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Julian Vasquez Heilig: Testing Does Not Promote Equity

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2015 //
5

Julian Vasquez Heilig recently delivered the Social Justice Keynote for The California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators (CALSA). He posted his remarks on his excellent blog, Cloaking Inequity.

Heilig reviews the racist history of standardized testing and its use to sort people by their socioeconomic status. He refers to court cases brought by civil rights groups in opposition to the use of standardized tests for high-stakes decisions.

Then he proposes an alternative means of assessing school quality, which he calls “local accountability” or “community-based reform,” using multiple measures and reflecting the ideas,, values, and priorities of local communities.

He writes (and says):

“We must press for community-based reforms in the public discourse instead of top-down, privately controlled reforms.

“We can utilize community-based, democratic approaches to student and teacher assessment.

“We must also support stakeholder collaboratives such as community-based charters instead of corporate based charters.

“We must do this because democratic control of public schools drives the health of our democracy!…..

“Community-based reform and policy changes the conversation from educators and local stakeholders as the “problem” by instead re-empowering them as the solution and strengthening the thread that links communities to vibrant, participatory neighborhood public schools.”

Categories Equity, Standardized Testing

Arthur Camins: The American Dream is about Progress for All, not Dog Eat Dog Competition

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2015 //
27

Arthur Camins writes of our nation’s current misdirection and our failure to dream big dreams.

This is an article I wish I had written. Camins nails the paucity of vision that narrows our goal to individual competition instead of seeking a better life for all Americans.

He writes:

“The United States is suffering through the audacity of small hopes. In the shadow of the Great Recession and after several decades of increasing wealth disparity in the United States, the politically and financially powerful have the audacity to call upon the nation to accept small dreams.

“Nowhere is this more evident than in the pathetically small hope that consequential testing and competition — among parents for entry into charter schools, among schools for students, and among teachers for pay increases — can lead to substantial education improvement and be a solution to poverty.

“There were times when our dreams were big. They can be again. The times demand it. A look back at what values and actions have broadened access to a decent life for all can illuminate a path toward greater equity in the future.
Images of workers on breadlines in the 1930s and of fire-hosed civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s catalyzed moral outrage and direct action leading to big dreams and substantive progress toward equality and equity for all Americans.”

He adds:

“To be clear, it was not the leadership, noblesse oblige or largesse of the powerful that led to improvement in people’s lives in the decades after the Great Depression. Nor was it individuals competing with one another for their personal chance to climb the economic latter. It was the values, vision, direct action, and political pressure of the labor movement- embodied in the song, Solidarity Forever- that pushed legislators to enact a new deal to address the needs of a nation that President Roosevelt called, “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished…..”

“Maybe the most important historical lesson is that only mass collective action guided by a moral vision will pressure elected leaders to prioritize the interest of the many over the selfish demands of the few. Hence, the claims of the empowered to be leading the charge to reduce poverty through their version of education reform should be taken with a healthy grain of salt. An additional lesson is that while the seeds of past triumphs for greater equality and equity were planted through local action, it was only when community engagement culminated in national legislation or Supreme Court rulings that progress was fully realized and secured.

“Unfortunately, those lessons have been obscured through decades of concerted propagandizing. Purposeful underfunding has reenergized the canard that government cannot be a force for general wellbeing. Once again, states rights, long the thinly veiled defense of segregation, is morally acceptable as political posturing. We need bigger, better hopes and dreams…..

“We can be better than the audacity of small hopes. The next anthem for equity needs to include the unifying theme: We’re in this together for jobs, justice, and equitable education.”

Categories Equity, Justice, Real Education

Tim Cook: Discrimination Pretending to Be “Religious Freedom”

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2015 //
80

Indiana and some other states have enacted or plan to enact laws legalizing discrimination against same-sex couples. Blogger and teacher Kenneth Bernstein sent me this excellent article by Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, who is openly gay. Here is Ken’s reaction.

Cook writes:

“There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.

“A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Some, such as the bill enacted in Indiana last week that drew a national outcry and one passed in Arkansas, say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.

