Carol Burris carefully reviewed the NAEP scores. Listen to her interview on public radio. Unlike many commentators, she has the advantage of being an experienced educator and is also executive director of the Network for Public Education.
Archives for category: Standardized Testing
Sometimes events happen that seem to be disconnected, but after a few days or weeks, the pattern emerges. Consider this: On October 2, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that he was resigning and planned to return to Chicago. Former New York Commissioner of Education John King, who is a clone of Duncan in terms of his belief in testing and charter schools, was designated to take Duncan’s place. On October 23, the Obama administration held a surprise news conference to declare that testing was out of control and should be reduced to not more than 2% of classroom time. Actually, that wasn’t a true reduction, because 2% translates into between 18-24 hours of testing, which is a staggering amount of annual testing for children in grades 3-8 and not different from the status quo in most states.
Disconnected events?
Not at all. Here comes the pattern-maker: the federal tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its every-other-year report card in reading and math, and the results were dismal. There would be many excuses offered, many rationales, but the bottom line: the NAEP scores are an embarrassment to the Obama administration (and the George W. Bush administration that preceded it).
For nearly 15 years, Presidents Bush and Obama and the Congress have bet billions of dollars—both federal and state– on a strategy of testing, accountability, and choice. They believed that if every student was tested in reading and mathematics every year from grades 3 to 8, test scores would go up and up. In those schools where test scores did not go up, the principals and teachers would be fired and replaced. Where scores didn’t go up for five years in a row, the schools would be closed. Thousands of educators were fired, and thousands of public schools were closed, based on the theory that sticks and carrots, rewards and punishments, would improve education.
But the 2015 NAEP scores released today by the National Assessment Governing Board (a federal agency) showed that Arne Duncan’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top program had flopped. It also showed that George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was as phony as the “Texas education miracle” of 2000, which Bush touted as proof of his education credentials.
NAEP is an audit test. It is given every other year to samples of students in every state and in about 20 urban districts. No one can prepare for it, and no one gets a grade. NAEP measures the rise or fall of average scores for states in fourth grade and eighth grade in reading and math and reports them by race, gender, disability status, English language ability, economic status, and a variety of other measures.
The 2015 NAEP scores showed no gains nationally in either grade in either subject. In mathematics, scores declined in both grades, compared to 2013. In reading, scores were flat in grade 4 and lower in grade 8. Usually the Secretary of Education presides at a press conference where he points with pride to increases in certain grades or in certain states. Two years ago, Arne Duncan boasted about the gains made in Tennessee, which had won $500 million in Duncan’s Race to the Top competition. This year, Duncan had nothing to boast about.
In his Race to the Top program, Duncan made testing the primary purpose of education. Scores had to go up every year, because the entire nation was “racing to the top.” Only 12 states won a share of the $4.35 billion that Duncan was given by Congress: Tennessee and Delaware were first to win, in 2010. The next round, the following states won multi-millions of federal dollars to double down on testing: Maryland, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island.
Tennessee, Duncan’s showcase state in 2013, made no gains in reading or mathematics, neither in fourth grade or eighth grade. The black-white test score gap was as large in 2015 as it had been in 1998, before either NCLB or the Race to the Top.
The results in mathematics were bleak across the nation, in both grades 4 and 8. The declines nationally were only 1 or 2 points, but they were significant in a national assessment on the scale of NAEP.
In fourth grade mathematics, the only jurisdictions to report gains were the District of Columbia, Mississippi, and the Department of Defense schools. Sixteen states had significant declines in their math scores, and thirty-three were flat in relation to 2013 scores. The scores in Tennessee (the $500 million winner) were flat.
In eighth grade, the lack of progress in mathematics was universal. Twenty-two states had significantly lower scores than in 2013, while 30 states or jurisdictions had flat scores. Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Florida (a Race to the Top winner), were the biggest losers, by dropping six points. Among the states that declined by four points were Race to the Top winners Ohio, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. Maryland, Hawaii, New York, and the District of Columbia lost two points. The scores in Tennessee were flat.
The District of Columbia made gains in fourth grade reading and mathematics, but not in eighth grade. It continues to have the largest score gap-—56 points–between white and black students of any urban district in the nation. That is more than double the average of the other 20 urban districts. The state with the biggest achievement gap between black and white students is Wisconsin; it is also the state where black students have the lowest scores, lower than their peers in states like Mississippi and South Carolina. Wisconsin has invested heavily in vouchers and charter schools, which Governor Scott Walker intends to increase.
The best single word to describe NAEP 2015 is stagnation. Contrary to President George W. Bush’s law, many children have been left behind by the strategy of test-and-punish. Contrary to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, the mindless reliance on standardized testing has not brought us closer to some mythical “Top.”
