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Mercedes Schneider on Arne Duncan’s “Legacy”

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2016 //
13

Mercedes Schneider reflects on Arne Duncan’s legacy. He was described by President Obama as a man who “has dedicated his life to the cause of education.” Now he is gone. He left behind, said the President, “a good product.” We will somehow have to persist without him.

 

But his “legacy” of bullying states and school districts lives on.

 

Mercedes notes that one of his aides, Ann Whalen, sent out a threatening letter to several states, warning that there would be serious consequences if they permitted or experienced high number of opt outs. They might even see the loss of federal funding for their poorest kids. Imagine that: the U.S. Department threatening to hurt poor kids as a punishment to states where many children opt out of testing.

 

This letter violates the spirit of the new federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act, but the new law has not yet taken effect. So, the Duncan crew must bully and intimidate as much as possible until the new law kicks in.

 

Ann Whalen, by the way, wrote a blistering attack on experienced educator Carol Burris last year for doubting the transformative power of high standards and daring to question the Common Core standards. Whalen has a BA in political science from Stanford; that makes her assertive and confident. She has apparently never been a teacher or principal, unlike Burris. Whalen worked for Duncan in Chicago before he became Secretary. She has been a bureaucrat now for many years, but she has some nerve lecturing Carol Burris. I suppose we should forgive her messianic belief in high standards and the Common Core because her attack was penned before the release of the 2015 NAEP scores, which showed that after 15 years of relying on standards and testing, after five years of Common Core, NAEP scores were flat or declining in almost every state.

 

What I can’t forgive, however, is the very idea that a federal official would attack a private citizen. When I served in the U.S. Department of Education under Lamar Alexander in 1991-92, that impropriety would not have been permitted. Something about working in Arne Duncan’s space seems to give his aides the belief that they are relieved of the rules of civility and propriety. I still recall that he accused me of “insulting” teachers, principals, and students “all across the country” when I wrote an article in the New York Times debunking his absurd claim that his favorite schools were achieving miraculous results merely by having high expectations and firing experienced teachers or closing the school and restaffing it. I used data to demonstrate that there were no miracles. No, I wasn’t insulting teachers, principals, or students; I was calling out the hype and spin that is now customary from the U.S. Department of Education. The only thing they haven’t been able to spin is the NAEP scores. And the NAEP scores raise serious questions about the Bush-Obama reliance on standards, testing, firing teachers and principals, and closing schools as a strategy for reform.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, ESSA, NCLB, Opt Out, Testing

Peter Greene Eviscerates the New York Times’ Editorial on Education

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2015 //
27

I wrote the last entry before I saw Peter Greene’s razor-sharp evisceration of the New York Times’ editorial praise for high-stakes testing and the Common Core. The editorial cited a number of spurious sources, all of them from cheerleaders for the Common Core.

 

I took on the general point that the Times makes: that high-stakes testing produces higher achievement. Surely after 15 years of NLB and Race to the Top, and five years of Common Core, no one believes that unless they are paid to do so or are hoodwinked by the former.

 

Peter looks at the underlying sources for the Times’ editorial and identifies each of them as fraudulent. For example, the editorial cites Education Trust for its claim that one of every five high school graduates were rejected by the military, but Greene finds this response from the Department of Defense:

 

For the military, the largest single disqualifying factor is health, including such problems as obesity. The estimate for those who are disqualified only because of aptitude is about 2 percent, said Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman. That includes not just people who failed the test but also those with other academic deficiencies, such as failure to get a GED.

 

The editorial claims that high school graduates in South Carolina won’t be prepared for the jobs available at automakers in the state.

 

But, writes Peter, this is not true.

 

Five minutes of googling indicates that they can be less worried. BMW appears ready to add more jobs in South Carolina, and these jobs include Forklift Operator and Production Associate. Production associates must have a year of steady job experience and be able to pass a drug test; they must also be willing to work any day they’re called, for a 10-12 hour shift. Forklift operators must have experience operating a forklift. Clearly more AP math courses would help graduates be better-prepared for these jobs.

