Two nations were influenced by our thinkers and example:
Finland and Chile. Finland learned its lessons from John Dewey. Its
schools are child-centered. It prizes the arts and physical
education. It has no standardized testing. Its schools are noted
for both excellence and equity. It is a top performer on
international tests. Chile learned its lessons from Milton
Friedman. It has vouchers and testing. Its schools are highly
segregated by social class. The quality of education is highly
dependent on family income. Students in Chile are rioting to demand
free public education. No one considers Chile a model. Which
direction are we going? Why? Whose ideas are dominant
today?
Archives for category: International
One of the favorite complaints of the corporate reformers
is that we are “losing” the international test score race. Richard
Rothstein and Martin Carnoy put that canard to rest in a report
released earlier this year.
It did not get the attention it deserved because it challenged the conventional wisdom. Since
the Obama administration’s education policy rests on the
conventional wisdom, and since the privatizers rely on the
conventional wisdom, the report was greeted not with elation but
stony silence.
No, we are not first in the world: by their
calculations, that distinction goes to Canada, Finland, and Korea.
But our average performance is dragged down by the very large
proportion of children living in poverty. When demographics are
factored in, our performance is quite good–not perfect–but not
the disaster claimed by those who have a vested interest in making
American schools and teachers and students look bad. They find:
“Because social class inequality is greater in the United States
than in any of the countries with which we can reasonably be
compared, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is better
than it appears when countries’ national average performance is
conventionally compared. “Because in every country, students at the
bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students
higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be
relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from
the bottom of the social class distribution. “A sampling error in
the U.S. administration of the most recent international (PISA)
test resulted in students from the most disadvantaged schools being
over-represented in the overall U.S. test-taker sample.
This error further depressed the reported average U.S. test score. “If U.S.
adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the
distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently
compared, average reading scores in the United States would be
higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial
countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom),
and average math scores in the United States would be about the
same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.
“A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student
population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than
populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for
the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools
in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the
U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher
than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics,
substantially higher). “This re-estimate would also improve the
U.S. place in the international ranking of all OECD countries,
bringing the U.S. average score to sixth in reading and 13th in
math. Conventional ranking reports based on PISA, which make no
adjustments for social class composition or for sampling errors,
and which rank countries irrespective of whether score differences
are large enough to be meaningful, report that the U.S. average
score is 14th in reading and 25th in math. Disadvantaged and
lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases,
substantially better) than comparable students in similar
post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and
lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as
comparable students in similar post-industrial countries. “At all
points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform
worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a
group of top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea).
Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the
difference in average scores between these countries and the United
States, it would not eliminate it.
“U.S. students from
disadvantaged social class backgrounds perform better relative to
their social class peers in the three similar post-industrial
countries than advantaged U.S. students perform relative to their
social class peers. But U.S. students from advantaged social class
backgrounds perform better relative to their social class peers in
the top-scoring countries of Finland and Canada than disadvantaged
U.S. students perform relative to their social class peers. “On
average, and for almost every social class group, U.S. students do
relatively better in reading than in math, compared to students in
both the top-scoring and the similar post-industrial countries.
Because not only educational effectiveness but also countries’
social class composition changes over time, comparisons of test
score trends over time by social class group provide more useful
information to policymakers than comparisons of total average test
scores at one point in time or even of changes in total average
test scores over time. “The performance of the lowest social class
U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance
of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial
countries has been falling. “Over time, in some middle and
advantaged social class groups where U.S. performance has not
improved, comparable social class groups in some top-scoring and
similar post-industrial countries have had declines in
performance.”
If you read about education, you are sometimes tempted to think that all common sense has departed this nation, its leaders, and its mass media.
They keep looking for quick fixes, miracles, turnarounds, and magical answers as “solutions” to education problems.
Here is Ray Strabeck, a retired school superintendent in Mississippi, who reminds us that there are still people who know what they are talking about and who are willing to speak up.
He reminds his readers of the fads that came and went over his 50 years in education.
He reminds them of the limitations of standardized tests.
As for all the weeping and wailing about how “our schools are failing,” “we are losing the race to nations with higher test scores,” Strabeck has a few wise observations about the goal of “beating” other nations:
I find such a motivation ridiculous. Who first landed on the moon? Americans trained in American public schools. Who has orbited Earth more times than any other nation? Americans who were educated in public schools. Who has probed deeper in the sea than anyone else — maybe excluding Jacques Cousteau? Again the answer is Americans who began their learning in public schools. Solar energy, fossil fuels, electronic technologies, social programs, jurisprudence — and the list goes on and on.
