Archives for category: Common Core
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Minneapolis: Scores Plunge Because of Opt Outs

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2015 //
12

According to a news story from Minneapolis, scores plunged at some of the best high schools in the city due to students who opted out of the testing.

 

The acting superintendent is upset by the falling scores, but parents are making their voices heard against the deluge of testing that has overtaken their schools. They are protesting the “reforms” based on test scores in the most effective way possible: by not letting their children take the tests.

 

With so many missing scores, the scores are invalid. Before the students opted out, the tests were invalid and unreliable, not available for review by independent experts. Parents know that the absence of transparency by the test-makers in not in the interest of their children and that the tests are designed to fail the majority of students because their passing score is set unrealistically high. Some parents understand that the tests provide little or no diagnostic information about their children (most Common Core tests provide NO diagnostic information, just a score.) Some are protesting the Common Core,  some are protesting the federal takeover of their state and their local schools. Some are protesting the tests themselves. As more students take the tests, the opt out movement will grow.

Categories Common Core, Minneapolis, Opt Out, Parents, Students, Testing

A White Suburban Mom Responds to Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
20

Arne Duncan once made an insulting comment about “white suburban moms” who got angry about Common Core tests because they were disappointed to learn that their child was not as brilliant as they believed.

This white suburban mom has written a response to Arne.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Parents, Standardized Testing, Testing

California: A Teacher, Living in Fear

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2015 //
25

I posted about the state of education in California, where Governor Jerry Brown pushed through a tax increase to benefit schools, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson suspended the stakes attached to tests while the Common Core is phased in, and where there have been thus far no negative consequences attached to the new regime of Common Core and its assessments. Several teachers wrote to complain that the post was far too positive, so I changed the title to a question rather than a statement. As backdrop remember that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed the education budget by many billions and appointed charter advocates to a majority of seats on the state board. The California Charter Schools Association is politically active, supporting candidates who support their agenda.

 

This comment was posted, without a name attached.

 

 

I am not even at liberty to write what I know or feel comfortable to share what I have experienced for the fear of what “they: will do to me (yes, I know, nothing can happen to me, truth is a defense to defamation claims etc., but the fear and paranoia persists).

 

I have taught on the East Coast (not comfortable even sharing which city) and extreme necessity led me to CA.

 

WHATEVER YOU ARE IMAGINING in CA as “BAD”, it is worse than that. The corporate takeover is beyond insidious. This is happening in rural communities—and most CA is THAT– where people outside the state don’t even know about the worst exploitations that are going on, where principals are just figureheads, and consultants from LA and Silicon Valley are hired at unconscionable rates. The parents are often illiterate or don’t know any better in these communities. The politicians are in the hands of the big companies (I can’t even name industries for the fear…) This is the first time I have ever written a comment here. I have no words to express how bad it is. But God is my witness, when the day comes when the fear has subsided, my words will be the brightest light to shed on what is actually going on there. Whatever “negative” articles exist about Success Academies and such, nothing compares to what is actually going on in CA.

 

Thank you for changing the title.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Testing

Joe Dowd of Long Island Business News on Casualties of Common Core

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2015 //
22

The Long Island Business News is all over Common Core. It published an article exploring the money trail that leads again and again to Pearson. Unlike Newsday, the major newspaper on Long Island, LIBN is attentive to the widespread parent revolt against Common Core and the testing associated with it.

In this editorial, Joe Dowd begins with a question:

How would you feel if your kids toiled in a factory run by a British company whose overlords were faceless bureaucrats in Albany?

LIBN’s Claude Solnik’s in-depth probe of British testing giant Pearson reveals that, over the past few weeks, your children – ages 8-14 – were asked to labor long hours during a six-day span without pay or tangible reward. In the process, they contributed to the testing factory’s windfall profits.
Meanwhile the state, which forced this down the throats of our children, took federal money to do the company’s bidding. Pearson not only produces the tests but the preparatory and remedial materials necessary to implement them. We pay for this through our taxes and parental angst.
Our kids received no pay, no timely results – merely the pain of mind-numbing test-taking for hours, answering questions with very questionable answers. Incredibly, this disgraceful form of mind management is designed as an evaluation of teachers, not actually their students.
Common Core: Think of it as forced child labor. Our nation fought for laws that made child labor illegal.

