Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Half the Juniors in 2 Palo Alto High Schools Opt Out

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
8

Students at two high schools in Palo Alto, California, opted out of the tests of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the Common Core test funded by the US Department of Education.

 

“For the second year in a row, both Palo Alto and Gunn high schools failed to meet the government’s required participation rates for new standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment, with about half of the junior classes choosing to opt out.

 

“About 47 percent of Gunn juniors and 61 percent of Paly juniors submitted exemptions, with their parents’ permission, to opt out of two days of testing the week of May 16, according to Janine Penney, the district’s manager of research, evaluation and assessment.

 

“At the elementary level, approximately 1 percent of third through fifth graders opted out, according to Penney, and less than 3 percent of middle schoolers.

 

“California schools are required by federal law to meet a 95 percent participation rate. Schools with federal Title I status, meaning they have high percentages of low-income students, could face losing federal funding if they don’t meet the participation threshold. Paly and Gunn are not Title I schools.”

 

California high school students are smart. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

 

 

Categories California, Common Core, Education Reform, Standardized Testing, Students

Mercedes Schneider: Is Gates Bailing on CCSS?

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
7

Mercedes Schneider noticed something curious in the reports of the Gates Foundation:

 

Despite the CEO’s pledge to “double down” in shoving CCSS on unwilling schools and teachers, the Gates Foundation has not handed out a single CCSS grant in 2016.

 

Oh, also, Sue Desmond-Hellman cites ACT data.  As Peter Greene pointed out in another post, the student who is gifted in music and the humanities is not “college ready” unless she also gets high scores in science. And the brilliant young scientis is not “college ready” unless his test scores in the humanities are equally stellar.

 

Standardization has downsides.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Higher Education, Standardized Testing

Walt Gardner Warns About Opt Out Backlash

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
59

Walt Gardner is an experienced educator who writes a blog in Education Week. In a Memorial Day post, he warns that the anti-testing movement is going too far, too fast, and is likely to generate a backlash. He argues that the public is entitled to know how schools are doing, and standardized tests provide them with information they want and need. He concludes that the tests should be better, more carefully vetted, and serve diagnostic purposes.

 

His concern is reasonable, but I don’t think he is fully cognizant of the reasons that so many parents have decided to opt out.

 

Let me run through a few of them and invite you to add others.

 

  1. The current tests have no diagnostic value. No one is allowed to see how specific children answered, what they got right or wrong, where they need extra help.
  2. No one is allowed to see the questions and “right answers” other than the testing companies. So, unless there is a leak, no one can judge whether the questions are coherent and developmentally appropriate, or whether the answers are ambiguous or incorrect.
  3. Children sit for reading and math tests over six days that may last for many hours, more than the bar exams or the SAT. This is cruel and unusual punishment.
  4. Given the high stakes attached to test scores–the school may be stigmatized or closed, the staff may be fired or get a bonus–the pressure to raise scores is overwhelming. This pressure leads to predictable consequences: teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, cheating.
  5. The heavy emphasis on testing warps education, distorts its meaning.
  6. The most vociferous fans of standardized testing send their own children to private schools. When will they give their children the medicine they prescribe for other people’s children.
  7. The tests themselves are heavily biased by socioeconomic status. Students from affluent families typically are in the top half of the normal curve, while those who do not have the advantages associated with affluence land in the bottom half. It is very hard to escape the bell curve.
  8. Instead of using a measure that is normed on a bell curve, why not judge students by a criterion-referenced measure, akin to a driver’s test? Every student should have a fair opportunity to succeed, not in comparison to others, but by measures that judge readiness for life.
  9. Few people will ever take a standardized test after they leave high school. Bubble guessing is not a useful skill.
  10. For most of our history, students were evaluated by their teachers, not by a bubble test. Then, in many states, students were tested in grades 4 and 8. Now all children in grades 3-8 are tested every year. This development has been a bonanza for testing companies but has had no positive effects for students, teachers, or schools.

 

I say, until we come up with better, more valuable, reliable, and effective ways of measuring student progress, let’s ditch the tests we have now. They accomplish nothing, at great cost.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Education Reform, Standardized Testing

Massachusetts: Showdown Over Teacher Evaluations Based on Test Scores, Even for Teachers of the Arts and P.E.