If history is to be examined regarding Common Core, it is a program that might last some four to eight years. Having been involved in public education for nearly 50 years, I have watched this timeline remain fairly constant across the years: both politicians and educators finally conclude that the latest fad is not working, and something new arises they want to try.
What, then, assures good schools and higher student achievement? Economics, pure and simple. Find me a good school, and nine times out of 10 there will also be found a flourishing economy in that school community.
Our plea that good schools bring good industries is a misnomer, a case of getting the cart before the horse. Make sure that parents have good jobs, that small businesses are flourishing in the neighborhood and that people take pride in where they live and one of the unfailing outcomes is good schools.
And he adds:
If we would spend the money currently being spent on Common Core on economic development and sustain that kind of effort for, say, four or five years, we would soon see “good” schools emerging.
Please read the whole article.
Alfie Kohn here chastises the New York Times Book Review for adding its
heft to the conventional wisdom: that our schools are “mediocre”
and need to find some other nation to emulate; that test scores
define success in school and in life; that test scores determine a
nation’s economic prospects; that children must be treated like
“hamsters in a cage” so they cram in enough facts to get those
all-important test scores; and that the only reason to go to school
is to make more money one day. These are what he calls “recycled
assumptions.” They are what I call the stale conventional wisdom.
These ideas are the underpinnings of No Child Left Behind and Race
to the Top. They are ruining the lives of children and teachers.
Left in place, they will turn education into a commodity that one
buys at Walmart or on the Internet, absent any human interaction.
That way: an ugly, soulless future. Alfie Kohn makes this
prediction: “Food for thought? Listen — I’ll gladly eat the front
page of the New York Times Book
Review if it ever features a book that challenges
these premises.” Inasmuch as I have a book that will be published
on September 17, inasmuch as it challenges the dead ideas of the
past generation, I hope he has that repast.
Yong Zhao, who was born and educated in China and is now a
professor at the University of Oregon, reports on China’s
new education reform plans To relieve the pressure on
young children and to encourage creativity, China is reducing
testing, homework, and tracking.
Yong Zhao reports: “No standardized
tests, no written homework, no tracking. These are some of the new
actions China is taking to lessen student academic burden. The
Chinese Ministry of Education released Ten Regulations to Lessen
Academic Burden for Primary School Students this week for public
commentary. The Ten Regulations are introduced as one more
significant measure to reform China’s education, in addition to
further reduction of academic content, lowering the academic rigor
of textbooks, expanding criteria for education quality, and
improving teacher capacity.” Among the kep points in the draft plan
are: “No Homework. No written homework is allowed in primary
schools. Schools can however assign appropriate experiential
homework by working with parents and community resources to arrange
field trips, library visits, and craft activities. “Reducing
Testing. No standardized testing is allowed for grades 1 through 3;
For 4th grade and up, standardized testing is only allowed once per
semester for Chinese language, math, and foreign language. Other
types of tests cannot be given more than twice per semester.” Just
as the Obama administration and the Common Core are increasing the
number of tests and driving them down even to kindergarten
children, the Chinese are going in the opposite direction.
Please leave a comment so that HuffPost readers will hear you.
I made a few changes, adding a new ending.
Charles Blow is one of the columnists in the New York Times that I usually count on to challenge the conventional wisdom and to speak up for the powerless.
Sadly, in this column, he parrots the conventional wisdom and voices the opinions of the elites.
Imagine, he calls the Broad Foundation a “reform” organization. The readers of this blog know the Broad Foundation as the source of malicious policies that are privatizing public schools and destroying communities. Some of the worst, most arrogant leaders in US education have been “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Academy. The foundation issued a guide on how to close schools that is a Bible for the corporate reform movement.
As for the international test scores, Blow should not have relied on Time magazine’s Amanda Ripley. He should have looked at the Rothstein-Carnoy study, which demonstrates that the PISA results were misleading, or the recent article in the UK Times Educational Supplement, where test experts maintained that the scores on PISA are “meaningless,” or considered the more recent TIMSS test, where American students did very well. Or read the chapter in my new book on the myths and facts about international testing.
Why in the world would he enthuse about the Common Core tests, which widened the gaps in New York between affluent and poor, between black and white, between English language learners and native speakers, between children with disabilities and those without? Common Core has no evidence to support its claims. As we see it in action in New York, we see that it is deepening the stratification of society and falsely labeling two-thirds of the state’s children as failures.
The corporate reform assault on American public education rests in large part on the international test called PISA (Programme in International Student Assessment), where US students rank well behind other nations and have only middling performance. Of course, the critics who brandish these mediocre scores never admit that they are heavily influenced by the unusually high proportion of students living in poverty, and that American students in low-poverty schools score as well or better than the highest performing nations. To do so would be an admission that poverty matters, and they reject that idea.
