Alan Singer writes that the real test of the state’s new standards will happen in the classroom. The proof of the pudding, he writes, is in the eating, not in what is said or written about it.
He warns that the whole process may be tainted if the current testing regime remains in place. And he worries that the state aims to quash the opt out movement, which is the only public voice and which compelled the state to make these revisions.
Newsday offers an amusing reflection on the change in the name of the Common Core state standards, which became toxic and set off the powerful opt out movement across the state, and especially on Long Island (which Newsday serves). In the last round of state testing, 50% of the eligible students on Long Island opted out of the English Language Arts state test, and 54% on Long Island opted out of the just concluded math tests.
Some teachers question in what way they “bought in,” as suggested below. Many are so familiar with the PR tactics of the State Education Department that they see this as yet another exercise in illusion.
From Newsday:
Pointing Out
Puzzle us this
Here’s a short quiz to start your week: The big news today is NGELAMLS.
What is it?
a) A newly diagnosed tropical disease that has alarmed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
b) A pharmaceutical breakthrough for melting body fat. Ask your doctor about NGELAMLS!
c) An obscure tribe living on the Ilha de Queimada Grande off the coast of Brazil.
d) A new name for the Common Core learning standards in New York.
The correct response is d. That tangle of letters stands for the Next Generation English Language Arts and Mathematics Learning Standards. State education officials have rechecked the standards, as well as the tests they first rolled out in the 2012-13 school year, this time with buy-in from teachers.
For all the controversy, the changes are small. But the messaging is big. By rebranding, the Education Department hopes to start fresh and reduce opt-outs from the tests.
Long Island, the national opt-out epicenter, had nearly 54 percent of eligible students sit out math exams last week. Will NGELAMLS change that?
Anne Michaud
In response to years of protests against the Common Core standards, the State Education Department has tweaked them, massaged them, tickled them, and given them a new name.
The New York state standards are now “the Next Generation English Language Arts and Mathematics Learning Standards.” Got that?
The revamped standards makes hundreds of changes to the state’s version of the Common Core, a set of educational benchmarks meant to get students ready for colleges and careers.
The “anchor standards” of the Common Core — which broadly lay out what’s expected of students — remain largely intact, though some were consolidated or clarified. The 34 English language arts anchors, for example, were whittled down to 28.
New York will become the latest state to put their own name on the standards, joining Florida and several others trying to assuage parental concerns and anger over the rollout of the Common Core.
Is it a cosmetic change or not?
Is it rebranding or not?
Is it real or is it Memorex?
We will hear more about this as the standards are introduced into classrooms.
You can be sure that the parents who opted their children out of state tests for the past few years, in rebellion against the Common Core standards and tests, will not be fooled. Nor will New York State Alliance of Parents and Educators, the group that has coordinated the opt-out movement, which has led about 20% of students across the state to refuse the tests year after year.
According to Newsday, the major newspaper on Long Island, about half of eligible students opted out of state math tests. This shows the resilience of the opt out movement and confounds the ability of the state to rank schools by test scores. The statewide number are likely to be about 20%, as in other years.
“Nearly 80,000 public school students in 100 districts across Long Island refused Tuesday to take the state mathematics exam given in grades three through eight, in a fifth straight year of boycotts driven by opposition to the Common Core tests, according to a Newsday survey.
“On the first full-fledged day of math testing in Nassau and Suffolk counties, 79,780 students in the districts that responded opted out — 53.1 percent of the pupils eligible in those systems to take the exam. There are 124 districts on the Island.
“The state’s Common Core math exams began Tuesday morning for most students in grades three through eight. The math test, like the English Language Arts exam administered in the same grade levels in late March, is given in segments during three days and will finish for most students on Thursday.
“Educators and leaders of the opt-out movement on the Island had said they expected refusals to remain high on the Island, a hotbed of anti-test activism. Nearly 85 percent of eligible students in the Middle Country district boycotted the test Tuesday.
