Archives for category: New York
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

NY Test Score Collapse: What Now?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
55

What should happen next in New York after the Common Core testing debacle?

I won’t share my thoughts here, which are strong, but instead share the views of an experienced educator. Jere Hochman is superintendent of the Bedford Central school district in Westchester County. This is what he concludes:

“Schools have always used standards, designed curriculum, taught kids, and assessed learning and acknowledged there is a lot of room for improvement. Still, SAT, ACT, and AP participation and scores are up as is college attendance and hundreds of thousands, millions of student success stories.

“But after the “Nation At Risk Report” in the ‘80s and other critiques going back to the late ‘90s, politicians and CEOs saw an Achilles heel that would advance their interests on the backs of kids and teachers while ignoring administrators and local school boards. Well intended efforts to “level the playing field” and “a new civil rights movement” were about as sincere as billionaires using the momentum of sincere Tea Party activists and the same billionaires converting the original Peace Corps mission of Teach for America into a business model to bust unions and segregate and oppress kids.

“Since 1999, since 2009, and since last spring, many of us have written about the attack on public education in the form of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the most recent New York reform measures. While trying to make them work and being supportive, protecting local norms and curriculum, and making the best of bad laws, this week the politicos and CEOs chicken little mantras came home to roost.

“So What?
“After numerous position papers, calls for cost-benefit analyses, pleas to slow down, and cries for communication; the convoluted efforts of Race to the Top became the proverbial and overused perfect storm: unproven college and career ready standards, excessive standardized testing, and a rushed teacher and principal evaluation plan. And, the storm hit this week when kids became collateral damage of tests that said, “You used to be smart – not so much now.”

“Yes, “We told you so.” We told you so when NCLB was railroaded under the shadow of 9/11. We told you so when we pointed out that RTTT was just the carrot version of the NCLB’s stick approach. We told you so when we illustrated APPR was not “building the plane while flying it” but rather a train wreck about to happen. We asked for information, explanations, test samples, and definitions. We asked for seats at the table, time, communication, and input.

“So, here we are. We hold our students to high standards and we have the data and work products to prove it. We hold ourselves to high professional standards. Maybe we needed to be hit over the head with a two-by-four to get our attention to high academic standards and meaningful professional evaluation. So, yes, you got our attention but then kept hammering away. And, all the while, you diverted funds from our schools and championed segregated, regimented, uniformed, information regurgitated charter schools.

“Now What? In order to be part of the solution that raises standards and expectations constructively, uses professional evaluation, and fair and meaningful testing, demand that the Board of Regents and Governor

“Re: CCSS and State Testing

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on State testing
2. Implement State testing only in transition grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 beginning in 2014-2015
3. Utilize transition year testing as benchmarks for student and cohort progress in multi-year clusters and review of curriculum implementation and alignment
4. Analyze 2013 tests and result for validity, reliability, and grade level match
5. Provide opportunities for teachers and principals to analyze all test questions, results, and standards for alignment and gaps
6. Utilize 2013-2014 to field test common core standards aligned state tests
7. Provide an extensive comment period reviewing PARCC assessments and other testing options

Re: APPR

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on the 40% tested subject and local assessments component of APPR
2. Utilize 2013-2014 to concentrate on rubric application confidence and inter-rater reliability
3. Utilize 2013-2014 for school districts and BOCES regions to field test local assessments
4. Provide irrefutable evidence for the use of Value-added measures or declare the application ceased

Re: RTTT, CCSS, State Testing, APPR, and State Reform Efforts

1. Report a complete expenditure review of RTTT funds
2. Provide a cost-benefit analysis of all components of CCSS, APPR, and state testing
3. Provide irrefutable evidence of privacy assurances on all aspects of data collection
4. Develop a revised timeline leading to 2014-2015 implementation with bi-weekly communications to the field
=

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

A Hero Principal Speaks Out Against Absurd State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
19

Anna Allanbrook, principal of PS 146 in Brooklyn, is not afraid. She is one of the remaining veteran principals in a city that has ruthlessly pushed out veterans and replaced them with teachers who have only a few years experience. Allanbrook is 58. She remembers what it was like to be an educator before the state and city leaders became obsessed with test scores.

Her school is highly popular. Last year, 1,538 students applied for 175 openings. Teachers love the school and seldom leave. In contrast to many of the charters, where staff turnover is 40-50% every year, only 4% of PS 146 teachers leave annually.

In a New York Times article by the experienced education writer Michael Winerip, Allanbrook recognizes the absurdity of the state testing regime.

Allanbrook is here added to our honor roll for her courage in telling the truth about a state testing system that is not only unreliable and erratic, but is reckless with the lives of children and teachers.

