Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Peter Greene: EdNext and the Beanstalk

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2018 //
5

Peter Greene retired as a teacher but, happily, not as a blogger. He continues to eviscerate hot air balloons and pretensions.

In this post, he examines the questions raised by the conservative journal Education Next: Have states maintained high expectations and does it matter?

Daniel Hamlin and Paul Peterson “note that ESSA gave states license to dump the Common Core, either in its actual form or under whatever assumed name they hid it behind. For accountability hawks, this raises the concern that we’ll have a Race to the Bottom, as states make it easier for schools to clear the performance bar (yes, for the six millionth time, this blurs the barely-existing line between the standards and the tests used to account for them). Will the political expediency of being able to say, ‘All our kids are Proficient (as we currently define it)!’ be too much for politicians to resist?”

They write:

So, has the starting gun been fired on a race to the bottom? Have the bars for reaching academic proficiency fallen as many states have loosened their commitment to Common Core? And, is there any evidence that the states that have raised their proficiency bars since 2009 have seen greater growth in student learning?

In a nutshell, the answers to these three questions are no, no, and, so far, none.

Peter responds: “So nobody has loosened up requirements to– hey, wait a minute. Did they just say that raising proficiency bars hasn’t actually increased student learning?”

Yep. States still have high standards, but the states with those high standards did not see “greater growth in student learning.”

Peter observes: “We are now only one third of the way through the article, and yet the next sentence is not “Therefore, there really is no purpose in continuing to fret about how high state standards are, because they have nothing to do with student achievement.” But instead, the next sentence is “While higher proficiency standards may still serve to boost academic performance, our evidence suggests that day has not yet arrived.” And sure, I understand the reluctance to abandon a favorite theory, but at some point you have to stop saying, “Well, we’ve now planted 267 magic beans in the yard and nothing has happened– yet. But tomorrow could be the day; keep that beanstalk ladder ready.”

Peter thinks those magic beans will never grow into a giant beanstalk.

You would think that after almost 20 years of pursuing high standards and rigorous tests, there might be more discussion of the meager results of these policies.

I have to use this discussion as an opportunity to say a few words about the subjectiveness of the term “proficiency.” Setting the dividing line between “basic” and “proficient” is an arbitrary process. A group of people, some educators and non-educators, meet together to decide what children of a certain grade should know and be able to do. On different days, the same panel might draw a different line. A different panel might choose a different cut score. The decision about where the cut score falls is not objective. “Proficient” is not an objective term.

When I served on the NAEP board, it was understood that “Proficient” was a high bar that most students were unlikely to reach. I thought of it as equivalent to an A. Somehow it has been transformed into a goal that all students should reach. On NAEP, Massachusetts is the only state where as many as 50% of students have reached Proficient.

It is not reasonable to complain when students don’t reach an arbitrary goal that is out of reach, like the NCLB goal that 100% of students would be Proficient by the year 2014. Making tests harder doesn’t make students smarter.

Categories Accountability, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Massachusetts, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Ed Johnson: An Open Letter To Obama about Race to the Top

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2018 //
19

Edward Johnson is an education activist in Atlanta and one of the sharpest critics of a school board and superintendent determined to privatize the public schools of that city.

He recently wrote an open letter to former President Obama, asking him to apologize for the failed Race to the Top competition, which built on the failed strategy of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind.

Via Email (info@ofa.us)

 

Open Letter to Barack Obama seeking apology for RttT Competition

 

22 May 2018 (revised 23 May 2018)

 

The Honorable Barack Obama

c/o Organizing for Action

1130 West Monroe Street, Suite 100

Chicago, Illinois 60607

 

Dear Mr. Obama:

 

“We are being ruined by competition; what we need is cooperation.”

—W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)

 

Thank you for your interest in my voting.  Voting, of course, is a cornerstone of democratic practice.  However, education—public education—underlies democratic practice that aims to serve and sustain the common good and to continually advance on closing gaps with democratic ideals, as in “We the People ….”  Unfortunately, your Race to the Top Competition strongly suggests a very different paradigm, a competitive, anti-democracy sustaining paradigm.

 

Frankly, Barack—may I address you as Barack since you addressed me as Ed?  Frankly, it’s hard to figure why especially prominent Civil Rights leaders would forgo inviting you to a private conversation out behind the woodshed at the very moment you spoke the words “Race to the Top Competition.”  Did they not understand competition made the Civil Rights Movement necessary more so than did so-called racism?  That so-called racism is, in reality, but an insidiously malicious and hostile form of competition?

