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Arnold Hillman: How to Reform NAEP Scores: A Satire

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
18

Arnold Hillman is a retired educator who spent his career in Pennsylvania and retired in South Carolina. Bear this in mind when you read his satire. Must be the SC water.

The decline of both reading and math scores on the NAEP national test is a harbinger of a predictive outpouring of solutions to the problem. That has been the standard for the last 100 years of public education. We typically find panaceas to “fix” problems in education.

Here is a very simple one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, education was rather simple- teach reading, writing and arithmetic. On the side you might provide vocational programs. However World War I provided us with a look into the future.

Many of the conscripts in the American army were seen not to be physically fit. That was a danger in a war. There was no part of the constitution that mentions education. The idea of a healthy mind and healthy body was promulgated by none other than John Dewey. World War I was an instigator, and schools took up the mantle.

That’s how things change in education. The nation needed more scientists to combat Russia’s preeminence in space and so Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). I know that you are getting the idea now. If you live long enough, you will see even more of these things.

Now, how will the decline in these scores be cured by those with the money to do it. Seems like administrations these days are not in the business of fixing education. You can tell by all ofthe news about investigations, indictments, Russian problems and all sort of other adjuncts to those happenings. So then, who or what will come through to help us climb out of this educational abyss?

Lets try this on for size. How about the Broad Foundation. Let’s give them leave to train all of the school superintendents in the nation. That’s only 13,452 school district superintendents. With all of the resources available to the foundation, this could be accomplished in the wink of an eye (see the movie “I Robot” for a reference).All problems of reading and math will follow the same successes that the Broadies have had in all of the places where they have been installed as superintendents. That’s for sure.

Let then have the voucher folks come up with the plan to take over public schools and do their level best to cherry pick the students that they will help. There will certainly be some unintended consequences, such as massive dropouts, higher crime rates, more unemployment and many other charming things.

These voucher folks have a way with statistics. In their first year of operation, math and reading scores will soar. All students will be on grade level in reading and all of them will be up to fractal geometry, after surpassing the highest scores ever on the NAEP test.

Another challenger will be the charter school folks. All schools could be “charterized” and escape from the silly laws that restrict public schools in their education of kids. Since charters do not have to have all certified teachers, that will be a great advantage. We can then dismiss those pesky teachers who have not been doing a good job anyway.

There would not be any responsibility for those charters to have any parental involvement. Parents or guardians will only know what is going on when their child gets a report card.

Huge management companies will continue to “buy up” these charters and run them for profit. The movement to make these charters non-public has already happened in the Washington state Supreme Court. It has decided that Charter Schools were not, in fact, public schools.

Think of all the improvements that charter schools have made across the country since their inception in Minnesota. We can have a myriad of online charter schools which will definitely improve reading and math scores, especially in kindergarten.

We are fortunate to have a parents group that is very interested in improving education by going onto the nation’s school boards and making things so much better when they are there. Incompetent administrators are fired by the dozens and reading and math scores have already risen as a result of these actions.

The premiere group is called “ Moms for Liberty.” Not sure why there are no Dads included. There must be a Title IX reason. These folks have the kind of enviable clout that gets these students on their way to improving their math and reading scores.

With “Moms for Liberty” in charge, schools will have the advantage of being close to those who lead our country. They are proud to have national figures, some even running for President, who will make sure the schools are doing the right thing.

Then we have a group that includes some very wealthy folks. Some of them are anonymously giving funding and directions to those who were described earlier. They are famously supporters of vouchers, privatization of public schools, charters and the like. They support parent groups like “Moms for Liberty.” Their aims are certainly to help students improve their reading and math scores. We will call them, for better or worse, “ The Billionaire Class.”

With all of these folks helping out, how long do you believe it will take for our youngster’s math and reading scores to soar?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Humor, Innovation, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Gene V. Glass: The Sky Truly Is Falling, Somewhere

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2023 //
35

Perhaps you saw the story in the New York Times a few days ago, lamenting that American students were not making up the ground they lost academically during the pandemic. This was presented as a full-blown crisis. The period from March 2020 to the fall of 2022 included many disruptions: family members died or were very sick, teachers and other school staff died or were very sick, many schools closed, many adopted online classes, normal life came to an end for more than two years, affecting family life and mental health.