“Until state assessments are cleanly and clearly uncoupled from teacher evaluations and are used solely to inform instruction, opt-outs will continue to be a reality,” Middle Country Superintendent Roberta Gerold said. “Parents have to believe that activities in which their children are involved are free of politics and have instructional value and no one can honestly say that is true about the current grades three-through-eight assessment.”
“This is the fifth consecutive year of boycotts of the Common Core tests. On Long Island, the number of refusals mushroomed to about half of all eligible students both last year and in 2015, according to Newsday surveys of the 124 districts in Nassau and Suffolk counties at the time.
“On Tuesday, figures from the 100 responding districts showed 32,239 students in Nassau and 47,541 in Suffolk opted out of the exams. Newsday’s survey showed a broad range: In the Plainedge district, for example, 79 percent of students refused to take the test, while in Hempstead, less than 7 percent opted out.
“More than half of the 100 districts that responded reported that more than 50 percent of their eligible students were sitting out the exam.
“Those opposed to the exams object to the Education Department’s reforms, saying that children are being over-tested and the tests are not developmentally appropriate to children’s ages.
“The state agency has made some changes. Last year, the department shortened the exams, established a statewide moratorium until 2019-20 on using test scores in teachers’ job ratings, and included teachers in devising test questions.
“The ELA exam, given the final week in March, was boycotted by more than 97,000 students on the Island — more than half of those eligible — according to results of a Newsday survey to which 116 of the 124 school systems responded.
“There is a significant difference in the number of students who take the math exam compared with the ELA, because some middle school students in accelerated math classes may not sit for it.
“Districts can waive the state math test for seventh- and eighth-graders who will take the Regents exam in algebra and for those who will take the Regents exam in geometry. In Newsday’s survey Tuesday, tallies of eligible students in three districts included students slated to sit for the Regents exam.
“This year, several systems on Long Island are offering computer-based testing, a new program implemented by the Education Department. Those exams also are given during three days.
“The Franklin Square district on Monday had third-graders in one of its three elementary schools taking the electronic test. Eighteen of 78 eligible third-graders there — 23 percent — opted out, the district said.
“In the South Huntington school district, more than 47 percent of eligible students opted out of the math test on Tuesday. School officials there said they encouraged parents to make their own choice.
“Our position on the opt-out or opt-in movement is that we respect each family’s right to make their own decision regarding testing and have worked hard to keep this polarizing issue from diverting focus away from the important instructional work taking place in our classrooms,” Superintendent David Bennardo said.
“Last year, nearly 88,000 students in 106 districts that responded to Newsday’s survey opted out of the math exam — nearly 53 percent of eligible students in the responding districts.
“In 2015, 66,000 students in 99 districts that responded to Newsday’s survey boycotted the math tests — 46.5 percent of eligible students in the responding districts.”
Gary Rubinstein wrote a post about the curiosity of the KIPP high school in New York City that was ranked one of the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, even though it had only 58 students and the three other KIPP high schools had zero students who took and passed AP exams. The name of the school is KIPP Academy Charter School. Were they trying to game the system, he wondered? But some comments on his blog alerted him to the fact, if fact it is, that the only KIPP high school is KIPP NYC College Prep High School.
Gary untangles the puzzle here.
“The reader informed me that there are not four KIPP high schools in New York City, but just one, KIPP NYC College Prep High School. This was puzzling to me since the school that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York was not called KIPP NYC College Prep High School, but called KIPP Academy Charter School.
“When I went to look at the data at the public data site for school report cards, there was no report card for a KIPP NYC College Prep High School, however. But there were report cards for the four MIDDLE schools, KIPP Academy, KIPP AMP, KIPP Infinity, and KIPP STAR. On these report cards, it shows that 5-8 middle schools also have students in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, in small numbers.
“One of those four middle schools is the KIPP Academy with its 58 12th graders, and this is the ‘school’ that was rated so highly on the U.S. News ranking.