“As a senior principal I feel a duty to speak honestly about what’s going on,” she said in an interview. “By my age, my position is relatively safe; I feel like I’ve learned a lot and should express what younger principals and teachers are too scared to say.”

“At 58, she is part of a generation that remembers when standardized testing did not dominate. She says from the time she started teaching in the 1980s, there has always been a place for testing to help assess student performance. But she worries that over the last decade, tests have superseded a teacher’s judgment.

“The P.S. 146 fourth-grade classes where 94.9 percent were proficient in math last year? This year, as fifth graders, only 25.6 percent of those same students passed. How did such gifted fourth graders become such challenged fifth graders? The problem isn’t the fifth-grade teachers, she says. Last year, with the same teachers, 83 per cent of fifth graders passed.

“Neither the 94 percent or the 25 percent reflects reality,” Ms. Allanbrook says. In the 1990s, when students took the tests, she says, results weren’t distorted by test prep. “You got a clearer sense of a child’s strengths and weaknesses,” she says. “What could parents possibly learn about their child’s abilities from such crazy results?”

“Here’s one way to think about it: Suppose your worth was measured by how much money you earned for a company, but the fellow who kept track of everyone’s earnings periodically forgot how to count.

“During the last decade, she has watched as state officials have repeatedly thrown out test results or rejiggered them.”

The state education department cannot be trusted. The test scores do not show what students know and can do. The scores do not show–as Arne Duncan claims–that the adults have been “lying” to the children. The results show that the adults in charge are incompetent.

As an aside: Welcome back to Michael Winerip, the nation’s most knowledgeable education beat reporter, who was inexplicably switched by the New York Times from covering education to writing about The Boomer generation. Every once in a while, he manages to write a column about education that reminds us how much we miss him.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing

How Come Commissioner King Knew the Test Scores in Advance?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
5

Carol Burris is not only the principal of the year in New York, as chosen by her colleagues, but she knows her statistics.

In this article, she explains Commissioner of Education John King’s magic trick of predicting the scores before the tests were given.

It was magic of the highest order.

And Burris has a brilliant idea about how to close the achievement gap:

“And so to all of the wannabe Kreskins in other Common Core States, here is my plea — align your proficiency cut scores with SATs that predict A+ in college courses. Your proficiency rates will drop to less than 1 percent and then all of the gaps will close. It will be the greatest disappearing act of all time, and perhaps then we can end the show and get back to the business of teaching kids.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

UFT: Call Arthur Goldstein, Classroom Teacher

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
5

[I am reposting this article because the formatting was not clear the first time round. Arthur was quoting the linked article, but I did not set off the quoted sections correctly. My mistake, not his. I think I got it right this time.]

 

Edwize, the house publication of New York City’s powerful teachers’ union, just published a strange and somewhat incoherent article, saluting the collapse of test scores and the arrival of Common Core, which is sure to return authority to teachers and end teaching to the test. Got it? Neither do I.

Here is what high school teacher Arthur Goldstein says about this essay:

A rather incredible piece is up at Edwize right now. It makes several assumptions about Common Core tests that are tough to comprehend. Commenting on the as yet untested and unproven standards, the writer ventures:

“And here’s the thing: these are the very skills educators want to teach and have had to forego in favor of test prep.”

I’m certainly glad that’s clear to the writer, who I very much doubt is a working teacher. Personally, I like to teach kids to love to read. This will help them greatly when they face more challenging reading tasks later. All the Common Core analysis, according to teachers I actually know and speak with, is making their students crazy. Even their quickest and brightest students are pressed for time and find it difficult to even answer the questions in the time allotted.

The assumption that this will preclude test prep, particularly considering the increased volume of testing due to Common Core, is nothing short of preposterous. Couple that with the fact that value-added measures will determine whether or not teachers keep their jobs, and you don’t have to wonder very much how those of us who actually have to work feel about them.

There is then some largely incomprehensible nonsense about forcing “accountability to grow up,” and placing “standardized tests back to their rightful, and less overblown, place.” How we are supposed to accomplish that when there are more tests is an utter mystery to me. And “accountability,” from all I read, tends to relate to ways to fire unionized teachers more than anything else.

“So less than a third of students meet standards. Well, what else do we know? How do students perform on social studies projects, lab work, art and music, sports, leadership activities, group tasks, or community service? What 21st century skills do they have; what ones need to be developed? What are the best models for teaching those skills? What can students tell us about what they do and don’t understand and what helps them learn? And how do we measure those?”