When I read the panicked discussion in the New York Times, based on a study by NWEA, a major standardized testing company, I reached out to one of the wisest people I know and asked him to discuss the issues. That’s Gene V. Glass, one of the nation’s eminent education researchers. He wrote the following commentary for the blog.

He wrote:

The New York Times is worried — no, it’s panic-stricken.

Jeremiah — the weeping prophet of the Torah — was a veritable Pollyanna compared to today’s policy wonks and political animals when it comes to delivering bad news.

Journalists — like the New York Times education reporter Sarah Mervosh — envision the half-dozen NAEP score point loss from 2019 to 2022 to result in fewer students accepted to college with a resulting lifetime loss of $70,000 income. Does anyone seriously entertain the possibility that colleges will forego the tuition & fees payments of students who scored 5 points lower in the eighth grade on the NAEP test? Nor did anyone weep in 1990 when the scores were 30 points lower and lifetime incomes were doing just fine, thank you?

Three weeks ago, Dana Goldstein reported, again in the New York Times, that on the October 2022 administration of the NAEP test, the 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 in reading – down 4 pints — and 271 in math — down 9 points — from the averages in 2019. What happened between 2019 and 2022? The COVID pandemic, of course.

Conjuring up the causes of NAEP fluctuations has grown into a widespread academic game since the NAEP Governing Board decided to call some scores “Advanced” and other scores “Basic” — euphemisms for “Excellent!” and “My, my; we have a problem here.” When the U.S. History NAEP scores dropped 9 points from 2014 to 2022, no one panicked, or even cared apparently. The Civics NAEP score never wavered more than 1 or 2 points between 1998 and 2022; the average was 150 in 1998 and 150 again in 2022, never rising above 153. Again, a big nothing, though arguably the nation needs better citizens than it needs better calculators.

NAEP scores jump around for all sorts of reasons, mostly a host of very small reasons that are impossible to unravel. Readers can exercise their own analytic muscles puzzling over NAEP scores. Reading scores were already declining from 2017 to 2019 before the pandemic. In 2019, NAEP Mathematics scores increased at grade 4, but decreased at grade 8 compared to 2017. Moreover, the percent of 13-year-olds taking algebra declined from 34 percent in 2012 to 24 percent today. I don’t disapprove of such a decline; I merely advance it as one of a number of reasons why NAEP scores might be wiggling from time to time. And even bigger forces are afoot.

A couple dozen Red states are experiencing a mass migration of middle-class and upper-class white students to private and charter schools, all driven with barely a whimper by crypto-privatization backers. It would be remarkable for NAEP scores to hold steady under these circumstances alone. Arizona’s universal school voucher program is expected to cost the taxpayers $900 million for the 2023-24 year, more than ten times initial estimates. Three-quarters of the initial voucher applicants are students already in charter, private, and parochial schools. The U.S. percentage of white K-12 students in public schools is projected to decline by 20% between 2010 and 2030.

But the occasion of the COVID pandemic has become a good excuse for policy analysts to propose their favorite solution to the crisis, indeed a “manufactured crisis” in the words of my friend and colleague David Berliner who introduced the term in 1995. Experts have offered no fewer than a dozen emergency measures needed for the nation’s recovery. Nine of these follow: 1. Smaller classes; 2. Tutoring; 3. Extending the school year; 4. Adding a fifth year of high school; 5. Focused funding on minority students; 6. Focusing on math, not reading; 7. Full-time summer school; 8. Increased teacher pay; 9. Focusing on students’ mental health. A fifth year of high school?! Seriously? Now I’m in favor of most of these things, except focusing on math. How about Civics?

Some seem to favor no solution at all. A leitmotif of the NYT article is that the federal government’s billions of dollars in pandemic emergency aid to schools were misspent. The trouble is, less will be heard of any of these “solutions” after NAEP scores wiggle up a couple of points in the next testing.

The ravages of the pandemic were caused by a White House of Dunces. Incompetence cost the nation 1.1 million lives, two or three times more than the irreducible number. It will never happen again — at least not with COVID. The stewardship of all children’s education is a responsibility of every citizen, regardless of the next year’s tweak in NAEP scores. Put that on NAEP’s next Civics test.

Gene V Glass

Emeritus Regents’ Professor

Arizona State University

 

The New York Times is worried — no, it’s panic-stricken. https://shorturl.at/mtI15

 

Jeremiah — the weeping prophet of the Torah — was a veritable Pollyanna compared to today’s policy wonks and political animals when it comes to delivering bad news. 