 

How could the New York Times get everything so wrong? Peter says it is because they relied for their “data” on organizations funded by the Gates Foundation to promote the Common Core standards. Are these trustworthy sources?

 

He writes:

 

I suppose they are “bi-partisan” in the same way that The Tobacco Institute and most lobbying groups are “bi-partisan.” In that sense, the NYT board just stopped short of flat out lying by saying that these two groups are impartial or unbiased. But the Education Trust is a Gates-funded advocacy group from the earliest days of the Core. And Achieve is the organization that “helped” the CCSSO and NGA write the Common Core to begin with– no organization is more highly invested in the continued support and push of the Core Standards and the tests that are welded to them. And they earlier this month released a report that says– well, it says pretty much exactly what this editorial says.

 

In short, the NYT board has done the opposite of journalism here. This belongs with such classics as “Cigarettes Are Totally Good For You” or “US Must Solve Critical New Car Gap.” This is endorsing one political candidate without ever actually talking to any of the others.

 

The problems that face public education are complicated. In fact, right now they’re more complicated than ever because we have a muddy mix of actual problems (e.g. poverty, refusal to fully fund), created problems (e.g. charters stripping public schools of resources), and made-up problems (e.g. Oh Nos! Our students aren’t taking enough standardized tests!). All of these problems exist at the intersection of larger national issues such as income inequality, systemic racism, and the proper relationship between corporate and citizen interests.

 

What would help? Information. Correct, well-researched, thoughtful information. If you want to find one of the problems getting in the way of finding a remedy for everything that ails education, a good first step would be for journalists to stop uncritically running the PR of the people who want to dismantle public education and sell off the parts. The NYT did not solve any problems today, and they didn’t identify any, either. But they surely provided an example of one of them. Come on, New York Times– do journalism better.

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

New York Times’ Editorial Defends High-Stakes Testing and Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2015 //
33

The New York Times published an editorial (“The Counterfeit High School Diploma”) today lamenting the poor preparation of high school graduates. The Times enthusiastically supported No Child Left Behind and applauds the continued federal mandate for annual testing. The editorial is a caricature of the criticism of high-stakes standardized testing. The editorialist believes that opposition to high-stakes testing was cooked up by teachers’ unions to protect their members, ignoring the parent-led opt out movement and the solid research base for opposing such testing (including statements by the American Statistical Association, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Educational Research Association).

 

 

The Times’ editorial says:

 

 

Teachers unions and other critics of federally required standardized tests have behaved in recent years as though killing the testing mandate would magically remedy everything that ails education in the United States. In reality, getting rid of the testing requirement in the early grades would make it impossible for the country to know what if anything children were learning from year to year.

 

 

The statement above is sheer nonsense. The loudest criticism of “federally required standardized tests” has come from parent groups, not teachers unions. No one has ever said that “killing the testing mandate would magically remedy everything that ails education in the United States.” And it is beyond ridiculous to state that without the testing requirement it would “impossible for the country to know what if anything children were learning from year to year.”

 

 

Note to New York Times editorial writer from Planet Reality: There is a federal testing program called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that reports on what U.S. students are learning every other year. NAEP has been testing students since the 1970s and reporting on states and individual districts since 1992. The scores on NAEP have steadily increased until the adoption of NCLB in 2002, when progress slowed. Test score gains came to a crashing halt in 2015, as NCLB, Race to the Top and Common Core converged in a frenzy of exactly what the New York Times wants.

 

 

If students are graduating with empty high school diplomas, it cannot be because there wasn’t enough testing. We have had a federal policy of high-stakes testing, and students are graduating unprepared for college and careers. So the New York Times’ solution: keep on doing what hasn’t worked for 15 years. Keep high-stakes testing and add Common Core so that standards are higher.