If you weren’t intimidated by a system that does not have your child’s best interest at heart, you’d opt out, right? “No thanks,” you’d say. “I think I’ll let my kids take a pass.”
Tens of thousands across Long Island and the state did just that. Their kids were required to go to school and sit in auditoriums for hours with little to do and no substantive instruction.
Where were our leaders at budget time? Why did they cave? If this system is so broken, why don’t we stand up and stop it?
Believe me: If my kids were of that age, I would have declared snow days in April and let them play and ponder the world from home. I’d tell them that when your government stops being responsive, it’s our duty to change it….

Opt out; demand representation: If this be treason, make the most of it.

Curious that some of the legislators who were strongest in supporting Governor Cuomo’s punitive and mindless teacher vengeance plan come from Long Island: Dean Skelos, the Republican leader of the State Senate, and John J. Flanagan, chair of the State Senate Education Committee. Why don’t they pay attention to the voices of the people they allegedly represent?

Read more: http://libn.com/2015/04/23/joe-dowd-casualties-of-common-core/#ixzz3YZovZtnX

Categories Common Core, New York, Opt Out, Pearson

William Doyle: No Respectable Corporation Would Use Methods of School Reformers

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2015 //
70

William Doyle writes that it is an insult to real corporate reform to confuse it with the misguided methods of those who call themselves school reformers.

Doyle writes:

“It is a mistake to refer to failing education reforms as “corporate reform.”

“No leading company would place the entire foundation of its business on inaccurate, unreliable, system-distorting and often “bad” data like multiple-choice standardized tests.

“No leading company would roll out a multi-billion-dollar national venture (like Common Core) nationally without extensive field-and-market testing first.

“And while much education policy is currently focused on rating, shaming, stressing and punishing teachers, schools and even students based on alleged “performance” on standardized test “data,” according to an article in the April 21, 2015, Wall Street Journal (“The Trouble With Grading Employees“), a number of leading companies including Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Gap, Inc., are realizing that “performance ratings” are counterproductive, are abolishing them, and achieving better results.

“The article reports that the companies “abolished such [performance] ratings after leaders decided they deterred collaboration and stoked staffers’ anxieties,” and quoted David Rock, the director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, as saying that ratings conjure a “threat response” in workers, or “a sensation of danger” that can last for months if they didn’t get the rating they expected.

“The article reports that “companies that have gotten rid of ratings say their employees feel better about their jobs, and actually listen to managers’ feedback instead of obsessing over a number.”

Here is my reaction:

My own view is that the people who think it is “urgent” for them to demoralize teachers and turn public dollars over to private entities with minimal (or no) accountability have honed their message with care. Billionaires, hedge-fund managers, even the U. S. Department of Education share the same vocabulary that portrays themselves as saviors of the poor, as civil rights leaders, as the righteous rich, even as they slander hard-working teachers, close beloved community schools, and promote privatization and segregation.

“I confess that I am guilty of calling these people “corporate reformers” because I can’t think of a better term. Maybe “privatizers” works better. Some call them “deformers,” others call them “privateers.” What do you think?

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Standardized Testing

Psychologist: The Common Core Tests Cannot Be Independently Verified for Validity or Reliability

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2015 //
62

A reader, Charlene Williams, who holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, sent the following comment in response to this post about the vocabulary used on one of the Common Core tests:

 

This speaks to one of the essential issues in the current high stakes testing debacle. Why the Pearson, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced testing is unscientific and unethical. I am a psychologist, faculty at UCLA, and a mother in California. I hadn’t heard about these concerns with the current high stakes testing, until after I became very concerned with the developmental level of the SB practice items when helping my daughter (dutifully prepare for the tests).
The 6th grade ELA practice performance task for the Smarter Balance was completely inappropriate for 11-12 year olds, requiring them to toggle between several screens (on small Ipad screens), and choose multiple pieces of evidence to evaluate, select, paraphrase, compare and contrast, as well as write a multiparagraph essay. Never mind that while practicing, toggling back to the articles caused the students’ written work on the essay to be erased (lost).