 

Journalists — like the New York Times education reporter Sarah Mervosh — envision the half-dozen NAEP score point loss from 2019 to 2022 to result in fewer students accepted to college with a resulting lifetime loss of $70,000 income. Does anyone seriously entertain the possibility that colleges will forego the tuition & fees payments of students who scored 5 points lower in the eighth grade on the NAEP test? Nor did anyone weep in 1990 when the scores were 30 points lower and lifetime incomes were doing just fine, thank you? 

 

Three weeks ago, Dana Goldstein reported, again in the New York Times, that on the October 2022 administration of the NAEP test,  the 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 in reading – down 4 pints —  and 271 in math — down 9 points — from the averages in 2019. https://shorturl.at/DFHZ5  What happened between 2019 and 2022? The COVID pandemic, of course. 

 

Conjuring up the causes of NAEP fluctuations has grown into a widespread academic game since the NAEP Governing Board decided to call some scores “Advanced” and other scores “Basic”  — euphemisms for “Excellent!” and “My, my; we have a problem here.”  When the U.S. History NAEP scores dropped 9 points from 2014 to 2022, no one panicked, or even cared apparently. And the Civics NAEP score never wavered more than 1 or 2 points between 1998 and 2022; the average was 150 in 1998 and 150 again in 2022, never rising above 153. Again, a big nothing, though arguably the nation needs better citizens than it needs better calculators.  

 

NAEP scores jump around for all sorts of reasons, mostly a host of very small reasons that are impossible to unravel. Readers can exercise their own analytic muscles puzzling over NAEP scores at www.nationsreportcard.gov. Reading scores were already declining from 2017 to 2019 before the pandemic. In 2019, NAEP Mathematics scores increased at grade 4, but decreased at grade 8 compared to 2017. Moreover, the percent of 13-year-olds taking algebra declined from 34 percent in 2012 to 24 percent today. I don’t disapprove of such a decline; I merely advance it as one of a number of reasons why NAEP scores might be wiggling from time to time. And even bigger forces are afoot. 

 

A couple dozen Red states are experiencing a mass migration of middle-class and upper-class white students to private and charter schools, all driven with barely a whimper by crypto-privatization backers. It would be remarkable for NAEP scores to hold steady under these circumstances alone. Arizona’s universal school voucher program is expected to cost the taxpayers $900 million for the 2023-24 year, more than ten times initial estimates. Three-quarters of the initial voucher applicants are students already in charter, private, and parochial schools. The U.S. percentage of white K-12 students in public schools is projected to decline by 20% between 2010 and 2030. 

 

But the occasion of the COVID pandemic has become a good excuse for policy analysts to propose their favorite solution to the crisis, indeed a “manufactured crisis” in the words of my friend and colleague David Berliner who introduced the term in 1995. Experts have offered no fewer than a dozen emergency measures needed for the nation’s recovery. Nine of these follow: 1. Smaller classes; 2. Tutoring; 3. Extending the school year; 4. Adding a fifth year of high school;  5. Focused funding on minority students; 6. Focusing on math, not reading; 7. Full-time summer school;  8. Increased teacher pay; 9. Focusing on students’ mental health. A fifth year of high school?! Seriously? Now I’m in favor of most of these things, except focusing on math. How about Civics? 

 

Some seem to favor no solution at all. A leitmotif of the NYT article is that the federal government’s billions of dollars in pandemic emergency aid to schools were misspent. The trouble is, less will be heard of any of these “solutioins” after NAEP scores wiggle up a couple of points in the next testing. 

   

The ravages of the pandemic were caused by a White House of Dunces. Incompetence cost the nation 1.1 million lives, two or three times more than the irreducible number. It will never happen again — at least not with COVID. The stewardship of all children’s education is a responsibility of every citizen, regardless of the next year’s tweak in NAEP scores. Put that on NAEP’s next Civics test.

 

Gene V Glass

Emeritus Regents’ Professor

Arizona State University

Categories Disruption, Health, NAEP, Standardized Testing

John Thompson: The Misinterpretation of NAEP Data

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2023 //
69

John Thompson writes here about the negative consequences of shallow reporting on NAEP data. Reporters are sensitive to whether scores are up or down, but tend to ignore contextual factors that may play a role in student performance.