But what if the PISA tests are fundamentally flawed? So argues testing experts in this article in the (UK) TES.
It turns out on examination that the results vary widely from one administration of the test to another. Students in different countries do not answer the same questions. And there are serious technical issues that experts debate.
The article asks:
“But what if there are “serious problems” with the Pisa data? What if the statistical techniques used to compile it are “utterly wrong” and based on a “profound conceptual error”? Suppose the whole idea of being able to accurately rank such diverse education systems is “meaningless”, “madness”?
“What if you learned that Pisa’s comparisons are not based on a common test, but on different students answering different questions? And what if switching these questions around leads to huge variations in the all- important Pisa rankings, with the UK finishing anywhere between 14th and 30th and Denmark between fifth and 37th? What if these rankings – that so many reputations and billions of pounds depend on, that have so much impact on students and teachers around the world – are in fact “useless”?
“This is the worrying reality of Pisa, according to several academics who are independently reaching some damning conclusions about the world’s favourite education league tables. As far as they are concerned, the emperor has no clothes.”
The article cites the concerns of many testing experts:
“Professor Svend Kreiner of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has looked at the reading results for 2006 in detail and notes that another 40 per cent of participating students were tested on just 14 of the 28 reading questions used in the assessment. So only approximately 10 per cent of the students who took part in Pisa were tested on all 28 reading questions.
“This in itself is ridiculous,” Kreiner tells TES. “Most people don’t know that half of the students taking part in Pisa (2006) do not respond to any reading item at all. Despite that, Pisa assigns reading scores to these children.”
“People may also be unaware that the variation in questions isn’t merely between students within the same country. There is also between-country variation.
“For example, eight of the 28 reading questions used in Pisa 2006 were deleted from the final analysis in some countries. The OECD says that this was because they were considered to be “dodgy” and “had poor psychometric properties in a particular country”. However, in other countries the data from these questions did contribute to their Pisa scores.
“In short, the test questions used vary between students and between countries participating in exactly the same Pisa assessment.”
Professor Kreiner says the methodology renders the results “meaningless.”
“The Rasch model is at the heart of some of the strongest criticisms being made of Pisa. It is also the black box within Pisa’s black box: exactly how the model works is something that few people fully understand.
“But Kreiner does. He was a student of Georg Rasch, the Danish statistician who gave his name to the model, and has personally worked with it for 40 years. “I know that model well,” Kreiner tells TES. “I know exactly what goes on there.” And that is why he is worried about Pisa.
“He says that for the Rasch model to work for Pisa, all the questions used in the study would have to function in exactly the same way – be equally difficult – in all participating countries. According to Kreiner, if the questions have “different degrees of difficulty in different countries” – if, in technical terms, there is differential item functioning (DIF) – Rasch should not be used.
“That was the first thing that I looked for, and I found extremely strong evidence of DIF,” he says. “That means that (Pisa) comparisons between countries are meaningless.”
Please, someone, anyone, send this article to Secretary Arne Duncan; to President Obama; to Bill Gates; and to all the other “reformers” who want to destroy public education based on flawed and meaningless international test scores.
Please read
the series of blog posts by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of
the University of Texas on the subject of Chile, vouchers, social
segregation, and inequality.
Chilean researcher Alvaro Gonzalez Torrez has read the
posts about Chile and thinks the solutions are too timid. Here are
his suggestions for what is needed to get free of free-market
ideology:
“I’ve been following the series of three blog posts about
Chile, being a Chilean ed researcher myself. I believe Waissbluth’s
contribution to the blog opens a debate of international relevance
by showcasing the Chilean example in the context of a global
advance of neoliberal policies in education (what Pasi Sahlberg
calls ‘GERM’).
I agree with the (dreadful) diagnosis offered by
Mario Waissbluth in terms of the consequences of neoliberal and
market policies in school education: high social segregation and
low attainment in schools, plus a weakened public image of public
education and the teaching profession.
Sharing the diagnosis,however, I do believe Waissbluth’s (and Educación 2020’s) proposals
to revert this situation would fall short to produce the necessary
changes. I don’t think this is the place to get in a detailed
argument, but I would say that Chile’s problems won’t be solved by
employing ‘market tools’ and ‘special funds’ as change levers.
There’s a need for more radical responses to address the radically
grim scenario of Chilean school education. The idea is to break
free from the neoliberal principles underpinning the Chilean school
system (market, choice, privatisation) that have turned education
into a commodity.
To do so, it isn’t enough to think that ‘we can
play the game better’ than the people that came before us, and use
neoliberal strategies to improve education quality (which is, in my
opinion, what people from the Concertación thought in the
90s).”