 

 

The New York Times blames states and teachers unions for the failure of high-stakes testing. It bemoans the loss of enthusiasm for the Common Core standards. Maybe the editorialist should do some research and learn that high-stakes testing creates perverse incentives to game the system, teach to the test, and cheat. Maybe he could start by reading Tom Loveless’s prediction in 2012 that the Common Core would make little or no difference in test scores, because the test-score differences within states (with exactly the same standards and curricula) are as great as differences between states. Test scores reflect demographics, not curricula, standards, or teacher quality. Anyone who believes that the Common Core standards will magically improve achievement and close achievement gaps has not been paying attention to research, evidence, NAEP, or reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, Testing

Peter Greene Reviews a Poll Claiming that New Yorkers Love Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2015 //
17

Peter Greene is well aware that one of every five New York parents opted their child out of the Common Core exams. Not even Governor Cuomo has publicly supported the Common Core; when asked about it during his re-election campaign in 2014, he dodged the question. His task force recently responded to parent outrage by promising to rewrite the standards and review the tests.

 

Yet here comes Center for American Progress with a poll claiming that New Yorkers really DO love Common Core!

 

And Peter picks the poll apart with his usual hilarious metaphors!

 

In an era in which even Jeb Bush has stopped saying the name out loud, no group has cheered harder for the Common Core than the Center for American Progress (theoretically left-leaning holding pen for interregnum Clinton staffers). No argument is too dumb, no data set too ridiculous. If that dog won’t hunt, CAP ties a rope around its neck and drags it.

 

So it’s no surprise that CAP is back with yet another Pubic Policy Polling poll announced with the breathless headline “NEW POLL: WHEN NEW YORKERS SEE SPECIFIC COMMON CORE STANDARDS, THEY SUPPORT THE COMMON CORE.” Partnering up on this raft of ridiculousness is High Achievement New York, a coalition of business groups like the Business Council of New York State and reformster groups like StudentsFirstNY.

 

The poll, found here in its entirety, is as fine an example of scrambled thinking used to fuel PR as you’ll find anywhere. In the world of polling, there are two types of polls– a poll that seeks to find out what people are really thinking, and a poll that tries to make it look like people are thinking what I want them to think. This would be the second type of poll.

Categories Common Core

Mercedes Schneider: Sure Is Hard Getting an Independent Review of Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2015 //
26

Mercedes Schneider writes about Louisiana’s fake review of the Common Core standards. State Superintendent John White responded to protests against the CCSS by promising a thorough review by Louisiana teachers. But when the math committee assembled, the Louisiana teachers of math found that they would be joined by two members of the state education department’s Common Core committee. One of the math teachers, Brenda DeFelice, resigned, saying that she could not participate under these circumstances.

 

DeFelice wrote in her resignation letter:

 

During our last sub-committee meeting in Monroe, two people were introduced as experts and were invited to be seated at microphones to answer questions and to offer input to the sub-committee as we conducted the review. I have since learned that the two experts who were added to the group, Carolyn Sessions (LDOE standards coordinator and PARCC cadre) and Nancy Beben (LDOE curriculum director), were two of the original writers of the national Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. In my opinion, they had absolutely no place at the table or in front of a microphone as the sub-committee conducted our review. In fact, in the very first Standards Review Meeting in August, the Standards Steering Committee rejected a proposal to form a panel of experts to assist in this review process, saying that the work was to be done by the appointed committee members only.

 

This morning in Baton Rouge, in an effort to continue the high school discussions prior to the full sub-committee meeting tomorrow, several of the high school sub-committee members met to review the Geometry standards revisions, with the rest of the high school sub-committee members reporting in this afternoon to continue the review. Imagine my surprise to find, seated at the sub-committee table, Scott Baldridge (LSU math professor and author of Eureka Math) and James Madden (LSU Cain Center and another of the original writers of the national Common Core State Standards in Mathematics), both strong proponents of Common Core. We were also joined by Carolyn Sessions (LDOE and PARCC) again. Not surprisingly, all three spoke strongly against the sub-committee members’ proposed changes to the current Louisiana Common Core Geometry Standards, and once again, I feel very strongly that these people had absolutely no place at these discussions.

 

Why are we conducting a review if the same people who brought us Common Core are invited to a seat at the table and are encouraged to influence the committee in a particular direction in which they benefit?

 

As I read this account, I wonder why advocates for CCSS are so desperate? Why are they fearful of an independent review by qualified math teachers? Why do they try to control any honest critique? What do they have to gain or lose?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Louisiana, Testing

David Coleman Tells Newman Society to Go Slow with Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2015 //
27

This is an interesting development. David Coleman was the architect of the Common Core; Arne Duncan used Race to the Top to push it into almost every public school in the United States, without any prior field testing.