He writes:

Despite the problems with education metrics, the decline in the nation’s 2022 math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test is worrisome – if we look at the big picture. 

As Diane Ravitch explained, the decline in scores during the pandemic was a “duh” moment. Rather than publishing panicky headlines, these predictable drops in scores should be seen in the broader context of the decade of declines which followed the implementation of rushed and simplistic corporate school reforms. And, as we should have done previously, we must acknowledge what reformers should have previously understood – meaningful increases in learning require inter-connected, holistic team efforts, as opposed to metric-driven instructional shortcuts.    

And we should also listen to Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. “The new data, she said, ‘reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.” Carr and other experts also warn that the “academic decline is part of a broader picture that includes worsening school climate and student mental health.”

For example, “Oklahoma NAEP results reflect pandemic-fueled decline in math and reading scores.” Eighth grade reading in Oklahoma (which reopened schools more quickly than most states) declined by 7 points, compared to a three-point average national decline. Our Eighth grade math scores declined by 12 points, compared to a nationwide decline of eight points. And the state’s and the nation’s “plunge” in history scores has been worse.

But the story behind those numbers is complicated. So, before we can understand the mixed messages of short- and long-term NAEP findings, we how they have often been misrepresented by the non-education press.

Chalkbeat properly quoted Peggy Carr, “There is nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.” And Education Week appropriately explained that all but the top-performing students saw declines, but the biggest drops were for the lowest-performing students, who were more likely to have parents who were “essential workers” who were disproportionately exposed to Covid, who were more likely to live in multi-generational households, and had the least access to medical care. Moreover, it further explained, “Reading scores for students in cities (where schools tended to be slower to reopen) stayed constant, as did reading scores for students in the West of the country.”

Yes, Covid closures led to an unprecedented decline in test scores, but many commentators should look more deeply at public relations spin dating back to the Reagan administration that inappropriately used NAEP test scores when arguing that public schools are broken. They stressed low levels of “proficiency” claiming that it correlated with grade level. And Jan Resseger explained:

A common error among journalists, critics, and pundits who misunderstand the achievement levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “Proficient” on NAEP is not grade level. “Proficient” on NAEP represents A level work, at worst an A-. Would you be upset to learn that “only” 40% of 8th graders are at A level in math and “only” 1/3 scored an A in reading?

On the other hand, the admittedly unprecedented (but expected) fall in NAEP scores during Covid followed a decade of stagnating or declining NAEP scores. Moreover, the recent release of falling history scores should lead to an open discussion about why the U.S. History scores have declined by 9% since 2014.

And Chalkbeat stresses the need for conversations about the last two years, when “nearly every state has considered a bill that would limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in their classrooms, and 18 states have bans or other restrictions in place, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week.”  For reasons I explain later, I’m especially impressed with its recommendation regarding the need for “weaving the (historical) material into other places in their (classrooms’) schedule.”

I began teaching History at John Marshall H.S. in the early 1990s during the crack and gangs crisis and after the standardized testing of the 1980s peaked. For the next 1-1/2 decades, outcomes improved at Marshall and in the nation as a whole. Marshall had serious problems, but I couldn’t believe how many great teachers it had. We had the autonomy necessary to teach in a holistic inter-connected, cross-disciplinary manner. When I saw students carrying copies of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, I had the freedom to deviate from the curriculum schedule, and teach about Ellison’s childhood in Oklahoma City, and how it informed his novel. We took fieldtrips to the Capitol, and had regular classroom visits by legislators and local leaders. And we watched excellent programs on OETA (which our Gov. Kevin Stitt recently tried to defund.).

Rather than teach to the test, I’d post the day’s State Standards, and History in the News topic. Students would drop by before class to peek at the day’s History in the News question. They quickly learned how to “weave” historical narratives into contemporary issues. 

Marshall improved more than any other OKCPS neighborhood high school until the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001’s and Race to the Top’s test-driven mandates became dominant. By the time I retired in 2010, my students who came from the poorest neighborhoods complained that they had been robbed of an education. When guest teaching up to 2020, I saw young teachers who wanted to offer culturally meaningful instruction but it was hard for educators and students to do something that they rarely saw in a 21st century classroom.

