is most important in each subject area?
3. Do these standards still reflect what students need to know to be successful after high school?

 

 

In order to offer a response you must go to a website where you can enter the feedback system. It is structured with five entry points for 963 Common Core standards: K-8 Math (229), HS Math (156), K-12 ELA (32), K-5 ELA (250), 6-12 ELA Literacy (296).

 

 

The number of standards is daunting enough (the system as dropped subordinate parts (e.g., a-f ) attached to many of standards–the parts that steer instruction and complicate judgments. The feedback system is semi-structured. You can search for standards by grade level and major topics, or enter a key word and see what that turns up.

 

 

Casual comments are clearly ruled out. When you have identified one standard for a comment, you are asked to follow these steps. (Begin quote)

 
1. Type of Suggestion Select the type of edit being suggested for the standard above. —Clarity—Grade Level Appropriate—Content Error—Other
2. Claim. Provide a description of your content-focused issue or concern with the standard you identified.
 Characters 0/1000
3. Resolution. Provide a description of a possible resolution to the issue that you claimed above.
 Characters 0/1000
4. Research/Rationale* Provide research, information or data that supports the claim made above concerning this standard. Characters 0/1000 If you have none, enter “None” into the box. (End Quote.)

 

 

So far the state has received over 350 comments. I am trying to find out the ending date for the on-line comments and more about “a committee” that will meet after the on-line comment period is closed.

 

 

This on-line comment “opportunity” is inexpensive, limits responses, and demands more time than most people can devote to it. I think the CCSS will not be changed much. It is not just that educators played such a marginal role from the get-go, and that Bill Gates paid for the CCSS, and the rest.

 

 

Ohio already has 3,203 standards on the books, an average of 267 per grade level, including the existing Common Core (including parts a-e). There are no caps on standard-setting.

 

 

There are also brand new national standards that might be worthy of concurrent review—including National Core Arts Standards (2014) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013). In fact, the NGSS include 410 cross references to the Common Core: 203 in math, 96 in reading, 90 in writing, and 21 in ELA literacy—all before high school.

 

 

Apparently Ohio “continues to review the NGSS document for the purpose of identifying related resources and strategies that schools can use to support Ohio’s Learning Standards in Science, which began serving as the foundation for Ohio’s State Tests in Science in 2014-2015.”

 

 

It seems doubtful that Ohio ever intended to have a serious and “actionable” review of the CCCS. Why? Ohio has already contracted with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) for math and English tests that are supposed to be ready now (Spring 2016) having dumped PARCC. In addition, AIR already has contracts for science and social studies tests. The “feedback form” is at http://www.ohio-k12.help/standards

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Ohio, Testing

2016 Election: Where Do the Candidates Stand?

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2016 //
16

This is a good article by Steven Rosenfeld about the 2016 election. Rosenfeld focuses on the charter school issue. He understands, as so few national commentators do, that charter schools are an existential threat to public education. 
He reviews the reactionary views of the Republican candidates, all of whom support privatization.
And he deconstructs the views of Hillary and Bernie. 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform

Illinois: Don’t Believe It When They Tell You Not to Opt Out

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2016 //
10

A former Chicago Public Schools teacher left a comment and referred to this article, which features one of her students. He is organizing a boycott of PARCC. Illinois offers no “formal” way to opt out; the decision is left to children. Some schools are threatening punishments of various kinds, and school officials imply that the tests have been improved. They say, for example, that the results will arrive in the summer, instead of the fall, when there is still time to help children. On the face of it, that claim is ridiculous. The child is not in school in the summer, for starters. He or she won’t have the same teacher by the time the results come in. Worse, there is nothing in the results that will “help” the teachers or the children. How are children “helped” by learning that they have scored a 1, 2, 3, or 4? How will they be helped if they learned what percentile they scored it? This is all nonsense, which is why students and parents should opt out and demand an end of this massive waste of money and instructional time.

 

This week, when state standardized testing begins at many CPS schools, at least one sixth-grader at Sumner Elementary School will be sitting out PARCC.

 

“I’m going to refuse PARCC next week because we haven’t had typing classes,” Diontae Chatman told the Board of Education last week, missing school for the first time all year so he could testify.

 

“We didn’t have a qualified math teacher from September to January,” he added. Plus last year, students taking the test online were logged on and off repeatedly, among other problems.

 

But skipping the test, even though state law allows it, could bring about consequences that feel unfair to children.

 

“My school is threatening to take away our field day to students who refuse PARCC,” Diontae explained. “I think we all should get treated the same way, if we take it or if we don’t take it.”

 

Once again, neither Chicago Publics Schools nor the Illinois State Board of Education have any specific directive for how schools should treat children who refuse to take the exam between now and May 15.

 

Meanwhile, the district is urging all parents to participate in the test, saying PARCC provides useful detailed data.

 

“PARCC is a mandatory exam and the district’s failure to implement the exam does have serious consequences” that are financial, Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson said. “We’re making a lot of short-term fixes, so we can’t afford any reduction in financing from the state as a result of our failure to administer the test.”

 

PARCC — the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers — is given to third- through eighth-graders and some high schoolers. Aligned to Common Core standards, it aims to show how well students are preparing for college at each grade level. Though PARCC was designed to be interactive and taken on a computer, CPS’ third- and fourth-graders still will take a paper version.

 

PARCC still carries no consequences at CPS, which uses a separate test to evaluate teachers and schools.

 

For its second year, PARCC has been shortened. It has a simpler format, and results have been promised much sooner than last year — by the summer, rather than late autumn, so that teachers and parents can actually use the results.

 

Those improvements still won’t stop a number of families in Chicago from skipping it.

 

 

[Some readers said the link doesn’t work; this works for me: https://r-login.wordpress.com/remote-login.php?action=auth&host=chicago.suntimes.com&id=107184512&back=http%3A%2F%2Fchicago.suntimes.com%2Fnews%2Fparcc-test-no-opt-out-policy%2F&h=]

 

PARCC Testing Begins, But Still No Opt Out Policy, in the Chicago Sun-Times

 

 

Categories Chicago, Common Core, Education Reform, Illinois, Opt Out, Standardized Testing
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