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
35

Massachusetts is the latest battlefield over the question of how to evaluate teachers. At the center of the conflict is the favorite idea of Arne Duncan and Bill Gates: evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students (or if not their students, someone else’s students). The new Every Student Succeeds Act relieved states of the obligation to tie teacher evaluations to students scores. Oklahoma and Hawaii recently dropped the measure, which many researchers consider invalid and unreliable.

The state plans to impose its evaluation system on all teachers, including teachers of the arts and physical education. How the state will measure the students’ growth in music or art or sports is not clear.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst studied the plan and criticized it:

A 2014 report by the Center for Educational Assessment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which examined student growth percentiles, found the “amount of random error was substantial.”

“You might as well flip a coin,” Stephen Sireci, one of the report’s authors and a UMass professor at the Center for Educational Assessment, said in an interview. “Our research indicates that student growth percentiles are unreliable and should not be used in teacher evaluations. We see a lot of students being misclassified at the classroom level.”

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the largest teachers’ union in the state, has come out in opposition to the plan, as has the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, representing the state’s elected school board.

But state officials, led by state Commissioner Mitchell Chester, insist that they won’t back down. Boston’s superintendent, Tommy Chang, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, is acting to implement the evaluations.


A centerpiece of Massachusetts’ effort to evaluate the performance of educators is facing mounting opposition from the state’s teacher unions as well as a growing number of school committees and superintendents.

At issue is the state’s edict to measure — based largely on test scores — how much students have learned in a given year.

The opposition is flaring as districts have fallen behind a state deadline to create a “student impact rating,” which would assign a numeric value to test score growth by classroom and school. The rating is intended to determine whether teachers or administrators are effectively boosting student achievement. The requirement — still being implemented — would apply to all educators, including music, art, and gym teachers.

“In theory it sounded like a good idea, but in practice it turned out to be insurmountable task,” said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “How do you measure a music teacher’s impact on a student’s proficiency in music? How do you measure a guidance counselor’s impact on student achievement?”

Critics question whether the data can be affected by other factors, including highly engaged parents or classrooms with disproportionate numbers of students with disabilities or other learning barriers. The requirement has also created problems in developing assessments for subjects where standardized tests are not given, such as in art and gym.

Resistance has escalated in recent weeks. On Thursday, the state’s largest teachers union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, as well as others successfully lobbied the Senate to approve an amendment to the state budget that would no longer require student impact ratings in job evaluations. A week earlier, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees passed a policy statement urging the state to scrap the student impact ratings.

But some educators see value in the student impact ratings. Mitchell Chester, state commissioner for elementary and secondary education, defended the requirement, which has been more than five years in the making.

Commissioner Chester is deeply involved with the Common Core and the tests for Common Core. Until recently, he was chair of the PARCC Governing Board.

The educational turmoil in Massachusetts is baffling. It is the nation’s highest-scoring state on standardized tests, yet school leaders like Mitchell Chester can’t stop messing with success. Although they like to say they are “trying to close the achievement gap” or they are imposing tougher measures “to help minority students,” these are the children who fall even farther behind because of the new tests, which are harder than past tests, and are developmentally inappropriate, according to teachers who have seen them.

What is happening in Massachusetts is the epitome of “reform” arrogance. Why doesn’t Commissioner Chester support the fine teachers he has and fight for better funding and smaller classes in hard-pressed urban districts like Boston?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Massachusetts, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

John Thompson: Shaming is not Teaching

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
33

John Thompson, teacher and historian, writes here about two examples of a disturbing trend. In the first one, a teacher writes about her abhorrence of data walls, which publicly shame children. The other is the current flap in Florida, where some districts are punishing children who do not take the state test, even though they are known to be good students whose work in class demonstrates their ability.

 

 

He writes:

 


Have They No Shame?

 

Virginia 3rd grade teacher, Launa Hall, exposes a shocking example of how corporate reform has lost its soul. In doing so, she reminds us of the way that bubble-in accountability started the nation’s schools down this abusive road. Hall writes, “Our ostensible goal in third grade was similar to what you’d hear in elementary schools everywhere: to educate the whole child, introduce them to a love of learning … But the hidden agenda was always prepping kids for the state’s tests.” When educators’ jobs shift from the unlocking of children’s whole potential to increasing test scores, some or many educators will stand and fight against destructive pedagogies, but it is amazing how many otherwise caring human beings will agree to inflict so much pain on children.