“Others are more transparent in their effort to discriminate. Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ marriage ban later this year. In total, there are nearly 100 bills designed to enshrine discrimination in state law….

“America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair. That’s why, on behalf of Apple, I’m standing up to oppose this new wave of legislation — wherever it emerges. I’m writing in the hopes that many more will join this movement….

“This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous.”

Andy Borowitz, the humorist who writes daily at the Néw Yorker, put it another way:

“INDIANAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report)—In a history-making decision, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana has signed into law a bill that officially recognizes stupidity as a religion.

“Pence said that he hoped the law would protect millions of state residents “who, like me, have been practicing this religion passionately for years.”

“The bill would grant politicians like Pence the right to observe their faith freely, even if their practice of stupidity costs the state billions of dollars.”

MORE from Borowitz: Pence Stunned to Learn How Many People Have Gay Friends

Categories Equity, Religion

Arthur Camins: The Danger of Bipartisan Agreement on Bad Ideas in NCLB

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2015 //
14

Arthur Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., warns that bipartisan agreement on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind may be bad news.

 

Just as parents are expressing their disgust with annual testing, Congress is close to mandating annual testing for yet another seven years (or maybe another 12 years if past experience is any guide).

 

 

He writes:

 

Bipartisan agreement makes for strange bedfellows as seeming opponents engage in an uncomfortable collective embrace of federal mandates of yearly, high stakes assessment. In the absence of obvious political alternatives some civil rights groups fear that without the harsh light of disaggregated data poor performance will be ignored. Those whose ideology bends their policy choices toward privatization see inevitable failure in the face unreasonable demands as a means to undermine faith in public education. Some are in the campaign contribution thrall of testing companies that stand to gain or loose billions from publically funded testing expenditures. Still others have an abiding faith in the power of rewards and punishments to compel behavior.

 

The continued focus of high-stakes assessment is the education equivalent of building inspectors requiring pipe wrenches to be used by all plumbers, framers, electricians, roofers and tile-setters, while bypassing the advice and needs of contractors and workers. For education, the sure losers are deep sustainable learning and equity.

 

Like building a home, creating an education system is a complex endeavor. As anyone who has undertaken it knows, significant remodeling may be even more challenging. When building or remodeling a complex system, it’s best to have a large, varied set of tools. Choosing the right tool for the right purpose is an obvious but often ignored principle- not least in education assessment policy. Pipe wrenches are great for large plumbing valves, but wreak havoc on smaller nuts. They have nasty teeth that rip and apply too much torque. Selection from a full set of open-ended wrenches would be a far better choice. Needle nose pliers are just the right tool for bending wires for electrical connections, but far too imprecise for removing the accidental building-related splinter. So it is with large scale standardized testing in education. The right tool can get the job done. The wrong tool fails and often causes damage….

 

Let’s start with the big picture. Education has three equally important purposes: Preparation for students for life, work and citizenship.

 

The values principle of equity implies that the design of our education system should accommodate and address the diverse needs of all students. To be clear, equity as used here has two meanings: opportunity equity and lived equity. The former refers to what is often called a fair shot to move up the socioeconomic ladder. The latter refers to a shorter ladder, in which position on the lower rungs does not preclude access to a decent secure life, with adequate food, clothing, housing and health care– what we have come to expect of a middle class life. The United States has neither kinds of equity and needs both.

 

The precision principle suggests the need to develop and select a variety of tools to assess progress and success with respect to all of the purposes and components of an effective education system. To assess education’s how are we doing questions, we need subsystem precision, lest we make the education-equivalent mistake of using meter sticks when micrometers are needed….

 

 

Equitable resources are essential, but they do not ensure equitable outcomes. While constitutionally, much of education decision-making authority in U.S. is delegated to the states, the interconnectedness of the nation clearly indicates that local outcomes are a national concern. Ineffective or poorly funded education in one state impacts another. The periodic National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) serves to monitor outcomes across the states. The NAEP is not given to every student at every grade in every year. Instead, it is administered at the end of grade bands and uses the well-known statistical strategy of sampling. Politicians know this technique well. They rely upon it extensively when they do polling to gauge potential policy positions because querying every citizen is impractical and not needed to get the information they need. As a tool for fair state or large city level big-picture achievement monitoring, NAEP does the trick, but different non-comparable state-designed tests do not….

