A few days ago, I named Scott Kuffel to the honor roll for
his courage in speaking out against the state’s arbitrary decision to
raise the cut scores on state tests, thus lowering student grades,
in preparation for Common Core testing. Anytime a superintendent is
willing to stand up for what is right and to defend students and
teachers from misguided policies, they are heroic. We need many
more of them to stop the train wreck that is mistakenly called
“reform.” After I saluted him, Superintendent Kuffel responded with
this comment:

“To those above who state that I am not a hero, you are absolutely correct. I’ve neither made that claim nor asked to be on this honor roll. There is always more that can be done. I’m not going to bore you with the context of the consequences for pulling funding by not taking state mandated tests in Illinois, but trust me, I have explored as many options as possible to direct our district to be non-compliant without jeopardizing essential programs for our students.

“And yes, I do need to make mortgage payments and buy groceries for my family, and perhaps it would be more heroic to disregard personal, professional and programmatic damages and “opt out” of state tests… and it may come to that, but for now, we in Illinois still work under guidelines and laws that would require more than just my decision to authorize said “civil disobedience”. There are many in Illinois who join me in trying to return us to a time of more common sense (and yes, it may reference Thomas Paine), creativity, and constructivism. And believe me, we have refused to take part in several “reform” structures and resource draining initiatives that we believe do not improve our mission.

“So, you’re correct, I am no hero. I’m a superintendent of a public, PK-12 school district in rural Illinois. The hero is the principal who comes in early on a Sunday morning to replace sod on the football field where vandals damaged the turf before graduation. The hero is the school nurses who makes the difficult call home to parents and tends to a scarcely seen scratch on a kindergartner’s arm. The hero is the AP US History teacher who holds study sessions, at 8 pm at night after kids are finished with their practices. The hero is the art teacher who spends her own money for supplies and materials because she knows the budget is dwindling, but the need for the arts is more important than ever. The heroes are the parents who sacrifice time for fundraising and make meals for another parent who just tragically lost a child. The heroes are school board members who take the criticism and complaints for hiring, for spending, for firing, for taking “hard lines” in difficult times.

“The heroes are those who try. They try every day for their “littles” who come with scant learning experiences or understanding of manners. They try for the businesses and realtors in town who pressure for high quality schools because that drives local economies and housing. They try because they believe that what happens today has impacts on tomorrow that we’re never really sure we’ll see.

“And those are the heroes in whom I believe. They are the heroes who keep me coming to work every day. They’ve kept me coming to District 228 for 10 years, and I know they’ll keep me coming for a few more. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the many good suggestions in these previous comments. Scott Kuffel, Geneseo CUSD 228 Superintendent”

Scott Kuffel is the superintendent of the Geneseo schools,
District 228, in Illinois. He has been superintendent of schools
there for five years. When he learned that the State Education
Department had decided to raise the passing marks (cut scores) so
that more students would be rated as failing, he was not at all
pleased. The state claimed it was lowering scores to get students
and teachers ready for the new Common Core standards and the PARCC
assessments. Superintendent Kuffel joins our honor roll because he
fearlessly blasted this callous indifference to the students and
teachers. It is great when leaders show leadership. He wrote to his
parents and community that the State Board of Education
was shoving schools and kids off a cliff. He sent out this public
letter to explain how the state was manufacturing failure:
  Last week school districts across the state
received an email from Illinois State Superintendent Chris Koch
pertaining to the proposed increase in “cut” scores used for the
Illinois Standards Achievement Test ( ISAT) that is administered
each spring to students in grades 3-8. Cut scores are used to
determine a range of scores necessary to assign a student an
overall performance level of “exceeds standards,” “meets
standards,” “below standards,” or “academic warning,” in the areas
of reading, math, and science.
Superintendent Koch stated in his email to schools that
“the increase in performance levels will align our expectations for
our grade 3-8 students with the more rigorous standards of the new
Common Core State Standards that are focused on college and career
readiness.” ISBE staff has made it clear to districts that the
increase in cut scores is part of the transition to the new
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers
(PARCC) assessment that all schools will be required to administer
beginning with the 2014-2015 school year.
The impact of these new cut scores will be
dramatic. Geneseo CUSD 228 staff applied the proposed new cut
scores to third grade math results from the 2012 ISAT tests. This
would change the number of third grade students who failed to meet
state standards in math from 1% to 17%. Similar trends will be seen
across all grade levels in districts across the state. ISBE has
advised school administrators to prepare to have “tough”
conversations with the many parents who will be alarmed that their
child is now performing “below” standards on the same state
assessment that in previous years they earned a “meets” or
“exceeds” designation. Essentially, Geneseo Schools will become
part of a traditional “bell shaped curve” to inequitably sort and
separate students, for purposes no one really seems to
know. ISBE acknowledges
that Illinois’ previous expectations for grade 3-8 students did not
align to the new Common Core State Standards that are now focused
on success in college and the workforce. So, why are schools
wasting valuable instructional time and resources by continuing to
administer a test that fails to produce meaningful
results? Perhaps the
most distressing aspect of the “transition” from the ISAT to PARCC
assessments and the increase in cut scores is the disregard how
these changes will impact the children in our classrooms. Why are
we subjecting thousands of children and teachers to the stress of
ISAT administration for the next two years and the humiliation of a
pre-determined course of failure on the ISAT? How do school staff
and parents explain to a 9-year-old that their failure to meet
state standards is to due to a statistical adjustment that will
enable ISBE to avoid the public relations disaster of a dramatic
drop in test scores with the new PARCC assessment? How do school
administrators explain to their dedicated teachers that they are
doing an outstanding job of working with children despite a
dramatic downturn in test results?
Furthermore, we will continue to administer a
test in the spring of 2013, called “The Illinois Standards
Achievement Test” (ISAT), but this year it will contain 20% of the
questions that we will eventually see on the PARCC assessment, and
100% of the test questions in 2014 will be Common Core-type
questions. So again, Illinois schools see a “double whammy”, this
time in the form of assessment coupled with increased cuts in state
funding. School
districts across the state face historic cuts in state funding
coupled with an overwhelming increase in state mandates, rules and
regulations. The pace of these changes under the guise of
“reforms,” has accelerated at the same time that schools face
unprecedented budget deficits, due in part, to existing state
mandates. This latest decision by ISBE illustrates the complete
disconnect that has developed between the agency and the dedicated
school administrators and teachers who work every day with the
children in our school districts. It also represents a further
erosion of the local control of duly elected school board members,
who represent the very property tax owners who are paying an
increasing percentage of the cost of education while the state
abdicates its responsibility to fund our schools. Most importantly,
it is not good for the children that we serve.