 

In Florida, for instance, most schools aren’t punishing 3rd graders for “opting out” of tests. Two districts, however, are warning parents that their children will be retained if they opt out. The Manatee district is “cherry-picking” from the state law in order to hold back a third-grader who “has gotten nothing but rave reviews from teachers.” Another parent opted her son out of the testing because of his test anxiety; “she said her son reads on a fourth-grade level and performs at or above grade level in the classroom.” These school systems are obviously willing to hurt those kids in order to send a message to parents who have the temerity to push back against the testing mania.

A few years ago, I thought I witnessed the ultimate abusive practice designed to shame children into working harder to meet higher quantitative targets. It was bad enough that the New Orleans “No Excuses” charter school I was visiting prohibited talking in the cafeteria during lunch. Even worse, their data wall was prominent in the lunchroom for everyone to see. I had once seen an Oklahoma City data wall, identifying the scores of all students, but it was in a room, inside another room, and it was for faculty eyes only. Teachers and administrators in OKC had long been warned that a NOLA-style breach of confidentially could cost us our teaching licenses, but that had seemed redundant. What sort of human being would publically reveal individual students’ attendance and/or classroom performance data?

And that brings us back to Launa Hall’s story. She notes that posting students’ names in such a way without parental consent may violate privacy laws. But, “At the time, neither I nor my colleagues at the school knew that, and … we were hardly alone.” Hall adds that the U.S. Education Department encourages teachers to not display the numbers for individuals, who are identifiable by name, and that approach would have been more “consistent with the letter, if not the intent, of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. But it would be every bit as dispiriting. My third-graders would have figured out in 30 seconds who was who, coded or not.”

Hall’s focus is not on the legal games adults are playing but on the damage done by this shaming to individual children. She paints us a picture of the pain that was inflicted on “Child X” when she saw her real name followed by “lots of red dots” declaring that she was not meeting official state standards. Of course, Hall “tried to mitigate the shame she felt.” The teacher’s efforts at reconnection may have helped a little, but the student “still had all those red dots for everyone to see.”
Hall then tells us “exactly who is being shamed by data walls.” Janie (her pseudonym for Child X) “is part of an ethnic minority group. She received free breakfast and lunch every school day last year, and some days that’s all she ate. Her family had no fixed address for much of the year, and Janie, age 8, frequently found herself the responsible caretaker of younger siblings.”

The Post story prompted around 400 comments and more discussion on social media. Almost all were opposed to the public posting of children’s data, often decrying the walls as insane and reprehensible. One commented, “Hard to imagine this actually occurring. Why not just put the dots on their foreheads?” Some commenters tried to blame the individual teachers who posted data walls, but others explained how that is often required by under-the-gun school systems.

Even so, the few supporters of such data walls, as well as the venom of some commentators casting blame on individuals, illustrate the tragedy unleashed by corporate reformers appealing to our basest instincts. A few recalled the good old days and complained “today’s little flowers can’t take competition or even comparisons of any kind,” or said that similar things happened 50 years ago, but “if some little snot bragged about getting the highest grade, he/she would get beat up after school.” One personified the market-driven mentality which gave us such brutality, saying that 3rd graders should be separated “into two tracks: one would be the “everyone gets a trophy track,” while “the other track would be the ‘competitive track,’ which would feature these dreaded ‘data walls,'” so we could see who became more successful in life.

Hall is magnanimous in wrapping up this sorry tale of cruel competition and compliance, “when policymakers mandate tests and buy endlessly looping practice exams to go with them, their image of education is from 30,000 feet. They see populations and sweeping strategies. From up there, it seems reasonable …” But, how could they disagree with her admonition? “Teaching the young wasn’t supposed to feel like this.”

I would only add that the ultimate tragedy would be the creation of a new generation of educators and patrons where this sort of shaming feels like teaching.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Education Reform, Florida, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Virginia

Manatee County, Florida, Won’t Back Down on Threat to Hold Back Third-Graders Who Opt Out

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
18

Manatee County, Florida, is standing by its stated policy: Third graders who do not take the state test or do not take the SAT-10 will be held back, no matter what their teacher says, no matter what kind of work they can show, no matter what. Period.

To be fair, Manatee is not the only county planning to flunk third-graders who opt out. And to be even more fair, they are just complying with a truly absurd state law.

Many researchers believe that retaining children in third grade is harmful, that it dampens students’ interest in learning, and that eventually retention turns into dropping out in later grades. After all, the students who are held back suffer humiliation.