 

 

ESEA reauthorization should not:

 

Mandate consequential state testing;
Include requirements for student assessment-based teacher evaluation.

 

ESEA reauthorization should:

 

Ensure funds to provide for and measure the attainment of equitable resources;
Provide funds to locales to increase educator expertise in the use formative assessment strategies to improve daily learning.
It is past time for all supporters of equitable education for life, work and citizenship to call out No Child Left Behind with its high-stakes testing centerpiece as a failed Faustian bargain. Choosing the right tools for the right purposes is a common sense starting point.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Equity, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Julian Vasquez Heilig: What Did the Latest Teach for America Study Reveal?

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2015 //
15

Julian Vasquez Heilig, who recently moved from the University of Texas to California State University at Sacramento, is one of the nation’s leading authorities on Teach for America. He has studied their performance over time (see here and here), and he is not a fan. When Mathematica released its latest study of TFA, Heilig read it closely and analyzed the findings. TFA boasted that the study showed that its teachers were just as good as those who had studied education and intended to be career teachers. Some readers gleaned from this finding that “anyone can teach, no professional preparation needed,” that is, if they graduate from a highly selective college and are admitted to TFA.

 

Heilig digs deeper and has a different take on the study. The main finding, he says, is that Mathematica found no statistically significant differences in the groups of teachers they studied. However, he points out, the TFA teachers were overwhelmingly white, and few had any intention of staying in teaching as a career.

 

He notes that the test of “effectiveness” in pre-K-grade 2 is a five minute test:

 

Equally effective at what?…Mathematica utilized performance on the Woodcock Johnson III for the Pre-K-2 results— which takes 5 minutes to administer. Thus, the effectiveness of TFA teachers compared to Pre-K – 2nd grade teachers is based on a five minute administration to capture letter-word identification (Pre-K – 2) and applied problems for mathematics Pre-K – 2). Furthermore, one of the more egregious issues in the study is the aggregation of grades is that of the states that have Pre-K programs, more than half of states do not even require Pre-K teachers to have a bachelor’s degree. The report does not state that lack of a degree was an exclusion criteria and it is explicit that community preschools were included, so it appears than an aggregate that includes not only alternatively certified but also non-degreed teachers worked to TFA’s advantage. Should we really be impressed that TFA teachers outperformed a group that could have included non-degreed teachers? And they do it twice: with kindergarten and with grades K, 1, and 2.

 

What are the lessons of the study? Heilig writes:

 

So the [TFA] teachers were— on average— young, White, and from selective colleges. They had not studied early childhood in college and had very little teaching experience. They reported a similar amount of “pedagogy” (primarily the 60 hours from the five week Summer Institute), and more professional development (as we discussed above, they viewed it not very valuable). TFA teachers also reported less student teaching experience before they entered the classroom. They also were more likely to be working with a formal mentor (I mentioned David Greene’s point about the drain on mentors due to the constant carousel of Teach For America teachers in and out of schools here). As new teachers, they spent more time planning their own lessons, but were less likely to to help other teachers. Finally, TFA teachers were less satisfied “with many aspects of teaching” and less likely to “plan to spend the rest of the career as a classroom teacher….”

 

In conclusion, read at face value, here is the message Mathematica appears to promulgate with the report:

 

We do not need experienced (read: more expensive) teachers when non-experienced, less expensive teachers get the “same” —though not statistically significant— outcomes.
We do not need a more diverse workforce of teachers, again, because TFA teachers, who are overwhelmingly white, get the same outcomes.
Is TFA really in alignment with a vision for providing every student a high quality teacher? Or do they, Mathematica et al. just keep telling us that they are?