 

The point being, the aim of every form of competition has always been, and always will be, to produce as few winners as possible and as many losers as possible.  Fine for sport competitions, but why would one facilitate attacking and harming the nation’s democracy-sustaining public educational systems by any manner of competition?  Was cooperation between and among the states not an option?

 

All too often, the thinking is that winning means excellence, and losing means failure or “not good enough.”  And that “competition builds character.”

 

But here’s the rub, Barack.  In social systems, such as our public educational systems, people made losers by competition for no good reason invariably figure out how to win, if only in their own eyes.  The massively systemic cheating on standardized tests that Atlanta experienced exemplifies the matter: A great many teachers and schoolhouse leaders the superintendent incited to compete for their job and bonuses for high standardized test scores figured they could win by changing students’ wrong answers to right answers.

 

We also have plenty other examples, including, notoriously: Dimitrios Pagourtzis, at Santa Fe High School, Texas; Nikolas Cruz, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida; Adam Lanza, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut; and, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, at Columbine High School, Colorado.

 

And consider, too, some people made losers by competition for no good reason very likely figured they could win by becoming police officers, or wannabe police officers—in the case of George Zimmerman, for example.  Then to that extent, these winners turned policing into hostile competitions with the public that could not avoid producing notorious shootings of especially young “Black” males and other citizens for no good reason.

 

It really is quite easy to understand, in a word, why the U.S. pretty much leads the world in incarcerating its citizens and children.  And that word is competition, meaning deeply inculcated drives to win at the expense of others, by whatever means necessary, so as to rationalize one is superior or excellent and others are not.

 

  1. Edwards Deming also teaches the wisdom that “when a system is broken into competitive segments, the system is destroyed.”

 

Specifically, Dr. Deming teaches the wisdom that:

 

“We have grown up in a climate of competition between people, teams, departments, divisions, pupils, schools, universities.  We have been taught by economists that competition will solve our problems.  Actually, competition, we see now, is destructive.  It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win.  What we need is cooperation[.]”

 

Barack, can you see the very name “Race to the Top Competition” necessarily meant breaking our otherwise 50 United States into 50 competitive segments?  Can you see the Race to the Top Competition aim to expand the number of charter schools hence spread malicious school choice meant breaking local public educational systems into competitive segments?  And, therefore, can you see “Chief Facilitator of Destroy Public Education” just might be a fitting aspect of your legacy as a former President of the United States?  And that that would be an astonishing juxtaposition of paradigms?

 

Barack, if you can see these things, and because, as you say, “[t]here are no do-overs,” can you then at least apologize for having created the Race to the Top Competition and then for having foisted it upon the nation?

 

Kindly know until such apology comes, it will be hard to hear and appreciate any interest you express about my voting, or any matters.  Sustaining and improving public education as a common good in service to democracy is just that important.  And please, let’s have none of the nonsensical contention that charter schools are public schools.

 

Sincerely, I am

 

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

 

Bcc: List 1

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Competition, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top

Peter Greene: What Arne and Margaret Got Wrong About Education Reform: Everything

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
26

Peter Greene commented on the opinion piece written by Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings about education reform, in which they lament the lack of courage and vision by those that succeeded them.

How sad, they write, that the bipartisan coalition that formed after the [phony] Nation at Risk report of 1983 is not fighting for more of the same.

How strange that they think of themselves as rebels when they were in charge and had the help of the nation’s billionaires.

How pathetic that they lament the lack of top-down muscle to shove more of the same down the throats of everyone else.

How curious that they don’t understand that the teachers marching in the streets are not supported their failed vision of more tests, higher punishments, and more privatization. What the protesters want more of investment in public schools, which neither Arne nor Margaret said much about when in office.

How out of touch these two are!

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

John Merrow: When Will Duncan and Spellings Admit the Failure of Their “Reform” Policies?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2018 //
43

John Merrow recently served as a judge for the Education Writers Association’s annual reporting awards. While admiring the high quality of journalism that he read, he used his post to excoriate Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings for a self-serving opinion piece that they wrote in The Washington Post.

“Here’s the story that shouldn’t be ignored: The proponents of disastrous ‘school reform,’ which has given us 20+ years of ‘test and punish’ & such, are now positioning themselves as voices of common sense. Exhibit A is this recent Washington Post column by two former Secretaries of Education, Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings. One guided the Department under George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” and other created the infamous “Race to the Top” program.

“Their breath-taking chutzpah begins with the title of the piece: What ails education? ‘An absence of vision, a failure of will and politics.’ But their opening sentence actually tops it: “We have long benefited from a broad coalition that has advanced bold action to improve America’s education system.”