“But the reality is that there is just one high school and it does not have just 58 students, but around 150 students, basically the four 12th grade classes from the four middle schools are actually not attending that middle school but all attending the KIPP high school.
“Why the students are still ‘officially’ in their middle schools is a mystery to me and why there is not report card for the KIPP high school is also pretty baffling.
“The non-existent KIPP Academy Charter High School that was ranked 29th in the country and 4th in New York claimed to have 58 students with a 100% AP participation rate and a 98% passing rate. We now know that these 58 students are only a subset, around a fourth, of an existing school KIPP NYC College Prep. Though there is no state report card for KIPP NYC College Prep, the school has one on their website for the 2014-2015 school year on which the U.S. News ratings were based.”
Read Gary’s analysis.
One thing is clear: the U.S. News & World Report ranking of high schools is phony. A fraud. Meaningless. They rank high schools to sell magazines. They don’t fact-check. They set themselves up as the arbiters of which are the best high schools in the nation, based on flawed data, and they are not qualified to do this work. Of what value is their product?
In a surprising move, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo hired New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s chief political strategist as his chief of staff.
Governor Christie is term-limited and will soon leave office. His popularity rating is at a historic low, about 20%. His presidential campaign blew up after the scandal called Bridgegate, in which his staff coordinated the closing of a major bridge (the George Washington Bridge) between New York and New Jersey to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee (where the bridge is based in New Jersey) for not supporting Christie’s re-election bid.
Christie has been a disaster for public schools. Although New Jersey has one of the best records in the nation for public school performance, Christie treats the public schools with disdain and favors charters and vouchers. He put a salary cap on administrators, causing many to retire or relocate. He has fought publicly with the teachers union and disparaged its leadership. He never had a good word to say about public schools, even though New Jersey schools consistently rank either 2nd or 3rd in the nation on NAEP tests.
Let’s hope that Governor Cuomo’s new chief of staff does not share Governor Christie’s hostility to public schools.
The State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia has scheduled a hearing on whether to remove Buffalo school trustee Carl Paladino for racially offensive remarks made last December in print.
As Leonie Haimson writes here, there is another reason to discipline the billionaire real estate developer.
He violated student privacy laws.
New York Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has scheduled a hearing to consider the removal of Buffalo School Board member Carl Paladino, who made vile comments about President and Mrs. Obama last winter. The hearing will be held on June 22.
Last December, Paladino was invited to participate in a published discussion of “hopes for 2017.”
His response began like this:
1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.
2. Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.
The Buffalo School Board voted for his ouster, but the decision lies with Elia.
Dr. Betty Rosa, Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, responded to a critical article by Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute in this post on the TBF website.
Pondiscio expressed disappointment that the Regents did not award an early renewal to several charter applicants. And he criticized the Regents for agreeing to drop the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST). I previously posted about the ALST, which was one of four tests that future teachers in New York must take and is redundant. Critics said that the Regents were backing away from literacy, which is absurd, since applicants must take three other tests that cover the same subject.
Dr. Rosa wrote (please open the link to see her many links):
In his April 5 commentary (“Education Reform in New York? Fuhgeddaboutit.”), Robert Pondiscio writes that “the era of high standards and accountability for schools, teachers, and those who train them…[is] over” in New York. I could not disagree more. The Board of Regents and I are forging ahead with our work to ensure that all students have access to high-quality teachers in high-quality schools led by high-quality principals. We simply have a different view of how to best deliver those things to our students.
To frame his argument that New York has lost its way, Mr. Pondiscio begins and ends his piece by pointing to two recent decisions by the Board of Regents—first, our decision to return to the SUNY Trustees ten applications seeking the early renewal of charter schools in New York City; second, our decision to drop one of the exams needed to become a certified teacher in New York State.