 

Now Coleman tells the Cardinal Newman Society that Catholic schools should not abandon their own core religious values. Did he ever tell public schools to go slowly?

 
Catholic is our core

 
Cardinal Newman Society

 

Editorial: Catholic Schools Should Proudly Keep ‘Catholic’ as Their Core

 

December 14, 2015

 

 

Common Core co-developer David Coleman says that Catholic schools should have the “moxie” to preserve and celebrate their Catholic identity and emphasis on the liberal arts — and The Cardinal Newman Society wholeheartedly agrees.

 

Today the Newman Society published two reports from our exclusive interview with Mr. Coleman , who not only helped write the Common Core Standards but also is CEO of The College Board, which is revising its college entrance exam (SAT) to reflect the Common Core. Although Mr. Coleman supports the Common Core, his comments to the Newman Society reinforce our consistent position that Catholic schools must have non-negotiable standards of Catholic identity and emphasis on the liberal arts. They should not compromise those standards for any reason, including conformity to sweeping school reforms.

 

Moreover, there is no need to rush into the Common Core Standards in Catholic education, even if educators find some value in them. Observe and see what works, reject what doesn’t. Mr. Coleman praises religious liberal arts education and says that students in traditional Catholic schools — even those in the growing number of classical education programs — have no need to worry about getting lower SAT scores on his revised exams. Certainly Catholic educators have no reason to fear falling behind public schools.

 

Changing curricula, textbooks, testing and literature standards in order to “keep up” with the Common Core is not in the best interest of Catholic schools and the students and families they serve. The Cardinal Newman Society works with wonderful Catholic schools across the country that continue to have great success providing a traditional liberal arts education with a strong Catholic mission.

 

It’s time for Catholic educators to “be proud of what you have to offer, which is different,” as Mr. Coleman said. Let’s stand in confidence with what we know and believe.

 

Please join with us in promoting faithful Catholic education by forwarding this email on to a family member or friend.

 

 

The Cardinal Newman Society
9720 Capital Court, Suite 201
Manassas, VA 20110

 

 

alert@CardinalNewmanSociety.org
Ph: 703-367-0333 Fx: 703-396-8668

Categories Common Core

Paul Lauter Explains the Original Purpose of Close Reading

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
24

Paul Lauter is an emeritus professor of literature at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is general editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature.

He followed the discussion of Eric Brandon’s post about close reading and wrote this response.

 

 

 

It’s fascinating to me to see reproduced in this discussion much of the argument about the New Criticism that took place during the 1960s and 70s. In the dim past, I studied with Cleanth Brooks, one of the main architects of the New Criticism, and co-editor of “Understanding Poetry,” perhaps THE most influential of New Critical texts. Mr. Brooks did indeed teach us to read closely. That meant, first, understanding what the words meant, and that often required looking them up so that we could appreciate the range of meanings, and ambiguities, embedded in them. The Oxford English Dictionary was our main tool, but any dictionary was useful. Just to take one example, the word “deferred,” as in “What happens to a dream deferred?” I can imagine, indeed have had, an extended discussion about the relevance of the various meanings of “defer” to the Langston Hughes poem.

 
But second, Mr. Brooks also wanted us to be aware of what the “music” of the poetry suggested or revealed. Take Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident” (which I won’t reproduce here—it’s on line). It is quite deliberately set in a sing-songy, children’s rhythm and rhyme pattern. But then the last line and a half of stanza two shatters that childish peace: “but he poked out/ His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’” That is, from my point of view, apparently “simple,” but in fact one of the most brilliant pieces of modern poetry in terms both of its diction and its implications with respect to racial politics.

 
That said, New Criticism had serious limitations and biases, and the attack on it insisted that we needed to reintroduce contexts, historical and cultural detail, in order fully to appreciate or more richly to understand a poem or a story or a movie. The last two weeks of the course I took with Mr. Brooks were taught by the poet Delmore Schwartz, and he wanted us to write a very different kind of paper, one that made use of historical contexts to explore a text. I wrote on Marvell’s “The Mower Against Gardens,” and to do so I learned more than I ever wanted to know about English and French garden styles, the enclosure movement, and how these shaped the ways people from different classes perceived gardens and gardening. I don’t recommend this as an exercise for most of our students, but it’s an approach that would be helpful in looking at a poem like e.e. cummings’ “Buffalo Bill’s/ defunct” or a story like Jack London’s “Koolau the Leper,” just to select two of thousands.

 
My point in this overlong post is that close reading is a valuable skill, whether we’re talking about poetry, a story, a lease, an indictment, or a political speech. It does not, in fact, lend itself to filling in test-bubbles and anyone who thinks it does is simply missing the point. It is also just one kind of reading skill; there are others that draw upon a variety of contexts and theories. As teachers, we should not be excluding anything that is useful in the classroom and helpful to our pedagogy.

Categories Common Core

Kindergarten as the New First Grade

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
75

Due to the Common Core and testing pressures, children in kindergarten are now expected to learn to read. Kindergarten, writes Erika Christakis in The Atlantic, has changed, and not for the better.

“One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. The researchers also reported more time spent with workbooks and worksheets, and less time devoted to music and art. Kindergarten is indeed the new first grade, the authors concluded glumly. In turn, children who would once have used the kindergarten year as a gentle transition into school are in some cases being held back before they’ve had a chance to start. A study out of Mississippi found that in some counties, more than 10 percent of kindergartners weren’t allowed to advance to first grade.

“Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea that the youngest learners might be disqualified from moving on to a subsequent stage. But now that kindergarten serves as a gatekeeper, not a welcome mat, to elementary school, concerns about school preparedness kick in earlier and earlier. A child who’s supposed to read by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5- and 6-year-olds, such as being able to sit at a desk and complete a task using pencil and paper, are now directed at even younger children, who lack the motor skills and attention span to be successful.”

“Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their “work” before they can go play. And yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.

“New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

Peter Greene on Defenders of the Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2015 //
31

This is a golden oldie from Peter Greene that remains relevant today. Actually, it is only a year old. In this post, Peter takes apart an article by Charles Upton Sahm (yes, the same person who wrote a glowing article about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain).

 

Peter takes apart the standard reformer narrative: the Common Core was written by experts (not); the tests are more rigorous, which is a good thing (not); the Common Core was handicapped by Obama’s support for it.

 

“These days The Test never leaves the house without “more difficult” by its side. The implication is always that these new tests are more difficult, more challenging and that’s why they bother people. “More difficult” is a useful weasel phrase because everybody assumes that it’s a legitimate “more difficult.” It’s more difficult to go into the boxing ring against an opponent who’s bigger and stronger than you are. Of course, it’s also more difficult to go into the boxing ring with ferrets crazy-glued to your eyebrows and a dozen angry hamsters in your shorts, but people don’t think along those lines because we wouldn’t actually describe the ferret-and-hamster option as “more difficult” but would instead call it “crazy unreasonable stupid.” By constantly describing the new tests as more difficult, writers keep directing peoples’ attention away from the ferrets and hamsters.

 

“Sahm says that “unfortunately” the debate about the Core is more about politics than education. Well, duh. The Core has been more about politics than education from day one. Why would today be any different. If the Core were about education, the conversation about it would have included educators. But it was created by politicians and businessmen for politicians and businessmen. Honest to Stallone, Charles– teachers have been trying to make the debate about education for several years now, but nobody in power seems to want to do …..

 

“Sahm does a quick recap of the Standard Issue History of CCSS, starting with “A Nation at Risk” and moving through the governors getting “curriculum experts” and as always I’m amazed at these folks who are unfamiliar with how the internet works. So click here to watch David Coleman explain that the Core was written by a “collection of unqualified people.” So, not curriculum experts. (Also– why do we need curriculum experts to create something that isn’t a curriculum?)