“Just exactly who are the WE that have benefited from the ‘bold action’ that the Secretaries refer to? It’s far easier to identify those who have NOT benefited from “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” Let’s start with students, because their performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which everyone agrees is education’s ‘gold standard,’ has basically been flat for the 20+ years of Bush and Obama. Next on the list are teachers, whose salaries and morale have declined over the years of increasing reliance on multiple-choice testing and ‘test-and-punish’ policies. Collateral damage has been done to the occupation of teaching, which has lost prestige and now fails to attract enough candidates to fill our classrooms with qualified instructors.

“So that’s–literally–millions of students and teachers who have NOT benefited from the ‘broad coalition’ that Duncan and Spellings are so proud of.”

Who benefitted from the Duncan-Spellings billions and mandates?

Testing corporations. Ideologues who want to fracture public education. Profiteers. “And–surprise–the two former United States Secretaries of Education. One now leads the University of North Carolina higher education system, and the other is one of three Managing Partners of The Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ very wealthy and active education venture.”

Wow.

He then goes on to enumerate the “reformers” who are now backpedaling or mansplaining, all to avoid responsibility for the disasters of the past 20 years. They (including Duncan and Spellings) are the people we need to be reduced from, says Merrow.

This is one of Merrow’s best pieces. He is on a roll.

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

Kymberly Walcott: Stop Closing Our Schools!

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2018 //
22

This video features Kymberly Walcott, now a senior in Hunter College in New York City. She describes the terrible injustice of closing her high school, Jamaica High School.

The idea that closing schools is a “remedy” was one of the cruelest aspects of the failed No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Countless schools were closed because they had low scores. Typically, these schools were located in black and brown communities, and the students enrolled in them were, of course, nonwhite. Children were dispersed, communities were disrupted, teachers and principals and support staff lost their jobs and had to fend for themselves.

Jamaica High School was once one of the greatest high schools in the nation and in New York City. As its population changed from white to predominantly nonwhite, its reputation changed. It enrolled needier students. But instead of providing the school with the supports it needed, school officials in the Bloomberg era declared that it was a “failing school.” That immediately sent enrollments into a tail spin, as parents withdrew their children. The label became a self-fulfilling prophecy, dooming the school. The Department of Education closed it and replaced it with small high schools, none of which could match the broad curriculum, the programs for ELLs, or other offerings at the original school.

This article in the New Yorker in 2015 captures a sense of what was lost.

There is no evidence that closing schools produces better outcomes for students. It predictably produces disruption and chaos, which are not good for children and teens.

If there are any researchers out there who have a source for the number of schools closed by NCLB and RTTT, please let me know. I have searched for the number without success.

Categories Closing schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Network for Public Education, New York City, Race, Race to the Top

Testing: A Modest Proposal

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2018 //
90

 

To my knowledge, the United States is the only nation in the world that requires students to take standardized tests every year from grades 3-8. I believe that it is surely the only advanced nation that requires annual testing in these grades. The tests are required by federal law, a hangover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, and the requirement was re-enacted in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.

This testing regime has been in place since 2002, when the law was signed by President Bush the first. The consequences attached to the tests have been harsh in many states, which use them to stigmatize students, teachers, and schools. Teachers have been fired, and schools have been closed based on test scores. That is called test-based accountability, and there is growing evidence that TBA is ineffective. NAEP scores have been flat since 2013. The number of people entering teaching has declined sharply. Schools have cut back on the arts, physical education, and other subjects that are not “counted” in the test score calculus. It is difficult to find any real benefits to our national investment in high-stakes testing.

Why do our policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels continue to require and enforce annual testing, despite the non-existent benefits? I believe that testing survives for two reasons: One is that there is a lobby that loves testing, composed of testing corporations and groups like Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers organization. The other is that our policymakers are still inhaling the stale fumes of NCLB and the non-existent “Texas Miracle.” It is hard to break away from a practice, even a bad practice, that has become ingrained. Annual testing began with NCLB, became more punitive with Race to the Top, and survived in ESSA. Bad habits are hard to change.

Testing authorities have a general rule. Tests should not be used for any purpose other than the one for which they are intended. Tests are supposed to be diagnostic; they are supposed to provide teachers with information to help them improve instruction. They never do, because the results are reported long after the student has left the teacher who administered the test and they never provide enough detail about the strengths and weaknesses of individual children to be useful.

Standardized tests should not be used for high school graduation or for firing teachers or closing schools. Yet they are. Obviously, they are misused on a regular basis.

So, I have a modest proposal.