Getting back to the type of solutions discussed in Chalkbeat and Education Week, Education Watch’s Jennifer Palmer wrote a hopeful piece about a pilot program at F.D. Moon Middle School. It uses “a social studies curriculum built on encouraging students to engage in civil discourse and celebrate American ideals while also examining darker chapters of history.” The program was created by iCivics, founded by retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Its U.S. History curriculum is “based on the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy, a joint project with iCivics, Harvard, Tufts and Arizona State universities.”

Palmer witnessed the energy displayed by Beatrice Mitchell’s 8th grade social studies class. All of them “passed the U.S. naturalization test, a new graduation requirement starting this school year.” This stands in contrast to a recent survey which “found just 1 in 3 adults can pass the exam … Oklahoma’s passing rate was even lower at 1 in 4 adults.”

It is unclear whether this nonpartisan program will clash with the Oklahoma Board of Education’s special report on “diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the request of State Superintendent Ryan Walters.” As Palmer noted, “Walters, a former history teacher, claimed such programs are ‘Marxist at its core.’” At any rate, it’s not just history that must be woven into other subjects. If we hope to teach critical thinking and 21st century skills, schools must abandon their test-driven silos, and teach students to be independent thinkers who listen, and learn how to learn. And, holistic instruction must be restored, as one part of serving each whole child. A first step, however, should be the non-education press shifting from alarmist headlines to meaningful solutions reported in the education press.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, History, Media, NAEP, Oklahoma, Standardized Testing

Join a Zoom to Meet an Exciting Candidate for Congress in Rhode Island

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2023 //
0

Aaron Regunburg is running for Congress in Rhode Island this fall, in a special election. I have followed his path since he was the organizer of the Providence Student Union and led a series of creative protests against the use of standardized test scores as a graduation requirement. If he wins, as seems likely, he will be a strong voice in Congress for public schools and against federally-mandated standardized testing.

He is holding a Zoom event on June 27. He asked me to invite you to attend.

Dear Friends,

I want to invite you to an exciting event in support of Aaron Regunberg, my friend who is running for Congress in a special election this year in Rhode Island (it’s the only Congressional election happening in 2023).

I support Aaron because I know he will be a fearless, principled progressive fighting for working families around the country. He will bring the energy we need to combat the climate crisis, stand up for the labor movement, fight for public education, take on corporate power, and work to defend our rights. I know this because he’s done it before — while in the Rhode Island state legislature, he helped pass paid sick days legislation, raise the state’s tipped minimum wage for the first time in 20 years, reform the use of solitary confinement, expand harm reduction strategies, and enact new renewable energy programs. And since then, he has worked with the Sierra Club and the Center for Climate Integrity on climate litigation.

Aaron is running for Congress on a strong progressive platform. He’s been endorsed by the Working Families Party, Our Revolution, labor and environmental orgs, and progressive leaders like Congressman Jamie Raskin. Here’s a video with some more background on his work.

Aaron is holding an end-of-quarter Zoom fundraiser event with some awesome progressive leaders like Steven Donziger and Maurice Mitchell, and I wanted to extend an invitation. We think this race has some national impact — as the only Congressional primary of 2023, a win here could give us some strong progressive momentum going into 2024! So, if you feel so moved, you can sign up to attend the event and support Aaron’s campaign here. Thanks again for your consideration!

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Elections, Rhode Island, Standardized Testing

NAEP Scores Show Effects of Pandemic: Duh.

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
125

The release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data yesterday set off the usual hysterical reaction. The scores fell as a consequence of the pandemic, when most kids did not get in-school instruction.

These are not secrets but they bear repeating:

*Students don’t learn what is tested when they are not in school for long periods of time.

*Learning online is inferior to learning in-person from a qualified teacher.

*It’s better to lose points on a test than to risk serious illness or death or infecting a family member or teacher or other member of the school staff.

During the depths of the pandemic, no one knew for sure whether it was better to keep schools open or closed. A superintendent in Florida—Rocky Hanna of Leon County— was threatened with loss of his license after he closed the schools, following the death of a third-grader from COVID. Teachers died of COVID. Some children lived with elderly grandparents at risk of getting COVID. Which matters most: lives or test scores?

Whatever was lost can be regained if students have good instruction and stability.

It is not surprising that test scores went down after a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This is not a “Sputnik moment.”

The Washington Post reported, under a ridiculous scare headline “National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery” (Patience needed!):

National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic.

Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often regarded as the nation’s report card. The release Wednesday reflected testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic began.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell just six points. The pattern for reading was similar, with lowest performers seeing twice the decline of the highest ones.

