Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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Is It Illegal to Write or Read This Article about Testing?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2015 //
41

Blogger-teacher Steven M. Singer here reveals the veil of secrecy that testing corporations drape around their product.

He writes:

Warning!

What you are about to read may be a criminal act.

I may have broken the law by putting this information out there.

Edward Snowden leaked data about civilian surveillance. Chelsea Manning released top secret military documents.

And me? I’m leaking legal threats and intimidation students and teachers are subject to during standardized testing.

Not exactly a federal crime is it?

No. I’m asking. Is it?

Because teachers are being fired and jailed. Students are being threatened with litigation.

All because they talked about standardized tests.

The US government mandates public school children be subjected to standardized assessments in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. Most schools test much more than that – even as early as kindergarten.

And since all of these assessments are purchased from private corporations, the testing material is ideological property. The students taking these exams – regardless of age – are no longer treated as children. They are clients entering into a contract.

He cites the copyright warning that students are required to read before they take the Pennsylvania tests. If they photograph or reproduce or copy any part of the test they may be find no less than $750 or as much as $30,000. Wow! Not too many children have that kind of dough to pay for a copyright violation.

The state warns students that they are not allowed to discuss the test with others either during the test or after it.

Singer writes:

Sure kids shouldn’t talk about the test with classmates DURING the testing session. Obviously! But why can’t they discuss it after the test is over!?

Kids aren’t allowed to say to their friends, “Hey! Did you get the essay question about ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’?”

They aren’t allowed to discuss how difficult it was or compare how each of them answered the questions?

These are children. If you think they aren’t talking, then you just don’t know kids. You don’t know people!

And why shouldn’t they talk about it? They just shared a stressful, common experience. Who wouldn’t want to compare it to what others went through so as to decide how your experience rates? Did you answer the questions well or not? Did you get a more difficult question than others? Did the thing that struck you as odd also hit others the same way?

Personally, I do not consider talking like this to be cheating. It’s just human nature.

He goes on to discuss the constraints imposed on teachers.

He asks:

Therefore, I must ask an important question of you, dear reader: Did I violate these rules by writing this very article? Is the piece you are reading right now illegal?

And he wonders: Why is the state exercising its powers to protect the testing corporations? Wouldn’t it be nice if the state were protecting its students and teachers?

Categories Cheating, Pennsylvania, Standardized Testing

Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out Responds to the New York Times’ Article

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2015 //
44

This comment was posted on the blog by Peggy Robertson, founder of United Opt Out, in response to the New York Times’ article implying that the Opt Out movement is led by the teachers’ unions.

Peggy Robertson writes:

Opt out is led by parents, teachers, students and citizens. When United Opt Out National began over four years ago we were simply a facebook page with a file for each state. Within hours our FB group page was flooded with opt out requests and now we have opt out leaders all over the country and grassroots opt out groups popping up everywhere. I think Florida has 25 at this point – probably more since I last checked – and mind you they did this all on their own. UOO has simply been a catalyst and a support. What is even more fascinating, and sad, is that UOO has reached out to the unions many times, and never received a response. You will notice that United Opt Out National is rarely mentioned in recent articles. I think that’s because we represent the people. The power of the people. UOO has no funding (heck I paid for our website for the first two years pretty much on my own). When our website was destroyed last year guess who helped UOO fund/rebuild it? The people. No corporations. No unions. The people – the citizens of this country – for free – and with truth and heart – have helped us to create fifty state opt out guides. The citizens have helped us to continually update and alert folks to opt out situations across the country. The people have helped us create essential guides, opt out letters, and social media campaigns. The fact that this is happening by the people, for the people, with no funding, is true democracy and is a dangerous thing. Folks would much prefer that we are sheeple and that we are incapable of strategically planning a nationwide opt out movement. Guess what? We did it. All of us. That makes us dangerous. That makes the media/corporations want to co-opt and shut down our work. A mass movement of civil disobedience that is running through our country like a tidal wave in an attempt to save our democracy is indeed a powerful force that no corporation can shut down. Let’s keep pushing forward. Solidarity to all of you.

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions

Carol Burris Discusses Some of the Worst Questions on the Pearson Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2015 //
55

Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School, has been an outspoken critic of both the Common Core standards (which she once supported, even wrote a book about them) and the testing associated with them. She is a leader of the Opt Out movement on Long Island in New York.

In this article for Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog, Burris reveals some of the most problematic questions on the Common Core ELA tests, administered last week. So many of the questions and the reading passages are now circulating on the Internet that it is hard to believe that Pearson thinks its tests are secure. They are not.

The article includes links to all the items mentioned.

Burris writes:

Disgusted teachers and parents are defying the “gag order” and talking about the tests, anonymously, on blogs. The sixth-grade test has consistently come under fire, especially during Day 3 when an article entitled, “Nimbus Clouds: Mysterious, Ephemeral, and Now Indoors” from the Smithsonian Magazine appeared on one version of the test.