This is the same writer who told us paragraphs ago that Common Core Standards were the very things we wanted to teach. Now, apparently, we are checking their art, music, and leadership activities, none of which are measured by the tests that could very well determine whether or not working teachers are fired.

Why can’t we assess students that way?

One big reason is that we’ve supported not only the Common Core, with its additional layer of testing, but also taken part in crafting a law designed fire teachers based solely on test scores. I have no idea whatsoever why we’ve done that. I would love to assess students in the ways the writer suggests. But there’s now a gun to my head, and I’ll certainly be fired if my kids don’t get sufficient test scores, likely as not on tests that have little or nothing to do with what my kids need to learn. Creative and carefree assessment does not remotely seem the way to go here.

“It would be a relieve if tests became more the province of educators.”

It would be a “relieve” indeed. On this astral plane, Common Core adds to standardized testing and makes that more difficult. Furthermore, there is now a NY State law that prohibits us from grading standardized tests of our own kids. Much to my disappointment, I can’t recall my union objecting to that at all. In fact, working teachers, who know their classes even better than Meryl Tisch or John King, should be testing our own classes and making judgements about our own students.

Sadly, Common Core takes us even further from that. This article, sadly, does not remotely address the concerns of working teachers. Anytime UFT leaders or writers would like to speak to me, they need only reach out. I only wish they had done so sooner.

I’m a real working teacher, and I hear from others each and every day. I’m not at all averse to sharing.

Categories Common Core, New York, New York City, Testing

A Hero Educator in Upstate Néw York!

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
7

Imagine the superintendent of a high-performing district who is fearless and speaks boldly about the political manipulation of the Common Core test scores. Imagine a woman who defends the students and staff against the rigging of scores by ambitious politicians and bureaucrats.

That is Teresa Thayer Snyder of Voorheesville in upstate Néw York, a district that has a 97% graduation rate.

Scores crashed in her district and she spotted the fraud. She saw that the distribution of scores was unchanged, and the gaps were unchanged.

She wrote: “Over the past several months school leaders have been receiving countless messages from the State Education Department preparing us for the dire outcomes associated with the most recent spate of State testing in grades 3-8 in Math and English Language Arts. As the date for the releases of the test scores approached, we received many notices of “talking points” to inform our communities about the outcomes, with explanations of new baselines and how these tests do not reflect the efforts of students and teachers this year. I have rejected these missives because they reek of the self-serving mentality the ‘powers that be’ have thrust upon our students and parents.

“Our community is sophisticated enough to recognize a canard when it experiences one. These tests were intentionally designed to obtain precisely the outcomes that were rendered. The rationale behind this is to demonstrate that our most successful students are not so much and our least successful students are dreadful. If you look at the distribution of scores, you see exactly the same distances as any other test. The only difference is that the distribution has been manipulated to be 30 to 40 percent lower for everybody. This serves an enormously powerful purpose. If you establish a baseline this low, the subsequent growth over the next few years will indicate that your plans for elevating the outcomes were necessary. However, it must be recognized that the test developers control the scaled scores—indeed they have developed a draconian statistical formula that is elaborate, if indecipherable, to determine scaled scores. I would bet my house on the fact that over the next few years, scores will “improve”—not necessarily student learning, but scores. They must, because the State accepted millions and millions of dollars to increase student scores and increase graduation rates. If scores do not improve from this baseline, then those ‘powers that be’ will have a lot of explaining to do to justify having accepted those millions.”

For telling the truth, for standing up to the bullies in Albany, for seeing through the vicious game that the State Education Department is playing and refusing to go along, I hereby name Teresa Thayer Snyder a hero of American education. She joins our honor roll of distinction for her service to her students and her community.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing

Our Kids Are OK, the Tests Are Not

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
25

Stephen Dyer in Ohio can’t believe that 2/3 of the children in New York failed the state tests. He says if he or his wife wrote an exam that 69% of students failed, the shame would be on them or the tests, not the students.

The Néw York scores lack face validity.

Dyer says: “Does anyone really, I mean really, believe that more than 2 out of every 3 children in New York State are failing? Or that only 5% of some subsets pass? Or that the schools in New York State (which consistently rank pretty well in EdWeek’s rankings) are really that bad?”

And he adds: “High standards don’t mean that more than 2 out of 3 kids have to fail. High standards and normal test scores are perfectly compatible.”

Maybe, he suggests the problem is the tests, not the kids.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Breaking News: Common Core Tests Widen Achievement Gaps

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
48

According to an exclusive report in the New York Daily News, the Common Core testing widened the achievement gaps between high-needs students and their advantaged peers. The Daily News had access to a study by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

“According to the Annenberg report, schools with the highest concentration of special-education students saw a 64% decrease in reading scores and 72% decline in math scores. Those with the most English-language learners dropped by roughly 70% in both reading and math.