Let’s look first at the charter school decision. In making its decision to return the applications to the SUNY Trustees, the Board of Regents did not comment in any way on the efficacy of the schools seeking early renewal of their charters. Rather, the Board based its decision on the Charter Schools Act, which does not allow this kind of early renewal. It has long been the practice of all authorizers to renew charter schools in the academic year in which their charter term expires to ensure the most recent data is used in the renewal evaluation. Granting early renewals to the ten applicants would circumvent this accountability protection and result in charter terms ending many years from the conclusion of the current academic year—in some cases, the new charter terms would run all the way until 2025.
But there are bigger issues at stake here. As a senior advisor to a network of New York City-based charter schools, Mr. Pondiscio naturally has a vested interest in promoting the growth of that sector. As Chancellor of the Board of Regents, however, I have a very different outlook and a very different set of obligations. The Regents are responsible for the education of more than three million New York State children who attend traditional public schools, charter schools, nonpublic schools, and those who are homeschooled. As a Board, we are obligated to ensure that all those children have access, on an equal basis, to excellent schools and teachers. That responsibility extends to students with physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities, students who speak little or no English, students who are desperately poor and homeless, and students who exhibit severe behavioral problems.
The Board of Regents will approve only those charter school applications that clearly demonstrate a strong capacity for establishing and operating a high-quality school. This standard requires a strong educational program, organizational plan and financial plan, as well as clear evidence of the capacity of the founding group to implement the proposal and operate the school effectively. The Board and I carefully consider those factors in deciding whether to open or renew a charter school. And we will consider those factors only at the time the law intends for us to make such determinations; we do not and we will not act prematurely to advance anyone’s political agenda.
Let’s also examine the Board’s recent decision to drop the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST) as a certification requirement in New York. Mr. Pondiscio described that decision as a vote “to make teaching a ‘literacy optional’ profession in New York.” A literate person might well use the word “hyperbole” to describe that over-the-top description of this change in certification requirements.
Here are the facts. Students in New York’s teacher preparation programs already take many courses that require them to read and write at a high, college level. Let’s not forget that teaching candidates must also take and pass four years of college courses to even reach the point of taking the certification exams—so they have already demonstrated that they possess the literacy skills needed to get through college.
The Regents took this action based on the recommendations of the EdTPA Task Force, comprised of college deans and professors, and after gathering extensive public feedback. These experts were concerned that the test is flawed, with many of the questions appearing to have more than one correct answer. In a recent interview, Charles Sahm, director of education policy at the conservative Manhattan Institute (Mr. Sahm was not a member of the Task Force that recommended the changes) noted that he took the ALST test; here’s what he said about it, “You can take it for $20 online. And I have to say, I only got 21 out of 40 questions right on the reading comprehension.” In short, the test is a flawed measure of literacy skills.
Even with this change, New York’s teaching certification requirements remain among the most rigorous in the country, requiring the vast majority of teaching candidates to pass three other assessments before earning certification; those assessments also require students to demonstrate literacy skills. We simply eliminated a costly and unnecessary testing requirement that created an unfair obstacle for too many applicants.
But let’s get to the crux of Mr. Pondiscio’s argument. He believes that education in New York is heading in the wrong direction. Again, I could not disagree more. The Regents are moving forward to bring greater equity to students in all our schools. And nowhere is this more evident than in the deliberative, transparent, and inclusive approach the Regents and Commissioner Elia are taking to develop our Every Student Succeeds Act state plan. Our goal is straightforward—we will submit to the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) a plan that supports the development of highly effective schools and encourages and enables all schools to become or remain highly effective.
Critical to the success of our State plan is the way we approach the issue of accountability. In a recent post on the Brookings Institution’s “Brown Center Chalkboard” blog, Brian Gill nailed it when he wrote, “It is time for accountability in education to be liberated from its narrow association with high-stakes testing. A single-minded focus on one form of accountability overlooks opportunities to create a rich system of incentives and supports that employs multiple accountability tools to promote improved practice.” That single-minded focus on test scores did not help children in poor, low-performing schools. We will change that.
