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Tom Loveless Answers Critics about Shanghai and PISA

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
22

Tom Loveless wrote an article criticizing OECD for allowing Shanghai to exclude the children of migrants from PISA testing, thus artificially boosting their scores. His article hit a hornet’s nest.

Loveless writes:

Andreas Schleicher of OECD-PISA wrote a response to my essays, as did Dr. Zhang Minxuan, President of Shanghai Normal University.  Marc Tucker, President and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, joined Mr. Schleicher in publishing a third response in Education Week.  

Here he responds to the critics. 

Please read his valuable analysis of the critiques.

Here are his conclusions:

Recommendations and Conclusion

 

These convoluted explanations place PISA’s integrity at risk.

 

I now elaborate upon my previous recommendation.  The PISA Governing Board, the governing authority responsible for PISA’s adherence to basic standards of assessment, should commission an independent panel to investigate and report on the OECD-PISA’s arrangement with China.  Evidence should include: all solicitations of participation in PISA that were made to Chinese provinces–and their responses; all correspondence and agreements regarding sampling and the reporting of PISA scores, whether the agreements were made with the central government in Beijing or provincial authorities; and a full review of the substance and quality of data that were collected throughout China in 2009 and 2012.  All data previously collected should be released so that independent scholars can conduct secondary analyses and verify conclusions publicized over the past several years. 

 

In the meantime, the ever changing story of PISA’s special arrangement with China continues to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of PISA.  

 

A December 18, 2013 CNN interview featured Andreas Schleicher and two other guests.  The discussion took place in Shanghai.   Mr. Schleicher stated, “There is no question that rural schools in China do better than similar schools almost anywhere else in the world.” 

 

The secret rural data are alive again!  And, we are told, although we will never have a chance to see them, that there is no question what the data reveal.

 

The only Chinese educator on the panel objected to Mr. Schleicher’s assertion and argued that rural schools in China are under-resourced and in terrible condition.  Mr. Schleicher would not hear of it, responding, “If you are at a disadvantaged school in China, your chance to succeed is much greater than in much of the rest of the world.” 

 

Shanghai is back to being representative of China, the secret data have been resurrected, wild assertions about overcoming disadvantage in China are being promoted, and, once again, hukou and the plight of migrant children go unnoticed.

 

China has a long way to go in reforming hukou.  And the OECD has a long way to go in reforming PISA.

 

Categories Accountability, International, Testing

Reader: GERM in Spain

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2013 //
4

A reader describes the impact of GERM in Spain, where she teaches. The Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg coined the term GERM in his book “Finnish Lessons.” It refers to the Global Education Reform Movement. GERM refers to interlocking strategies of testing, choice, competition. PISA spreads GERM. GERM turns education into a competition for test scores, instead of a process of human development.

“Thanks for your blog I have just discovered two months ago.

“Here in Spain we are having lot of troubles in schools and as teachers, due to the policy of our new goverments whose only aim is to reach higher figures in school results without paying any attention to the needs of our students or the increasing difficulties of budgets. During the last year, they have been cutting our budgets and criminalised teachers, they have only paid attention to PISA results, but not in order to solve real problems. So reading your posts makes me see we are not mistaken, and our fight for a public and democratic school is legitimate.”

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

What This Fifth Grade Teacher Learned While Teaching in Finland

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2013 //
44

Tim Walker moved to Finland with his family. They have moved permanently, as Tim’s wife is Finnish. Tim now teaches fifth grade in Helsinki. He experienced culture shock. Here is what he learned: children need time to refresh, teachers need time to refresh. Both groups take frequent breaks during the day. But that’s not all: read on.

Categories International, Students, Teachers and Teaching

The New York Times Editorializes on Teachers and PISA, with Multiple Errors

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
38

Once again, we are treated to a New York Times editorial on education that is a mix of good and bad.

Bottom line: The Times blames teachers for the U.S. scores on PISA. And once again, the Times assumes that the scores of 15-year-olds on a standardized test predict the future of our economy, for which there is no evidence at all.

On the good side, the Times recognizes that entry standards into teaching in this country are far too low. In many states, a college graduate may become a teacher with no professional training or with an online degree or with only five weeks of training (TFA). That is not what the much-admired nations cited by the Times do.

On the good side, the Times notes that Finland has extensive social services for children in its schools. Entry into teacher education programs in Finland is rigorous. Teacher education is a five-year program.

On the bad side, the Times fails to mention that state after state is busily dismantling the teaching profession by eliminating collective bargaining (which Finland has); teacher tenure; salary increments for masters’ degrees; and actively discouraging and demoralizing experienced teachers. To call for an improved teaching profession, as the editorial does, while demonstrating total indifference to the widespread attacks on the teaching profession shows an astonishing ignorance of the political realities on the ground.

On the bad side, the Times never acknowledges that Finland has NO standardized testing until the end of high school.