 

For myself, I have read many times that Teach for America invites young people to “make history” by serving for two years. And Wendy Kopp has frequently said that “One day,” all children in America will have an excellent teacher. I have a hard time understanding the logic of these claims. If the TFA teachers get the same results as current teachers, how is that “making history”? If most TFA recruits leave after two years, how does that lead to the conclusion that one day all children will have an excellent teacher? If TFA persuades policymakers that teachers can do a good enough job with no professional preparation, doesn’t that decimate the idea of teaching as a profession? If anyone can teach so long as they went to a selective college, how does that raise the standard for teachers? If our policymakers prefer churn, with teachers leaving every two or three years to find their real career, how is that good for students? How does TFA improve the profession? It doesn’t. It eliminates it.

 

For his fearlessness, for his willingness to stand up to those with money and power, for his willingness to present the evidence as he finds it without fear or favor, I place Julian Vasquez Heilig on the honor roll of this blog. He is an example to all researchers of the ethics of his profession. To be an outstanding researcher requires years of study, scholarship, discipline, dedication, and experience. Sort of like being a great teacher.

 

 

 

 

Categories Equity, Research, Teach for America

Davenport, Iowa: A Hero of Public Education

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2015 //
4

Art Tate, the superintendent of Davenport, Iowa, public schools announced at a school board meeting that he was going to break the law by spending more money for his students than state law allows. He said the district has ample reserves to pay for the additional spending. The Legislature imposed a formula that gives Davenport schools less than 170 other districts. Two-thirds of the students in the district are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. Art Tate joins the honor roll of this blog for his courage and readiness to take a stand on behalf of students.

 

Davenport schools Superintendent Art Tate Monday said he intends to “violate state law” and use more money than the state of Iowa has authorized.

 

The move will stave off budget cuts that Tate and the board had been discussing for months.

 

“I am taking this action after careful consideration and understanding the possible personal consequence,” Tate said. “I take full and sole responsibility for the violation of state law.

 

“With this action, I am following the example of our state Legislature, which has ignored the law this year by not providing districts with the state supplemental aid amount by Feb. 12, 2015.”

 

Tate’s address to the board and the audience was greeted with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.

 

Tate said a legislative forum on Saturday, when he saw some of his students wearing T-shirts that said “I’m Worth-Less,” influenced his decision.

 

Three students wore those T-shirts to the Monday board meeting and spoke about the inequity of the state funding system for education.

 

“We won’t stand for our schools being underfunded,” North High School student Anthony DeSalvo said. “We won’t stand for inequality. Our students are not worth less than anyone else.”

 

All three students briefly stood behind Tate during the board meeting.

 

The forum, Tate said, made him realize his personal responsibility as the district leader to take action. The students’ T-shirts, he said, are literally correct….

 

Earlier, Tate had planned for the district to slash $3.5 million from the general fund budget for the 2015-16 school year and $5 million from the next year’s budget.
Several board members spoke in support of Tate.
“I think it’s criminal that we’re put in this position and that our children are made to wear shirts that say ‘I’m Worth-Less,'” said board member Jamie Snyder. “What investment does the state of Iowa think is more important than our children?”
“I applaud you, Dr. Tate,” said board member Ken Krumwiede, who also attended the Saturday forum. He said he was disappointed in the legislators who were there. “I hope you’re all listening out there … you need to contact your legislators to get things changed in Des Moines.”
Board Vice President Rich Clewell said, to much laughter, that he felt like he had “walked out of a board meeting and into a Baptist revival.”
“Although the cost of education might be high, what is the cost of ignorance?” Clewell asked.
Tate said he will make budget cuts with early retirement, utility savings through an energy conservation program, moving maintenance contracts from the general fund to the management fund and curtailing professional development during the school day, amounting to $1.4 million in savings.
“I will be asking no other reductions to programs and personnel, and most notably, I will not be increasing class size in order to reduce teacher positions,” he said.
Tate said he intends to use up to $1 million to support new programs to reduce the achievement gap, to “fight the effects of poverty, and to address diversion programs needed to turn around our out-of-school suspension numbers.”

