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How Should Schools Be Graded?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
23

Mike Petrilli of the right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute thinks that policymakers are wrong to judge schools by proficiency rates. In a thoughtful article called “The Problem with Proficiency,” he argues that it makes more sense to grade schools by whether their students show “growth.”

He offers the example of a school where the proficiency rates (passing rates on state tests) are very low but the improvement each year is impressive.

In his hypothetical, he offers this example:

Our school—let’s call it Jefferson—serves a high-poverty population of middle and high school students. Eighty-nine percent of them are eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch; 100 percent are African American or Hispanic. And on the most recent state assessment, less than a third of its students were proficient in reading or math. In some grades, fewer than 10 percent were proficient as gauged by current state standards.

But, he adds, at the same school “every year Jefferson students gain two and a half times as much in math and five times as much in English as the average school in New York City’s relatively high-performing charter sector. Its gains over time are on par or better than those of uber-high performing charters like KIPP Lynn and Geoffrey Canada’s Promise Academy.”

Now, how would you rate this school?

Gary Rubinstein recognized that Mike Petrilli was responding to the poor showing of many charter schools in New York City on the recent Common Core tests. He wrote a post called “Petrilli’s Desperate Attempt to Save Democracy Prep’s Reputation.”

Matt Di Carlo has often pointed out the problems inherent in grading schools by changes in proficiency rates. In his most recent article, he argued that:

In general, it is not a good idea to present average student performance trends in terms of proficiency rates, rather than average scores, but it is an even worse idea to use proficiency rates to measure changes in achievement gaps.

Put simply, proficiency rates have a legitimate role to play in summarizing testing data, but the rates are very sensitive to the selection of cut score, and they provide a very limited, often distorted portrayal of student performance, particularly when viewed over time. There are many ways to illustrate this distortion, but among the more vivid is the fact, which we’ve shown in previous posts, that average scores and proficiency rates often move in different directions. In other words, at the school-level, it is frequently the case that the performance of the typical student — i.e., the average score — increases while the proficiency rate decreases, or vice-versa.

Critics of the New Orleans “miracle,” on the other hand, have frequently complained that charter champions keep talking about student test score “growth” in the Recovery School District but refuse to admit that the RSD is one of the lowest-performing districts in the state of Louisiana.

Petrilli’s article provoked an extended online discussion among about 50 think tank denizens and policy wonks in D.C. and beyond, who went back and forth about what accountability should look like, how to measure it, etc.

For my part, I find myself alienated from the conversation because I see less and less value in our multi-billion investment in testing and accountability.

This was my contribution to the online discussion, which many in the conversation, no doubt, thought to be from Mars:

I have two children and four grandchildren. I care about them. I care about their health and their well-being. I love them. I don’t care how they compare to others their age in other cities, states or nations on standardized tests. I never had that information about my two grown sons, and they turned out to be wonderful, responsible people who lead good lives. I don’t want to know that information about my grandchildren. It is irrelevant to their lives. I don’t want them graded and rated by anyone other than the teachers who know them and understand their potential and their character. 
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Could I be more plain? I don’t care if my two grandsons–one now entering second grade, the other not yet 1–have higher or lower scores than children their age in California, Florida, Iowa, Finland, Japan, Korea, or any other place you can think of. I don’t think their parents care either. They care that their children are healthy; are curious about the world; are loved; learn to love learning; are kind to their friends and to animals; and have the confidence to tackle new challenges.
How did we allow ourselves to get swept up in this national game of “Survivor” or “The Hunger Games” or “America’s Best Students” or “America’s Best Schools” or whatever you want to call it.
Let’s all read Walden, read poetry, listen to good music, visit a museum, look at the stars, and think more about what matters most in life.
Let us see our children not as global competitors, but as children, little human beings in need of loving care and kindness.
Tests have their place in education, but they should be used to help children, not to define them or to “grade” their school.
We are so far off track that it will take a generation to reclaim our human and professional values about how to raise and educate children.
Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Students, Testing

Are AP Courses Ripping Off Minority Students?

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2013 //
40

Two news stories shine a bright line on the allure and failed promise of AP courses.

Liz Bowie of the Baltimore Sun has an outstanding article about AP courses in Maryland, which has invested heavily on this strategy to lift achievement.

She writes that the expansion of AP courses has not lived up to its claims. “It has not delivered vast numbers of students from low-performing high schools to selective colleges with credits in their pockets, helping to bridge the academic gulf between the nation’s rich and poor. Too often, students who haven’t been prepared in earlier grades flounder in AP classes, or are awarded A’s and B’s in the courses and then fail the AP exams.

“The high grades for course work can lull students into a false sense of security, said Steve Syverson, a board member of the National Association of College Admission Counseling and a former dean of admissions at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Many students arrive at college with AP courses on their transcripts, but with skills so low they must take remedial classes.

“The kids are … doing what society is telling them to do,” he said. “We just set those kids up for complete failure because they just get hammered when they get to college.”

“A Baltimore Sun analysis of test scores showed a troubling discrepancy between grades for AP course work and scores on the exams. In at least 19 high schools throughout the Baltimore region, more than half of the students who earned an A or B in an AP class failed the exam.

“Failure rates of 75 percent on the exam were common at Woodlawn and other Maryland schools with large numbers of minority and low-income students. For the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent available data, about 40 percent of students who took an AP test in the nation failed. But nearly 75 percent of African-American students nationwide failed, and the pass rates for Latinos and low-income students are far below those for whites and Asians.”

In a related story, Stephanie Simon at politico.com reports that the national picture is troubling:

“Taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to nudge more students into Advanced Placement classes — but a close look at test scores suggests much of the investment has been wasted.

“Expanding participation in AP classes has been a bipartisan goal, promoted by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and by Republican governors including Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and John Kasich of Ohio. In the last five years, the federal government has spent $275 million to promote the classes and subsidize exam fees for low-income students; states have spent many millions more.

“Enrollment in AP classes has soared. But data analyzed by POLITICO shows that the number of kids who bomb the AP exams is growing even more rapidly. The class of 2012, for instance, failed nearly 1.3 million AP exams during their high school careers. That’s a lot of time and money down the drain; research shows that students don’t reap any measurable benefit from AP classes unless they do well enough to pass the $89 end-of-course exam.

“In its annual reports, the nonprofit College Board, which runs the Advanced Placement program, emphasizes the positive: The percentage of students who pass at least one AP exam during high school has been rising steadily. Because so many students now take more than one AP class, however, the overall pass rate dropped from 61 percent for the class of 2002 to 57 percent for the class of 2012.”

No matter what happens to the kids, the nonprofit College Board does well indeed.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Students, Testing

Incredibly Good News: The Public Does Not Support High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2013 //
30

The new PDK/Gallup Poll had some amazingly good news for those parents and educators who have been fighting the movement to test, standardize, and quantify every last child, as well as to destroy public confidence in public education.

What this poll shows is that the public is not buying what the U.S. Department of Education and the corporate reform movement are selling.

They like their teachers and their schools. They don’t believe that standardized testing has helped their school. They don’t want test scores used to evaluate their teachers.

The message: Corporate reform lacks a popular base.

Here are some key findings:

*Only 22% of Americans “believe increased testing has helped the performance of local public schools.”

*A majority (58%) “reject using student scores from standardized tests to evaluate teachers.” This is a reversal from last year, when 52% approved of this obnoxious idea. The more people see that it mislabels teachers and disrupts schools, the less they like the idea.

*A majority (63%) oppose publishing teacher ratings in the media. This is a reversal from last year, when 51% favored this humiliating idea.

*A decisive majority (72%) “have trust and confidence” in teachers in the public schools. When the question is asked of people under 40, who are likeliest to have school-age children, the proportion grows to 78%.

*A bare majority (52%) supported the right of public school teachers to go on strike.

*A huge proportion (88%) of public school parents say their child is safe at school. Their greatest concern is not intruders but other students.

*A majority (68%) support charter schools.

*A large majority (70%) oppose vouchers for private schools. This is a very large increase from 2012, when only 55% opposed vouchers.

*Almost two-thirds of the public have never heard of the Common Core standards.

*Of those who have heard of the Common Core standards, most say they will either make the U.S. less competitive or make no difference.

*More than  90% of Americans “believe activities such as band, drama, sports, and newspaper are very or somewhat important,” with 63% saying “very important.”

 

Bottom line: The American people like their public schools, respect their teachers, do not like standardized testing, and do not want teachers evaluated by test scores.

They want their children to have a well-rounded education.

All common sense.

 

Categories Accountability, Opinion Polling, Parents, Students, Teachers, Testing, U.S. education, Vouchers

Who Is Held Accountable in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2013 //
33

A teacher explains what accountability means in North Carolina:

I argue that the validity of these test scores and results are dismal because the test itself does NOT hold students accountable (at least in my state of NC). The entire basis of the test is invalid before the students even took the test.

The only person that gets any consequence from poor test scores are teachers. No student is held back due to failing the tests (even before the Common Core exams) and every student knows this – they state it out loud in my classroom. I had a student fail EVERY assignment (many assignments were not turned in at all and if completed late could be turned for a grade) and was in the 1% on the high stakes test and STILL was promoted. the teachers now get “report cards” based on student test scores. Sure if I was responsible for these young peoples diet, bedtime, homework help and general health and education care I would be happy to be graded based on their test scores. Many students & their families do not value education in my school district, many are not getting their basic needs met and because I am employed in a very low income school district in a very backwards state I am getting a grade. My grades are average for teachers and I excel in all that I do and a highly trained leader and teacher (I have run education programs and have taught for 20 years and have received numerous awards) but none of that changes the life conditions at home. Yes if I was a poor teacher it would be worse – but even the best teachers cannot overcome the effects of ignorance, poor health and poverty. Grade me on my lessons, on my leadership , on my character and my work ethic – these are measurable items that can be assessed with fairness. But I cannot be graded based on student scores of a 4 hour test at the end of 180 day school year – the 6th graders do not care all they know is in 7 days they will be on summer break!

Categories North Carolina, Students, Teacher Evaluations

A Hero Educator Who Heads a Private School in Manhattan

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2013 //
24

What does it take to be a hero educator? It takes brains, courage, integrity, and a deep understanding of education and children.

Steve Nelson, headmaster of the Calhoun School in Manhattan, is a hero educator because he has all these qualities. He wrote a brilliant article about why the Common Core won’t work.

He knows that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, now heads the College Board. He knows that Coleman wants to align the SAT to the Common Core, so no one can escape his handiwork, not even students in prestigious private schools.

Here is a sample of Nelson’s article.

“Actual children, as opposed to the abstraction of children as seen in policy debate, are not “standard.” Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of child development knows that children learn in different ways and different times. Some children “read” (meaning a very limited ability to recognize symbols) at age 3 or 4. I have known many students who did not read well until 8, 9 or, rarely, later. The potential (or ultimate achievement levels) of these children does not correlate with the date of reading onset.

“It is rather like walking. Children who walk at 9 months do not become better runners than children who walk at 15 months. “Standardizing” the expectation of reading, and setting curricula and tests around this expectation, is like expecting a child to walk on her first birthday. If she doesn’t, shall we get our national knickers in a knot, develop a set of walking tests, prescribe walking remediation, and, perhaps inadvertently, make her feel desperately inadequate? In the current climate, Pearson is ready to design walking curriculum and its companion tests. The Gates and Broad Foundations will create complementary instructional videos.”

And he also writes:

“If policy makers and test writers had even rudimentary knowledge of rich individual differences, they would know that any standard test is unfair and, ultimately, useless. Just as children learn in very different ways, they express mastery in many different ways. The Common Core tests (and I’ve suffered the experience of wading through the many samples provided in the media) assume that all its takers process information in the same way, have the identical mix of cognitive and sensory abilities, and can, therefore, “compete” on level ground. This is nonsensical and damaging. Some of the most brilliant people I know would grind to a suffocating halt after trying to parse the arcane nonsense in a small handful of these questions. Even the math questions assume a homogeneous ability to understand the questions and a precisely common capacity for reasoning and concluding.