On the bad side, the Times never notes that nearly one-quarter of children in the U.S. live in poverty, as compared to fewer than 5% in Finland. The editorial completely ignores poverty as a cause of low academic performance.

On the bad side, the Times cites the NCTQ as if its review of course syllabi and reading lists made it a credible research organization, which it is not.

On the bad side, the Times assumes that Shanghai has included all the migrant children in its schools and in its PISA testing, when Tom Loveless has demonstrated that this is an aspiration for 2020, not a reality.

Here is Tom Loveless’s comment on the New York Times‘ gushing praise for Shanghai: “dumb and dumber.”

Here are some tweets from this morning:

  1. @chingos Draws causal conclusions from X-sectional data. And praises Shanghai for equitable migrant ed. Dumb and dumber.

  3. @pasi_sahlberg @nytimes NYT draws causal conclusions from X-sectional data. Praises Shanghai for equitable migrant ed. Dumb and dumber.

  4. @NeeravKingsland @nytimes Bold isn’t the right word. Too bad NYT didn’t do some reporting before it editorialized.

    •  More

  5. Amazingly uninformed! NY Times praises Shanghai for equity in migrant education. Why Other Countries Teach Better

Categories International, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

European Scholars: PISA Rankings Are “Utterly Wrong” and “Meaningless”

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2013 //
16

Professor Svend Kreiner, a prominent statistician and psychometrician at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and Dr. Hugh Morrison of Queens University in Belfast have published studies blasting the reliability and validity of the PISA league tables. They describe PISA’s rankings as “useless,” “utterly wrong,” and “meaningless.”

According to TES (London),

“Professor Svend Kreiner, a statistician from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said that an inappropriate model is used to calculate the Pisa rankings every three years. In a paper published this summer, he challenges their reliability and shows how they fluctuate significantly according to which test questions are used. He reveals how, in the 2006 reading rankings, Canada could have been positioned anywhere between second and 25th, Japan between eighth and 40th and the UK between 14th and 30th.

“Dr Hugh Morrison, from Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, goes further, saying that the model Pisa uses to calculate the rankings is, on its own terms, “utterly wrong” because it contains a “profound” conceptual error. For this reason, the mathematician claims, “Pisa will never work”.

“The academics’ papers have serious implications for politicians, including England’s education secretary Michael Gove, who justified his sweeping reforms by stating that England “plummeted” down the Pisa rankings between 2000 and 2009.

“The questions used for Pisa vary between countries and between students participating in the same assessment. In Pisa 2006, for example, half the students were not asked any reading questions but were allocated “plausible” reading scores to help calculate their countries’ rankings.

“To work out these “plausible” values, Pisa uses the Rasch model, a statistical way of “scaling” up the results it does have. But Professor Kreiner says this model can only work if the questions that Pisa uses are of the same level of difficulty for each of the participating countries. He believes his research proves that this is not the case, and therefore the comparisons that Pisa makes between countries are “useless”.

“When the academic first raised the issue in 2011, the OECD countered by suggesting that he had been able to find such wild fluctuations in rankings only by deliberately selecting particular small groupings of questions to prove his point. But Professor Kreiner’s new paper uses the same groups of questions as Pisa and comes up with very similar results to his initial analysis.

“He is sceptical about the whole concept of Pisa. “It is meaningless to try to compare reading in Chinese with reading in Danish,” he said.

“Dr Morrison said that the Rasch model made the “impossible” claim of being able to measure ability independently of the questions that students answer. “I am certain this (problem) cannot be answered,” he told TES.”

To read Dr. Kreiner’s studies, google his name.

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

New York Times on Gifted Students

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
154

The New York Times has a predictable editorial about gifted students, referring to PISA scores as evidence of failure and complaining that educators are not nurturing the talents of the best and brightest students.

What is notable about the editorial is what is missing:

1. Little to nothing about budget cuts that have devastated most state and district education budgets in recent years.

2. Little to nothing about the billions diverted to standardized testing, which does not encourage gifted students.

3. Nothing about the appalling poverty rates that crush the spirits of gifted students who are living in terrible circumstances. Perhaps the Times should think about their recent series about a homeless child (“Invisible Child”) in New York City, likely very gifted, but living in abject squalor.

4. Not a word about the resurgence of racial segregation, which dims the hopes of children of color.

5. Frankly, the editorial’s assumption that nations with the highest test scores contain the most gifted students is dubious. There is no evidence that the test scores of 15 year olds predict anything about the future economy or the future winners of Nobel prizes.

Once again, the New York Times editorial board demonstrates the limits and pitfalls of conventional wisdom.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, International, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Testing

My Interview on CNN with Christine Romans

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
36

This is a wide-ranging interview with Christine Romans on CNN.

Romans has two school-age children, and I think she gets it.

It only takes about 3 minutes, and we cover a lot of ground.

I say things that are obvious and common sense but seldom heard on mainstream television.