 

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Equity, Funding, Honor Roll, Iowa, Students

Wendy Lecker: The Challenge of Learning in Chaos

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2015 //
17

Wendy Lecker, an experienced civil rights attorney in New York and Connecticut, writes here about the enormous stresses under which low-income children live and how they impair children’s ability to learn.

 

She writes:

 

A new UCLA report centers on those out-of-school factors that interfere with learning. The report, titled “It’s About Time,” found that community stressors such as economic distress, hunger, lack of medical care, family problems, unstable housing and violence, result in lost learning time three times as often in high poverty schools as in low poverty schools.

 

While the report focuses on California, I have heard identical stories from teachers, principals and district officials in Connecticut and New York. Children in impoverished districts often arrive at school hungry, without coats, socks or with broken glasses. High school students miss the first few periods of each school day because they must ensure their younger siblings get to school safely. Children bring to school the instability they experience in their lives.

 

These are not isolated stories. These are the barriers many poor children encounter every day when they try to learn, and teachers encounter when they try to teach. Before a child can focus on learning, she needs to be fed and clothed and have a way to deal with any trauma she may have experienced the night before. This is why social workers, behavioral specialists, psychologists, counselors and other therapists are essential educational resources. “Support staff” is a misnomer.

 

In the current fevered atmosphere, teachers are blamed for the low scores of their students who live in poverty; common sense has gone out the window. It takes remarkable dedication to teach in schools where children are burdened by poverty, where resources are often inadequate, where the children come to school without coats and miss school because of illness.

 

Lecker writes:

 

One has to wonder why the Obama administration pushes policies that not only fail to correct the inequalities in educational resources, but instead exacerbate them.

 

The UCLA report revealed that poor schools lose three times more instructional days than low poverty schools to standardized testing and test prep — more than four weeks of instructional time.

 

It is now well-established that standardized tests do not improve learning, and narrow a school’s curriculum. It is also well-known that yearly testing is unnecessary, since a child who passes a test one year is overwhelmingly likely to pass the next.

 

Yet U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan clings to the faulty conviction that children must suffer through standardized tests every year so that children “do not fall through the cracks.” How absurd. Teachers know which children are struggling academically.

 

If policymakers were truly concerned with children falling through the cracks, they would make sure that every school had a safety net to catch them. Too often, our neediest children must face life’s harshest realities. It is time politicians stop ignoring how those realities impact our schools.

 

 

 

 

Categories Equity, Funding, Poverty

Paul Thomas: Grit and Education Do Not Trump White Privilege

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2014 //
53

Paul Thomas, a professor at Furman University in South Carolina and one of our most insightful scholars of race and inequality, writes that the narrative that “anyone can succeed with grit and education” is a myth, a veneer to protect white privilege (Thomas is white). The reality, he argues, is that race and class are powerful determinants, more powerful than effort and education.

 

He writes, with data to back up his assertions:

 

Political leaders and the mainstream media feed two enduring claims to the public, who nearly universally embraces both: Doing well in school and attaining advanced education are essential to overcoming any obstacles, and the key to succeeding in school is grit, effort and perseverance.

 

Education appears significant within race, but not the avenue to overcoming racism. Well educated blacks earn more than less educated blacks, but blacks and whites with the same education reflect significant race disparities favoring whites….Rarely do we admit stunning data on race/education inequity. Blacks with some college have similar employment opportunities as whites with no high school diploma….

 

Anthony Cody has now confronted the relentless and uncritical mainstream media fascination with grit in his The Resilience of Eugenics, linking claims about the importance of grit, the ability to identify students with grit, and the push to instill grit in certain students (brown, black, and impoverished, mainly) with Eugenics.

 

Cody’s argument has deep roots among many of us who have argued for quite some time that charter movements such as KIPP and grit arguments are not sound educationally, scientifically, or ethically. In fact, we have demonstrated that this entire package of narratives and policies is essentially racist and classist.

 

Certainly we should aspire to change our society so that education is more important than race. But we are far from that ideal now, and society is doing very little to alter the reality that race trumps grit.

Categories Equity, Race
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