Archives for category: NAEP
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A Question for Mitt Romney

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2012 //
16

Mitt Romney likes to boast that Massachusetts is number 1 in the nation in academics, and he is right. Massachusetts is the highest scoring state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in math and reading, in fourth and eighth grades.

Now, as we know, Mitt is very anti-union. His educational platform excoriates the bad teachers’ unions, that allegedly protect bad teachers and drive down educational quality.

But, wait a minute! Massachusetts has a completely unionized teaching force. How can this be?

Did anyone ever tell Romney that the highest scoring states in the nation on NAEP–Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey–have strong teachers unions and collective bargaining?

Did anyone tell ALEC, which has model legislation to bust teachers unions?

Categories Accountability, NAEP, Unions

A Hero of American Education: Richard Rothstein

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2012 //
3

When writing about Richard Rothstein, I scarcely know where to begin.

He has written several major books. Anyone who wants to understand the challenge of poverty in our society must read Rothstein’s seminal work, Class and Schools.

He was responsible for drafting the EPI paper that brought together nearly a dozen scholars to explain why value-added assessment–or judging teachers by student test scores–was riddled with problems.

I got to know Richard many years ago when he wrote a regular column for the New York Times. We used to meet and disagree, but he never lost his cool, and he never stopped trying to explain patiently why I was wrong. Over time, I discovered, he was right on almost everything about which we had disagreed.

He understands the importance of public education. He objects when people defame public education, especially when they have no facts. If you want to get a flavor of his careful, thoughtful, judicious approach to issues, read this response to Bill Gates’ claim that educational achievement has been flat for many years. Richard Rothstein refuted what he said with clear and persuasive evidence.

For his courage, for his intelligence, for his dedication to democratic ideals, Richard Rothstein joins our honor roll as a hero of American public education.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Honor Roll, NAEP

Jeb Bush: There Should Be No Public Sector Unions

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2012 //
9

Jonathan Pelto reports on Jeb Bush’s recent visit to Connecticut. While there, he saluted the “reforms” pushed through the legislature by Governor Dannell Malloy, especially his efforts to curb teachers’ tenure and seniority. And he boasted about Florida’s achievement (he didn’t mention the class size reduction initiative, which voters approved and he tried to roll back). And choice, choice, choice!

Funny that no one mentioned that Connecticut is one of the top two or three states in the nation on NAEP, even though it has strong teachers’ unions, seniority and tenure. It is far ahead of Florida. Since when does a state whose students are ABOVE the national average (8th grade math, NAEP) take lessons from one that is well below the national average?

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Florida, Malloy, Dannel, NAEP

Conservative Pundits Pummel Chicago Students

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2012 //
12

Jersey Jazzman calls out the conservative pundits who, in an effort to embarrass Chicago teachers,try to show how awful student perormance is in that district and paint it in the worst possible light.

If they are casting stones, you kinda wonder why they don’t throw them at Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley, whose policies determined what happened in the schools.

What they do is akin to blaming the war in Iraq on the soldiers, not the policymakers.

Categories Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NAEP

Here is My Interview on CNN

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2012 //
36

Many readers have contacted me to ask why CNN has not posted Randi Kaye’s interview with me, rebutting Michelle Rhee’s assertions.

This reader, Michael Brocoum, made a copy of the interview and posted it on Youtube. Here it is.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interview began with a question about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (you will note that it is misspelled by CNN as the National Assessment of Educational Process). I don’t recall the precise wording, but the question went like this:

“You claim that test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history, but how do you explain that the scale score for fourth grade reading is only 221? That’s 221 out of 500. That’s less than 50%. Isn’t 50% a failing grade?”

I then tried to explain that scale scores don’t work like that, that the question itself was a completely erroneous interpretation of scale scores. NAEP has a vertical scale, and scale scores in the 4th grade are lower than in the 8th grade. They can’t be converted into a grade in the way that Randi Kaye asserted, although they are useful as measures of progress.

Consider this: the average scale score for 4th grade is 221, but students scoring at the 90th percentile–our top students–have a scale score of 264. By Randi Kaye’s fallacious reasoning, they are failing too! In 8th grade reading, the students at the 90th percentile had a scale score of 307 (on a scale of 500). She would convert that to a grade of 61, which is borderline failing.

Wouldn’t you think that the editor or research staff at CNN would have prevented Randi Kaye from making such absurd assertions?

But it was of a piece with all the questions that followed. I felt as if I were being interrogated by someone who worked for StudentsFirst, not by a reporter seeking to ascertain either my views or the basic facts.