I am not aware of any legal requirement that the annual tests required by Congress must be offered in the spring.

Why not give the tests in the first week of school and use only a test whose results may be returned within a month? Let machines score the standardized questions, and let teachers score the constructed responses. The testing vendor would know that they would be chosen only if they could report the results in a month, in a format that informs teachers what students do and do not know. That way, the teacher can find out where students are as they begin the year and tailor instruction to address the needs of the students.

That way, tests would no longer be high-stakes. They would be expressly designed for diagnostic purposes, to help teachers help students. The results would come too early to misuse the tests to stigmatize students, punish teachers, and close schools. There would be no punishments attached to the tests, but plenty of valuable information to help teachers.

How would we know how schools are doing?

We could rely on the National Assessment of Progress, which reports on states and many districts and is disaggregated by race, gender, disability, and other categories. It reports on achievement gaps as well.

With this fairly simple but drastic change, we could put testing in its proper place. We could stop terrorizing students and teachers.

We could let teachers gain at least a month, maybe two, for instruction instead of test prep.

Tell me what you think.

Some of you, I know, will tell me why all testing is a waste of time.

But so long as the requirement for annual testing is in the law, there must be a good faith effort to comply.

Why not comply in a way that is not harmful to students, teachers, or schools, but that might actually provide useful information?

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Rick Hess: The Pendulum Is Swinging Against the Bush-Obama “Reform” Era

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
45

 

Although I often disagree with Rick Hess, I think he is the most insightful of the reformers and the nicest as well. He has a code of civility, and he never descends into mud-slinging or name-calling, unlike others in the reform camp.

In his latest article, I was surprised and delighted to see his acknowledgement that the pendulum is swinging away from the Bush-Obama reforms. He tacitly admits, as few other reformers do, that the era of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has failed, and (as John Merrow said in his latest post) “the air is humming,” and something great is coming. The current federal law (Every Student Succeeds Act) is a stripped-down version of NCLB, still insanely test-focused, in my view. Under ESSA, despite its grandiose name, there is no hope, none, that “every student will succeed.”

Rick looks at the wave of teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky (with more likely to happen) and draws five lessons.

First, “Teachers are immensely sympathetic actors. For all the gibes, harsh rhetoric of the accountability era, and tsk-tsk’ing occasioned by polls in which people say they don’t want their kids to be teachers, the reality is that people really like teachers. In surveys, no matter how much talk there is about “failing” schools and problems with tenure, teachers are trusted and popular.” Although he doesn’t say it, I will: People trust teachers more than hedge fund managers or billionaires.

Second, “The Trump era has made it tougher for GOP officials to plead “fiscal restraint.” For years, GOP governors and legislators have said there is no more money, but the national GOP has just added billions to the defense budget, over a trillion dollars to the national deficit, and cut taxes for corporations by more billions.

Third, the reform movement must shoulder a significant part of the blame for demonizing teachers, demoralizing them, and building a reservoir of rage. “Along the way, teachers came to look and feel like targets, rather than beneficiaries, of “school reform,” which may be why bread-and-butter demands from teachers are ascending as the guts of Bush-Obama school reform are sinking to the bottom of the “discarded school reform” sea.”

Fourth, teachers’ strikes and walkouts are succeeding because they have broad appeal.

Fifth, he sees the current moment as a good time to rethink compensation, pensions, and staffing. In the minds of reformers, this could be converted into their usual mindset: merit pay, performance pay, replacing pensions with savings plans, etc. As the Kentucky walkout showed, teachers will not sit still while their retirement benefits are whittled away. Part of the appeal of teaching is the expectation that one will not retire to a life of penury after a career of low-paid service.

This is one of the most hopeful articles I have recently read about the pendulum swing that almost everyone knows is coming.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Tom Loveless: Billions Have Been Spent on Standards Based Reforms: Was It Worth It?

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2018 //
25

 

Tom Loveless taught fifth grade in California, then earned a doctorate in educational policy, taught at Harvard, then landed at Brookings where he wrote reports on the condition of American education and analyzed international assessments. He recently retired from Brookings but continues to write.

He is one of the few original thinkers in the education think tank world. Neither the right nor left claims him. He is a straight shooter and brings a fresh perspective. He was one of the first to knock down the Great Shanghai Myth by pointing out that the student population of that city is not typical of China. Meanwhile the media and Arne Duncan ranted and raved about the superiority of Shanghai, as proven by its ranking on the international tests, which Loveless debunked.

I recently learned that Loveless had written a new paper evaluating the value of standards-based reform, the approach that is central to No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Every Student Succeeds Act.  

