Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita of early childhood
education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
prepared this short
guide for parents about child-rearing. It was written in
collaboration with United Opt Out.
Archives for category: Parents
Liz Rosenberg, New York City public school parent, has a
new idea about her daughter’s test scores: she ignores them. This
is what she wrote: Refusing our Daughter’s Test Scores Earlier this
month, New York state made headlines when it revealed how poorly
schools and districts had fared on the state’s new Common
Core-aligned standardized tests. Beginning August 26, families of
the roughly 400,000 New York City public school pupils who took the
tests can log into ARIS (the system that stores student records) to
see their children’s ELA and math scores. My partner and I,
however, have decided that we will not be joining our fellow
parents in this endeavor. Instead, we are sending our school a
letter asking that they not share this year’s scores with our
daughter nor send them home via backpack or snail mail. Why? In
order to trust the reliability of this year’s scores, we would need
to believe that the tests are valid instruments that can accurately
measure what our daughter knows and is able to do. But how can
we–or educational experts, for that matter–assess the tests when
we can’t even see them? When New York signed a contract allowing
Pearson LLC, the producer of the tests, to keep the actual tests
private, it enabled the for-profit testing behemoth to shield
itself from scrutiny–and to dominate the lucrative test-prep
market. Since only small fragments of the tests are being made
public, the only other state-condoned resource that we have to go
by are the curricula the state has purchased and posted online
(produced by Core Knowledge and Expeditionary Learning). Looking at
a series of lessons that focus on frogs, we find a text called
“Everything You Need to Know about Frogs and Other Slippery
Creatures (DK Publishing). Who wouldn’t want third graders to read
a book by this title? But reading a book in class with your teacher
is quite different than testing students on their ability to
analyze a particular text. Everything You Need to Know about Frogs
and Other Slippery Creatures has a Lexile score of 1040 (Lexile is
a well regarded system for mapping the complexity of texts), which
puts it in the 6-8th grade range of text complexity. The Lexile
“analyzer” predicts that an average 3rd grade reader will
comprehend 50% of this text. Assessing students using texts that
are 3-5 years above their grade level does not help teachers or
parents learn much of anything about what those students know and
are able to do. Many high profile ed reform advocates, like Arne
Duncan, have voiced their support of NY state Education
Commissioner John King’s choice to set the bar for proficiency on
the tests so high. “I think the only way you improve is to tell the
truth, and sometimes that’s a brutal truth….,” he commented.*
Aside from “telling the brutal truth,” is there something else to
be gained politically from King’s choice? Perhaps he (and by
extension, his boss, Governor Andrew Cuomo) want to use low
proficiency rates to justify some of the reforms they have put in
place. The more “trouble” our schools are in, the more we need the
state or city to move to fix them. The fixes range from assessment
driven “personalized learning environments” (part of the national
Race to the Top applications for this year) or commercially
produced curricula to closing district schools, opening more
charters, and placing more schools on the turnaround list. They
also include expanding standardized testing to even our youngest
students–those in kindergarten through 2nd grade. As money and
personnel are diverted to these “reforms,” the byproducts are
larger class sizes; curricula that have no ties to schools,
students, or communities; an exodus of talented teachers frustrated
by their loss of autonomy; a stronger argument for charter schools,
and a weakened union. Given all of this, the state has not given us
any reason to trust the scores our daughter (or anyone’s daughter
or son) received this year. So like Michelle Rhee, President Obama,
Commissioner King and federal Department of Education Secretary
Arne Duncan–all of whom send their children to private schools–my
partner and I will have to rely on factors other than the state’s
standardized test scores to evaluate our child’s learning and
progress towards the standards. Our faith will lie with our school,
our daughter’s teachers, and with our own ability to assess her
learning in relationship to the standards. For other parents who
question the content, methodology, and uses of NY State’s 3rd-8th
grade tests, please consider refusing the scores with us. Our hope
is that this action will not only be the best choice for our
family, but that it will help spur a conversation about these
issues among parents/guardians around the city and state.
*http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/schoolbook/2013/aug/06/lower-scores-expected-duncan-backs-ny-new-state-tests/
Liz Rosenberg is a co-founder of NYCpublic.org, an organization
that is creating more opportunities for public school parents to
learn, organize, and take action — together. She lives in Brooklyn
with her partner, Sue Schaffner and their two children.
Most of us don’t have the time to dig down into polls and figure out the nuances of wording and responses. Fortunately for us, Mercedes Schneider has done it for us.
She here compares the AP-NORC poll which concluded that most parents like standardized testing to the PDK/Gallup poll, which found that only 22% of parents thought that standardized testing improved their school.