Rhee said at the outset of my interview that the answer to what she thinks is the terrible performance of our schools is merit pay. So Randi Kaye drilled in on that with two questions (one of them was dropped from the show before it aired). She ended up with a quote from someone named Lucas who said he wanted merit pay. That wasn’t exactly definitive, since I was able point out that merit pay has been tried again and again and has always failed to make a difference.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Tell the Truth about American Education (Math)

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2012 //
16

So-called reformers say again and again that the U.S. education system is a failure and that academic performance is declining.

What they never tell you is that the test scores of American students are at their highest point in history, as recorded on the only longitudinal measure of performance, the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Maybe the reformers don’t know that. You can educate them with facts.

In an earlier post, I reported the reading scores. The gains in reading have been slow, steady, and significant.

In mathematics, the gains have been large.

There are two different versions of NAEP.

One is called the long-term trend trend, and it reports the scores on tests that have been given from 1973 to 2008.

The long-term trend tests hardly ever change, so they provide a consistent yardstick over decades.

The other is called “main NAEP,” and it has been reported periodically since 1990 or 1992 (depending on the subject).

Unlike the long-term trend NAEP, main NAEP gets revised and updated, yet still has a consistent trend for academic performance over the past 20 years.

Main NAEP is now given every other year; the long-term trend NAEP is given every four years.

Here are the long-term trend data for mathematics. Remember, same test given every four years from 1973 to 2008:

White students: Age 9, up 25 points; age 13, 16 points; age 17, up 4 points.

Black students: Age 9, up 34 points; age 13, up 34 points; age 17, up 17 points.

Hispanic students: Age 9, up 32 points; age 13, up 29 points; age 17, up 16 points.

On the main NAEP, from 1990 to 2011, here are the data:

White students: fourth grade, up 49 points; eighth grade: up 23 points.

Black students: fourth grade, up 36 points; eighth grade, up 25 points.

Hispanic students: fourth grade, up 29 points; eighth grade, up 24 points.

Asian students: fourth grade, up 29 points; up 28 points.

Don’t let anyone tell you that American education is failing and declining. It’s not true. 

Share this.

Source: “The Nation’s Report Card Mathematics 2011: National Assessment of Educational Progress,” U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.

“The Nation’s Report Card: NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress, Reading 1971-2008; Mathematics 1973-2008,” U.S. Department of Education

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, NAEP

Stop the Lies about U.S. Education (Reading)

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
17

I get so tired of reading about the “decline” and “failure” of American education.

It is not true.

A reader wrote the other day to say that NAEP scores in reading have been flat since 1971. She read it somewhere.

I went to the NAEP reports, the ones produced by the federal government, and here are the facts about NAEP reading.

Sources:” The Nation’s Report Card Reading 2011″; “The Nation’s Report Card Mathematics 2011”; both printed in Washington, D.C., by U.S. Department of Education. Also “The Nation’s Report Card: Trends in Academic Progress, Reading 1971-2008, Mathematics 1973-2008”

Share them:

On the long-term trend NAEP, which goes from 1971-2008:
White students age 17 gained 4 points from 1971-2008
Black students age 17 gained 28 points from 1971-2008
Hispanic students age 17 gained 17 points from 1971-20082008 is last date that long-term NAEP was given.

There is also Main NAEP, which has been given since 1992.

Only given to 4th and 8th grade, not to 17-year olds.
Improvement for all groups in this 20 year period, from 1992-2011.
Whites in 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 29% to 22%
Blacks in 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 68% to 51%
Hispanics: 4th grade: % below basic dropped from 62% to 49%.

Don’t believe everything you read. I am quoting from government documents.

The gains on NAEP reading are incremental but significant.

The gains on NAEP math are dramatic.

Reading changes more slowly than math, because math is taught in school, and reading reflects both home and school.
Categories Accountability, NAEP

Arne Duncan Praises Tennessee and Race to the Top

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
17

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had a story in the Huffington Post extolling his work in building respect for the teaching profession.

He has accomplished this, he says, by insisting that teachers be evaluated based on the test scores of their students.

Exhibit A of his success, he says, is Tennessee. Mr. Duncan relies on a report by Kevin Huffman, the state commissioner of education (former PR director for TFA, now employed by one of the nation’s most conservative governors).

The report says that since Tennessee won Race to the Top funding in 2010, it has seen remarkable results because it is now using test scores as 50% of teachers’ evaluations.