Categories Common Core, International, Ravitch, Diane, Testing

USA Today: U.S. Has a Poverty Crisis, Not a Schools Crisis

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
62

Believe it or not, USA Today published a powerful article by Oliver Thomas, a member of its Board of Contributors, acknowledging that the latest PISA rankings reflect the crisis of poverty in the United States. Our Students in low-poverty schools are doing fine; some analyses place them at the very top. But the more poverty, the lower the test scores.

He writes:

“As researchers Michael Rebell and Jessica Wolff of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, have noted, there is no general education crisis in the United States. There is a child poverty crisis that is impacting education.

“Here’s one data point worth remembering. When you measure the test scores of American schools with a child poverty rate of less than 20%, our kids not only outperform the Finns, they outperform every nation in the world.

“But here’s the really bad news. Two new studies on education and poverty were reported in Education Week in October. The first from the Southern Education Foundation reveals that nearly half of all U.S. public school students live in poverty. Poverty has risen in every state since President Clinton left office.

“The second study, conducted by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, reveals that poverty — not race, ethnicity, national origin or where you attend school — is the best predictor of college attendance and completion.

“Chew on that. The causes of poverty are complex and varied: excessive immigration, tax policy, and the exportation and automation of manufacturing jobs. Yet the list of solutions is strikingly short. Other than picking a kid’s parents, it amounts to giving all children access to a high-quality education.

“Here’s the catch-22. While the only long-term solution to poverty might be a good education, a good education is seldom available to children living in poverty.

“One reason is that spending on education has not kept pace with the rise in child poverty. While poverty grew by 40% in the Midwest and 33% in the South from 2001 to 2011, educational spending per pupil grew by only 12% in these regions over the same 10-year period.”

Unfortunately, the article goes on to praise the Gates Foundation for providing college scholarships to low-income students but fails to recognize that Bill Gates has done more than any single individual (other than Arne Duncan) to promote the idea that we can’t “fix” poverty until we “fix” schools. He has promoted Teach for America, charter schools, and teacher evaluation as the way to “fix” schools. Better to do something about poverty. It is a scandal that the world’s richest nation has nearly one-quarter of its children living in poverty, and the best we can do is to privatize school management and test students with greater frequency.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, International, Poverty, US Education

EduShyster: What Happened to Free-Market Schooling in Sweden

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
3

EduShyster has written a hilarious and accurate description of Sweden’s love affair with privatization.

School choice advocates swooned over the Swedish model.

But something very bad happened on the Road to Utopia.

Read her post and learn from it.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization, Vouchers

Crushing Labor Unions and the Middle Class: Is This the American Way?

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
50

A recent article by business columnist Eduardo Porter in the “New York Times” was titled “Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe.”

This is what the “Americanization of labor policy” means:

“In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Last year, the number was down to 300,000.

“Spain has eased restrictions on collective layoffs and unfair dismissal, and softened limits on extending temporary work, allowing workers to be kept on fixed-term contracts for up to four years. Ireland and Portugal have frozen the minimum wage, while Greece has cut it by nearly a fourth. This is what is known in Europe as “internal devaluation.”

“Tethered to the euro and thus unable to devalue their currency to help make their goods less expensive in export markets, many European countries — especially those along the Continent’s southern rim that have been hammered by the financial crisis — have been furiously dismantling workplace protections in a bid to reduce the cost of labor.”

Cutting back on workplace protections is sure to increase income inequality while shrinking the middle class.

Porter writes that “These policy moves are radically changing the nature of Europe’s society.”

“The speed of change has certainly been very fast,” said Raymond Torres, the chief economist of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. “As far as I can tell, these are the most significant changes since World War II.”

“While most of the debate over Europe’s response to the financial crisis has focused on the budget austerity enveloping the Continent, the comparatively unheralded erosion of worker protection is likely to have at least as big and lasting an impact on Europe’s social contract.

“It has a disastrous effect on social cohesion and a tremendous effect on inequality,” argued Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. “Well-being has fallen all across Europe. One symptom is the rise of extremist political parties.”

“Europe’s strategy offers a test of the role played by labor market institutions — from unions to the minimum wage — in moderating the soaring income inequality that has become one of the hallmarks of our era.

“Inequality across much of Europe has widened, but it is still quite modest when compared with the vast income gap in the United States.

“The question is whether relative equity can hold as workplace institutions that for decades protected European employees’ standard of living give way to a more lightly regulated, American-style approach, where the government hardly interferes in the job market and organized labor has little say.”

This is a model that will ill-serve Europe and which should shame our political and economic leaders. Translated, it means that the rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, and the poor feel hopeless.

The 1% say that charter schools and Teach for America will close the gap that their policies created. They know it isn’t true, but it changes the subject enough to allow them to keep enlarging their share of the pie.

Categories Charter Schools, Economy, International, Teach for America TFA, Unions
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