How did the two polls reach such different conclusions? Read Mercedes and find out.
By the way, Mercedes pronounces her name with the accent on the first syllable and a soft “e” in the second syllable, not like the car, which sounds like an “a” in the second syllable. Apparently, her renown in Louisiana has spread through her blog, and she is known by that unusual first name, like Cher and Madonna.
The new PDK/Gallup Poll had some amazingly good news for those parents and educators who have been fighting the movement to test, standardize, and quantify every last child, as well as to destroy public confidence in public education.
What this poll shows is that the public is not buying what the U.S. Department of Education and the corporate reform movement are selling.
They like their teachers and their schools. They don’t believe that standardized testing has helped their school. They don’t want test scores used to evaluate their teachers.
The message: Corporate reform lacks a popular base.
Here are some key findings:
*Only 22% of Americans “believe increased testing has helped the performance of local public schools.”
*A majority (58%) “reject using student scores from standardized tests to evaluate teachers.” This is a reversal from last year, when 52% approved of this obnoxious idea. The more people see that it mislabels teachers and disrupts schools, the less they like the idea.
*A majority (63%) oppose publishing teacher ratings in the media. This is a reversal from last year, when 51% favored this humiliating idea.
*A decisive majority (72%) “have trust and confidence” in teachers in the public schools. When the question is asked of people under 40, who are likeliest to have school-age children, the proportion grows to 78%.
*A bare majority (52%) supported the right of public school teachers to go on strike.
*A huge proportion (88%) of public school parents say their child is safe at school. Their greatest concern is not intruders but other students.
*A majority (68%) support charter schools.
*A large majority (70%) oppose vouchers for private schools. This is a very large increase from 2012, when only 55% opposed vouchers.
*Almost two-thirds of the public have never heard of the Common Core standards.
*Of those who have heard of the Common Core standards, most say they will either make the U.S. less competitive or make no difference.
*More than 90% of Americans “believe activities such as band, drama, sports, and newspaper are very or somewhat important,” with 63% saying “very important.”
Bottom line: The American people like their public schools, respect their teachers, do not like standardized testing, and do not want teachers evaluated by test scores.
They want their children to have a well-rounded education.
All common sense.
A reader whose nom de plume is “labor lawyer” responds to the AP survey–claiming that parents approve of high-stakes testing–with these observations:
Anecdotal evidence (my own conversations over several years with well-educated middle/upper-middle-class parents), the overwhelming majority of parents approve relying, at least in part, on student test scores to evaluate teachers, including to discharge teachers. In these conversations, I argue that high-stakes testing is 1) too unreliable to use for evaluation purposes due to variables impacting test scores that are beyond the teacher’s control, and 2) counterproductive because it has too many adverse side effects (i.e., encouraging cheating, narrowing the curriculum, discouraging teacher-teacher cooperation, and discouraging teachers from accepting assignments in low-SES schools). Usually, my arguments fall on deaf ears.
These conversations suggest — to me — that most parents do not know enough about what goes on in a classroom today (particularly a classroom in a low-SES-area school) to recognize the many variables that can impact student test scores and that the teacher cannot control. Similarly, most parents have not thought enough about high-stakes testing to recognize the adverse side effects it has on education. Unless the parent is him/herself a teacher in a low-SES-area school, the parent does not have sufficient information and has not spent sufficient time thinking about the issue of high-stakes testing to recognize its unreliability and adverse side effects.
If you would have asked me 15 years ago about high-stakes testing, I would probably have said it was a good idea. Since then, I have discussed the issue with family members and close friends who have taught in low-SES-area schools and, since my retirement a few years ago, have followed the high-stakes-testing debate on the blogs. As a result of these discussions and research, I am now strongly opposed to high-stakes testing. However, very few parents/voters (other than low-SES-area teachers) have experienced this level of exposure tot he high-stakes-testing issue.
The main culprit here — in my opinion — is the main stream media that has reported at length on high-stakes testing while devoting virtually no time to in-depth analysis of the problems inherent in high-stakes testing. The main stream media usually quote a sentence or two from a teachers union official regarding the union’s opposition to the testing without presenting or examining the union officials’ underlying arguments. The main stream media then follows the union official’s comments with responding comments from a pro-testing advocate to the effect that the union officials’ are merely trying to protect poorly-performing teachers, leaving the reader/listener with no guidance re which side of the debate has the better arguments.
A second important culprit are the elected officials — city, state, and federal — who have seized on high-stakes testing as an inexpensive and superficially reasonable solution to the problem of poor academic performance in the inner-city public schools. These elected officials are under significant pressure to “do something” about the inner-city schools and are also reluctant/unable to spend much $ on school reform. High-stakes testing is an easy solution to this political problem. So, we’re not likely to see elected officials — who have ready access to the mainstream media — out there attacking high-stakes testing.