Here is a passage from the article:

“As a result, the location of the cloud is an important aspect, as it is the setting for his creation and part of the artwork. In his favorite piece, Nimbus D’Aspremont, the architecture of the D’Aspremont-Lynden Castle in Rekem, Belgium, plays a significant role in the feel of the picture. “The contrast between the original castle and its former use as a military hospital and mental institution is still visible,” he writes. “You could say the spaces function as a plinth for the work.””

You can read the entire article here.

The genius at Pearson who put that article on the sixth-grade test should take his nimbi and his plinth and go contemplate his belly button in whatever corner of that Belgian castle he chooses. The members of the State Education Department who approved the article’s inclusion should go with him.

Other complaints include:

* requiring fourth graders to write about the architectural design of roller coasters and why cables are used instead of chains

* a sixth-grade passage from “That Spot” by Jack London, which included words and phrases such as “beaten curs,” “absconders of justice,” surmise, “savve our cabin,” and “let’s maroon him”

* a passage on the third-grade test from “Drag Racer” which has a grade level of 5.9 and an interest level of 9-12th grade.

The eighth-grade test required 13-year-olds to read articles on playground safety. Vocabulary included: bowdlerized, habituation techniques, counterintuitive, orthodoxy, circuitous, risk averse culture, and litigious. One of the articles, which was from The New York Times, can be found here. Here is an excerpt:

Paradoxically, we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.

I am sure that 13-year old ESL students were delighted by that close read.

[Guess the subjects deemed too ‘sensitive’ for new Common Core tests]

And who will be scoring this new generation of tests? If you have a bachelor’s degree, you can ‘soar to new heights’ working either the day or night shift with Pearson making $13 an hour. Or, if you would like to spend some quality time in Menands, New York, the temp agency, Kelly Services, will hire you for $11.50 an hour to score. No degree? No problem. The company’s last ad on Craig’s list for test scorers didn’t require one.
With these exams, the testing industry is enriching itself at the expense of taxpayers, all supported by politicians who self-righteously claim that being subjected to these Common Core tests is a “civil right.” Nonsense. It is clear that none of this will stop unless the American public puts an end to this. I have only two words left to say—opt out.

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing

Juan Gonzalez: Remember the Number 999!

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2015 //
27

Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News says that 999 is the code for students who opted out in New York state, and their numbers are huge. At last count, with slightly more than half the districts tallied, protest organizers estimate that about 180,000 students opted out of the English language arts exams. In some districts, 70-80% of the students did not take the tests. State officials, acting with all due speed, as usual, said that they won’t know how many students opted out of the test until the summer, maybe.

 

Remember that these are not the tests that we took when we were in school. They are tests that last several hours over a three-day period for each subject. Two full weeks of school are devoted to testing, one week for ELA, one week for math, three days of testing each week. Why can’t the testing companies figure out what students know and can do with a one-hour test, as our teachers used to do by themselves?

 

Parents opted out despite threats from state and local officials that their child would jeopardize his/her future or the school would lose funding.

 

Gonzalez writes:

 

Whatever the final number, it was a startling act of mass civil disobedience, given that each parent had to write a letter to the local school demanding an opt out for their child.

 

It’s even more impressive because top education officials publicly warned school districts they risk losing federal funds if nonparticipation surpasses 5%.

 

“To react to parents who are speaking out by threatening to defund our schools is outrageous,” said Megan Diver, the mother of twin girls who refused their third-grade test at Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

 

Gonzalez sees the game that the state is playing with the tests:

 

Back in 2009, the old state tests showed 77% of students statewide were proficient in English. The next year, the pass level was raised and the proficiency percentage dropped to 57%. A few years later, Albany introduced Common Core and the level plummeted even more — to 31% statewide.

 

Same children. Same teachers. Different test.

 

The politicians created a test that says all schools are failing, not just the ones in the big cities, then declare a crisis, so they can close more neighborhood schools, launch more charter schools, and target more teachers for firing.

 

Meanwhile, the private company that fashioned this new test, Pearson, insists on total secrecy over its content.

 

This week, test instructions even warned teachers not to “read, review, or duplicate the contents of secure test material before, during, or after test administration.”

 

What kind of testing company forbids a teacher from reading the test he or she administers?

Categories New York, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

The New York Times Misses the Story: Opt Out Came from Parents, Not Unions

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
90

In a story published in the New York Times, Kate Taylor and Motoko Rich describe test refusal as an effort by teachers’ unions to reassert their relevance. This is ridiculous.

Nearly 200,000 students opted out. They were not taking orders from the union. They were acting in the way that either they wanted to act or their parents wanted them to act.