“I could go on: Stress inhibits learning, so we design stressful expectations; dopamine (from pleasurable activities) enhances learning, so we remove joy from schools; homework has very limited usefulness with negative returns after an hour or so (for elementary age kids), so we demand more hours of work; the importance of exercise in brain development is inarguable, so we eliminate recess and gym; the arts are central to human understanding, but we don’t have time.

“I have been accused of complaining but not offering solutions, so here’s a solution: Properly fund schools and allow good teachers to select the materials and pedagogy that serve the actual students in their care. The rest will take care of itself.

“And we can take the billions we’re wasting on NCLB, RTTT, Common Core and other nonsense and spend it to improve the lives of the shameful number of children who live in poverty in the “richest nation on Earth.”

Steve Nelson, welcome to the honor roll as a hero of American education.

Please someone, anyone: send this article to Bill Keller and Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

Categories Arts Education, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Students, Testing

Teacher: I Am Not Alone

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2013 //
68

A teacher in Connecticut will lose her job because she teaches the neediest kids. If she can get a job in an affluent district, she will get a high rating.

She writes:

“I have been reading your flurry of blog posts and the excellent comments from teachers and other concerned citizens all at once this morning, and while I must say, they are very cathartic, my stomach is all in knots because they so hit home with my present situation, and clearly of so many other teachers. What you say about charter schools being “free to choose its enrollment and kick out disruptive students while we must accept everyone” is one of the kernels of truth at the center of this whole mess.

“I teach 7/8 social studies in one of the “lowest performing” schools (read highest poverty and crime neighborhoods), in a large CT urban district (name withheld to protect the guilty…). According to the new teacher evaluation system tied to test scores, I have been labelled as ineffective, and am being terminated by the district after 10 years.

“My school is not a magnet, and so we must accept students who are “kicked out” of charters and magnets from around the city at all times during the school year, and I actually had 6 students transfer in after March! These are often children with severe emotional disturbances, but they are almost always children who are very low-skilled, and by middle school, very turned off by the “Brave New World” of being tested more than they are being taught. Just the change in the classroom dynamic when new students like these are brought in is enough to throw all learning out of kilter as my current students feel the need to establish themselves in the pecking order of their new classmates. This makes any of my cooperative grouping plans go right out the window until I can try to form relationships with the new students, which sometimes is next to impossible, and this is only one of a myriad of problems like 10 year-old computers, no librarian, huge school wide disciplinary problems, lack of parental involvement, etc., etc.

“However, all these challenges for me and other teachers in schools like mine might be overcome if it were not for the pressure of district and school administrators constantly harping on deficient test scores, not enough “higher order thinking” questions, (very hard to do when many of my students can barely read) and not perfect classroom management. I have always believed that good teachers teach the “whole student” and that before any of those higher order thinking goals can be achieved, I need to meet the students at their level, and try to build on their strengths to give them the confidence they need to succeed, let alone survive the many traumas they face from their home situations. It is cruel to give them tests that just confirm their feelings of inadequacy, and yet, sadly, that is the future for my students with the CCSS Smarter Balance testing on the way.

“Of course I am not trying to claim that I have all the answers, but I don’t think that the powers that be do either. Every weekend of the past two years I have spent countless hours online looking at excellent websites like teachingchannel.org or edutopia.org among many others, and all have been very helpful for me in improving my practice and finding methods to increase student-directed learning. I have attended workshops and served on school reform committees in my district, but still, according to my district, I am not effective because my children are deficient according to these “standards.” I came to teaching 10 years ago after having had another career because I really thought I could make a difference for children in a school like mine, and judging from the number of kids who come back to say hello after they graduate and have written me thank you letters, I think I probably have. I am 57 and have been sending applications to other districts, but this may be the end of my teaching career because of my age and my poor rating.

“Thank you, Diane, for making me feel that at least I am not alone in this tragedy that is occurring in public education, although it is a small comfort considering that the welfare of our most at-risk children is at stake.”

“

Categories Connecticut, Poverty, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

When Test Prep Isn’t Enough

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
15

Gail Robinson has written a stunning article about the impact of the test score collapse in New York City.