A third culprit are union officials (and ed experts generally) who attack high-stakes testing (correctly) but fail to suggest alternative procedures for identifying/improving/discharging poorly-performing teachers. Virtually every parent/voter during his/her own school days or during his/her children’s school days came in contact with one or more teachers who appeared to be performing poorly and who continued doing so, year after year. These parents/voters will reject out-of-hand the argument that there are no poorly-performing teachers and the argument that current methods of teacher evaluation are effectively identifying/removing the poorly-performing teachers.
Bottom line: Unions and ed experts should strongly advocate for peer-review evaluation systems (like that in Montgomery County, MD — a large suburban school system outside DC — that has resulted in the discharge or resignation-in-lieu-of-review of over 500 teachers over 10 years) while continuing to attack the high-stakes testing.
A reader posted this AP story about parent support for standardized testing and the Common Core. If you read the story carefully, it shows that parents have no idea how test results are being misused and are unfamiliar with the Common Core. The headline says parents support “high-stakes testing,” but nothing in the story supports that assertion.
One parent quote in the story below thinks the test results are used diagnostically, which would be appropriate: ““The tests are good because they show us where students are at, if they need help with anything,” said Vicky Nevarez, whose son Jesse just graduated from high school in Murrieta, Calif. “His teachers were great and if there were problems, the tests let me know.”
Parents think that the test results will be used to help their child do better. They don’t realize that the results are not available for months, when their child no longer has the same teacher. Nor do they know that neither the teacher nor the student is allowed to see the test questions after the test, so they never learn what they got wrong and where they need to improve.
A thoughtful poll would reveal, I suspect, that parents know that the teacher is not the sole determinant of their child’s test scores. Even President Obama once opined that one of his daughters got a low test score in science because she wasn’t trying hard enough. He didn’t blame her teacher; he said Malia was “slacking off.” He said, ““But even in our own household, with all the privileges and opportunities we have, there are times when the kids slack off. There are times when they would rather be watching TV or playing a computer game than hitting the books.’’ In the school his daughters attend, teachers write their own tests, which is the way it should be.
How would parents react if they knew that the tests are not used to help their child, but to give her a rating and to rate the teacher and the school How would they respond if they knew that their child’s score would be used to fire her teacher or close her school?
Here is the story. If anyone can find the questions, please send a link or the questions.
Posted by a reader:
New poll: Parents back high-stakes testing
“By Philip Elliott and Jennifer Agiesta
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Often criticized as too prescriptive and all-consuming, standardized tests have support among parents, who view them as a useful way to measure both students’ and schools’ performances, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Most parents also say their own children are given about the right number of standardized tests, according to the APNORC poll. They’d like to see student performance on statewide exams used in evaluating teachers, and almost three-quarters said they favored changes that would make it easier for schools to fire poorly performing teachers. “The tests are good because they show us where students are at, if they need help with anything,” said Vicky Nevarez, whose son Jesse just graduated from high school in Murrieta, Calif. “His teachers were great and if there were problems, the tests let me know.”
The polling results are good news for states looking to implement increased accountability standards and for those who want to hold teachers responsible for students’ slipping standing against other countries’ scores. Teachers’ unions have objected to linking educators’ evaluations to student performance.
As students prepare to return to classrooms, the AP-NORC Center surveyed parents of students at all grade levels and found:
» Sixty-one percent of parents think their children take an appropriate number of standardized tests and 26 percent think their children take too many tests.
» Teachers’ fates shouldn’t rest solely on test results, according to a majority of parents. Fiftysix percent said classroom observations should be part of teachers’ evaluations, and 74 percent of all parents said they wanted districts to help struggling teachers.
» Despite many Republicans’ unrelenting criticism of the Common Core State Standards, in various stages of implementation in 45 states and the District of Columbia, 52 percent parents have heard little or nothing about the academic benchmarks and a third are unsure if they live in a state using them. Still, when given a brief description of what the standards do, about half of parents say educational quality will improve once the standards are implemented, 11 percent think it will get worse, and 27 percent say they’ll have no effect.
» Seventy-five percent of parents say standardized tests are a solid measure of their children’s abilities, and 69 percent say such exams are a good measure of the schools’ quality. “We know when the tests are coming up. They spend a lot of time getting ready for them,” said Rodney Land of Lansing, Mich. His daughter, Selena, will be in eighth grade at a charter school this fall. The weights-and-measures inspector supports the testing because “it shows what they know, and what they should know.”
“We need some way to keep track of whether the teachers are spending enough time educating,” Land said.
“Education union leaders have stood opposed to linking teacher evaluations with these tests, arguing it is unfair to punish teachers for students’ shortcomings. They also say teachers have not had sufficient time to rewrite their lessons to reflect new academic benchmarks, such as those found in the Common Core.
“When states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, which aim to provide consistent requirements across all states for math and English, test results often falter and the standards can make schools and teachers appear to be faring worse than they did the previous year.”
In a front page story in the New York Times about the budget crisis in Philadelphia, parent leader Helen Gym said this:
“The concept is just jaw-dropping,” said Helen Gym, who has three children in the city’s public schools. “Nobody is talking about what it takes to get a child educated. It’s just about what the lowest number is needed to get the bare minimum. That’s what we’re talking about here: the deliberate starvation of one of the nation’s biggest school districts.”
The story says that Philadelphia does not have an elected board but fails to explain that the city has been under state control for more than a decade. During that decade, also unmentioned in the story, Paul Vallas “saved” the schools.
Maybe Pennsylvania doesn’t want to pay for schools anymore. Maybe it just wants ill-tended buildings, large classes, no arts, nothing else. But lots of prisons.
This Los Angeles parent explains why parents are alarmed by the prospect that the new mayor Eric Garcetti might choose Thelma Melendez, one of Arne Duncan’s deputies as his advisor.
She writes:
“In making this appointment, the Mayor should follow his creed to lead by listening and consider first and foremost the concerns of public school parents, the only “special interest” group whose only concern is children. In so doing, he can resist appointing a staffer who will advance the so-called “reform agenda” which tends to view schools as business franchises in need of a quick corporate turn-around.
“Two-thirds of public school parents reject reform policies including an emphasis on standardized testing, closure of struggling schools, shifting resources from traditional schools to charters, narrowing curriculum, reducing teacher pay and benefits, and budget cutting. This was revealed in a national poll of public school parents (including those at charters). Conducted last month, it reflects the same views Angelenos have already demonstrated at the ballot box….
“Parents know the “reform agenda” itself needs reform. The highly political movement, largely funded by business plutocrats, has become as inflexible and oppositional as the unions it points to as the root of all educational evils. Parents are caught in the middle. We want reform, but reform that helps our children, not an imposed agenda that eviscerates neighborhood schools. Reform that aligns city resources to support and to strengthen local neighborhood schools along the Community Schools model makes sense. Mayor Garcetti succeeded at this kind of political leadership as a city councilman when he helped direct anti-poverty grant funds to Mount Washington Elementary School’s new community center and library.
“Taking a cue from both local elections and the overwhelming evidence from the recent parents’ survey, the mayor should appoint an education deputy who will support public schools. That means professional development over teacher bashing, improvement of neighborhood schools over increased competition, and broadening quality curriculum over teach-to-the-test.”
The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are struggling to come to terms with the New York testing disaster. They certainly will not retreat from their deep faith in standardized testing, and they insist that there must be more parent choice, even though parents are sick of the excessive testing and most continue to choose their neighborhood school, if they still have one.
This is my favorite line:
“Reform critics like Diane Ravitch often question why we don’t push reforms that would create a “Sidwell Friends” for every student. Putting aside where we would find the extra $1.6 trillion it would take to make that possible, there is a simpler answer: some of us don’t want Sidwell Friends. And just because some believe the elite culture of the top 1 percent is what’s best for all children, doesn’t mean all parents share that belief.”
I can’t say where that $1.6 trillion number comes from. I went to ordinary public schools that did not face annual budget crisis, that did not squander millions on standardized testing, that provided arts programming and daily physical education and foreign languages, that did not fire teachers if students got low test scores. But people who did not go to ordinary public schools may not know that.
What I want to challenge here is the assertion that “some of us don’t want” what the best private schools have to offer.
Who wouldn’t want what Sidwell offers? Or Exeter? Or Lakeside Academy in Seattle?
Who wouldn’t want classes of 12-15 instead of 35-40?
Who wouldn’t want a beautiful campus?
Who wouldn’t want experienced, respected teachers?
Who wouldn’t want a rich curriculum with science labs, history projects, drama and music, and lots of sports every day?
Who wouldn’t want to go to a school that never gave standardized tests and didn’t judge teachers by students test scores?
Maybe there are such people. I have never met them. Maybe they work at Fordham or the Gates Foundation, but I doubt it.
A carefree governor paddling away while the children of Philadelphia lose arts, sports, computers, guidance counselors, librarians, books, etc.
Diane Ravitch's blog 