I emailed with one of the reporters before the story was written and gave her the names of some of the parent leaders of the Opt Out movement, some of whom have spent three years organizing parents in their communities. Jeanette Deutermann, for example, is a parent who created Long Island Opt Out. I gave her the names of the parent leaders in Westchester County, Ulster County, and Dutchess County. I don’t know if any of them got a phone call, but the story is clearly about the union leading the Opt Out movement, with nary a mention of parents. The parents who created and led the movement were overlooked. They were invisible. In fact, this story is the only time that the Times deigned to mention the mass and historic test refusal that cut across the state. So according to the newspaper of record, this was a labor dispute, nothing more. Not surprising that this is the view of Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the Board of Regents, and of everyone else who opposes opting out.

By taking this narrative as a given, the Times manages to ignore parents’ genuine concerns about the overuse and misuse of testing. Not a word about the seven to ten hours of testing for children in grades 3-8. Not a word about the lack of transparency on the part of Pearson. Not a word about data mining or monitoring of children’s social media accounts. To the Times, it is all politics, and the views of parents don’t matter.

The great mystery, unexplored in this article, is why the parents of 150,000 to 200,000 children refused the tests. Are the unions so powerful as to direct the actions of all those parents? Ridiculous.

How could they get it so wrong?

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Standardized Testing, Unions

New York State Education Department Issues Statement Disparaging Opt Outs as Meaningless

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
44

In the midst of a story about a teacher who walked 150 miles to deliver a letter to Governor Cuomo, there was mention of a statement about the opt outs by the State Education Department.

Basically the SED said that the opt outs will not derail its determination to rate teachers based on test scores.

The State Education Department released a statement saying, “We are confident the Department will be able to generate a representative sample of students who took the test, generate valid scores for anyone who took the test, and calculate valid State-provided growth scores to be used in teacher evaluations.”

The SED did not say how it will generate valid ratings for teachers whose students opted out, especially in districts where the majority of students did so; nor did it say how it would generation valid ratings for the 70% teachers who don’t teach the tested subjects. Even if only 10% opted out, how will the SED know if they were high-scoring students or low-scoring students? The SED will succeed in making a process of dubious value even less valid. The SED is determined to do the wrong thing with or without adequate data.

Read More at: http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/as-common-core-testing-enters-second-week-controversy-still-abounds-24810.shtml

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

NYC Parents: Meet and Join the Opt Out Movement Tomorrow!

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
7

PRESS ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contact:
Liz Rosenberg
917-697-1319
liz@girlray.com

Parents from Schools Across the City Stand Together:
Announce Latest Opt-Out Numbers and Launch New Grassroots Campaign

WHAT: On the day before NY State administers the Common Core Math tests to city 3rd-8th graders—thousands of whom refused the English exam, with even more expected to refuse tomorrow’s tests—NYC public school families will gather in Prospect Park to celebrate the unprecedented growth of the opt-out movement and to launch their latest grassroots campaign.

WHEN: Tuesday, April 21st at 4 P.M.

WHERE: Prospect Park bandshell, closest park entrance @9th Street and Prospect Park West.

VISUALS: Parents and children playing in park, holding posters that question putting profits before children. Weather is supposed to be gorgeous!

WHY:
Despite threats and deep-pocketed corporate ad campaigns to discourage test refusal, the opt-out movement in New York City has grown, reaching an unprecedented number of schools in neighborhoods throughout the city. Parents, the David, in this David & Goliath scenario, are demanding that children receive an enriching education, rather than be used to enrich corporate profiteers, who care most about their own bottom line.

WHO:
NYC OPT OUT is a loose coalition of parents throughout New York City who have come together to share information about the New York State tests and their effects on children, teachers, and schools. They support each other via the NYC Opt Out Facebook page. On Tuesday, both families who have refused the tests and those who are considering opt out will be present and available to speak to press.

Categories New York City, Opt Out, Standardized Testing

CNN: Excellent Reporting on Opt Out Movement Gone National

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
11

CNN ran an excellent segment about the burgeoning opt out movement. It is especially strong in New York, but it is rapidly spreading across the country as parents recognize that the tests provide no information other than a score and have no diagnostic value. For some reason, the defenders of high-stakes testing continue to say that the tests are helpful to our most vulnerable children, who are likeliest to fail the test, because until now we have neglected them. We didn’t really know that they were far behind and now they will get attention. After years of No Child Left Behind, in which no child was left untested, this is not a credible claim. Every child has been tested every year since at least 2003. How is it possible to say that no one knows that special education students need extra time and attention and accommodations? How is it possible to say that without Common Core testing, we will not know that English language learners don’t read English? In New York, we have had two administrations of the Common Core. Five percent of the children with disabilities passed the test; 95% were told they were failures. Three percent of English language learners passed the test; 97% were told they failed. How were they helped by learning that they had failed a test that was far beyond their capacity?

