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Andrea Gabor: What to Do When the Testing Madness Ends

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2019 //
84

Andrea Gabor, The Bloomberg Professor of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, is one of the nation’s worthy and thoughtful education writers. Her book about W. Edwards Deming has the best refutation of merit pay that I have read (chapter 9, The Man Who Invented Quality). Her latest book book, Education After The Culture Wars, gathers stories of districts where collaboration, not competition, creates a healthy environment for education.

In this post, she argues that America’s infatuation with standardized testing is waning, and it’s time to find a better way to assess how students are progressing.

America’s decades-long infatuation with standardized testing is finally waning, and for good reasons. Despite years of training students to do better on tests, the performance of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, has flatlined. At the same time, the focus on testing produced unintended consequences, including inattention to important educational priorities and growing teacher shortages.

That’s in part because test performance became a goal in many districts instead of a means to an end and, thus, a prime example of Campbell’s Law, which points to the corrupting influence of using a single measurement as a target, thus ensuring that “it ceases to be a good measure.

Gabor says there is a better way. She describes the work of the New York Performance Standards Consortium as a model.

The country’s best under-the-radar experiments are a useful guide. Chief among these is the New York State Performance Standards Consortium, a decades-old effort led by progressive educators and involving 38 high schools, which won exemptions from all standardized tests except English. Instead, students complete ambitious projects known as performance-based assessments — think mini theses with lots of research, writing and real-world projects in everything from social studies to physics, which students present to expert panels, including teachers (often from different schools) and community members.

Since launching in the 1990s, the consortium has racked up far higher graduation rates and college matriculation ratesfor its schools than New York’s traditional public schools.

The consortium prevailed even as New York became Exhibit A for the nation’s testing follies. New York adopted “Common Core-aligned” tests before the standards were completed, and introduced new tests almost every year — making it difficult to track student progress.

Is she right? Is there a big change coming?

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
13

Laura Chapman has been doing research on the Center for American Progress, which the media views as the voice of the Democratic Party. This may be the most depressing thing you read today. It calls for a return to the principles of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Both failed. CAP wants to resuscitate the worst features of both. Maybe CAP can persuade Arne Duncan to return as Secretary of Education. Then the disaster would be complete.

 

And here we go with the new progressive agenda for schools.

Almost every week Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (CAP) appears on television to opine about the presidential elections. Tanden is a former aide to Hillary Clinton. CAP is supposed to function as a think tank for Progressives, especially Democrats. On July 2, 2019, CAP published: A Quality Education for Every Child: A New Agenda for Education Policy.” The press release asserted: “The Next President’s Education Agenda Must Center Racial Disparities in Educational Opportunity.”

I have been studying this report. It is highly critical of K-12 education. It is also calculated to mislead casual readers. The authors claim the report is “a bold and comprehensive approach to K-12 education.” I think not. Many of CAP’s favored policies endorse two decades of federal demands for accountability. Think Arne Duncan and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).

CAP is on record as favoring teacher unions and higher pay for teachers, especially for those who work in low-income communities. However, CAP is also all-in for charter schools, known to be antiunion. This contradiction is one among others this report. The writers also bury important details in the endnotes. For example, CAP wants students to meet “challenging standards.” The endnote cites the Common Core. In addition, CAP’s website has over 50 articles pushing the Common Core, the latest in 2019. This affection can be explained by the $14 million CAP has received from the B&MGF, main financier of the Common Core, and specific grants: In 2013, $550,000 “for implementation of the Common Core,” and in 2016, a cool $2 million for “enactment of the College and Career/Common Core agenda, and to reduce opposition to it and associated high quality tests.”

CAP’s policy recommendations for the next President are bad news for public schools. The Introduction claims that a bipartisan consensus exists on key elements of education reform—standards-based accountability; teacher evaluations that include test scores of students; and school choice. The authors then say that these three reforms are not the problem. The real problem is that improvements have not been made “at the pace needed to give every student a fair shot at success in college and career.” CAP elaborates on all of these claims in five policy priorities for a new administration.

Applying An Explicit Race Equity Lens To Policy Development. “This means specifically looking at potential impacts on communities that do not identify as white or that have large concentrations of families with low incomes, without conflating the two.” This section is an argument on behalf of increasing opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities, schools, and students. CAP’s discussion of race ends in naming groups who are underserved: Students who are non-white, Black, Latinx, Native American, and some Asian American and Pacific Islander children, students from families with low incomes, students with disabilities, students who identify as LGBTQ, and students who are English language learners.