Students from all regions of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more split. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and White students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters? or will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?

Categories Education Reform, Health, Hope, NAEP, Science, Standardized Testing

Nora de La Cour: It’s Long Past Time to End the Tyranny of High-Stakes Testing!

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2023 //
104

Nora de la Cour writes in Jacobin about the damage done to children by our politicians’ obsession with high-stakes standardized testing. They do not test what was taught; they encourage teaching to the tests; the results come back too late to be helpful; they distort teaching and learning.

Nora de la Cour writes:

When I taught at an alternative public school for kids with exceptional social-emotional, behavioral, and learning needs, one of my students — I’ll call him Dante — got As in every class he took. School staff would frequently elevate Dante’s extraordinary focus and commitment as an example for his peers.

In the spring of Dante’s senior year, his counselor informed him he’d earned the status of valedictorian. His beaming smile of pride after hearing the news affirmed everything I love about public education. When his mother found out, she burst into tears of joy.

Then, abruptly, we were informed that there had been a mistake. Because Dante’s exceptional learning needs made it impossible for him to pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) — the standardized tests that Massachusetts requires high school students to pass prior to graduation — he would not receive a diploma. Without a diploma, he couldn’t be valedictorian — even though, according to his grades and the unanimous judgment of his teachers, he clearly deserved the honor. A wave of incredulity rippled through the staff as we tried to resign ourselves to this obviously cruel, unfair reality. For Dante, the news was devastating.

Even before the “giant federal wrecking ball” (to borrow leading education policy analyst Diane Ravitch’s phrasing) known as education reform, evidence from diverse fields had demonstrated a scientific concept known as Campbell’s Law: the more we base social decision-making on a specific quantitative measure, the more likely it is that that measure will become distorted, ultimately corrupting the processes it’s intended to monitor.

Just so, in the two decades since Congress reauthorized the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), researchers have collected a mountain of data showing that in the long run, attaching high-stakes, or punishments, to student standardized test scores does not improve educational outcomes. Instead, it results in a host ofperverse consequences, with poor, minority, and disabled kids like Dante experiencing the greatest harms. This last point makes a lot of sense when you consider that standardized testing was first developed by eugenicists looking to organize people into racist taxonomies based on perceived ability.

But despite these serious problems — and the persistent, bipartisan unpopularity of the high-stakes testing regime inaugurated by NCLB — our current, Obama-era iteration of the ESEA (the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA) still requires states to impose inappropriate test-based accountability on students and school communities.

When we sort children into “proficient” and “failing” categories based on test scores, we’re not solving the opportunity gaps that show up in public education; we’re creating new ones. No one is helped, and many people are hurt, when we give students, teachers, and schools an impossible assignment and then sanction them for failing to complete it. Looking forward to the ESEA’s now overdue reauthorization, it’s high time we built accountability systems that nurture the humanity and potential of all kids — rather than placing artificial roadblocks in their way.

Please open the link and read the article in full. FYI, in addition to referring to NCLB as a “giant wrecking ball,” I have also called it the “Death Star of American education.” If left without modifications, it would have caused the closure of almost every school in the nation. No national legisislature ever passed such a dumb law.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

NYC: Asian-Americans Dominate Admissions to Specialized High Schools

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2023 //
63

The New York Times reported on the annual competition for admission to New York City’s most selective high schools, where about 26,000 eighth-grade students competed for some 4,000 openings. Admission is based on a single standardized test, offered only once. Although two-thirds of the city’s students are Black or Latino, about 10% of offers went to students from these groups. More than half the acceptance offers (53%) went to Asian-American students.

Latino students were 26% of the test-takers and received 6.7% of the offers. White students were 17% of the students who took the test and received 27% of the offers. Asian-American students were 32% of test-takers and received 53% of the offers. Black students were 19% of the test-takers and received 3% of the offers.

Admission to the selective high schools is considered a ticket to the best colleges (but students have to work hard in high school to earn that ticket).

It should be noted that New York City has dozens of excellent high schools that do not require students to take the Specialized High School Admissions Test that is required by the elite high schools.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to change the admissions criteria to increase the proportion of Black and Latino students to 40%, but any change in the testing requirement must be approved by the State Legislature. That body includes graduates of the elite schools, who protect the status quo. Also, Asian-Americans fiercely oppose any change in the admissions process. All proposals for change have failed.