She begins by reminding us that students in New York City have been told for a decade that what matters most for their future and their schools is their test scores. They have done test prep, test prep, test prep, because the scores are so important. Nothing else matters so much to their future–their ability to be promoted to the next grade, to graduate, to go to college, to have a decent life–as test scores.

Test scores define the person. Test scores define the school. Test scores define life.

This is her opening:

“Energy and optimism burst out of the 2011 video [view below] by students at Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn. Dancing and singing to the tune of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” they proclaim, “Test prep goes on and on and on….I am brilliant. I have confidence. Gonna ace these tests.”

“This month, many city students will see such optimism ebb when they learn how they scored on the state’s standardized reading and math tests. At Brooklyn’s Young Women’s Leadership, for example, only 24 percent scored well enough to be viewed as “passing” the English test, with less than 15 percent passing the math exam. In the first tests tied to the new Common Core standards, other schools, particularly in poorer parts of the five boroughs or with high percentages of black and Latino students, had similar results.”

What do you tell the students? You are not brilliant after all? All your efforts were in vain? You failed. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how often you did test prep, you failed. You failed.

Now city and state officials say, tell them the scores don’t matter all that much. All that stuff that said last spring, last year, and for the years before; forget about it. But we know–the kids know, the teachers know, the principal knows–that this isn’t true.

Why lie to them?

Categories Accountability, Students, Testing

Why We Love Monica Ratliff

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
5

What is not to love about Monica?

She beat the Billionaires Boys Club, which had assembled a massive campaign fund to defeat her.

She was trained as a lawyer, worked in civil rights law, then became a teacher.

She has taught for 12 years in a high-poverty school.

She won election to the LAUSD school board as a long-shot underdog.

Here she gently explains to a host on the Fox Morning Show that all the claims he has heard about the public schools of Los Angeles and about teachers are not true. She patiently explains how excited teachers are to return to their classes, how they pay for supplies out of their own pockets, and how dedicated they are to the success of their students.

Go, Monica, go!

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Students, Teachers and Teaching

NC Teacher: These “Reforms” Are Insane

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2013 //
18

A reader from North Carolina explains how the legislatures so-called reforms will affect her:

“I have been teaching in NC for 13 years now. To be honest, having to sign a new contract each year or not getting a raise yet again doesn’t concern me as much as having 25+ 7 year olds with no assistant. I’ve had to share an assistant with 3 other teachers for the past few years, and that is better than having no one. The idea that teachers can meet the individual needs of all children with less time and resources is insane. During a classroom emergency (sick or violent behaving student) how am I supposed to take care of the student needing help plus keep teaching the others? I’d like to see how some of these politicians would function without their secretaries and personal assistants. Instead of trying to help public schools, they are setting us up for failure. It’s like giving a carpenter a hammer, a handsaw, a couple of boards, and a box of nails then calling him incompetent when the house isn’t built in 3 weeks.”

Categories North Carolina, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Stop Bullying Now

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2013 //
28

I just learned from a reader about a new group in Pittsburgh to stop bullying.

It reminded me to share with you my thoughts about a current movie called “Bully.”

I saw it on a cable station as an “on demand” movie. A friend urged me to see it. He was right. It is gripping and heart-breaking.

It tells the story of several children who were bullied, taunted, teased, ridiculed on a daily basis by other students. Some were beaten up and attacked on the school bus. Some committed suicide. Some projected weakness because they “looked different” or were vulnerable in some way. Some were gay. Their parents couldn’t understand why their child had become an outcast, a target for meanness. Their teachers and principals tried but didn’t do nearly enough to protect them. Ultimately, we need not only to protect these children but to have a cultural sea change that makes bullying unacceptable.

Every community should have parent/teacher/community groups to take a stand and defend the right of children to live in peace and to be accepted by their peers and their community.

The reader posted this comment:

“We are starting a parent, teacher organization to prevent bullying of all types ( principal on teacher, student on teacher, parent on teacher teacher/principal on parent and kids. We want to take a community based public health approach to school based violence in Pittsburgh Public Schools. If people are interested in joining they can contact us at parentsagainstbullyinginpgh@gmail.com”

Categories Parents, Students, Teachers
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