Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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A Hero in Lee County, Florida

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2015 //
4

Bonnie Cunard Margolin in Florida reminds us of the brief rebellion in Lee County, Florida, when the school board voted to opt out of a crushing burden of state tests. One member rescinded her vote and the rebellion was crushed. But the fight goes on, led by Don Armstrong, a hero for children.

Bonnie writes:

As you remember, last Fall, Lee School Board Member, Don Armstrong, stood up in a bold move and opted his twin children out of testing. The entire county followed immediately after, setting off a storm of discussion about testing in Florida. His voice helped many but cost him his re-election here in Lee Cty.

The fight in Lee rages on. Armstrong is a large part of it. In fact, our superintendent, Dr. Nancy Graham (the super who gave us so much resistance during the opt out), just resigned amid sanctions for intimidation and bullying from the US Dept of Ed, Office of Civil Rights.

It stays hot down south here 😉 I thought you might be interested in Armstrong’s Sunday letter this week. He mentions BAT and Bob Schaeffer (also a Lee Cty, FL resident). Here is his letter:

Happy Sunday. As always I woke up Sunday morning, drank my coffee, and pondered the issues that we are facing in the Lee County School District. This upcoming week, we have some testing issues that we need to address at Tuesday’s 6 pm Board Meeting. Let’s dive right in and look at the issues, as well as some of the solutions.

Let’s start with a look at the new testing calendar. The Lee County School Board is required to approve the testing calendar by each October. This calendar was placed on last week’s agenda, page 99, for public review. When it became public, the proposed calendar really startled parents and teachers to see that the amount of testing has increased in Lee County this year, despite efforts by the community and our state representatives to reduce testing last spring.

So, why so much concern with this new Lee County testing calendar? Well, let’s see. Starting in the kindergarten, we have ridiculous amounts of testing. Our young kindergarten students must complete 240 minutes of testing (district and state). And, you can follow the testing all the way to high school, with older students facing over 30 hours of state and district tests in one school year.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard that right. 30 HOURS of testing in one school year. Yes, and up to 240 minutes of testing in kindergarten, alone. WOW. Kindergarten testing – and, I don’t mean Fun Friday Spelling Tests. I mean, 240 minutes of grueling multiple choice tests, some on advanced software platforms, and all with high stakes consequences for our 5 year olds.

Can you imagine? I remember when I was in kindergarten, the only thing we were tested on was on how not to eat the glue and whether or not we could sing the ABC’s. Now, all their time is being spent on multiple choice testing. This insanity is taking away from our children’s’ education. Our children should be blowing bubbles, not filling them in.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I fully understand that we need some type of testing to measure our students’ education, but this has completely spun out of control. As local resident, Bob Schaeffer, also National Director of FAIRTEST, pleaded at the school board microphone last Tuesday, “Enough is enough.” Lee County residents must stand up and put a stop to this nonsense.

So, let’s look at why there is so much testing. First, you have testing companies which make money. Then, you have lobbyists which make money and, of course, you have politicians who are pushing the testing because those same lobbyists are donating money to their campaigns. It is one big profitable scheme.

You see folks, there is one crucial piece to all that I just said that is missing: Teachers. Yes, you heard me right: TEACHERS. Why aren’t the teachers involved in the choice of tests? Wouldn’t you think that they are the ones who understand the children they teach? Wouldn’t you be confident that a professional, holding a college degree and licensed by state of Florida, would be the best choice to measure the needs of our students? Wouldn’t a teacher know best about where students need to be, academically, and how to get them there?

These questions bring me to the solution, and you know me: I am all about solutions.

I recommend we form a Testing Coalition across the state of Florida. This coalition is to be made up of teachers from Elementary, Middle and High School. Each of these teachers will be appointed by their peers. At the beginning of the year, they will collect data and at the end of the school year, they will work with the other 67 school districts in the state to analyze the data and recommend programs, professional development, and other needs. Yes, we would have to pay the members of the coalition and, yes, it would absolutely be well worth the money spent. The missing element in today’s crazy world of school accountability is the teacher’s voice. Let’s return teachers to the table of decisionmaking.

It’s simple. Their job would be to look at all the tests and decide which ones are working and which ones are not working. Then, they would go to the education committee in Tallahassee with recommendations.