“A new administration must begin with a comprehensive strategy for addressing disparities in educational opportunity” (ideally) ”coupled with a comprehensive economic development strategy beyond the educational system.” CAP calls for $200 billion to modernize school buildings; a grant program to promote “culturally responsive pedagogy”; state audits of schools and districts for “disparate educational opportunity,” and USDE guidance to state legislatures on equitable funding.

Equitable funding seems to mean “filling the annual $23 billion gap in funding between predominantly white and predominantly nonwhite school districts.” I found the source of this estimate. It is EdBuild. EdBuild promotes “a weighted student funding formula” so that money goes to the school a student attends, aiding school choice, including vouchers. ALEC, the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange has also pushed this system of funding since 2010.

It turns out that CAP as a financial supporter of EdBuild. CAP and EdBuild also receive money from the same foundations: The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Helmsley Charitable Trust; Walton Family Foundation; Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and W. K. Kellogg Foundation among others. CAP traffics in ideas and money devoted to undermining public education.

Preparing All Students For College And The Future Workforce. CAP dwells on the economic return on investment from college and high-value work credentials. The report calls for states with “college-and career-ready academic content standards” (aka the Common Core) to make sure a K-12 ladder prepares students for careers “in the new economy.” Districts should make sure that families with children in kindergarten know requirements “for the future of work.”

CAP also wants “a new federal-state-industry partnership” empowered to identify middle and high school models for accelerated college credit and a meaningful workforce credential. This partnership is also supposed to ensure that career and technical education (CTE) programs “reflect upcoming, well-paid, in-demand jobs” in regions where the programs are offered.

CAP’s thinking about CTE is not bold. It is not progressive. It assumes that labor markets are predictable and that schools should be responsible for job training desired by potential employers. CAP’s policy ideas are vintage 1990s workforce training proposals from the National Center for Education and the Economy. They ignore the civic mission of schools and what life may offer and require of students beyond getting a job. http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Americas-Choice-High-Skills-or-Low-Wages.pdf
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3. Modernizing And Elevating The Teaching Profession. Here is the major claim: “If states and school districts raised teacher pay to match that of other professions, provided training to help teachers meet the needs of the changing student population, and increased the selectivity of the teaching profession, the national narrative about and respect for the teaching profession would shift. A comprehensive policy agenda to achieve this goal should be multifaceted and must ensure that teachers are given the necessary training and resources to meet a higher bar.”

CAP’s discussion of teacher strikes, low pay, and other discontents has little bearing on a “comprehensive agenda to raise the prestige of teaching and improve teachers’ working conditions.” For teacher education programs CAP says: Be more selective in accepting candidates for teaching and explicitly seek diversity among candidates, provide high-quality clinical training and more rigorous coursework of use in modern classrooms.
For states and districts, CAP says: Align requirements for licensure with candidates’ observable readiness to teach; invest in supports for new teachers, such as high-quality induction and mentorship programs; provide dedicated time and support for professional development that improves student outcomes; and identify career pathways so excellent teachers can expand their effectiveness.

There is nothing daring or innovative about these recommendations. The puffed-up “elevating” language comes from a Obama/Duncan 2012 RESPECT program conjured by McKinsey & Company https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-seeks-elevate-teaching-profession-duncan-launch-respect-proSome of the same points appear in CAP’s 2015 report “Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession.” Here is a scathing review of this warmed over Obama scheme from the National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-tprep

4, Dramatically Increasing Investments And Improving The Equity Of Existing Investments In Public Schools. CAP writers note that about eight percent of public schools funds come from federal sources. Title I funding is dedicated to schools were many students are from families with low incomes. CAP wants Title I funding increased and full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Act.

CAP’s big new policy idea is this: “The federal government should appoint a commission to determine a specific set of critical education resources that are typically present in privileged communities but missing from historically disadvantaged schools and districts. These resources could include guidance counselors, school nurses, mental health professionals, art and music classes, or extracurricular enrichment opportunities.” (I found no endnotes or details about who would appoint the commission, with what authority, or how their deliberations might be acted upon.)

CAP proposes federal “public education opportunity grants” as a way to address inequities. This is not a new idea. Such grants are available under Title I, Part A Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies. The grants are for schools with a high proportion of students from low-income families. In 2018, these grants were funded at $15,759,802,000. (CAP does not seem to have ideas on state and local funding other than money follows the student.)