 
Why the current high stakes testing is unscientific:
1) There is no proven Construct Validity (does your test measure what you think it measures)
2) Cut scores are determined by an unknown (arbitrary) process- labeling children as proficient, or failing appears to not be based on any scientific process. It is not scientific to arbitrarily decide what levels of your test scores actually mean in the real world. Scientific measurement requires cross-validation with external measures that provide evidence for your claims (like grades, or independent in-depth measures of children’s educational achievement in a a smaller sample with highly experienced evaluators).
3) Computer adaptive tests- there have been many concerns raised about how item difficulty has been decided. Children continue to progress on these tests if they continue to get a certain number the most recent answers correct. Educational measurement specialists (true academically trained professionals) and parents and children have observed that very often items following very difficult questions are significantly easier. This raises concerns that children’s scores are artificially deflated by unscientifically determined item difficulty determinations.
4) Inter-rater reliability- No checks exist to independently determine whether the scoring administered by these testing companies has truly reliable and valid measurements of children’s answers (see Todd Farley http://www.bkconnection.com/static/Making_the_Grades_EXCERPT.pdf )
Most importantly, the Pearson, PARCC, and Smarter Balanced testing is unscientific because they violate the basic rule of science. The assessments are not verifiable, because they are not permitted to be subject to independent scientific evaluation. Their validity cannot be proven nor disproven. Under the guise of “test security” companies use copyright laws so extreme they prevent true scientific evaluation of the validity of these tests, by scientists with expertise in the fields of Education, Psychology, and related fields.
So I am deeply concerned that the profit-driven testing business is using unscientific (and expensive) testing which is portrayed to the public as if it’s truth, with high stakes ramifications on children, teachers, and our public education system. As stakeholders and parents, we need to demand accountability, real science, and an ethical separation between profit-driven educational businesses and the true scientifically-based education and measurement. For the sake of our children, our teachers, and our educational system which is truly one of the foundations of our democratic country.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Testing

California Parent Thanks Leonie Haimson

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2015 //
16

Leonie Haimson is a national treasure. She founded a group called Class Size Matters, which advocates for reduced class size. She is an unpaid worker for kids in Néw York and across the nation. She is also an expert on data-mining and student privacy. Through her research and testimony, she informed parents in seven states about the $100 million committed by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation to create inBloom, a vast data mining plan. Once exposed, arents protested, state after state withdrew and inBloom collapsed.

Here is a public letter from a parent to Leonie Haimson:

The California parent wrote:

Leonie Haimson’s Opt Out Message Rang Out Loud and Clear on the West Coast

—What a small but mighty group can do—

—RestorePVEducation —

We had the privilege of hearing Leonie Haimson speak on April 12th in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Leonie spoke to the privacy issues, data mining and high stakes testing.

Parents heard loud and clear.

Today it was confirmed that 200 students out of a class of 464 Opted Out at Palos Verdes High School’s 11th grade class. Only approximately 40% are taking the SBAC.

Palos Verdes High School has a 98% rate of students going on to college.
We are already ‘College Ready’.

If Smarter Balanced thinks that CA parents have already been dumbed-down, think again.

Parents and community are waking up to the Smarter Balanced profiteering scenario and they don’t like what they are finding out.

Parents here questioned “Where is the Smarter Balanced Privacy Policy?” only to find out from Leonie that there is none. Absolutely no Privacy Policy to be found. How reassuring

Parents are questioning why Smarter Balanced has ‘locked out’ the public, school boards, administrators, parents and community from any information regarding the Smarter Balanced Executive Committee, its’ elections, decisions, agendas, minutes, etc.

There is no way to access the SB website for any of this type of information since September 1, 2014.

Yet Smarter Balanced is dictating policy decisions, lessons and testing to 17 states who have paid them with public funds.

Any decisions made by Smarter Balanced are done in secret, while Smarter Balanced functions on public funds.

Housed along with the CRESST center on the UCLA campus, parents fear, and rightly so, that the Hewlitt Foundation CRESST center is accessing our children’s data.

Why? And who else gets to see and use it?

Third party vendors are having a field day with our CA children’s data. We get the Big Data, Big Money Scheme. We don’t want that here.