Teachers have a voice and it is time we listened. Our Florida teachers are well educated on their craft and extremely well educated on the failures of recent reform efforts. Think about it, if you put a large group of teachers, especially intelligent, brave teachers willing to stand up to corporate, education reform, like BATS ( BadAss Teachers Association – 55,000 strong )In front of the education committee with recommendations, our leaders would have to be silly not to listen to them. The teacher’s are screaming for a voice. Let’s give it to them.

Remember, kids first not politics. Don’t put a $ sign on our kids’ education.

– Don Armstrong, Parent and Candidate for Lee County School Board

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Florida, Honor Roll, Standardized Testing

Meet the Chair of the Cuomo Commission: A Textbook Case of “Failing Upward”

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2015 //
14

A reader sent this article about the remarkable and surprising career of Richard Parsons, the businessman who will chair the Cuomo Commission to review the Common Core standards and assessments.

Parsons, the article says, is a glorious exemplar of “failing up,” something that happens only in the business world. He dropped out of high school and got a GED. He dropped out of the University of Hawaii. Nonetheless, he entered the corporate world and moved up and up. He was chairman of the Dime Savings Bank, which failed. He was chairman of AOL Time Warner, which was a disastrous merger. He then became chairman of Citigroup. That did not end well either.

Last month, shareholders finally rebelled against Citigroup, the worst of the Too Big To Fail bailout disasters, by filing a lawsuit against outgoing chairman Dick Parsons and handful of executives for stuffing their pockets while running the bank into the ground.
Anyone familiar with Dick Parsons’ past could have told you his term as Citigroup’s chairman would end like this: Shareholder lawsuits, executive pay scandals, and corporate failure on a colossal scale. It’s the Dick Parsons Management Style. In each of the three companies Parsons was appointed to lead, they all failed spectacularly, and somehow Parsons and a handful of top executives always walked away from the yellow-tape crime scenes unscathed.

This past April, for his final act as Citigroup’s chairman, Dick Parsons made sure that Citi’s top executives were handsomely rewarded for their failures. He arranged a pay package for CEO Vikram Pandit amounting to $53 million despite the fact that Citi’s stock plummeted 44% last year, and has woefully underperformed other bank stocks even by their low standards.

Citigroup, as you might recall, got the largest bailout of any banking institution, larger than BofA’s– $50 billion in direct funds, and over $300 billion more in “stopgap” federal guarantees on the worthless garbage in Citi’s “assets” portfolio. Those are just the most obvious bailouts Citi received—this doesn’t take into account the flood of free cash, the murky mortgage-backed securities buyback programs, the accounting rules changes that allowed banks like Citi to decide how much their assets “should be worth” as opposed to what they’re really worth on their beloved free-market, and so on…
So just as Dick Parsons stepped down as Citigroup chairman last month, shareholders finally rebelled, suing Parsons, CEO Pandit and a handful of executives for corporate plunder.

How to explain his miraculous rise to the top?


Dick Parsons’ biography can be summed up in two phases of his life: before meeting Nelson Rockefeller, and after meeting Nelson Rockefeller.
Before meeting Nelson Rockefeller, Dick Parsons was a self confessed clown from a middle-class African-American family in Brooklyn. “Left to my own devices, I don’t feel any compulsion to strive,” he told to the New York Times. Race was never an issue with Parsons either: ”I don’t have any experience in my life where someone rejected me for race or any other reason.’

So Parsons dropped out of high school with a “C” average, earning a GED certificate. He enrolled in the University of Hawaii for reasons he could never really explain, joined a frat, and became their social chairman. As one of Parsons’ frat brohs recalled to journalist Nina Munk, “Here’s this guy who’s at the bar sixty-seven days in a row and, as you can imagine, he did very poorly in school.”

Parsons did worse than poorly: He flunked out of U. Hawaii. Without earning a degree.

And then slacker Dick Parsons met oligarch Nelson Rockefeller, and from here on out, Parsons lived out a Cinderella fairytale for the One Percenters. As luck would have it, Dick Parsons’ grandfather was once a favorite groundskeeper at the famous Rockefeller Compound in Pocantico Hills and lived in a hut on in the shadow of the oligarchs’ mansion. Soon, Dick Parsons and his wife would move into one of those same groundskeepers huts under Nelson Rockefeller’s patronage.

As Parsons later admitted, “The old-boy network lives…I didn’t grow up with any of the old boys. I didn’t go to school with any of the old boys. But by becoming a part of that Rockefeller entourage, that created for me a group of people who’ve looked out for me ever since.”