Bringing A Balanced Approach To Charter School Policy. To its credit, CAP does not support for-profit on-line charter schools. It also urges the next administration to “include strong authorizing and accountability policies for charter schools as well as efforts to proactively address the shortfalls of the sector. These efforts should include solutions for pain points, such as issues related to backfilling enrollment during the school year, providing service to students with disabilities, and maintaining transparency in financial operations—to name a few.” (Pain points? Shortfalls? Not a single endnote refers to well-documented and rampant corruption in charter schools. Not one).

CAP is on record as favoring charter schools. CAP’s 2017 “The Progressive Case for Charter Schools,” offers praise for Teach for America and Relay Graduate School of Education. CAP’s 2018 “Charters and the Common Good: Spillover Effects of Charter Schools in New York City” includes this astonishing claim: ”There is suggestive evidence that spillover effects (from co-location) are larger if the charter school appears to be of high quality, (defined) as either having high average scores on annual 4th-grade math and reading exams or being operated by an established, respected charter management organization such as KIPP, Success Academy, or Uncommon Schools.” (Respected? Franchise cookie-cutter schools are great?)

According to CAP, charter schools represent a solution to racial and economic inequities in education. “In too many places across the country, there are not enough good seats in schools, especially for Black, Latinx, and Native American students, as well as students from families with low incomes. A strong charter sector is a critical component to expanding the number of good public school seats, and high-quality charter schools are a valuable strategy to address that problem.” (CAP refuses to acknowledge that charter schools are not legally equivalent to public schools. They are now and historically have been a means to further segregation. “Seats” is shorthand for a calculation used to market charter schools in any community where schools are ranked A-F or in league tables. The enrollments in all schools not rated A or B, or an equivalent system are counted as all of the “seats” that could be replaced by the imagined “high quality seats” in charter schools).

CAP wants the next administration to “apply a race equity lens to public school choice policies generally and charter schools specifically, with a focus on equitably expanding access to opportunities for underserved students. This means that decisions on where to locate schools and programs and how to make enrollment decisions—for example, boundaries, admissions requirements, and lottery rules—should be analyzed with a race equity lens.“ (CAP assumes that school choice is an uncontested and established policy. Notice the absence of any reference to elected school boards. Decisions are “just made” as if from some invisible decider).

“This approach should include a balanced assessment of potential charter growth and the impact on traditional districts. This assessment should always focus on how to increase the number of good seats for students but may imply different specific recommendations in different places and circumstances.”

CAP’s eagerness to endorse school choice and charter school growth is not just in accord with Trump/Betsy DeVos’ policies. It also responds to the wishes of key funders of CAP. For example, the Walton Family Foundation has sent CAP $1,228,705 in three grants for K-12 education, with a 2017 ”special projects” grant of $453,705 for work on “Supporting High-Quality Charter Schools” and “Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act.”

CAP’s report is designed to promote charter school growth and double down on every misguided policy of the last two decades. I have left a ton of references and rants on the cutting floor. By the way, all five of the authors of this Report had staff positions on the Hill and four worked in Obama’s Department of Education. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2019/07/02/471511/quality-education-every-child/

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top

Bill Phillis: State Takeovers Cause Chaos, Not Improvement

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2019 //
1

Bill Phillis of Ohio writes:

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Cleveland Plain Dealer analysis of trends in test scores in HB 70 districts: NO IMPROVEMENT
The state takeover of school districts (HB 70 of the 131stGeneral Assembly) has caused chaos in school communities, fattened the wallets of consultants, but has not demonstrated improved test scores.
The federal government, via No Child Left Behind (NCLB), has created chaos in school communities throughout the nation. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is not much better than NCLB. The feds are attempting to run schools via NCLB and ESSA with no success. Some states like Ohio are also trying to run school districts with no success.
The feds need to help the states implement a system of education in accordance with each state’s constitutional provisions. In turn, the states need to help districts provide equitable and adequate educational opportunities and then butt out of local school management. Communities have far greater capacity to manage their schools than state and federal officials.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Ohio, Privatization, Race to the Top

Alfie Kohn: Why Can’t Everyone Get An A?

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2019 //
33

 

Alfie Kohn has written many books critical of competition and ranking in schools. This article appeared in the New York Times.

 

For a generation now, school reform has meant top-down mandates for what students must be taught, enforced by high-stakes standardized tests and justified by macho rhetoric — “rigor,” “raising the bar,” “tougher standards.”

Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose that next year virtually every student passed the tests. What would the reaction be from politicians, businesspeople, the media? Would these people shake their heads in admiration and say, “Damn, those teachers must be good!”?

Of course not. Such remarkable success would be cited as evidence that the tests were too easy. In the real world, when scores have improved sharply, this has indeed been the reaction. For example, when results on New York’s math exam rose in 2009, the chancellor of the state’s Board of Regents said, “What today’s scores tell me is not that we should be celebrating,” but instead “that New York State needs to raise its standards.”

The inescapable, and deeply disturbing, implication is that “high standards” really means “standards that all students will never be able to meet.” If everyone did meet them, the standards would just be ratcheted up again — as high as necessary to ensure that some students failed.

The standards-and-accountability movement is not about leaving no child behind. To the contrary, it is an elaborate sorting device, intended to separate wheat from chaff. The fact that students of color, students from low-income families and students whose first language isn’t English are disproportionately defined as chaff makes the whole enterprise even more insidious.

But my little thought experiment uncovers a truth that extends well beyond what has been done to our schools in the name of “raising the bar.” We have been taught to respond with suspicion whenever all members of any group are successful. That’s true even when we have no reason to believe that corners have been cut. In America, excellence is regarded as a scarce commodity. Success doesn’t count unless it is attained by only a few.

One way to ensure this outcome is to evaluate people (or schools, or companies, or countries) relative to one another. That way, even if everyone has done quite well, or improved over time, half will always fall below the median — and look like failures.

Kohn quite rightly concludes that the nature of the standards-and-accountability regime of federal policy (No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds Act) requires that most children are left behind, most children will never reach the top, and most children will not succeed. The reliance on standardized testing, normed on a bell curve, guarantees that outcome.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Steve Nelson: Excellent Communities Produce “Excellent” Schools

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2019 //
33

 

We have lived through more than two decades of shaming schools with low test scores, blaming and shaming their teachers and principals for scores that are primarily the result of poverty, poor housing, poor health, poor nutrition.

One reader asserted that excellent schools attract wealthy families.

He was corrected by Steve Nelson, who wrote First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk.

When I read anything he writes, I find myself nodding vigorously in agreement.

He wrote here that excellent communities create excellent schools, not the other way around.

“You still misstate the cause and effect by writing, “When a neighborhood has excellent schools.” The schools are not excellent. The neighborhood is “excellent.”

“It is, to be sure, a subtle point, but in my book I refer to my own public high school. It was “rated” among America’s best. Graduates went to college at high rates and won prizes of all kinds. The orchestra was considered among the 2 or 3 best in the country. But the teachers and classes were dull and uninspired. The orchestra was good because the kids were privileged and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The parents were either affluent or in higher education or medicine or both.

“The community did not have excellent schools. The schools had an excellent community.

“The schools in the adjacent, poverty-riddled neighborhood were just as good in terms of dedicated teachers and curriculum. The community? Not so lucky.”

Many schools closed because of low test scores were excellent schools filled with dedicated teachers. They were serving the neediest kids and were punished for it.

Categories Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty, Propaganda, Race to the Top

DeVos Continues D.C.’s Mad Obsession with Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
25

 

Betsy DeVos’ team warned Arizona that it could lose $340 million in federal funding if it persists in offering options to students taking standardized tests. The state has to pick one test for high school students—either the state test, SAT or ACT-or it may lose Title 1 funding for disadvantaged students.

Leave aside the fact that the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test. Leave aside the fact that all standardized tests are normed on a bell curve to produce “winners” and “losers” and are completely misaligned as high school tests of competency. Leave aside that using these two commercial tests is a multimillion dollar windfall for two private testing corporations.

The federal government should not be holding any state hostage over its decision about how or whether to use certain tests. It should not threaten to withhold funding for the neediest students to force states to do what the U.S. Department of Education or Congress prefers. Congress should use its powers to protect the civil rights of students, not to interfere in how to educate students, a subjectwhereit is woefully and demonstrably ignorant.

This is a stellar example of federal control of education, which was banned by federal law in the early 1970s. Using a standardized test to judge the “success” of every student will predictably rank students by family income with only rare exceptions. The students from low-income families will cluster at the bottom, along with children English-learners and students with disabilities.

This spring, Arizona allowed its districts a choice of offering the ACT, the SAT, or the state’s traditional test, the AzMerit test, at the high school level.  ESSA allows states to offer districts the option of using a nationally-recognized college entrance exam in place of the state test, but first they must meet certain technical requirements.

For instance, states must make sure that the national recognized exam (such as the ACT or SAT) measures progress toward the state’s standards at least as well as the original state test. They also must make sure that the results of the nationally-recognized exam can be compared to the state test. And they have to provide appropriate accommodations for English-language learners and students in special education. All of this is supposed to happen before the state ever allows its districts the option of an alternate test…

The department has other, big concerns about Arizona’s testing system. The state passed a law allowing its schools a choice of tests, at both the high school and elementary level. That is not kosher under ESSA, which calls for every student in the same grade to take the same test, in most cases, Brogan wrote.

What’s more, Arizona hasn’t had a single high school test for several years. Instead, students are allowed to take one of three end-of-course math and reading/language arts tests, Brogan’s letter says. The failure to offer students the same test statewide is the reason the state has been put on high-risk status.

The state needs to pick one test for high school students, Brogan says, or it may lose federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students. It’s up to Arizona to decide whether the single test is the AzMerit, the ACT, the SAT, or something else.

Congress needs to abandon its belief that tests improve outcomes and that it can use federal funding to force uniformity of testing. NCLB proved that this theory was wrong.

After almost 20 years of failure, after a decade of flat test scores, isn’t it time for the members of the Congressional education committee to reflect on the bad ideas they have been promoting and figure out that it is time to stop compelling states to adopt harmful practices? Don’t they know they are still inhaling the toxic fumes of a failed NCLB? Or do they still believe that there was a “Texas Miracle”?

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

Tom Ultican: IReady: Is This the Worst Education Program Ever Marketed? Maybe, Maybe Not.

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2019 //
12

 Tom Ultican discovered a program called iReady that has magnificent marketing, but he says it is awful. If he spoke Yiddish, he would say it is “schlock” or “dreck.” Worse than the program is that stuff like this is pushed by the federal government. They like to waste your money. Ultican posted this entry a year ago but it has taken on a life of its own. One mother who reviewed it called it not iReady but “iSCAM.”

 

iReady is an economically successful software product used in public schools, by homeschoolers and in private schools. It utilizes the blended learning practices endorsed by the recently updated federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). iReady employs competency-based education (CBE) theory which is also advocated by ESSA. The outcome is iReady drains money from classrooms, applies federally supported failed learning theories and undermines good teaching. Children hate it.

Public education in America contends with four dissimilar but not separate attacks. The school choice movement is motivated by people who want government supported religious schools, others who want segregated schools and still others who want to profit from school management and the related real estate deals. The forth big threat is from the technology industry which uses their wealth and lobbying power to not only force their products into the classroom, but to mandate “best practices” for teaching. These four streams of attack are synergistic.

Profiting from Education Law

A group of billionaires with varying motives are using their vast wealth to shape America’s education agenda to their own liking. The last rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 called ESSA was larded up with provisions like the big money for technology which is listed in Title’s I and IV. It also specifies generous grants to promote both “blended learning” and “personalized learning.” (See page 1969 of the official law.) Charter schools, vouchers and social impact bonds are promoted in ESSA. All these initiatives drain money from the classroom and none have been credibly shown to improve education outcomes.

Read his post to learn the history of iReady, which started innocently enough as a workbook series in 1969. Then an equities investor took over, and all of a sudden the whole spectrum of money-grabbing hedge funders and know-it-all billionaires get into the picture. Even Jeb Bush.

A cautionary tale that begins with money and ends with money.

Categories Common Core, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Paul Thomas: The Big Lie About the “Science of Reading”

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
94

 

Paul Thomas of Furman University in South Carolina reminds us that “the crisis in reading”  is a staple of American educational history. Every generation complains that young kids are not learning to read.it began long before Rudolf Flesch’s best seller “Why Johnny Can’t Read” in the 1950s.

Jeanne  Chall, Reading specialist at Harvard and experienced kindergarten teacher, explored the mystery of reading in her book “Learning to Read: The Great Debate,” 1967, where she recommended early use of phonics, them a transition to engaging reading.

The National Reading Panel (1997) popularized the idea of a “science of reading,” and the myth refuses to die.NCLB codified it into law, but the “crisis” persisted.

Thomas exposes The Big Lie.

Mississippi is the latest example of a state falsely claiming that it has used the “science of reading” to raise scores.

Mississippi hasn’t broken the code. Neither has Florida.

Thomas writes:

“The “science of reading” mantra is a Big Lie, but it is also a huge and costly distraction from some real problems.