But while researchers may debate the value of retention, no one argues that a good reader should be flunked because he or she did not take a test. What is the purpose of retaining a good reader, an excellent reader? The district can say it was “just following orders.” The district can say its hands are tied to state law. But no matter what they say, holding back a student for punitive reasons proves that “reform” is not about the kids. It is about a hard-right ideology that wants to standardize children and impose iron conformity, even to unjust laws.

And that is the problem with the Florida law. When excellent students are held back as punishment, then the law is stupid and unjust. As we have learned from opt out in other states, the children who do not take the test are very likely children of educated parents, who consider the test to be unnecessary and burdensome. If the students can demonstrate that they can read by reading-out loud to an examiner, doesn’t it make sense to allow them to advance a grade based on the fact that they can read rather than on their willingness to submit to a multiple-choice test?

Understand that when you discuss the willingness of a third-grader to take a test, you are really talking about their parents, not the child. It is virtually certain that the parent tells the child not to take the test because the parent wants to make a statement.

Bear in mind that the parent pays the taxes that pay the salaries of the legislators, the principal, the state education department staff, and the teachers. These are public employees. Why should they ignore the will of parents? Why should the legislature celebrate school choice, yet deny parents the right to remove their child from the testing regime?

Time to review Peter Greene’s sensible commentary on this goofy situation.

He writes:

An eight year old child who had a great year in class, demonstrated the full range of skills, and has a super report card– that child will be required to repeat third grade because she didn’t take the BS Test.

This is what happens when the central values of your education system are A) compliance and B) standardized testing. This is what happens when you completely lose track of the purpose of school.

What possible purpose can be served by this? Are administrators worried that the child might not be able to read? No– because that is easily investigated by looking at all the child’s work from the year.

What possible benefit could there be to the child? Mind you, it’s impossible to come up with a benefit in retention for the child who has actually failed the test– but what possible benefit can there be in flunking a child who can read, her teacher knows she can read, her parents know she can read, she knows she can read– seriously, what possible benefit can there be for her in retention. How do you even begin to convince yourself that you are thinking of the child’s well-being at all when you decide to do this?

This is punishment, not so pure, but painfully simple. Punishment for non-compliance, for failing to knuckle under to the state’s testing regime. And in taking this step, the districts show where their priorities lie– the education of the children is less important than beating compliance into them and their parents, less important than taking the damned BS Test.

Officials in these counties scratch their heads? What can we do? The law is the law. Well, in the immortal words of Mr. Bumble, “the law is an ass.” And furthermore, just look across county lines at some other Florida counties that are NOT doing this to their third graders. Go ahead. Peek at their answer. Copy it.

Hell, Superintendent Lori White of the Sarasota schools is retiring in February of 2017– is this really how she wants to finish up her time there?

Categories Florida, Opt Out, Standardized Testing, Students

Rachel Rich: Everything You Need to Know about the /%#£€%+ Test

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2016 //
47

Rachel Rich is a retired English teacher who has taken a deep interest in standardized testing. She wrote the following review of one of the two federally subsidized tests. Normally, I would tell you which test she has analyzed, but I have recently become acutely aware that the testing corporations hire security agencies to scan the Internet, looking for blogs and tweets that dare to mention their name. If you mention their name, the testing corporation goes to the Internet Service Provider and complains that you violated their copyright. The ISP then deletes your post or tweet. So I won’t tell you which national test she is writing about. I will just give you a hint: it is not the one that is CCRAP spelled backwards. It is the other one. (Let’s see if they miss this one.)

 

Rachel Rich writes:

 

S——r B—–ed Exposed

 

The online Third Grade SB Practice Test is the tip of the testing iceberg, but presumably made of the same basic material as the larger, submerged test. The “real” test is so hidden from view that you, other parents, teachers and even the students themselves are not even allowed to whisper about it, let alone criticize. Given that other standardized tests publish their questions once the test is over, the SB never-ending code of silence is unprecedented, probably to hide flaws. If the public mini-version is any indication, the final is a sloppily written, tricky, grossly unfair mess.

The current level of censorship surrounding SB would make Nixon proud. The test originators, Pearson, CTB/McGraw-Hill, and AIR, unleash internet spies like TRAXX and Caveon who set webcrawlers after key words like test names. Next, human spies dig into the Facebook, Twitter and other accounts of any griping parents, teachers, bloggers and especially children!