Just the right person to lead the Cuomo Commission on the Common Core standards and assessments. Especially given his deep knowledge of standards, assessment, and curriculum.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reform, Cuomo, Andrew, Standardized Testing

Carol Burris: The Origins of the Opt Out Movement

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2015 //
14

Carol Burris tells the story of the birth of the opt out movement. Contrary to the take in the mainstream media, parents started opt out, not unions. Parents continue to lead opt out. In 2015, the leader of the NĂŠw York State United Teachers, Karen Magee, endorsed opt out shortly before the testing began. The organization and groundwork had already been out in place by parents.

Look for larger numbers of parents opting out in 2016. Thus far, their children have won nothing but more testing and empty pronises.

Categories Opt Out, Standardized Testing

Gerri K. Songer: A Lexile Analysis of PARCC, SSBA, SAT, ACT

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2015 //
25

Gerri K. Singer, an educator in Illinois, performed a Lexile analysis of four major standardized tests. The Lexile rating measures the difficulty of the language.

She analyzed sample questions from PARCC, SAT, SBA, and ACT.

Categories Standardized Testing

Corporate Reformers Defend Cuomo Commission, Attack Parents

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2015 //
56

The Albany Times-Union published a letter written by corporate reformers who support Common Core, charter schools, and high-stakes testing.

The signatories applaud the idea of giving the Common Core standards a new name. That’ll mollify parents, for sure. Call them New York’s Very Own Unique Standards. Rebranding will fool almost everyone, on the assumption that the parents of the 220,000 children who opted out are dumb and won’t notice that New York’s Very Own Unique Standards are the Common Core! Apparently the trick worked in other states, so why shouldn’t it work in New York?

The shortening of the tests by 90 minutes is a step forward, but it does not really solve the problem of tests that currently are 8-11 hours long. Why should tests require 6.5 hours for an 8-year-old to see if they can read or do math? Even that is way too long.

The corporate reformers are certain that the Common Core standards (aka “New York’s Very Own Unique Standards”) offer a brighter future for the children of New York.

But they don’t explain how children who are English language learners will have a brighter future when 97% of them “failed” the Common Core tests for three years in a row.

How will students with disabilities have a brighter future when 95% of them “failed” the Common Core tests for three years in a row?

How will African-American and Hispanic children have a brighter future when more than 80% “failed” the Common Core tests for three years in a row?

Will they be promoted to the next grade even though they failed the CC test? Will they be allowed to graduate?

If they can’t be promoted, and they can’t graduate because the CC standards are developmentally inappropriate, and the tests have passing marks far above their capacity, why kind of future will they have?

It won’t be bright. What will they be able to do without a high school diploma?

Ideas?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, English Language Learners, Special Education, Standardized Testing

Hudson Valley Parents: Cuomo’s Commission is a Farce

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2015 //
15

Parents in the Hudson Valley of New York are outraged by Cuomo’s commission to review the Common Core standards and tests.

This is a region that encompasses both high wealth and high poverty. It had some of the highest opt out numbers in the state.

Here is a large sample:

After conceding that “evidence of failure is everywhere”, Governor Cuomo recently announced his fifteen member 2015 Common Core Commission. Billed as an opportunity to cure an “implementation” problem, the commission is notably lacking in any representation of elementary school parents, let alone critics of the Common Core. Parents across the Hudson Valley reject yet another pointless commission that ignores the concerns of parents and educators.

“A panel of advisors hand picked by Chancellor Tisch made recommendations about the Common Core Learning Standards to the Regents in February 2014 and the Governor himself was responsible for putting together a Common Core Implementation Panel who made recommendations in March 2014. Now, over a year and half later, the Governor admits that “failure is everywhere”. The Governor keeps asking for time to make common core work but my children have no more time to give. Their most formative years are being wasted and abused by this deeply flawed and developmentally inappropriate education reform which focuses on standardized testing and eliminates authentic teaching” said Joanne Tumolo, Mahopac public school parent and co-founder Putnam, Northern Westchester, Southern Dutchess Refuse the Tests.

Failure of the experimental Common Core Learning Standards comes as no surprise to the 220,000 families of public school children who chose to refuse NYS Common Core tests in the spring of 2015. While state education officials claim that the appointment of new test maker, Questar will address the public concerns, parents know that this is simply more of the same. Until New York State takes action to scrap the Common Core Learning Standards and halts the invalid use of discriminatory test scores to evaluate schools and teachers, opt out will grow.