While our local Palos Verdes Peninsula School District has been pouring funds to meet the unfunded mandates for technology, parents have stormed the Board room questioning why their children are in huge classes or combo classes.

Teachers have only seen a 2% raise over an 8 year period. There is no money for anything but technology to take the SBAC tests.

When asked parents will tell you that 1 teacher is worth a million computers to their child. We don’t need more tech to teach children–we need more teachers.

By 2012, 77 Palos Verdes teachers had lost their jobs, and have not been replaced.

What has come in instead is more computers and software.

Parents get it and will not stand for it any longer.

Thanks Leonie Haimson for bringing your message to CA. We are starting our chapter of Parents Across America.

Watch out Smarter Balanced–here we come!

Categories Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Opt Out, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology, Computers, Testing

Heidi Hayes Jacobs: Don’t Just Sit on Your Plinth!

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2015 //
27

Heidi Hayes Jacobs has surmised that this is an ominous situation. Before you go into a paroxysm of laughter, remember that life is ephemeral.

If you wonder why the outbreak of clamorous verbiage, please note that Jacobs has collected some of the unusual words that appeared on the 6th grade Common Core test in Néw York.

She writes:

“Arguably there is universal admiration for a command of vocabulary, but the thought of eleven and twelve year olds wrestling with these words in a timed pressure cooker suggests an “ominous situation”.

“What were these test makers thinking? Perhaps they yearn to design those SAT exams for seniors. The sobering fact that the results will have a direct impact on how a teacher is evaluated points to a profound disconnect.”

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing

Nick Kristof: Corporate Reform Has Failed, Time to Focus on the Early Years

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
70

This is quite a remarkable admission. Nicholas Kristof writes today in the New York Times that the “reform” efforts have “peaked.” I read that and the rest of the column to mean that they have failed to make a difference. Think of it: Bill Gates, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Wendy Kopp, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Florida Governor Rick Scott, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and a host of other luminaries have been singing the same song for the past 15 years: Our schools are broken, and we can fix them with charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing, merit pay, elimination of unions, elimination of tenure, and rigorous efforts to remove teachers who can’t produce ever-rising test scores.

Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government, the states, and philanthropies have poured into this formula, it hasn’t worked, says Kristof. It is time to admit it and to focus instead on the early years from birth to kindergarten.

He writes:

For the last dozen years, waves of idealistic Americans have campaigned to reform and improve K-12 education.

Armies of college graduates joined Teach for America. Zillionaires invested in charter schools. Liberals and conservatives, holding their noses and agreeing on nothing else, cooperated to proclaim education the civil rights issue of our time.

Yet I wonder if the education reform movement hasn’t peaked.

The zillionaires are bruised. The idealists are dispirited. The number of young people applying for Teach for America, after 15 years of growth, has droppedfor the last two years. The Common Core curriculum is now an orphan, with politicians vigorously denying paternity.

K-12 education is an exhausted, bloodsoaked battlefield. It’s Agincourt, the day after. So a suggestion: Refocus some reformist passions on early childhood.

Wow! That is exactly what I wrote in “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” along with recommendations for reduced class sizes, a full curriculum, a de-emphasis on high-stakes testing, a revival of public policies to reduce poverty and segregation, and a recommitment to the importance of public education.

When I look at the Tea Party legislature in North Carolina or the hard-right politicians in the Midwest or the new for-profit education industry, I don’t think of them as idealistic but as ideologues. Aside from that, I think that Kristof gives hope to all those parents and teachers who have been working for years to stop these ideologues from destroying public education. Yes, it should be improved, it must be improved. There should be a good public school in every neighborhood, regardless of zip code. But that won’t happen unless our leaders dedicate themselves to changing the conditions in which families and children live so that all may have equal opportunity in education and in life.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

First Grade Teacher: How Common Core Tests Affect My Students

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
50

This letter was written by a first grade teacher in upstate Néw York:

She writes:

(Un)Intended Consequences

Today was the first day of the NYS ELA tests. I must state right from the outset that my students do not take these tests. Not yet. But in two short years, they will. And yet, these tests had an effect on my students today and will continue to do so in the days to come. You see, these tests have a ripple effect. The immediate effect is that my students who receive services such as reading and resource will not receive these services for the next TWO WEEKS since the teachers who provide these services are proctoring the state tests. They will also lose services when some of these same teachers are pulled out to score the tests in the subsequent weeks. (They will lose out again when we begin the SLO testing in May, but that is for another post). The longer term effects are more devastating. You see, their education has been hijacked by these tests. Although my “Firsties” are not taking these tests yet, they are preparing for them and will continue to do so throughout their Elementary years.