“Black and Latino students suffered a 56% decrease in reading scores and more than a 60% decrease in math scores from 2012 to 2013, according to the report.”

Before the tests, the city’s chief academic officer Shael Polakow-Suransky, insisted that the purpose of the Common Core testing was to increase equity. He wrote to all schools in New York City, “At its heart, our ongoing transition to the Common Core standards is about equal opportunity.” But now he says, “Anytime you raise standards, the achievement gap for our neediest students gets bigger.”

Well, yes, if you raise the bar to 6 feet, those who struggled to clear the 4-foot bar won’t be able to jump over it. They will fail. They will believe it is their own fault. They will feel discouraged. They may give up, not realizing that they fell because of adults who made the tests so hard that most students failed.

This was a predictable train wreck. The children are the victims. Will anyone be held accountable at the State Education Department or the New York City Department of Education, or for that matter, at the U.S. Department of Education? Don’t count on it.

The only ones who will be punished for the adults’ bad decisions are the children.

And the adults, instead of admitting their errors, will cover up their misdeeds by continuing to make absurd promises that it is good to get low scores because they might go up next time. Or they might not.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/achievement-gap-widens-city-new-standardized-tests-article-1.1423531#ixzz2bfbSf0cf

Categories Accountability, Common Core, New York

New Group Forms in New York State to Fight Common Core

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
64

A parent in New York contacted me to tell me of a new group that she and other parents created to fight the Common Core in New York.

She writes:

My name is Yvonne Gasperino.  My husband and I have started a grassroots effort named Stop Common Core in New York State on April 3, 2013. Here is the link to the website: www.stopccssinnys.com or www.stopcommoncoreinnewyork.com, we also have a FB group page https://www.facebook.com/groups/607166125977337/  

We recently hosted a statewide conference call for NY on July 25.  Here is the link if you would like to listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b-NDZ98QgU&feature=youtu.be

We had experts from Pioneer Institute, Jamie Gass and Joy Pullman from the Heartland Institute.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky was also on the call, whom I am sure you know has been playing a key role in this nationwide effort.

We are holding a free forum on “The REAL FACTS on Common Core State Standards” Saturday, September 21st  with several leading national experts: Sheila Kaplan, Jamie Gass, Emmett McGroarty, Neal McCluskey, Dr. Christopher Tienken, Renee Braddy and Alisa Ellis.  Here is the link for the info: http://stopccssinnys.com/RealFactsForum.html  Our senator George Latimer will be attending.  I would like to know if you would be willing to spread the word about this forum on your blog.  I know that your base is far reaching and Sheila mentioned that you would definitely help with this effort.  As I mentioned above my husband and I are underwriting this ourselves and can use any help possible to promote this to ensure all New York parents and educators will take advantage of this great opportunity.

Categories Common Core, New York

Jersey Jazzman Explains NY’s Triple Lindy Testing Mess

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
14

Remember when teachers wrote the tests for their students to determine way they knew and what they needed to study again? Remember when testing was feedback intended to inform instruction?

It’s all over!

Jersey Jazzman explains the crazy way that Néw York state decided to grade the tests.

Only a mad psychometricians would come up with a process so convoluted. It’s a triple Lindy. Maybe a quadruple Libdy. It’s dazzling. It’s complex. It is totally insane.

And this mad process will determine whether teachers have a job or get fired, whether a school is closed.

Hats off to John King, our state commissioner, who sacrificed the lives of children and teachers to perfect this nutty scheme.

It may be punitive. It may be costly. It may be wrong.

But it is what John King wants. And whateverJohn King wants, the Regents say yes yes yes. After all, he taught in a charter school for three years.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

New NY Scores Prompt Increased Interest in Opting Out of Next State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2013 //
37

Long Island’s Newsday has a story about growing interest by parents in opting out of state testing.

It says that the terrible scores will increase the number of parents who don’t let the schools test their children.

William Johnson, the superintendent of Rockville Center district, says the scores are essentially useless.

They dropped so far for so many students that he can’t make any sense of them.

Meanwhile a spokesman for the New York State Education Department expresses surprise that some parents will not care to find out whether their children are on a path to being “college and career ready.”

I read that line and I thought about my grandson, now entering second grade.

I hope his parents opt him out next year. He will be 8. I don’t care if he is college-ready. Neither do they.

He is a great little guy.

So far, he loves school.

The state should keep its hands off him and let him learn with the natural joy that he brings to everything he does.

We have reached a point where it is time to say no. And mean it.

Categories Common Core, New York, Parents, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »