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Denis Ian: When Do Children Get to Be Children Again?

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2016 //
26

Is childhood a lost concept? Have we decided to treat five year olds like little adults? Reader Denis Ian reacts to the post about a child’s first day in kindergarten, which was spent taking assessments, not playing or socializing. Taking assessments:

 

 

I find it harder and harder to repeat myself when I bump into tales like this.

 

I sort of cringe myself into almost-anger because what we all see before us is so macabre and so twisted. And it reappears week after week after week.

 

In this case, which is hardly unique, a child’s first several moments in school … her first actual memories perhaps! … are of evaluations, testing, and assessments. This sounds awfully army-ish to me … and not very school-ish at all.

 

But the essential question … the one that should be asked first … is very simple: Who thinks this is a good idea? Who thinks 60 month-old children should be queued up like draft inductees and then sized up like petite soldiers on their way to the proving ground of the classroom? I hate that forced gulp of adult air. Why? Why do that to a child?

 

Will these experts step forward and explain themselves to all of us who seem to think that such stuff is abusive and asinine and beyond reasonable? And do it all in human terms … in words we understand. And we’ll talk likewise.

 

Where are they? I seldom hear their voices. And if I do, I rush to their credentials, and guess what? I am almost always presented with the same disturbing information … that these new Know-It-Alls have zero classroom experience beyond visitor status.

 

But somehow, some way … through this warped reform … these classroom allergic gurus hold sway over a generation of new learners … that would be YOUR children … proposing logic-defying curriculum alterations and procedures that every classroom teacher knows to be worthless … and even damaging.

 

And still it goes on and on and on. In fact, it gets worse … because these new Socrates of education are ever more emboldened, and to cement their early assertions, they rummage their own empty heads for more educational absurdity which spews out at volcanic speed. And there are always some political schlubs right there to crown these dopes as the new geniuses of education … and then give them warping power beyond belief.

 

Can you see why I cringe? Why so many of you cringe? Here you are … in the moment of one of life’s great moments … your child’s first day of school. The camera is charged, they clothes are extra-neat, the essential paraphernalia is stylishly arrayed from lunch box to pencil case … and you now realize you are escorting your youngster … that child you love more than life … to boot camp. So, we all cringe some more. And lots of you probably cry, too.

 

I would cry. A lot. And I am not given to that sort of soft stuff. But I know how my children were once stitched to my heart and my soul when they were tiny human beings … and it doesn’t take great effort to recapture that moment in time.

 

All cringing aside … when do we stop begging and imploring educational officials and politicians to STOP! To treat our children like … like children?

 

When do they hear us rather than the goofy gurus? When do they realize that we’re not so goddamned consumed with data and test scores and rankings and such? That we’re more concerned with smiles and joy and refrigerator art?

 

When does that happen? When do we all get our balance back? And when does childhood make a comeback.

 

I can’t believe I typed that last sentence. I’m cringing again.

 

Denis Ian​

Categories Childhood, Testing

Peter Cunningham Says that the Public is Rejecting Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2016 //
55

Peter Cunningham was Arne Duncan’s spokesperson in the first Obama term. He was assistant secretary in charge of communications. I once heard him described as “Arne’s brain.” He now runs a billionaire-funded website called “Education Post,” which advances the “reform” agenda. .

Here is an interview with Peter, in which he expresses his view that public schools are on the way out and the public is turning its back on them, preferring charter schools, home schooling, and vouchers. His answer: more accountability. I guess that means more testing. But when everyone takes the same tests, the public schools usually outperform the students in charter schools and voucher schools.

Since public education is an integral part of a democratic society, I am not sure what he is suggesting or why he thinks it is a good thing for people to turn towards privatization. Privatization produces inequality; it produces segregation; it produces some excellence and some squalor and plenty of mediocrity. The real problem is that we have an inward turning society of deepening inequality where it is every man, woman, and child for him/herself. We lack visionary leadership. We lack the kind of leaders who would call upon the better angels of our nature and inspire us to pursue the common good instead of our own self-interest.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

NY BATS on John King

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2016 //
29

The NY BATS. Are not happy about President Obama’s selection of John King as Secretary of Education. Say this for King. His arrogant indifference to parents set off the largest testing opt out in history. Maybe he can do the same for the nation.

BATS write:

“WE GOOFED BUT TRUST US TO FIX IT: Now headed for Senate confirmation hearings, Obama’s Acting Education Secretary John King admits in a new video that standardized testing has been harmful and wasteful, yet will continue federal tinkering to find a better balance between subjecting kids to non-stop testing hell and collecting data to improve instruction.

Reading stiffly from cue cards, King continues his “apology tour” after alienating teachers with corporate reform policies straight out of ALEC’s basement. Yet the Secretary continues to pretend outraged teacher and parent groups do not see right through to the heart of the problem – the corporate revolving door and the influence of money in politics.

Obama had always mailed in his education policy, straight from the boardrooms of Center for American Progress, the Gates Foundation and social engineers like Joanna Weiss. The policies were also favored by Wall Street and billionaires like the Waltons and Broads, yet were met with whimpers by the heads of the large teacher unions.

This untested market-based approach to changing schools exploded in opt-outs and gave Republicans an issue with great traction. Now Obama is backpedaling, but only in rhetoric as his actions only cement his commitment to upending classrooms through continuous, invasive measuring. His promises to help underperforming schools remain broken, as support for addressing actual learning obstacles flows instead into the hands of testing contractors and armies of consultants.

In essence, Obama is saying to America “yes we goofed” but let’s have a “fresh start”, beginning with the nomination of King, a darling of privatizers and dark money PACs that rain campaign cash onto your state legislators. This is not only tone-deaf and a thumb in the eye, it’s doubling down on corporate reform and federal centralization.

As a short-lived teacher and charter network director, King lacked the experience the education community was looking for, so his PR handlers instead launched an all-points media blitz based on his personal narrative, which credited NYC public schools for changing the trajectory of his life. Strange then, that he would pick a career in charter schools, which require pro-active completion of lottery applications, thereby leaving behind the most needy children whose parents are not as involved.

Today, the hope of students, parents and teachers across the political spectrum is that local control of schools can be restored by downsizing almost everything the megalithic USDOE does, abandoning NCLB’s federally mandated test requirements and concentrating on supporting the research-based recommendations of actual educators instead of mandating ham-handed “fixes” after meeting with lobbyists.

In short, Obama’s record on education is widely considered even “worse than Bush”, but the way forward now is no longer manufacturing fake crises and endlessly patching up failed (and unconstitutional) federal testing policies, it’s folding up shop and giving tax dollars back to districts so teachers can teach.”

Categories Common Core, Opt Out, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, VAM (value-added modeling)

Florida Quietly Releases School Grades Based on Flawed Tests

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2016 //
14

When public officials want to bury a news story, they release it to the media on Friday afternoon. That’s supposed to assure minimal attention.

 

Florida officials released school grades last Friday afternoon.

 

Paul E. Barton, an eminent education researcher who retired to Florida, sent me this observation:

 

“With the problems with the new tests the student grades were not used, but the school grades were despite the fact that the outside audit said that the PARC test was invalid. It was explained that the tests would be used as a baseline to show progress next year, but if the test was not valid, how could it be used to show progress?”

 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Florida, Testing

OECD Study Identifies Causes of Low Test Scores, Misidentifies Solutions

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2016 //
24

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which oversees the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA), has released a lengthy study comparing the nations that take the PISA test.

 

The conclusions of the report confirm what almost everyone knows: the students with the lowest test scores are those who live in poverty, those who have an immigrant background, and those who live in a single-parent home (which is usually a female parent, who usually lacks the income to support the family). These findings are not surprising.

 

How does the US compare? Apparently there have been no changes in reading scores since 2003—despite No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and their heavy emphasis on reading and math. There were some gains in science, which is surprising since science was not a priority subject for either of the  big federal programs.