When I started teaching oh so many years ago, we focused on thematic instruction and integrating all subject areas so that our students had opportunities to make connections. We taught in ways that honored many learning styles, student’s individual differences and developmental stages, along with their individual needs. We understood (and still do) that each child has different intelligences and learning styles. My walls and windows of my classroom were covered with songs and poems, student artwork and artifacts of student learning. My little ones sang and read and played. We taught using literature with rich language and focused on building background knowledge. Children were encouraged to synthesize knowledge and draw conclusions using what they knew and what they were learning. We used a tremendous amount of glitter and paper and encouraged children to express themselves in ways that played to their strengths. We did projects and had lots of hands-on learning with manipulatives. I assessed through observation and working directly with students.

Over the years, we have had to move away from what we know is right for kids to what we are told we must do in order to prepare students for the tests.

At first, teachers knew that we could use those tests to help identify areas where students needed further instruction and where we could improve our teaching. We accepted that our 4th and 8th grade students would be tested and we knew how to prepare them. We focused on those areas and we saw growth. We didn’t like “No Child Left Behind” but we could work within it.

Fast forward to “Race To The Top” and Common Core and the use of the tests to evaluate teachers. Without going into all that is wrong with this, let me just say how it has affected my little ones:

My walls are no longer covered with songs and poems and artwork. That has been replaced with “anchor charts”, “I can statements” and “Learning targets”. We barely use construction paper and I have not purchased glitter in 3 years. There is no time for art projects or creative expression. Children can no longer choose their learning. They write to prompts and must write different genres at certain times. Math is done on paper and manipulatives are few and far between (except when I pull out the old stuff). Reading is “close reading” and answers to questions are to be solely based on the text, without synthesis of prior knowledge.

Assessment is daily and must be documented along with being scripted (because Big Brother is watching). Modules are scripted, teacher led and boring for little ones. We have to have 50% of text presented as informational text. Students have to write essays before they even have automaticity of letter formation. ALL THIS IS DONE SO THEY CAN PREP FOR THE TESTS. My students will take keyboarding in 3rd grade so they can take the tests online…BEFORE SOME OF THEM EVEN HAVE THE PHYSICAL HAND SPAN TO USE A KEYBOARD.

Our littlest learners are preparing for these tests as soon as they enter school. We know that. We know that our colleagues in grades 3-8 depend on us to lay the foundation. We know that our little ones are being used as weapons to help destroy public education. We know that they cannot possibly do well on these tests as they are written 2-3 grade levels above their current grade level and that an arbitrary “cut score” will be determined AFTER the tests are scored to manipulate the data. We know that we cannot discuss these tests and that they cannot be used to inform instruction nor to inform us of our students’ progress. These tests are solely being used to create false data about our students and our schools. They are being used to make our public schools look as though they are “failing” and that our teachers are incompetent. They are creating a pressure cooker atmosphere.

Our Bully of a governor wants to turn our public schools into For-profit Charter schools (which are little more than test prep factories that do NOT have transparency of finances). He is beholden to his hedge fund donors and his big $ donors. In addition, he has publicly stated that he wants to break the teacher’s union. Our children’s education has been hijacked. Our teachers are being abused by an agenda that puts money over what is right for kids. Our society’s future is being manipulated to create a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, both in terms of dollars and education and opportunities. The simple fact that the private schools where the children of the elite attend do not have to participate in these tests or this curriculum, is very telling.

Today’s refusal numbers are encouraging. This is a lesson in civil rights and civil disobedience. We are teaching our children that they have a way of changing what is wrong in our government and our society through nonviolent means. We are teaching them that they have a voice. We are showing them that we can all create change. We are also showing them how to stand up to Bullies. And THAT is a great lesson that no amount of test prep can compare to.

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Standardized Testing
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