Christine Zirkelbach co-Administrator of Hudson Valley Parent Educator Initiative said: “The Governor continues his charade of listening to the parents of New York State students by appointing a commission to review Common Core State Standards where the majority of the members are not professional, life time educators at all. Parents are not going to be appeased by another commission or rebranding of CCSS. Parents will continue to advocate for our public schools until local control is restored and the Governor and NYSED no longer mandate the corporatization of our children’s education.”

Bianca Tanis, Ulster County Public School parent and co-founder of New York State Allies for Public Education said “While the task force includes business leaders with no pedagogical knowledge, it does not include a single parent of an elementary school child. And of the 15 person panel, there are two teachers, only one of whom is an elementary school teacher. The panel is a sham and disgrace. Union leaders and politicians claiming to support the best interest of children should refuse to participate until the parents and teachers of the young children harmed by these experimental learning standards are represented.

“The Governor’s selected panel is very disappointing. There is not a single member who is an expert or a teacher of Math or English. The exclusion of parents of Special needs students and Special Educators is alarming. This task force is a farce and it’s another failed attempt by the Governor to mend a system that is failing miserably” said Suzanne DiAngelo Coyle, Rockland County public school parent and administrator of Stop Common Core Rockland County.

Who on this commission will actually do the work of reviewing the standards and the tests? This appears to be yet another “Cuomo commission” that has lots of sound and fury, amounting to nothing.

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Parent Groups, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Standardized Testing

NY Opt Out Leaders Protest Phony Cuomo Commission

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2015 //
7

The NĂŠw York State Allies for Public Education, representing more than 50 grassroots groups across the state, denounced Governor Cuomo’s commission to review and revise the Common Core standards and tests. Yet th Cuomo commission includes no parent who opted out, no early childhood educator, but many who served on Cuomo’s last, failed commission.

NYSAPE describes the commission as”donor-driven,” chaired by the same banker who chaired the last Cuomo commission on standards and tests.

Opt out leaders promise to refuse the tests next spring.

“The Cuomo Commission consists of many members from his first unproductive Commission and will again be led by the same businessman, Richard Parsons, despite the public’s outcry for an educator-led process. Parents know the Common Core standards and the Common Core exams are damaging their children’s education, not because they are “confused”, but because the standards themselves are invalid.

“Governor Cuomo cannot use a political task force to get politics out of education. Until our children’s education is once again under the direction of real education experts and classroom teachers, parents will not comply. Continuation of an unreliable teacher evaluation system tied to test scores, inappropriate and untested Common Core curriculum in our classrooms and inappropriate exams will not be tolerated. A task force devoid of critics is pointless.” –Jeanette Deutermann, Long Island public school parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out.

“If the governor really wanted to fix this mess, he would have called back the legislature for a special session to undo the laws that got us here in the first place. It is time to get back our real learning in our kids’ classrooms and to local control by elected school boards. Without a fundamental improvement to the Common Core standards, the state exams and the way test scores are being unfairly used to stigmatize schools, teachers and students as failures, the number of parents opting out is guaranteed to sharply rise again this year.” –Lisa Rudley, Hudson Valley public school parent and NYSAPE founding member.

“Governor Cuomo is not trying to fix the problems with Common Core and testing. He is trying to make it salvage his reputation and his poll ratings, to make it ‘look like’ he is fixing these problems. These problems are not difficult to fix. Start by disconnecting tests from teacher evaluations to the extent allowable by Federal law, and then totally redo the standards and the exams by allowing New York teachers to rewrite them. But it appears that the Governor does not really want to do what is best for our children.”–Eric Mihelbergel, Erie County public school parent and NYSAPE founding member.

“Cuomo claims Common Core is headed for a total reboot. Oddly enough, he has chosen 15 individuals as members who never had a problem with the standards to begin with. It is not often that you ask a bull to clean up the mess it has created in the china shop.” –Kevin Glynn, Long Island public school parent and educator.

“Governor Cuomo claims he is listening to parents, yet he has established another group that contains many of the same members as his previous commissions, which totally failed to provide answers to the education crisis created by the corporate reform movement. Polls show that the public is opposed to the Common Core, over-testing our children, and tying teacher evaluation to assessment results, yet the vast majority of Cuomo’s latest task force support the very policies rejected by New York families.” – Chris Cerrone, Western NY public school parent, school board member and educator.