Leave aside for the moment the fact that leading researchers (like Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University and the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association) say that these value-added measures are inaccurate, unreliable, and unstable.

It is simply bizarre to boast about a one-year change in state test scores. It has long been obvious that state test scores are less reliable than NAEP and that any real change requires more than one year of data as evidence of anything.

According to NAEP, the scores for Tennessee in both reading and math were flat from 2009-2011. Perhaps Secretary Duncan should wait for the release of the 2013 NAEP  before boasting about the dramatic gains in Tennessee.

In the meanwhile, I urge Secretary Duncan and his staff, and Commissioner Huffman, to read the joint statement of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association on value-added testing and its misuse in evaluating teachers. It is called “Getting Teacher Evaluation Right.” I am sure that the Secretary agrees that policy should be informed by research.

Here is the executive summary:

Consensus that current teacher evaluation systems often do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making has led to a range of new approaches to teacher evaluation. This brief looks at the available research about teacher evaluation strategies and their impacts on teaching and learning.

Prominent among these new approaches are value-added models (VAM) for examining changes in student test scores over time. These models control for prior scores and some student characteristics known to be related to achievement when looking at score gains. When linked to individual teachers, they are sometimes promoted as measuring teacher ―effectiveness.‖

Drawing this conclusion, however, assumes that student learning is measured well by a given test, is influenced by the teacher alone, and is independent of other aspects of the classroom context. Because these assumptions are problematic, researchers have documented problems with value-added models as measures of teachers‘ effectiveness. These include the facts that:

1. Value-Added Models of Teacher Effectiveness Are Highly Unstable: Teachers‘ ratings differ substantially from class to class and from year to year, as well as from one test to the next.

2. Teachers’ Value-Added Ratings Are Significantly Affected by Differences in the Students Who Are Assigned to Them: Even when models try to control for prior achievement and student demographic variables, teachers are advantaged or disadvantaged based on the students they teach. In particular, teachers with large numbers of new English learners and others with special needs have been found to show lower gains than the same teachers when they are teaching other students.

3. Value-Added Ratings Cannot Disentangle the Many Influences on Student Progress: Many other home, school, and student factors influence student learning gains, and these matter more than the individual teacher in explaining changes in scores.

Other tools have been found to be more stable. Some have been found both to predict teacher effectiveness and to help improve teachers’ practice. These include:

  • Performance assessments for licensure and advanced certification that are based on professional teaching standards, such as National Board Certification and beginning teacher performance assessments in states like California and Connecticut.
  • On-the-job evaluation tools that include structured observations, classroom artifacts, analysis of student learning, and frequent feedback based on professional standards.

    In addition to the use of well-grounded instruments, research has found benefits of systems that recognize teacher collaboration, which supports greater student learning.

    Finally, systems are found to be more effective when they ensure that evaluators are well-trained, evaluation and feedback are frequent, mentoring and coaching are available, and processes, such as Peer Assistance and Review systems, are in place to support due process and timely decision making by an appropriate body. 

    And here is a short summary of the report by Linda Darling-Hammond.

Categories Accountability, Darling-Hammond, Linda, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NAEP, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

How Rhee Cons the Innocent

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2012 //
6

A reader submitted this post:

http://backburner-nkk.blogspot.com/2011/08/ive-been-conned.html

It tells the now-familiar story of how an unwary person was conned by Michelle Rhee’s Students First. The reader was going through her email, and along came a “puppies-and-kittens” petition from Change.org, and “Click!”

Too late: “And suddenly, there it was…the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the Trojan horse of all Trojan horses: Join the Fight to Save Great Teachers,  a petition initiated by Students First, the education policy lobby run by faux education expert, Michele Rhee.  Remember her?  The mythologized Bee Eater who got results in the Washington, D.C. schools, and then quickly ducked out when her mayoral patron was evicted from office?”