 

 

SB even sends out annual flyers to school administrators detailing how to spy on kids’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. Principals are supposed to suspend kids as young as eight simply for telling their parents there was a question about the Wizard of Oz on a Common Core test. Teachers are forced to sign gag orders or face firing for discussing the uber-test even in the most general terms. And right this very minute testing companies are forcing the removal of internet discussions under threat of lawsuits. Censorship is now as common as head lice in kindergarten.

 
Now let’s find out what they’re hiding:

 

The Language Arts Third Grade SB Practice Test is twenty pages long! Since it’s supposed to take an hour, we can easily calculate the length of the final. Officially third graders need at least seven hours to finish the math and English portions combined, meaning the real deal is a grueling 140 pages long!!! Tenth graders are assigned at least 8 1/2 hours, which would mean their tests are about 170 pages long! Endurance is now as key as knowledge. One kid told me afterwards his fingers hurt.

The test opens with a colossal three page reading passage totaling 580 words. That is triple the length of passages in other tests, a length only suitable for in-class discussion, not a cold read. Still the test repeats this flaw with similar, lengthy, redundant passages. Such a quantum leap in expectations renders all comparisons with other tests useless, meaning it can’t be proven to be a legitimate measure.

Previous tests were only 60-120 minutes long, while today’s third graders must sit still for 90 minute intervals totaling a minimum of seven hours for English and math combined. This minimum doesn’t include time needed for individual log-in, bathroom breaks, computer crashes, or SB transmission snafus. Already heaped with challenges, special education students need up to fifteen hours to finish, though knowing in advance they’ll probably fail. Even recent immigrants who can’t read English are required to simply sit and stare at the screen until the clock runs out. Test makers call that rigor, but it’s really just plain mean and stupid.

Sophisticated computer skills are required of kids, even though the makers don’t have their own act together. I had to click back and forth between passage and questions, which sent my answers into a black hole, as does pressing the tab button during typing. Eight-year-olds are also expected to highlight, drag and type fluently, which most cannot. I wanted to throw myself off the front porch as a martyr for the millions biting their nails and pulling out their eyebrows in sheer frustration.

Question 1: “Click the two details that best support this conclusion.” Kids are faced with choices twenty words long, although adult tests typically warm up with soft pitches, like choosing from short phrases.

 

SB, way to destroy kids’ confidence right out of the gate!

Questions 2, 11, 13, 27 have a Part A/Part B format. Question 2: “This question has two parts. First, answer part A. Then, answer part B.” This format is unfamiliar to adults, let alone eight-year-olds. Since these quirks don’t exist on the ACT, ASVAB, or Meyers-Briggs, etc., they negate the Smarter Balanced claim that they prepare K-12 students for future tests. Equally befuddling, the fifth choice for Question 2 Part B is on the next page and since you can only open one page at a time, even I, an adult, overlooked it.

 
So why such trickiness? Teacher, teacher, I know! The more students SB fails, the more test prep they sell! As soon as last year’s testing month was over, SB solicited teachers through our district email to purchase out of their own pockets tutorials for improving student scores. In some districts they even use school contact lists to advertise directly to parents! These profits from the private sector are on top of their profits from federal and state funds. In 2012 alone, a year of limited pilot testing, the industry pocketed a cool $8.1 billion. No one is saying what today’s total is, probably for fear of alerting the public to this gigantic waste of tax dollars.

 
Question 3: “Arrange the events from the passage in the order in which they happen. Click on the sentences to drag them into the correct locations.” Many eight-year-olds don’t have the experience, let alone the dexterity to do this. Consequently they fail not from lack of knowledge, but from a lack of intelligent tests.

 
Question 5: “What inference can be made about the author’s message about animals? Include information from the passage to support your answer.” Also, Question 12: “What inference can be made about why the author includes the backpack in the passage?” Where do I begin? Little children’s brains can’t “infer” anything, because they still think only literally. It’s developmentally impossible for them to read between the lines or think figuratively. To say, “The girl has a chip on her shoulder” merely signals them to look for something on her shoulder, not that she’s angry. Teaching inference at this age is as unrealistic as trying to potty train every single one-year-old. Sure, a few precocious babies might succeed, but the rest will be driven batty.

 
These little kids are even required to type their answers! You have to be living in la-la land to expect fluent keyboarding at the age of eight. According to the US Census, a whopping 16% of students lack the home computers or hand-held devices necessary for practice, and most schools don’t have enough computers for all. Ironically, exploding testing expenditures have also forced most districts to drop keyboarding courses.