No wonder Arne Duncan is leaving Washington. There is nothing to boast about, and the next set of NAEP results won’t be published until 2017. The program that he claimed would transform American education has not raised test scores, but has demoralized educators and created teacher shortages. Disgusted with the testing regime, experienced teachers leave and enrollments in teacher education programs fall. One can only dream about what the Obama administration might have accomplished had it spent that $5 billion in discretionary dollars to encourage states and districts to develop and implement realistic plans for desegregation of their schools, or had they invested the same amount of money in the arts.
The past dozen or so years have been a time when “reformers” like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Bill Gates proudly claimed that they were disrupting school systems and destroying the status quo. Now the “reformers” have become the status quo, and we have learned that disruption is not good for children or education.
Time is running out for this administration, and it is not likely that there will be any meaningful change of course in education policy. One can only hope that the next administration learns important lessons from the squandered resources and failure of NCLB and Race to the Top.
Mitchell Robinson, professor of music education and blogger, ponders whether the education wars are winding down. He thinks not. The contention over policy issues remains profound.
To help explicate the issues, he has compiled a brief guide to the different “sides.” In a recent post by Sam Chaltain, who does think the battles are subsiding and a new convergence is on the horizon, one side is the “practitioners, and the other is the “policymakers.” Robinson says the labels illustrate a clash of views.
Robinson writes:
“Mr. Chaltain’s descriptors for the two sides in the war on education are revealing, in that he sees a clear distinction between those who actually teach (the “practitioners”), and those who establish and enforce the rules and policies that govern that practice (the “policy makers”). Perhaps unintentionally, his labels also highlight a major flaw in our current education enterprise: public education policy is being written and administrated largely by persons who have not themselves attended public schools, have no degrees or certification in education, have never taught, and have spent little time in public schools. Whatever meager educational background that the members of what I term the Deformer “edu-tribe” may have is often accrued through alternative routes to the classroom (i.e., Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, the Michigan Teacher Corps), and their educational credentials are often received via online programs that require little or no actual teaching experience, residencies or interactions with other teachers or professors with actual teaching experience.
“Many of the “foot soldiers” in the Deformer army wind up in high-level positions in state departments of education, policy think-tanks, on school boards and as leaders of high-profile charter school networks. They reach these positions of power and authority with shockingly little experience in classrooms, or working with children, but exert out-sized influence on the shape and nature of public education. These members of the Deformer “advance force” parrot a regressive agenda of union-busting, tenure-smashing, and teacher-demonizing, paired with an obsessive devotion to standardized testing, “data driven decision making”, charter school expansion, and privatization as the “answers” to the “crisis in public education”–while remaining seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was their policies that manufactured the crisis they claim to be addressing, and which are paying off so handsomely for the investors who fund their charter schools and pay their generous salaries.”
On the other side are what Robinson calls “the Guardians of Oublic Education.”
“The members of this army largely consist of teachers, retired teachers, and teacher educators, most of whom have significant experience as classroom teachers, multiple degrees in education, and a career commitment to children, schools and education. Few Guardians entered the profession by alternative routes, instead earning their credentials in traditional colleges and universities, under the tutelage of professors who had themselves been classroom teachers before moving to higher education. Many of these activists earn graduate degrees in their chosen field–even as states now refuse to pay for additional degrees–and seek out weekend and summer professional development opportunities at their own expense in order to remain certified.
“The activism practiced by these Guardians is not their sole focus as professionals–rather, these teachers blog at night after lessons have been planned, and kids put to bed, or on rare quiet weekend mornings and afternoons when a few minutes can be stolen from other tasks and responsibilities. And the conflict in which they are engaged is a non-linear war–they are fighting not just the Deformers, but also their support staff in their underground bunkers, typing away on banks of sleek laptops as they push back against kindergarten teachers furiously hammering out their frustrated rants on the ridiculousness of testing 6 year olds, or 3rd grade teachers pointing out the illogic of retaining 8 year olds who struggle with reading.”
The “Deformers” are well-paid. But the Guardians work not for money but for conviction.
“These writers and activists don’t receive a penny for their efforts, in stark opposition to the Deformers’ forces, who are stunningly well-compensated for their work. Instead, these bloggers often toil away in anonymity, providing a voice for the thousands of teachers that have been silenced for speaking out against the reform agenda.”
He provides a list for each side. My lists would be longer. Make your own lists or additions. I would certainly place ALEC, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, and a number of academics and philanthropists on the Deformer list.