At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the most selective of the city’s so-called specialized schools, seven of the 762 offers made went to Black students, down from 11 last year and eight in 2021. Twenty Latino students were offered spots at Stuyvesant, as were 489 Asian students and 158 white students. The rest went to multiracial students and students whose race was unknown.

Gaps at many of the other schools were also stark: Out of 287 offers made at Staten Island Technical High School, for example, two Black students were accepted — up from zero last year — along with seven Latino students….

The schools also represent perhaps the highest-profile symbol of segregation across the system, where over the last decade, Black and Latino students have never received more than 12 percent of offers.

Decades ago, the specialized schools tended to serve much larger proportions of Black and Latino students. And a handful of elite schools, like the Brooklyn Latin School — where 73 Black and Latino teenagers were accepted in a class of 388 this year — are somewhat more reflective of the city’s demographics….

The Adams administration has not made school integration a top priority, quieting the public and political attention on the issue after years of intense fights.

The system’s chancellor, David C. Banks, has argued that many Black and Latino families care more about school quality than who their children’s classmates are.

He has aimed to overhaul how students are taught to read, and supported increasing seats in the city’s selective gifted and talented program for elementary students, reversing Mr. de Blasio’s plan to eliminate it.

Categories Equity, Inequity, New York City, Standardized Testing, Students

Tienken and Borst: Please Get Rid of Standardized Testing! It Doesn’t Work!

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2023 //
134

Christopher Tienken and Julia Larrea Borst wrote this article for NJ.com, where it is behind a paywall. It was reposted by the Network for Public Education blog:

In a guest editorial at NJ.com, Tienken, an associate professor at Seton Hall University, and Borst, executive director of Save Our Schools New Jersey, explain why it’s time to put an end to the big high stakes standardized test.

They wrote:

A veritable industrial-testing complex has been set up across the country that siphons educational resources from public schools to large corporations. The United States mandates more standardized tests of academic achievement than any other democratic country in the G20 group of nations. So, what have we learned from all of this testing?

Studies over the last 35 years have demonstrated that results from standardized tests are highly subjective and not entirely indicative of what is happening in the classroom. Findings from decades of scientific research suggest that standardized tests are blunt instruments, whose results can be predicted at the school and district levels by using family and community demographic data found in the U.S. Census.

Simply put, results from study after study over the last 70 years suggest that the tests are measuring more of a child’s experiences outside of school than what’s happening inside of school. The results do not provide valid information about the quality of teaching in a school, how a student learns, what a student learned, nor the learning potential of a student. According to the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, which was developed by leading education and psychology research associations, the tests are not diagnostic and the results cannot be used to inform classroom instruction.

Supporters of large-scale standardized tests continue to tell parents and taxpayers that without the results from standardized tests, no one will know how their children are doing in school or where financial resources should be allocated to close learning gaps. Both notions are false.

Read the full piece here.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Research, Standardized Testing

Why NAEP Scores in History and Civics Are Meaningless in These Times

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2023 //
47

I served on the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for seven years. I was appointed by President Clinton. I learned quite a lot about standardized testing during that time. I enjoyed reading test questions and finding a few that had two right answers. Two subjects where I felt confident as a reviewer, in addition to reading, were history and civics.

I was momentarily dismayed, but not surprised, to learn that the NAEP scores in history and civics had declined, as they had in reading and math, after the disruptions and closings caused by the pandemic. This is not surprising, because fewer days of instruction translates into less learning.

So we know for sure that instructional time matters. You can’t learn what you weren’t taught.

But on second thought, I realized that in these days it is almost impossible to test history and civics and get a meaningful result.

Many states, all Republican-dominated, have censored history teaching. The legislatures don’t want students to learn “divisive concepts.” They don’t want anything taught that will make students “uncomfortable.” They don’t want “critical race theory” to be taught. These ideas have been spun out at length with other vague descriptions of what teachers are NOT allowed to teach.

The people who write test questions for NAEP history are not bound by these restrictions. They are most likely writing questions about “divisive concepts” and “uncomfortable” topics. They might even ask questions that legislators might think are tinged or saturated by critical race theory.

Given the number of states that ban the teaching of accurate, factual history, it’s seems to me impossible to expect students to be prepared to take an American history test.