 

 

So how does the U.S. stack up when it comes to low-performing students? Here are the results from the 2012 PISA exam – the most recent date it was administered:

 

In math, 26 percent of students were low performers compared with the OECD average of 23 percent.
In reading, 17 percent were low performers compared with the OECD average of 18 percent.
In science, 18 percent were low performers compared with the OECD average of 18 percent.
And 12 percent were low performers in all three subjects compared with the OECD average of 12 percent.
Notably, the share of low performers in math and in reading in the U.S. has not changed since the 2003 PISA test, but the share of low performers in science decreased by about 6 percentage points between 2000 and 2012….

 

Internationally, the study found that:

 

The probability of low performance in math, for example, is higher for students if they are socioeconomically disadvantaged, female, have an immigrant background, speak a different language at home from the language of instruction, live in a single-parent family, attend school in a rural area, have not attended preschool, have repeated a grade or have enrolled in a vocational program.

 

 

What conclusions does Andreas Schleicher, the director of PISA, reach?

 

 

One facet could be increasing access to early childhood education, through which “countries have been able to really make a big difference,” Schleicher said. Other policies that have had a big impact on student achievement include improving training and professional development for teachers and boosting the rigor of academic standards.

 

“The U.S. recently adopted the Common Core,” Schleicher said of the academic benchmarks being used in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia. “That has happened in many countries, and we can actually see a big impact on this.”

 

In what way will the increased “rigor of academic standards” help low-income students who are already far behind? How will it help students who live in single-parent homes, or homes where no one speaks the local language? Will Common Core reduce poverty or change the circumstances of children’s lives? I wish he would explain his logic.

 

Categories Common Core, International, Poverty, Testing

New Orleans: Massive Cheating Discovered at Charter School

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2016 //
22

Here is a switch: Parents at a charter high school in New Orleans suspected massive cheating and hired a law firm to conduct an investigation. They were right. There was massive cheating.

 

 

Landry-Walker High School’s 2013-14 test results were so amazing that some New Orleans education insiders doubted they were valid. More students at Landry-Walker than at Lusher Charter, a selective-admissions school, aced geometry. In biology, the school was fourth-best in the city.

 

Skeptical of the numbers, the school’s parent organization, the Algiers Charter School Association, launched a 16-month investigation — without telling Landry-Walker’s principal — into what some feared could be widespread, teacher-enabled cheating. The association undertook a detailed analysis of student performance, hired outside lawyers and, for the spring 2015 round of testing, placed independent monitors in every single examination room at its flagship school, according to internal documents.

 

When the 2014-15 test results came back, Landry-Walker’s scores fell off a cliff. The percentage of students getting top marks in geometry fell by 51 points.

Categories Charter Schools, Cheating, Education Reform, New Orleans, Testing

Do You Think That There is Too Much Testing? Tell AERA

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2016 //
5

On her blog, VAMboozled, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley invites parents, students, teachers, and everyone else to let the American Educational Research Association know what you think about testing today. Too much or too little? Too long or too short? Used well or used poorly?

 

As the scholarly debate about the extent and purpose of educational testing rages on, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) wants to hear from you. During a key session at its Centennial Conference this spring in Washington DC, titled How Much Testing and for What Purpose? Public Scholarship in the Debate about Educational Assessment and Accountability, prominent educational researchers will respond to questions and concerns raised by YOU, parents, students, teachers, community members, and public at large.

 

Hence, any and all of you with an interest in testing, value-added modeling, educational assessment, educational accountability policies, and the like are invited to post your questions, concerns, and comments using the hashtag #HowMuchTesting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, or the social media platform of your choice, as these are the posts to which AERA’s panelists will respond.

 

They are extra interested in video recorded comments. The deadline is March 17 for  your submission. Read the post for the links.

 

 

Categories Testing

Fred LeBrun: The Opt Out Movement is Parents’ Most Powerful Tool Against Bad Education Policies

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2016 //
11

Fred LeBrun, a columnist for the Albany Times-Union, wrote a terrific column about the power of the parents who opted out.

 

Without the pressure they exerted, Governor Cuomo would never have appointed a commission to review the Common Core standards and testing.

 

Without the force of their numbers, the state education department would have proceeded to evaluate teachers by student test scores, despite the research proving its invalidity.

 

Opt Out parents caused Cuomo’s poll numbers to plummet, and that got his attention. Poll numbers can outweigh hedge fund cash.

 

Here is part of LeBrun’s perceptive column:

 

According to the latest Siena poll, education has jumped to the top of the list for what matters most to New Yorkers, ahead of jobs, taxes, and that perennial favorite, governmental corruption.

 
Granted, education is a wide umbrella covering higher and lower ed, funding, curricula, charter schools, and a lot more, plus the poll indicates the greatest concern for education is held by downstate Democrats.

 
They’ve got the numbers to dictate the poll. But at the least we can reliably say the poll affirms how important public education consistently remains for upstaters and downstaters alike.

 
When it’s that important to voters, it’s critical to politicians.

 
In the brash youth of his governorship, Andrew Cuomo confidently swaggered to war against teachers and the “educational bureaucracy,’’ which it turns out is mostly parents, by trying to impose a cockamamie Common Core system that brutally punished school children and a punitive and grossly unfair teacher evaluation system, all in the name of “reform.”

 
Washington, in the embrace of billionaire advocates of privatizing public education, applauded.

 
So did New York hedge-funders promoting charters.

 
The governor used all his cunning and considerable available resources to get his way, and even beat up the Legislature to become complicit.

 
Yet he got his ass handed to him. By whom? By the most potent force there is in public education, the public.

 
Cuomo’s poll numbers fell through the floor. In December, the governor sent up the white flag and sued for peace with a landmark Common Core review commission report that made 21 splendid, common sense recommendations to put New York public education back on track.

 
In his State of the State this year about all he had to say on the subject was urging the Board of Regents to pass all 21 recommendations.

 
That’s exactly what the Regents should do, and we have every high hope they will once two new progressive members of the 17-member Regents are appointed by the Legislature, and once the Regents leadership becomes more enlightened and attuned, which is also imminent.

 
There are several factors behind why the governor lost the war, including a change of heart in Washington, but high among them is the Opt Out movement that last spring kept 220,000 New York pupils from taking the state’s ridiculous standardized tests.

 
Opt Out has been the most powerful in-your-face, can’t-ignore referendum on the governor’s policies since he took office.

 
So here’s the irony of Opt Out for the governor, post-truce.

 
If there is another Opt Out uprising this spring, the popularity fallout will still be the governor’s to reap even though he has been forced to see the light and change course. In the public’s eye he remains the architect of that dismally failed model for public education.

 
It should come as no surprise that Opt Out is a very real possibility again this year.

 
That’s because there’s a Grand Canyon between the considerable rhetoric of change we’ve heard and the reality of where we actually stand with altering or eliminating high stakes testing and the Common Core, teacher evaluations, and inappropriate pressures on our youngest citizens.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, New York, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Testing

TNReady Online Testing Crashes in Tennessee: Not TNReady Yet

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2016 //
24

Tennessee is still Racing to the Top although they are still far away. So, of course, the state switched to online assessment for its Common Core testing, at a cost of $108 million.

 

Yesterday was the first day, and the system crashed.

 

There was a “major outage.” The state commissioner, a huge fan of Common Core, blamed the vendor. She told schools to go back to the “worst case scenario,” that is, pencil and paper testing.

 

Since we learned not long ago that students who took the PARCC tests on paper instead of on a computer tend to get higher scores, this may have a bright side.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Tennessee, Testing

Gene Glass: Would Horace Mann Tweet? (Make This Go Viral!)

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2016 //
8

Gene Glass has written one of the most brilliant, most perceptive commentaries on the billionaires’ reform movement that I have ever read.

He gives a witty, well-sourced analysis of the familiar corporate reform narrative and punches giant holes in it.

Here is the opening sentence:

“A democratically run public education system in America is under siege. It is being attacked by greedy, union-hating corporations and billionaire boys whose success in business has proven to them that their circle of competence knows no bounds.”

Glass is one of our nation’s most celebrated and honored researchers. He called VAM “stupid” back in 1998. Unlike many ivory-tower academics, he is taking sides: he is on the side of public education, democracy, and truth.

If you don’t read this, shame on you.

Please tweet it, post it on Facebook, share it with your friends and your elected officials.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, ESSA, For-Profit, Hoax, Research, Testing
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