Paul Thomas writes a scathing indictment of the U.S. Department of Education’s blind faith in standardized testing. He might have included the U.S. Congress, as well as most governors and legislatures, and a large number of think tanks and foundations. Certainly, one of the primary malefactors of the testing obsession is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And let’s not forget George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, and Sandy Kress (architect of NCLB and Pearson lobbyist.) Then there is the cluster of testing zealots attached to the Common Core.
I could devote an entire post to listing those who shaped the current regime of testophilia. I would include myelf for my sins, but at least I recanted my sins.
Thomas attributes a large part of the damage to non-educators put in positions of authority.
“And let’s not fail to acknowledge that such vapid bureaucratic nonsense is inevitably the result of know-nothings being appointed to positions of power (think never-taught Arne Duncan serving as Secretary of Education in the wake of Margaret Dishonest-or-Incompetent Spellings turning her hollow SOE gig into becoming president of the University of North Carolina, resulting in her bragging about having none of the background experiences typical of leading higher education).”
Thomas includes links to valuable articles and studies about the uselessness of high-stakes standardized testing. Does anyone at the U.S. Department of Education read research? Or has it been turned into a cheering squad for whatever administration is in charge?
Peter Greene carefully reviewed the Obama administration’s “Testing Action Plan” and concluded it is phony, a duplicitous confirmation of the status quo.
Did you think the administration realizes that the billions of dollars spent on 13 years of standardized testing was a waste? Think again.
Did you think the administration really wants to reduce time spent on testing? Think again.
Did you think the administration understands that it is not fair to give exactly the same test to children who can’t read English, children with disabilities, and others of their age? Think again.
Have they lost faith in standardized testing? Not a bit.
Here is what they see as the problem that needs fixing, Greene writes:
“Before you get excited about the administration taking “some” blame for the testing mess, please notice what they think their mistake was– not telling states specifically enough what they were supposed to do. They provided states with flexibility when they should have provided hard and fast crystal clear commands directions for what they were supposed to do.
“Because yes– the problem with education reform has been not enough federal control of state education departments.”
Dad Gone Wild is a blogger in Nashville whose children attend the local public schools. In this post, he recounts his decision to start serious running, first for his health, but then because he became obsessed with collecting data about his running.
You see, it started with a simple app that measured time and distance and kept a running total for a benchmark. But then it progressed to enough of a dependency to justify getting a top-of-the-line Garmin race watch because, well, dependence on data requires more data. Where I once was only concerned with how far and how fast I ran, I am now measuring footfalls, cadence, and several other categories that a) I don’t know exactly what they mean, and b) I wouldn’t know how to change them even if I knew what they meant. I imagine that my running has gotten better over the years, but I attribute that to running more and trying to eat better, not measuring my cadence and footfalls. My sense of accomplishment has certainly not grown; in fact, I’ve noticed a weird phenomenon.
If I head out on a run and one of my measurement tools isn’t working, I’ll either quit the run or proceed without the measurement. The weird part is, that if I continue the run sans measurement, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. I’m going the same distance. I’m burning the same miles, but for some reason it doesn’t feel real. When I look at the data for the month, those runs cease to exist and any progress I might have made is discounted. When I compare my results to friends I “compete” against, it almost feels like I’m lying about those results.
He realizes that the data have taken over; he no longer thinks about why he runs, but only about the measurements. That’s data addiction.
We also say that standardized tests are for the good of the child and that we are preventing minority children from slipping through the cracks, the opposite is actually true, but I ask you, how many people have cited that one test back in 7th grade that opened the door to learning for them? Until they took that test they were lost in the wilderness, but that test inspired them to greatness. Now substitute test with book or mathematical concept, and I bet you get a different answer. By putting emphasis on learning for the measurable we are actually restricting people’s potential. Like when I fail to take a 3-mile run because it doesn’t add significantly to my monthly totals, similarly, students will potentially fail to partake in opportunities to learn because it will produce no measurable results.
Data addiction also leads to putting undue pressure on suppliers. Let’s face it, that is what we are turning our teachers into, data suppliers. Our teachers are under a constant barrage to deliver more data. They are losing valuable time and sanity trying to meet the ever-increasing need. They are in an endless churn to produce more data under the threat that if they don’t, we will replace them with people who can, though we never mention a viable source for these replacements. Perhaps there is a teacher orchard producing an overabundance of quality teachers willing to work for decreasing pay and autonomy that I am unaware of.
Our thirst for more that is measurable has reduced the art of teaching into that of a producer. We’ve lost sight that teaching children is more than just about instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Think about the teachers who had a profound effect on you and your growth. Do you remember them because in fifth grade they had you reading on a seventh grade level, or is it deeper than that? Is it because you felt that they cared for you and were truly vested in helping you understand your place in the world?