​“For too long the majority of NYS Regents led by Chancellor Merryl Tisch have failed to provide the leadership necessary to protect children from harmful reforms. While the tide is changing with six Regents representing kids, the parents of Central NY see that Vice Chancellor Bottar has failed to protect kids and will call for his ouster.” –Jessica McNair, Central New York public school parent and educator.

“To show how off-base Cuomo is, in his speech he bragged about the teacher merit pay system he has imposed on the state. Teacher merit pay has never been shown to work to help kids learn, and this is one more sign of his willingness to waste millions of dollars of our taxpayer funds on untested or even damaging programs, in place of proven reforms like class size reduction.” –Lori Griffin, Northern New York public school parent and educator.

“Parents don’t just want politics out of their kids’ education. They want Andrew Cuomo and his political contributors to stay out of their classrooms. Parents across the state have vowed to continue refusing these harmful tests and practices to protect their children and their schools.”

Join NYSAPE. Help them resist political manipulation of our children and our schools.

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Standardized Testing

Governor Cuomo Announces His Commission to Revise Common Core, Without A Single Opt Out Leader

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2015 //
49

Governor Cuomo announced his commission to revise the Common Core standards and it includes not a single parent leader of the opt out movement. The reason for the commission was to respond to the opt out movement, but no one on the commission speaks for the parents and guardians of the 220,000 students who did not take the test.

If you look at the members of the commission, you will see MaryEllen Elia, the state commissioner, plus the chair of the Senate Education Committee and the House Education Committee. The commission will be chaired by Richard Parsons, a respected banker. The commission includes some educators, but they all have day jobs.

Read the responsibilities of the commission. It is supposed to review the standards and the tests, among many other assignments. Here is the title of the press release:

Task Force to Perform Comprehensive Review of Learning Standards, Instructional Guidance and Curricula, and Tests to Improve Implementation and Reduce Testing Anxiety

Does anyone seriously believe that this commission has the expertise or the time to do what they are supposed to do?

Can anyone explain why there is no one on the commission to speak for the parents who opted their children out of the state testing?

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Opt Out, Standardized Testing

The Case of Malala: Would My Alma Mater Require an SAT for Admission?

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
28

In our blog discussion of Stanford’s requirement that Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai must take the SAT, a reader suggested that she should apply to Wellesley instead. Wellesley is my alma mater, and I seconded the idea. A few of our blog’s skeptics sent me copies of the admissions requirements to “prove” that Wellesley would not make any exceptions for Malala.

I contacted the administration at Wellesley and received this response from Joy St. John, the Dean of Admissions:

“I cannot say definitively what the admission decision would be in Mala​l​a’s case because
the Board of Admission (which includes faculty, students and administrators) makes
Wellesley’s admission decisions. I can say, though, that while Wellesley requires SAT
testing for admission (except when the student is living in a country where neither the
SAT or ACT is administered), we work to assist students (on a case-by-case basis) who
have questions or challenges in complying with the requirement. If Malala, a young
woman with such​ a ​distinguished background, also has compelling academic credentials,
we would work very hard to clear the path toward her admission to Wellesley.”

I take that response to mean that Wellesley would find a way to “clear the path” to admit this remarkable young woman, whose accomplishments dwarf the value of the SAT.

Malala, if you get this message, go to Wellesley and enjoy “the Wellesley Effect,” which has produced remarkable women of accomplishment and leadership.

Categories Higher Education, Standardized Testing

The Opt Out Movement is Scaring the Politicians

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
18

This article in The Hechinger Report says that the opt out movement will win some concessions. Policymakers in their cocoons inside the Beltway are not (yet) worried by the parent-led movement. They hope that if they ignore it long enough, it will go away.

But at the state level, the opt out movement looks threatening. Some states are rebranding the Common Core, dropping out of PARCC or SBAC, looking for other ways to respond to angry constituents.

If the Opt out movement spreads to other states and continues to grow, it will be a huge blow to those in D.C. who like to impose their ideas on other people’s children. Even inside the Beltway, they might have to listen to the voices of the people.

Remember the Lincoln line (Gettysburg Address) about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” He did not mean “of the billionaires, by the bureaucrats, and for the corporations”

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing
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