This blogger was repentant but not fooled:

Here’s what Students First says they’re for which sounds a lot like “kittens and puppies” at first blush:
  • Elevating the teaching profession by valuing teachers’ impact on students;
  • Empowering parents with real choices and real information; and
  • Spending taxpayers’ money wisely to get better results for students.
But Students First (SF) perpetuates a fraud on families through smoke and mirrors:
  • SF narrowly defines the value of teachers’ impact on students, equating impact with large scale test scores.  It devalues the impact of teachers’ relationships with students and their families by minimizing the effects of teacher experience and the trust that families build with teachers over time. It fails to recognize the strength and local knowledge that comes from commitment of and by the school community.
  • SF says that choice is good but is blind to the information on the demographic consequences of school choice. A National Education Policy Center study suggests that charters actually increase segregation of students. For many children excluded by charters through “cherry-picking” and “counseling out” there is no choice if they are to get the supports they need. And the children who are disproportionately affected by these tactics? The poor, those with disabilities, English language learners, the very children SF claims to be helping.
  • SF promotes responsible use of taxpayers’ money, but ignores the shell games played by commercial charter operators to profit at public expense.  Hedge fund investors capitalizing on the “crisis in education” have joined the fray.  Public school districts lose in this tug-of-war for resources.
Earlier today, another reader sent in a comment and chastised me for my description of D.C. test scores under Rhee. He said I should have written about the change in test scores during her tenure in office, not just the fact that D.C. has the largest achievement gaps for black and Hispanic students of any city in the nation. He was right.
So I looked up the scores  in fourth grade reading, which Rhee says is a disgrace to the nation, and recorded the changes over time in her district. This is what happened on her watch. The scores of higher-income students went up significantly from 2007-2011. The scores of lower-income students were flat from 2007-2011. The scores of white students, black students, and Hispanic students were flat from 2007-2011. Why is she telling the nation how to improve achievement when she didn’t do it?
Diane
Categories Education Reform, NAEP, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Romney’s Absurd Claims

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2012 //
10

Mitt Romney is out on the campaign trail, pushing vouchers and charters and online learning and for-profit schools and larger class size as the answers to our “failing” public schools.

I wish someone would give him some actual facts to work with. Are our schools failing? No, they are  not.

According to the latest federal data, the high school graduation rate is now at the highest point in our history for every group: for white students, black students, Hispanic students, low-income students, middle-income students, and high-income students.

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, test scores in reading and math are at their highest point in our history. Forgive me if I quote an earlier blog from this site:

“Proficient [on NAEP] is akin to a solid A. In reading, the proportion who were proficient in fourth grade reading rose from 29% in 1992 to 34% in 2011. The proportion proficient in eighth grade also rose from 29% to 34% in those years. In math, the proportion in fourth grade who were proficient rose from 18% to 40% in the past twenty years, an absolutely astonishing improvement. In eighth grade, the proportion proficient in math went from 21% in 1992 to an amazing 35% in 2011.”

“When the scores are broken out by race, you can really see dramatic progress, especially in math. In 1992, 80% of black students in fourth grade were below basic. By 2011, that proportion had dropped to 49%. Among white students in fourth grade math, the proportion below basic fell in that time period from 40% to only 16%.”

“The changes in reading scores are not as dramatic as in math, but they are nonetheless impressive. In fourth grade, the proportion of black students who were below basic in 1992 was 68%; by 2011, it was down to 51%. In eighth grade, the proportion of black students who were reading below basic was 55%; that had fallen to 41% by 2011.”

These numbers tell a story not of failing schools, but of steady–and in some cases, very impressive–progress.

Should we do better? Of course. But people don’t do a better job if you keep telling them (falsely) that they are failing. It is important to acknowledge success if you want to keep moving forward.

Mitt Romney tried pushing his education policies at a charter school in West Philadelphia. He probably thought that what he was offering would be greeted with cheers, but he looked very foolish when he told his audience that class size didn’t matter.

Steven Morris, a music teacher at the school, said: “I can’t think of any teacher in the whole time I’ve been teaching, over 10 years — 13 years — who would say that more students would benefit them. And I can’t think of a parent that would say ‘I would like my kid to be in a room with a lot of kids,’” Morris said. “So I’m kind of wondering where this research comes from.”

Romney knew better than the teacher, it seems, because he cited a study by McKinsey saying that class size doesn’t matter. No doubt, he also had heard the same from his stable of uber-conservative think tank experts.

Had Romney consulted a wider body of research, he would have known that class size does matter.

Had he thought about the choices he made for his own children, he would have not been so foolish as to suggest that class size doesn’t matter. I don’t know where they went to school, but I have read that they were educated in private schools. I am willing to bet they had class sizes of 12-18. (A reader informs me–see comments below–that the Romney children attended an elite school where average class size was 12. Wonder how that would work in the public schools of Detroit, Cleveland, Fresno, Philadelphia, and Baltimore?)

Why would Romney propose that children who need as much or more attention as his own children should get less?

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, NAEP, Romney, Mitt, Testing
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