Can data addiction be cured or are we doomed to reduce everything we do to numbers, forgetting why we do those things?
We will have a life with data, but a life without purpose.
Mark Pafford, House Minority Leader in the Florida legislature, supports parents who tell their children to opt out of standardized testing.
Pafford says that Florida does not have the public education system that the state’s children need. He singles out the overuse of testing as an area where the state has gone wrong. It uses tests not to help people, but to punish them.
Wise man! Pafford for Governor!
Andrew Rotherham is a reformer who runs a consulting business. He is on many boards, including Campbell Brown’s 74. He used to write a regular column for TIME, now he writes for US News. He typically discloses his conflicts of interest at the end of his articles.
In this article, he tries to explain why it is so difficult for public companies to succeed in the public education sector. He says that the market makes demands for performance indicators that lead to poor decisions. His example is Joel Klein’s Amplify, which Rotherham thinks was too good for the market. (Amplify is or was a client of Rotherham’s business). Other commentators attributed Amplify’s failure to the poor quality of its tablets, some of whose screens cracked and chargers melted after delivery to Guilford County, NC. Rotherham also explains the poor stock performance of K12 (another of his past or present clients) by saying that the market forced it to enroll students who were “ill-suited” to its model.
He writes:
Pressure to hit revenue and growth expectations drives companies to attract customers who are a poor fit. That’s why Edison ended up in Philadelphia. It’s also why the online learning company K12 got caught in a perverse spiral when enrollment expectations drove it to recruit students who were ill-suited to succeed in the company’s model. The more such students the company signed up, the more its academic results suffered.
All in all, his explanation of why businesses fail is a good explanation of why “reform” by test scores fails. Reformers think they can reach the projected “profits” by setting audacious goals, pressuring and intimidating educators, and closing schools. Those tactics don’t work in business, and they don’t work in education.
PS: apologies to readers for the several typos in the original. I wrote this while riding in a taxi on a bumpy highway. But no excuses. I should have read it before posting it.
Peter Greene watched the debate and became outraged, as only he can.
So this is how it’s going to be. The GOP is going to have a cartoon discussion about education, focusing on how to use charters to dismantle public ed and on how to find wacky ways to pretend that we’re not havin’ that Common Core stuff. And the Democratic line on public ed? The Clinton campaign locked in on their line months ago– stick to the safe-and-easy topics of universal pre-K and accessible, cheaper-somehow college education.
That mantra is comfortable and easy. Plain folks can listen to it and hear, “Aww, more pre-school for those precious cute little kids, and a chance for young Americans to make something of themselves,” while corporate backers, thirsty hedge funders, and ambitious reformsters can hear, “Expanding markets! Ka-ching!!”
The unions made their endorsement early. Did that take education off the table as an issue?
Really? We don’t want to hear anything about the disastrous policies of the last twelve years that have systematically broken down and dismantled American public education and the teaching profession? Dang, but I could have sworn we wanted to hear about that. But I guess now that the union is on Team Clinton, our job is not to hold her feet to the fire so much as it is to give them a little massage and carry some baggage for her so that she can save her strength for other issues. Important issues. Issues that aren’t US public education.
Sanders, with his focus on how the rich have commandeered so many parts of our democratic society, is so close to making useful statements about the education debates, but it just doesn’t happen. And I’m not sure how somebody helps it happen at this point. And those other guys? Generic Candidates #3-5? I don’t know what they think about education, but I suppose now that the education vote is supposedly locked up by Clinton, they won’t feel the need to go there.
Bottom line– US public education, despite the assorted crises associated with it (both fictional and non-fictional) is shaping up to be a non-issue once again in Presidential politics. I would say always a bridesmaid, never a bride, but it’s more like always the person hired for a couple of hours to help direct the car parking in the field back behind the reception hall. Or maybe the person who cleans up the reception hall after the bridal party has danced off happily into the night.
The Network for Public Education created a list of questions that journalists should ask the candidates. In this post on Salon.com, I explained NPE’s agenda to improve our public schools and to repel the corporate assault on them.
K-12 education issues, of huge importance to the future of our nation, were almost completely ignored in 2012. They should not be overlooked in 2016 because the very existence of public education is under attack. Billionaires hope to privatize urban districts, then move into the suburbs and elsewhere.
For those of us who believe that public education is a public responsibility, the time to become active is now.
We oppose the status quo of testing and privatization. We seek far better schools, equitable and well-resourced, where creativity and imagination are prized, not test scores. We seek equality of educational opportunity, not competition for scarce dollars.
Please join the Network for Public Education and help us build a new vision of education for each child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 