 

“This is also the CCSS story that notes retrospectively that President Obama’s support in 2009 was a Bad Thing that created a political liability with people on the Right. This part of the narrative is intriguing; I am wondering how, in a non-federalized CCSS alternate universe, the CCSS ever is adopted. First, in that universe, what mysterious force makes the corporate backers/writers of the Core sit back and say, “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t use every tool at our disposal to get every state to adopt these. If just a few adopt them, that will be good enough for us.” Second, in that universe, why do states adopt the CCSS? I mean– who would be selling it? Who would be going state to state saying, “Yes, it will make your schools awesome and only cost you a gazillion dollars to implement, and it’s totally voluntary!”

 

“CCSS supporters can complain about the damage done to their cause by federal push for CCSS adoption, but without that federal bribery (RTTT) and extortion (NCLB waivers), CCSS would be sitting in a dusty binder somewhere. This is why it’s a political debate, Charles– because it was politically created and politically pushed into states. CCSS has depended on political power for every breath it has taken in its short, wasteful life.

 

“Sahm goes on to tell us what the standards are supposed to do in math and English (he does not bother to say how we know that the standards will accomplish these things, but it’s a short article). He points out that they are not a national curriculum, just an outline of what students should learn. So, totally different things. And he grabs the low-hanging fruit of debunking the complaint about non-fiction vs. fiction…..

 

“For the finish, lets’ quote David Brooks’ lamebrained NYT piece and insist that people who don’t love the Core are misinformed and opposing a perfectly sensible program because of hysterical– oh, that word again. Let’s throw in an appeal to the sensible center, and return to our Rocky image of the Core being battered and bruised but still game.

 

“You know what everybody always forgets about the first Rocky movie? At the end of the big climactic boxing match, Rocky loses.”

 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Reform

John Thompson: A Closer Look at the “Success” in D.C. That Wasn’t

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
8

John Thompson knows that reformers point to the District of Columbia as one of their examples of success. After all, the district has been controlled by Teach for America alumnae Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson since 2007. They own whatever successes and not-successes that occurred over the past eight years. The centerpiece of their claims of success is NAEP scores, which are up.

 

In this post, Thompson identifies the flaws in the narrative of success. Thompson lauds John Merrow for critiquing the narrative of a district he once held up as an exemplar of successful reform. Merrow asked, in his post, why anyone was celebrating Kaya Henderson’s five-year anniversary in the wake of the disastrous scores on the Common Core PARCC tests, which showed a district where academic performance was dismal.

 

Thompson reviews the NAEP scores, using Rick Hess’s data.

 

Hess cites overall gains in NAEP growth under Rhee and Henderson, but those same NAEP studies actually support the common sense conclusion that the numbers reflect gentrification. Hess’s charts show that from 2005 to 2013, the percentage of D.C. students who are low-income dropped from 66% to 61.6%. (In my world, a 61.6% low-income urban school seems danged-near rich.) Per student spending increased by 40% during that time. (The new spending, alone, comes close to the total per student spending in my 90% low-income system.)

 

According to Hess’s chart, the percentage of the D.C. students who are black dropped by 1/8th from 2005 to 2013, and the percentage of students with disabilities dropped by 1/7th. And, the 2015 NAEP excluded as many as 44% of D.C.’s English Language Learners. The conservative reformer RiShawn Biddle calls that exclusion “massive and unacceptable test-cheating.”

 

Even so, as Merrow reminds us, the performance gap between low-income and more affluent students has grown even wider; for instance, from 2002 to 2015, the 8th grade reading performance gap grew from 17 to 48 points.

 

Before Rhee/Henderson, the growth in D.C. test scores was spread much more widely. Because I believe that 8th grade reading is the most important NAEP metric in terms of evaluating school performance, I will cite some of those metrics in support of Merrow. From 1998 to 2002, black 8th grade reading scores increased from an average of 233 to 238. By 2015, they were down to 236. From 1998 to 2002, average 8th grade reading scores for low-income students increased from 229 to 233. In 2015, they remained at 233.

 

Thompson says it is sad that the elites now re-engineering public education are utterly disconnected from the lives and realities of the children who attend those schools or the people who teach in them. They need a reality check, or maybe a course in sociocultural sensitivity training so that they stop stepping on the faces of children and adults whose lives they know nothing about.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing
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