“Relatively affluent states still tend to score above average or average on reading tests; relatively poor states tend to score below average on reading tests.

“Some states that historically scored low, under the weight of poverty and the consequences of conservative political ideology that refuses to address that poverty, have begun to implement harmful policies to raise test scores (see the magenta highlighting) in the short-term for political points.

“It is 2019. There is no reading crisis in the way the “science of reading” advocates are claiming.

“It is 2019. Balanced literacy is the science of reading, but it is not the most common way teachers are teaching reading because schools are almost exclusively trying to raise scores, not students who are eager, joyful, and critical readers.

“It is 2019. Political and public efforts to do anything—often the wrong thing—so no one addresses poverty remain the American Way.

“It is 2019. It is still mostly about poverty when people insist it is about reading and reading policy.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Lies, Mississippi, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Research

Laura Chapman on the Triple Disasters of Federal Policy: NCLB, RTTT, and ESSA

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2018 //
15

Laura Chapman responded to this post about the nil effects of NCLB:

She writes:

“The biggest lie was NCLB. The second biggest lie was Race to the Top. The third biggest lie is ESSA.”

NCLB was the template for what followed. I wrote about that jargon-filled fiasco as a heads up to colleagues working in arts education who did not know what hit them.

Race to the Top was the double whammy with a propaganda mill called the “Reform Support Network” designed to intimidate teachers who failed to comply. USDE outsourced the problem of compliance to people who did not know what to do with this fact: About 69% of teachers had job assignments untethered to statewide tests. The hired hands working for the Reform Support Network offered several absurd solutions. Among these were the idea that teacher should be evaluated on school-wide scores for subjects they did not teach (e.g., math, ELA) and that a writing assignment called SLOs (student learning objectives) should function as a tool for evaluation.

The SLO writing assignment required teachers to specify and predict gains in the test scores of their students from the beginning to the end of the year. Teachers were graded on their SLOs and up to 25 criteria had to be met for writing a “proper” SLO. That absurdity has been marketed since 1999, first in a pay-for-performance scheme for Denver conjured by William Slotnick (Master’s in Education, Harvard). There is no evidence to support the use of SLOs for teacher evaluation. Even so, this exercise is still used in Ohio, among other states.

ESSA is like NCLB in that the high stakes tests are still there, but they are surrounded with legalese about state “flexibility.” Some parts of ESSA calls for de-professionalizing the work of teacher education (see Title II, Section SEC. 2002).

ESSA became the federal law before our current ten-yacht owner and avowed Christian missionary, Betsy Devos, was appointed to be in charge of the Department of Education.

Devos’ incompetence delayed and then mangled the “approval” of required ESSA “state plans“ for this school year, 2018-2019. In the meantime, groups that championed NCLB and Race to the Top publicized their own ratings of ESSA plans (e.g., Bellwether Education Partners, Achieve, and the Collaborative for Student Success). The Collaborative for Student Success is funded by the Bloomberg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, ExxonMobil, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation–none friends of public education.

I think that compliance checks on ESSA, if any, will be outsourced and that the still pending federal budget will confirm the ten-yacht Education Secretary’s’ real priorities—choice and some of the increasingly weird things recently on her mind.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Stupid, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Caleb Rossiter Reviews Arne Duncan’s Book About “Lies” and the Liars Who Tell Them

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
36

Caleb Rossiter taught in both the charter schools and public schools of Washington, D.C.

In this post, he reviews Arne Duncan’s recent book about his seven years as Secretary of Education.

He came away from the experience convinced that everyone lies.

Rossiter wonders what he learned.

“”Duncan says he first encountered school lies 30 years ago, when during college he tutored at his mother’s after-school program in a poor black neighborhood in Southside Chicago. Duncan, who is white, also lived on the Southside, near his father’s job as a professor at the elite University of Chicago. His tutee was a black high school basketball star who assumed that his “B” average guaranteed a college scholarship. Duncan soon realized that the boy’s pathetic academic level meant he had no hope of even getting into college.

“The memoir makes it clear that schools are still at it, hiding from poor parents their children’s low effort, achievement, and readiness for college or work, which will keep them trapped in the underclass. That’s a depressing conclusion coming from someone who presided over a generation of accountability policies as head of the Chicago schools and then as President Obama’s secretary of education.”

Apparently, he sees nothing wrong about the high-stakes Testing and accountability regime that he promoted and has no regrets. Reflection is not his thing. He remains all in for the principles behind No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing
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