 
This boondoggle isn’t age appropriate precisely because zero elementary specialists were allowed to help with its design. Instead, reps from the College Board, ACT and Aspire idiotically “backward mapped” expectations for each age starting with college entrance exams and assuming every child should attend college. No Child Left Behind agreed, but who do you think set that agenda for US Department of Education?

 
No joke, SB requires a B to pass!!! That’s to align with a B requirement for college entrance. But as kids didn’t we all need only a C to pass? Even reading levels are now one full year higher by graduation. No wonder only about a third pass. Meanwhile, doesn’t requiring all students be college eligible mean they all must be above average? Hard to believe intelligent adults fall for this. It’s oxymoronic!

 
Question 10: “The author uses a word that means placed one on top of another.”

 

Punctuation rules require quotation marks around “placed one on top of another”. Rushing to publication in just nine months, test makers clearly ignored the thousands of pleas for corrections, proving once again that they’re not about quality, but about profits. Investment sites squealed with delight over the chance to stuff $2.2 trillion dollars in public education funds into their private pockets.

 
Question 16 has a typographical error: “Move the groups of sentences so that the group that makes the bestbeginning (sic) comes first.” Even English majors don’t agree on the correct sequence for this story, but they do agree SB should have hired a copy editor. I actually heard one test designer complain that since corrections impact multiple contractors, from software to print, they’re just too expensive to make. That’s because they’re beholden to shareholders, not students.

 
Question 21’s phrasing is light years above grade level: “Which of the following sentences has an error in grammar usage?” Seriously? Why not, “Which sentence uses incorrect grammar?” Strangely, teachers aren’t even allowed to help kids understand these obtuse questions, but instead must parrot “Do your best.” Kids get so stressed out not knowing what they’re supposed to do that SB manuals actually detail how to handle crying, vomiting and peeing pants. You wouldn’t believe how many parents and teachers tell me this is actually happening to their own students! It’s epidemic.

 
Question 23: Who in their right mind gives a listening test about The International Space Station to third graders? On what planet do little ones have either the background or the interest? It’s also grossly unfair because they don’t study this until the fourth grade. Besides, not everyone is a white, suburban, middle-class kid whose school and parents can afford trips to the planetarium.

 
No surprise, SB has never passed any validity studies that compare it with other measures such as the NAEP, PISA, SAT, ACT, high school or college graduation rates. In fact, they’ve quietly issued disclaimers. If the test did have validity, they’d be crowing it from the rooftops. But why should they bother when they’ve already pocketed the cash?

 
Now would someone please blow the lid off the real test, preferably before quitting or retiring?!

 
Rachel Rich

Categories Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Standardized Testing

Militant Union Leader Re-Elected in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
8

Barbara Madeloni, the firebrand insurgent who won the presidency of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, was re-elected last week on a platform of fighting high-stakes testing and charters.

 

Madeloni first rose to prominence in 2012 when she fought the EdTPA, the Pearson test required for certification. She refused to administer it to her students and lost her job (she later regained it, then took an unpaid leave, then lost it again, but may be rehire again, or maybe not.)

 

At that time, she said about teacher certification:

 

““This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.”

 

Last week, the MTA filed an amicus brief as part of a lawsuit to stop the legislature from lifting the cap on charter expansion.

 

Charter advocates filed a lawsuit last year claiming that the state’s cap on charter schools violates the civil rights of students who could then not have an opportunity to attend a charter. The state attorney general, Maura Healey, filed a motion to dismiss and the Massachusetts Teachers Association just filed an amicus brief in support of the AG’s motion to dismiss. The MTA brief confronts the lie behind the charter advocates’ ‘civil rights’ argument.

 

For her fight for public schools, students, teachers, education, and democracy, I am glad to place Barbara Madeloni on the honor roll.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Massachusetts, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Support for public schools, Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

Julian Vasquez Heilig Assigns a Lesson on Testing and Censorship

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
7

The executives at PARCC continue to delete Tweets (and possibly my post about the deletions, which disappeared in the middle of the night of Friday the 13, between 10:46 pm, when it was posted, and 4:45 am, when a reader informed me that it was gone).

 

Julian Vasquez Heilig decided that it would be a useful exercise for his education policy students to study these issues. He posts the disputed posts and challenges his students to examine the issues

 

Here is his assignment.

 

The question:

 

Is the analysis of PARCC tests fair use for research and scholarly purposes?

 

Categories Accountability, Freedom of Speech, Research, Standardized Testing
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