The ESSA state plan ultimately adopted by the Board of Regents will improve teaching and learning, and it will promote greater equity for New York’s schoolchildren. By improving teaching and learning, we seek to increase teacher effectiveness in providing high-quality instruction aligned with state standards while fostering a positive learning environment for all students. By promoting equity, we seek to reduce the gaps in achievement that currently separate whole groups of students.
One final note about accountability. I have said repeatedly that, ultimately, it is a parent’s decision whether to have his or her child take the state assessments. I have also said that no school and no child should ever be punished because of a school’s low test participation rate. At the same time, I believe that assessments can be useful tools—provided they are diagnostic, valid, reliable, and provided they yield practical and timely information to teachers, administrators, and parents. So our goal is to continue to improve our tests; when we do, participation rates will improve as a natural consequence.
For too long, New York has neglected the needs of too many students. I am proud to head a Board that is dedicated to changing that paradigm.
For what is worth, I would be happy to see New York state lead the way in abandoning the pointless quest for the right combination of standards and tests.
After twenty years of trying, we should have learned by now that what matters most is having expert professional teachers and giving them the autonomy to do their job with out interference by the governor or legislature. The belief that kids learn more if they are tested more has been a huge benefit to the testing industry, but it has done immense damage to public education. We should eliminate annual testing from federal and state law. My favorite model remains Finland, where schools are free of standardized testing, teachers are highly educated, teaching is a high-status profession, and politicians and think tanks don’t have the nerve to tell teachers how to teach.
One of our regular readers, who is a member of a college mathematics faculty, sent this following comment about the state of math education today:
“I teach at a small four year college in NY. We administer a mathematics placement test to all incoming freshmen. The test we use was created in house and covers basic skills from algebra, trigonometry, and pre calculus. Questions are asked in a straightforward manner (unlike the current NYS common core based regents exams).
“Any student may take a statistics class (taught outside the mathematics department), regardless of placement score. However, we use the results of the placement test, high school coursework and individual discussions with the students to place students appropriately in the remedial algebra, college algebra, pre calculus, calculus sequence.
That said, fully 25% of our incoming freshmen place into remedial algebra–some should probably be placed lower than
remedial algebra, but we do not offer such a course. These students truly need the remedial work.
“The reasons why these students place low are varied. Some have not taken math courses for two years and have become rusty. Some students never really learned the material (the percentage of points required to pass the NYS regents exams is quite low and the tests are so poorly designed that scores are meaningless).
“I am continually bombarded by emails from companies who want to sell textbooks that combine remedial coursework with college credit coursework. Perhaps in some non STEM fields this approach works, but you cannot teach calculus to students who haven’t learned how to add fractions or who don’t understand basic laws of exponents.
“I do not blame their teachers. I blame a state system that shoves a scientific calculator in the hands of every fourth grader–before they’ve learned their multiplication tables, before they’ve learned how to add fractions, and before they’ve gained any practical sense of how numbers work, because apparently solving convoluted word problems is more important than understanding how numbers work. (Some never learn these basic skills–I have students in my classes who need a calculator to multiply 2 times 3).
“This same state system requires every student in algebra to have access to a graphing calculator with equally disastrous results. Calculator overuse is only a small part of the problem. The insistence that all students follow what used to be considered a college prep track and the subsequent rewriting of standards into a bizarre jumble of topics in which necessary skills and techniques are deemphasized in favor of solving pseudo “real world” applications are certainly major contributors.
“The regents exams have become a weird mishmash of questions with teachers left trying to guess all the permutations of how a question about a concept could be asked. I am afraid I have wandered off topic a bit. Anyway, many students truly do need remedial work that cannot be accomplished as part of another course. We do our best to get them through it and get them where they need to be mathematically. We are not 100% successful. Some simply do not have the ability, some do not make the effort, and saddest of all, some are just too far behind.”
Any comments from math teachers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 