Categories Common Core, English Language Learners, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Special Education, Standardized Testing

School Board in Springfield, Oregon, Mulls District Opt Out from SBAC

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
6

The school board of Springfield, Oregon, may propose a moratorium on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. In other words, the whole district may opt out.

State officials have warned the district it may lose state and federal funds, in a blatant attempt to intimidate the elected officials of the district.

“Board member Jonathan Light proposed a motion at a meeting earlier this week that would place a moratorium on the more challenging tests, called Smarter Balanced. Light, who is a music teacher in the Pleasant Hill School District, said he determined that the computerized tests “are not good for kids.”

“Not good for kids” is a good reason not to do it.

““There’s a whole lot of agreement about not liking this test,” said Light, citing concerns for students who don’t have access to computers at home to practice the tests. He criticized the state Department of Education for requiring students to take the test when state officials predict that 70 percent are expected to fail.

The five-member Springfield board is currently the only one in the state to consider such action. The board is expected to discuss the topic again at an April 27 planning meeting and may vote on the motion at a later date.

In addition to placing a moratorium on the tests, Light also proposed that the district create a committee to study the tests and the Common Core State Standards to “either accept, modify or introduce an alternative testing system that would directly serve our students and satisfy state requirements.”

“I think it is a risk, but hopefully other boards would step up,” he said.

“We could really change things,” he added….”

“Some parents have criticized the tests because they say students are not prepared to take them, and younger students don’t have the keyboarding skills to type their answers. Some parents and teachers say the tests give school districts incentive to focus more on reading, writing and math — topics students are tested on — rather than a more well-rounded education that includes, for example, the arts.”

Categories Common Core, Opt Out, Oregon, Standardized Testing

Educator: A Clear Explanation of Why State Testing Hurts Public Education

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
35

One of the biggest challenges to those of us who oppose privatization, school closings, high-stakes testing, and the rest of the failed ideas mistakenly called “reform” have a big job to do. We must educate the public. The public hears the word “reform,” and they think it means progress and improvement. They don’t know it means chaos and disruption of their local public schools. They hear about testing, and they think, “I took tests, what’s so bad about that?”

Here is a fine example of educating the public. It appeared in my local newspaper, the Suffolk Times-Review (recently recognized as the best weekly in New York state). It was written by Gregory Wallace, a former “educator of the year.”

Wallace explains in plain language for non-educators why the Common Core testing will harm public education.

He writes:

As a seasoned educator, I strongly believe that well-designed tests are a valuable educational tool. When used properly, tests provide timely feedback about student progress. Rather than adding to the diagnostic value of tests, however, the NYS Common Core assessments are used solely to rank students, evaluate teachers and label schools as “failing,” slating them for takeover by privately run charters.

One need only understand that the results of these tests are released months after students have moved to the next grade. Parents cannot see an itemized breakdown of how their children performed, because the content of the test remains a closely guarded secret. There is no transparency. Thus, unlike traditional tests, the information generated is completely useless to the parent and child. Without the ability to analyze how students answered the questions, educators are not able to use them to drive instruction or shape pedagogy.

Although testing companies work hard to make sure the content of exams remains embargoed, some information that has been gleaned is cause for great concern. Questions are ambiguous; there are often questions with multiple correct answers and others with no correct answer. The readability of the tests is often two or three grade levels higher than a student’s typical development. The passing rates are set after the test is taken. (That’s how former education commissioner John King was able to accurately predict that 70 percent of students would fail the exam months before they were administered.) These reports, if accurate, underscore the limited (if any) value that these tests provide to the educational system…

I am proud of the education I received in Greenport public schools and I am also proud that my children reside in this district. What takes place in the halls of our community’s school cannot be quantified by a test. Yet as a result of the demographic makeup, our school, its teachers and the district itself will have a far greater risk of sanctions than a school that is wealthier.

Since the NYS Common Core tests provide none of the valuable feedback of a proper test and seemingly disregard all the unique factors that contribute to the complexity of a particular district or region, I have concluded that if my children took these tests I would be complicit in the loss of local control leading to the possible erosion of public education here in Greenport.

My children are vessels to be filled; they are not commodities and will not be used as pawns to create market share for charter schools.

Thus, after much consideration, the only recourse left is to withhold consent. My children will be refusing these exams.

The fifteen comments posted on the newspaper’s website thanked Wallace, and several said their children too would refuse the tests. This is the kind of information that helps people understand how pointless the tests are, except as a way to label students. They do not provide any information about student progress other than a score. There is nothing in the report to help teachers know where they need support. Like the parent group called “Long Island Opt Out,” Wallace educated the public, which helps to explain the large numbers of opt outs on Long Island.

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