Even more complicated is civics. A good civics exam might ask questions about the importance of the right to vote. It might ask questions written on the assumption that vote suppression and gerrymandering are undemocratic practices that were long ago banned by the courts. Yet courts are now allowing these baleful practices to stand. How can a student understand that a discredited practice is now openly endorsed in various state laws and have not been discredited by the courts?

Civics classes typically teach that one of the great strengths of American democracy is the peaceful transition of power from one President to another. How can they teach that idea when Trump partisans insist that he won the last election and was ousted in a coup? How can teachers explain the election process when Trump says it’s rigged (he said it before the 2016 election as well)? How can students answer questions about elections and the Electoral College when Trumpers believe they were corrupted in 2020?

How can teachers teach civics when almost every GOP leader asserts that the election was stolen?

How can civics be taught when public officials defy public opinion to allow any individual to buy guns without a background check or a permit. Having bought a gun, they may wear it openly in some states and carry it concealed in some other states. Students have been practicing in case an armed killer walks into their school during the day. They need only google to learn that a majority of the public favors gun control of varying kinds. Why, they might ask their teacher, doesn’t the legislature and Congress act to protect the lives of children?

Is it worse to teach lies or to teach the truth?

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Civics, Corruption, Curriculum, Elections, Extremism, History, Lies, NAEP, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Chicago: Can Mayor Brandon Johnson Change National Democratic Education Policy?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
22

Retired teacher Fred Klonsky points out the stark difference between national Democratic education policy and the views of Chicago’s new Mayor Brandon Johnson. He would love to see the party follow the lead of Mayor Johnson, who was a teacher in the public schools and an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union.

The national Democratic Party was once a strong champion of public schools, it once understood the importance of resources and funding for needy students and schools, it was once skeptical about the value of standardized testing.

All of that changed, however, after the Reagan report “A Nation at Risk.” (In a recent article, James Harvey explained how that very consequential report was distorted with cherry-picked data to smear the nation’s public schools.)

Democratic governors jumped aboard the standards-and-testing bandwagon, led by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. When Clinton became president in 1993, his major education legislation was Goals 2000, which put the Democratic Party firmly into the standards-and-testing camp with Republicans. Clinton was a “third way” Democrat, and he also enthusiastically endorsed charter schools run by private entities. His Goals 2000 program included a small program to support charter start-ups. That little subsidy—$4-6 milllion—has grown to $440 million, which is a slush fund mainly for big charter chains that don’t need the money.

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation was supported by Democrats; it encompassed their own party’s stance, but had teeth. Obama’s Race to the Top rolled two decades of accountability/choice policy into one package. By 2008-2020, there was no difference between the two national parties on education. From Clinton in 1992 (with his call for national standards and testing) to NCLB to Race to the Top, the policies of the two parties were the same: testing, accountability, closing schools, choice. And let us not forget the Common Core, which was supposed to lift test scores everywhere while closing achievement gaps. It didn’t.

Democrats nationally are adrift, unmoored, while Republicans have seized on vouchers for religious and private schools that are completely unregulated and unaccountable. Despite evidence (Google “Josh Cowen vouchers”) that most vouchers are used by students who never attended public schools and that their academic results are harmful for public school kids who transfer into low-cost, low-quality private schools, red states are endorsing them.

Mayor Johnson of Chicago represents the abandoned Democratic tradition of investing in students, teachers, communities, and schools.

Fred Klonsky writes:

In his speech yesterday, Mayor Johnson addressed the issue of schools and education, an issue that as a retired career school teacher, is near and dear to my heart.

“Let’s create a public education system that resources children based on need and not just on numbers,” Johnson said.

I hope so.

Some have predicted that the election of Brandon to be mayor of a city with the fourth largest school district in the country might represent a shift in Democratic Party education policy.

Chicago under Mayors Daley and Emanuel gave the country Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas who together were the personifications of the worst kinds of top-down, one-size-fits-all curriculum, reliance on standardized testing as accountability and union busting.

Corporate school reform groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children dominated the Democratic Party’s education agenda for two decades.

Joe Biden’s Department of Education has mostly been silent on these issues.

If Chicago’s election of Brandon Johnson does reflect a national shift, let alone a local one, it must do it in the face of a MAGA assault on free expression, historical truths and teacher rights.

None of this will be easy.

So, yes. I wish the Mayor the best and will do what I can to help.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Clinton, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure, Funding, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Republicans, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools, Turnaround Schools, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers
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