He presented his findings at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative D.C. think tank.

It is, as I expected, original and important.

Unless there is breaking news today, this will be the only post.

Please read the paper and feel free to comment.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), International, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

NAEP Results: Scores Mostly Flat, Gaps Widen

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2018 //
18

 

Education Week reports that NAEP results are flat, with few exceptions. The billions squandered on annual testing and Common Core Gabe produced meager change, especially for those already at the bottom. Achievement gaps widened.

With so little change, it is time—past time—to give serious attention to rethinking the federal testing juggernaut that began with No Child Left Behind, intensified with Race to the Top, and continues with the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act. The latest national results show that many children have been left behind, we are nowhere near “the top,” and every student is not succeeding.

In short, the federal policy of standards, testing, and accountability is a train wreck.

It is past time to stop blaming students, teachers, and schools, and place the blame for stagnation where it belongs: On nearly 20 years of failed federal policy based on failed assumptions.

 

Education Werk reports:

“Across the board, struggling American students are falling behind, while top performers are rising higher on the test dubbed the “Nation’s Report Card.”

“A nationally representative group of nearlyt Behind,  585,000 4th- and 8th-graders took the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2017, the first time the tests were administered digitally. The results, released Tuesday, show no change at all for 4th grade in either subject or for 8th graders in math since the tests were last given in 2015. Eighth graders on average made only a 1-point gain in reading, to 267 on the NAEP’s 500-point scale.

“That meager gain in reading was driven entirely by the top 25 percent of students. During the last decade, 8th grade reading was the only test in which the average score for both high and low performers rose. By contrast, in math, the percentage of students performing below basic (30 percent) and those performing at the advanced level (10 percent) both increased significantly since 2007. The same pattern emerged in 4th grade math and reading.”

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Inequity, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Lisa E. Litvin: How NCLB Continues to Ruin School and Childhood

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2018 //
28

 

Lisa Eggert Litvin, parent leader in Westchester County, remembers a childood in which testing was present, but far from dominant. There was time for play and hanging out with friends.

Today, however, standardized testing has become the measure of students, teachers, and schools. 

She writes:

“When I attended public school in the 1970s, we didn’t have the high-stakes tests in math and English Language Arts that elementary and middle schools now give every year. We studied math and English, of course, but we had time to dig into other disciplines. We didn’t have much homework, so that after school, we could play with friends and be with our families. Not every day was amazing by any means, but we had room to explore, have fun, make mistakes, and just be kids.

“We didn’t take many standardized tests. In fact, I remember taking a standardized test only two or three times over those years. There was no test prep, except for the reminder to bring a #2 pencil to school.

“Fast forward to 2001, with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law was well-intended, hoping to ensure that all children were accounted for. It required that schools test every year in grades 3-8, and report the results, including for traditionally underserved groups. The thought was that low scores couldn’t be hidden, students’ needs would be addressed, and every child would eventually show proficiency. The tests would provide accountability.

“But NCLB went astray: it limited its focus to annual tests in math and ELA, and imposed harsh repercussions on schools for low scores (hence the term “high-stakes testing”). At the time, the nation’s top adolescent psychiatrists warned Congress not to increase testing, especially with draconian stakes, explaining that “test-stress is literally making children sick” and that “the health effects of such policies” must be studied. But the law and its testing mandates passed anyway.

“Now, nearly two decades later, such testing-centric public education means that my childhood, with its range of studies and exploration and free time, is endangered. Playtime, recess, and the arts are considered throwaways as schools double-down on ELA and math. As early as 2005, a survey by the Center on Education Policy found that 71 percent of school districts cut back on subjects like history and music so they could spend more time on the tested subjects.

“In addition, the pressure for high achievement in the tested subjects has intensified tremendously. Teaching has become more about preparing children for the tests, and tested subjects are being taught earlier than ever. Kindergarten is the new first grade, with emphasis on reading and math over unstructured free play time — even though experts have warned of the grave consequences that this will cause.”

In theory, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (which is just another way to say “No Child Left Behind”, but the reality is that standardized tests continue to dominate the lives of students and teachers.

Can anyone say that no child was left behind as a result of the imposition of annual testing? With enough test prep, scores may go up, but they don’t translate into success after school. Does anyone sentient person believe that “every student” will succeed because of annual testing?

No other nation imposes annual tests on children from grades 3-8. Why do we? It is a massive waste of time, purpose, and money. The biggest beneficiaries are not the students but the testing companies.

The emperor has no clothes yet has paraded around stark naked  since January 8, 2002, the day NCLB was signed.

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »