Archives for category: Testing
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Iowa Goes Backward

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2015 //
8

Across the nation, states are dropping out of the Common Core testing. Most have decided that the tests are too long, too expensive, and provide no more information than the tests they had before.

 

But Iowa, among the high-scoring states in the nation, has decided to adopt the Smarter Balanced Assessment at the same time that others are backing out. The new tests will begin in the 2016-17 year.

 

The irony is that Iowa has long been one of the nation’s high-performing states even though it had no state standards or assessments.

 

But the state board of education has decided to follow everyone else, even as others are dropping out.

Categories Common Core, Iowa, Testing

Opt Out News: East Meadow, Long Island, School Board Criticizes High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2015 //
19

Opting out is about to become the norm on Long Island, the epicenter of New York’s opt out movement.

The East Meadow, Long Island, New York school board adopted a policy of providing alternative activities for children who do not take the state tests.

Last July, the board unanimously adopted a resolution in opposition to Governor Cuomo’s teacher evaluation law, which makes test scores count for 50% of a teacher’s evaluation. This makes test scores super-important and guarantees that an inordinate amount of time will be devoted to test prep.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Testing

Rick Ayers: EdTPA Is Ruining Teacher Professionalism

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2015 //
141

Rick Ayers, a professor of teacher education at the University of San Francisco, reviews the controversy over EdTPA, the Pearson-owned assessment tool for future teachers. In the past, educational professionals decided whether teachers were prepared for their job. Now, in 35 states, teachers must take the Pearson EdTPA to win certification.

He writes:

The Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) is the new set of evaluations of teacher candidates that is spreading across the country. Packaged as government-mandated test that assures the quality of teaching, it in fact colonizes the curriculum of teacher education programs and narrows the focus on teaching as pre-determined and top down delivery of lessons.

If you ask advocates about edTPA, they’ll tell you it’s a teacher performance assessment developed through a partnership between Stanford University’s Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). They describe it as being designed “by the profession, for the profession” and “transformative for prospective teachers because [it] requires candidates to actually demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to help all students learn in real classrooms.” And policy makers are listening: as of November 2015, 647 educator preparation programs in 35 states are using edTPA, and it’s required for teacher licensure in 4 states.

Critics, however, tell a radically different story. In articles published in an increasing number of academic journals, blogs, and trade magazines, they question the validity of the assessment, its ideological stance, and its function as yet another tool of privatized, neoliberal reform. Barbara Madeloni, now president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, was an early resistor. After the New York Times published a 2012 article about her students’ refusal to participate in an edTPA pilot, Madeloni lost her job at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Later, she, with Julie Gorlewski of SUNY New Paltz, published a series of critiques under headlines like “Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question” that describe edTPA as reductive and poorly aligned with the goals of social justice education….

Many scholars and activists are especially concerned about the role of Pearson Education, who is the exclusive administrator of edTPA and charges $300 per candidate per submission. $75 of this goes back to a “calibrated scorer”–a teacher or teacher educator who, with just 19-23 hours of computer-based training by Pearson was magically transformed from unqualified to evaluate their own teacher candidates to a national expert in evidence-based assessment. The other $225, presumably, goes to Pearson, SCALE and AACTE, who are surely celebrating their resounding success: 18,463 candidates were required to take edTPA in 2014. At $300 each, that’s $5,538,900. It is true that Pearson offers some vouchers to offset the cost for candidates. But in 2014, there were a whopping 600 vouchers available for the entire state of New York.

I have learned from a high-level official in New York that EdTPA has caused numerous problems. The future teachers are supposed to submit videos that show them teaching but parents are reluctant to give permission to film their children. The pass rates of African-American and Hispanic candidates is disproportionately low.

To many observers, both inside and outside the teacher education profession, EdTPA seems to be just one more piece of the “reform” effort to break the teaching profession and make it easier to turn teaching into a scripted performance.

If anyone wants to defend EdTPA, go for it. I’m all ears.

Categories Accountability, Illinois, Pearson, Teacher Education, Testing

FairTest: 2014-2015 Was a Great Year for Critics of Testing

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2015 //
14

FairTest writes that the past year was amazing for opponents of high-stakes testing for students and teachers.

 

Testing Reform Victories 2015: Growing Grassroots Movement Rolls Back Testing Overkill
for further information:

Lisa Guisbond (617) 959-2371

Dr. Monty Neill (617) 477-9792

or Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773

 

 

NEW REPORT: “TESTING REFORM VICTORIES 2014-2015:

 

GROWING GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT ROLLS BACK TESTING OVERKILL”

 

Pressure from parents, students, teachers, school officials and community leaders began turning the tide against standardized exam overuse and misuse during the 2014-2015 school year, according to a new report released today. “Testing Reform Victories 2015: Growing Grassroots Movement Rolls Back Testing Overkill” shows that many states reduced testing mandates, eliminated score-based consequences, and implemented better assessments. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), a leader of the U.S. assessment reform movement, released the study.

 

Lisa Guisbond, the report’s author, explained, “Public pressure has forced policy makers to respond to the many harms resulting from the fixation on high-stakes exams. Even President Obama now concedes that testing has gone too far. Opinion polls show a sharp shift against overreliance on test-and-punish policies in favor of assessments based on multiple measures.”

 

Among the concrete assessment reform victories documented in the new FairTest report:

 

– Policy-makers repealed California’s graduation test. Six other states recently overturned similar requirements, reversing a trend toward exit exams. California, Georgia, South Carolina and Arizona also granted diplomas retroactively to students denied them by test scores.

 

– Florida, Oklahoma, New York and North Carolina suspended or revised their test-based grade promotion policies. New Mexico legislators blocked their governor’s attempt to impose one.

 

– Several other states, including Texas, Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado and Maryland rolled back testing mandates. So did many districts, led by Lee County, Florida.

 

– Opting out surged to record levels in New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, Illinois and elsewhere. The national total approached 500,000.

 

– Polls show that large numbers of Americans agree that there is too much standardized testing and that it should not be used for high-stakes purposes.

 

– Three dozen colleges and universities eliminated or reduced admissions test requirements. The record test-optional growth means that more than 850 schools now offer such policies.

 

– Promising efforts to develop alternative systems of assessment and accountability are under way in California, New Hampshire and New York. All deemphasize standardized tests while incorporating multiple measures of school performance.

 

Ms. Guisbond concluded, “The movement’s growth and accomplishments are tremendously encouraging. But it’s far too early to declare victory and go home. Activists will use lessons learned from last year’s successes to expand and strengthen the testing resistance movement and ensure that policy makers go beyond lip service to implement meaningful assessment reforms.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Opt Out, Resistance, Testing

Black Agenda Report: A Scathing Report on the Obama Education Legacy

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2015 //
34

Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report writes a scathing commentary on Arne Duncan and John King. 

 

Unlike his underqualified predecessor, John King is highly qualified to nail down the gains of educational privatizers. For the last ten months, King has been Arne Duncan’s deputy, and before that he headed the New York State Department of Education. Like Duncan, he’s never taught in or administered a public school in his life. King started out as a charter school teacher and administrator, and eventually headed a chain of charter schools with exceptionally onerous disciplinary policies.

As commissioner of NY State Department of Education King was instrumental in forcing Common Core, a standard curriculum developed by non-educators and corporate consultants from the Gates Foundation, the testing industry and others, upon parents and schools while his own children attended a local Montessori school, which of course did not administer standardized testing. In New York King distinguished himself as a thin-skinned, tone-deaf bully, insisting in the face of widespread public opposition that cutting recreation, music, literature and real teaching in favor of Common Core’s “teach to the test” and other “run-the-school-like-a-business” practices were good for children and good for education.

There are two pieces of good news here. The first is that the $4 billion in stimulus funds the administration had under Duncan to coerce states and school districts into compliance is gone, and provisions of the successor to No Child Left Behind, which of course will institutionalize as much of the privatization regime as possible, are not yet finalized. The second is that like Arne Duncan, John King is no charmer, no persuader, and no salesman. He’s an arrogant autocrat in a highly public, highly visible position, committed to enforcing a set of massively unpopular policies. There’s a serious political opportunity here to galvanize and make visible a movement of national resistance to the juggernaut of school privatization. The Obama administration is well aware of this, and is transparently seeking to buy time with empty declarations of intent to reduce emphasis on standardized testing.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Wendy Lecker: Connecticut Should NOT Use the SAT for 11th Graders

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2015 //
11

Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker warns the state of Connecticut that it is wrong to require students in 11th grade to take the SAT  and to use it to evaluate teachers (in Hartford) and schools. Even the College Board says this is not a valid use of the SAT. The SAT is supposed to test college readiness, not whether students have learned what they were taught.

Lecker writes about a new study from the University of California that demonstrates the limitations of the SAT:

The study examined 1.1 million students from 1994-2011. It found that one-third of the variance of SAT scores could be explained by parental education, socio-economic status or status as a member of an underrepresented minority. By contrast, socio-economic factors accounted for only 7 percent of the variance in high school GPAs.
Even more stunning is that while in 1994, parental education was the strongest predictor of SAT scores, in the last four years of the study, status as a member of an underrepresented minority overtook both parental education and socio-economic status as the strongest predictor of SAT scores.

And while there is a racial gap in high school GPAs, that gap is not nearly as huge as the racial SAT gap. The study found, in ranking University of California applicants, Latinos and African-Americans comprised 60 percent of the lowest decile in SATs, but they comprised only 39 percent of the lowest decile in GPA. And while they comprised 12 percent of the top decile in GPA, they comprised only 5 percent of the top in SAT. Ranking by SAT score produces more severe racial/ethnic stratification than GPA.

The study also confirmed what three other large scale studies found: that the SAT is a poor predictor of college success.

The evidence showed that high school GPA is an accurate predictor of college completion, while the SAT is very weak.
This finding was especially true for students of color. When controlling for parental education and socio-economic status, the predictive power of the GPA increased — while the SAT’s predictive power got even weaker.

The SAT cannot determine whether a student is ready for college success. The SAT never professed to determine whether someone is “career-ready,” whatever that means.

But, as the study shows, the SAT has an adverse effect on racial minorities.So, while the SAT may be able to identify the demographic makeup of a school — and there are easier and cheaper ways to find that out — it cannot tell us a thing about the quality of the education that school provides.

If all the SAT will do is rank schools by race, why is Connecticut using it?

Categories Connecticut, Testing

A Note to Marc Tucker: Why I Disagree with Your Analysis of NAEP Scores

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2015 //
22

Dear Marc,

I read your latest post about NAEP scores in which you say you are taking a long view. You dismiss the disappointing results of the 2015 NAEP, which showed almost no gains and some declines. You choose instead to look at the Long-Term Trend NAEP, which has been asking identical questions since 1973. You point out that 17-year-old scores are flat since the early 1970s, which persuades you that we are in big trouble.

For readers, let me explain that there are two different versions of NAEP. The one that was recently reported is called “Main NAEP.” Its curriculum framework is updated every seven to 10 years, and the content changes. Main NAEP is offered in every state every other year, in reading and mathematics. It also periodically tests other subjects, such as history, civics, and science. It gives data for individual states for students in fourth and eighth grades, enabling anyone to compare performance from state to state. It also reports on achievement gaps among students who are white and black, white and Hispanic.

Then there is the “Long-Term Trend” NAEP. It is offered every four years. The reading LTT started in 1971, the math in 1973. Unlike Main NAEP, the content almost never changes, although items that are obsolete are deleted (the one deleted item I recall from my time on the governing board of NAEP was about S&H Green Stamps). It breaks out scores by race and gender.

Marc, you note the impressive progress made by students at ages 9 and 13, especially black and Hispanic students. But you then go on to say that at the current rate of improvement, 80% of students would not reach “proficient” for many decades, perhaps more than a century. I have to disagree with you here, because setting NAEP proficient as a goal is as unrealistic as the NCLB mandate that 100% of American students would be proficient by 2014. NAEP proficient is a very high standard; it represents a very high level of achievement. NAEP started measuring state performance in 1992, and 23 years later, Massachusetts is the only state in the nation where as many as 50% of students have reached NAEP proficient. Why set an impossible goal?

It is true that the scores for 17-year-old students have barely moved, but not for the reasons you cite. It is not that students get dumb as they reach senior year, but that they don’t give a hoot about a test that means nothing to them. When I was on the NAEP governing board, we devoted an entire meeting to discussing the problem of motivation for students at age 17 or senior year. Seniors doodled or made patterns on the answer sheets. They didn’t care what their score was because they knew the test didn’t matter. It didn’t affect their grades; it didn’t affect their college prospects. They would never find out how they did. For them, it was a meaningless exercise. The board considered ways to motivate them. Suppose we offered a pizza party to encourage students to care? Suppose we offered cash prizes? We could not agree on a solution to the problem of motivating high school seniors to take seriously a test that didn’t count.

And that is why I am not surprised or alarmed by the test scores of 17-year-old students on a test that they know doesn’t matter to them.

Categories NAEP, Testing

Arne’s Former Speechwriter Explains Why Conservatives Should Support the Common Core

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2015 //
20

David Whitman wrote a paper for the Brookings Institution called “The Surprising Roots of the Common Core: How Conservatives Gave Rise to ‘Obamacore.'” The goal of the paper is to persuade readers that conservatives, starting in the Reagan administration, laid the groundwork for national standards and tests. As a participant in some of the events he describes, I have a somewhat different take on the past.

Whitman was Arne Duncan’s speechwriter from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of a 2008 book for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute calling “Sweating the Small Stuff,” which praises “no-excuses” charter schools. His prime example was the American Indian Charter School in Oakland, whose leader subsequently resigned after $3.8 million went missing in a state audit. Given Whitman’s admiration for “no excuses” schools, it makes sense that he wrote speeches for Arne, who believes in them as an effective answer for the educational crisis of African American students who live in poverty.

There are several major differences between the advocacy for national standards in the Bush 1 administration and in the Obama administration.

First, the effort to develop voluntary national standards in the early 1990s did not take place in secret, as did the drafting of the Common Core standards.

Second, the mechanism of the Bush administration was not to convene a secret and unaccountable committee to write standards but to award grants to the nation’s leading organizations that represented teachers and scholars in each field. There was no federal involvement in the writing of the standards; each field wrote its own document about what students should know and be able to do.

Third, the Bush 1 effort was not limited to reading and math. It included the arts, science, foreign languages, history, economics, civics, and physical education.

Fourth, the Bush 1 effort did not direct any teacher about how to teach. The standards were guides, not directives.

Fifth, the Bush 1 strategy was a low-cost effort, as compared to the CCSS. The Bush 1 administration spent about $10 million, as compared to the $200+ million spent by the Gates Foundation to subsidize the CCSS.

Sixth, unlike CCSS, the Bush 1 push for voluntary national standards did not include any element of coercion. Teachers, schools, districts, or states could use them or not. The standards were truly voluntary. The theory of action was that if they were good, states would copy them, or parts of them, if they so chose.

Seventh, unlike the CCSS, there was no national public relations campaign to promote them on national television and in the print media.

Eighth, the Bush 1 voluntary national standards quickly failed after the U.S. history standards became a nasty, politicized national controversy in 1994. But when the standards failed, they didn’t drag anyone down with them, because so little was expended to create them. The Bush 1 standards did not take billions away from other purposes of schooling. They did not suck up education dollars as schools were forced to absorb budget cuts. They did not lead to increases in class sizes and billions spent on consultants and technology.

At the time the Bush 1 standards were written, Senator Lamar Alexander was Secretary of Education. He does not believe that the federal government should force states and districts to reform their schools to satisfy federal mandates. He has always opposed a “national school board.” Even as Secretary, he did not want that power. He believes in federalism.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and the Department of Education do not understand federalism. They do not understand that federal laws specifically prohibit any federal official from attempting to influence or control curriculum or instruction. They recklessly promoted the Common Core standards, and they paid $360 million for testing the Common Core standards. Secretary Duncan pretends that the setting of national standards and the creation of tests aligned to those standards have nothing to do with either curriculum or instruction. What the federal government, and Secretary Duncan in particular, have done in trying to establish national standards and tests violates federal law. It is not only illegal, it is impractical. The theory seems to be that if everyone studies the same subjects and has the same tests, everyone will become equally successful. This is absurd. And the test results prove that the theory is absurd on its face.

Defend the Common Core standards if you wish. Use them if you choose. But please don’t say that they are a direct descendant of the failed effort in 1991-92 to create voluntary national standards, written by teachers and scholars. The Common Core standards will fail, not only because they cost billions to implement, but because of their indifference to teachers and to democratic processes.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Testing

Tim Slekar Calls on Wisconsin Parents to Opt Out of Civics Test for Graduation

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2015 //
20

Tim Slekar, dean of education at Edgewood College in Wisconsin, was outraged when he learned that the legislature passed a bill requiring all students to pass a civics test if they wanted to graduate from high school. His son will opt out of this test, and he urges other parents to do the same.

He writes:

Quick Fact. In the Spring, Representative James “Jimmy Boy” Edming slipped into the Wisconsin budget (without debate or public commentary) a provision that requires all students attending public schools to pass a Civics test in order to graduate from High School. According to Representative Edming it seemed like a”good idea” and would “help instill the responsibilities of citizenship.”

It’s now November and as a parent of a 10th-grade Wisconsin public school student I recently received a letter from my son’s school informing us that “successful completion of this exam will be required for graduation.”

Oh well what are you going to do?

I don’t know about all of you but as a social studies scholar and advocate for participatory citizenship I plan on challenging this disaster of a “good idea.”

Isn’t it amazing how legislators are so cavalier about writing laws telling schools and teachers how to do their job?

Here are Tim’s reasons for objecting to the mandated test as a graduation requirement:

 

It’s an exit exam for graduation and will have a detrimental influence on the graduation rate in Wisconsin.
He is already required to pass a civics course during his time in high school and I have faith in his teacher. She is best qualified and in the best position to assess my son’s knowledge of civics.
The civics test mandated is culturally insensitive and discriminatory.
This test actually diminishes civic participation.
This test will use valuable instruction time pushing a false patriotism at the expense of engaging experiences that motivate our students to become active citizens and critical “consumers” of political rhetoric.
It’s time to stop the mind numbing, skill and drill ethos that is destroying the potential of our children who overwhelmingly understand that the test and punish culture sucks the life out of their one chance to be educated.

Tim is willing to compromise. He will endorse the test requirement if the legislators who mandated it and other elected officials in the state also take it and publish their scores.

The people and the children of the state of Wisconsin have a right to know if their elected leaders are proficient in their knowledge of American Civics. And I do not want any excuses like “I already graduated from high school.” Too bad. If all of our children have to prove their civic competency by taking a high stakes test then so do our elected representatives.

I want to see Governor Scott Walker’s scores!

Categories Testing, Wisconsin

Jeannie Kaplan: How Big Money Bought Total Control of the Denver School Board

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2015 //
4

Jeannie Kaplan, who served two terms on the Denver school board, describes here how the usual monied privatizers managed to win every seat on the Denver school board at the same time that “reformers” went down to defeat in nearby Jeffco and Dougco.

The money rolled in from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)–the hedge funders–and other national reform groups to keep the privatization agenda in control, with not a single dissenter. Some of it is “dark money,” the kind that is hard to trace or not revealed until the election is closed.

Jeannie writes:

“Reformers” in Denver are claiming victory, and to some extent they should. They have been successful in buying a 7-0 school board. Following is the story of how the last seat was purchased on November 3 and how the big money was able to hold on to the two “reform” seats up for re-election.

“Should you not wish to read all of my analysis here are the headlines:

“District 1: The incumbent was going be difficult to beat, for while voting for all things “reform,” she has managed to keep most of “reform” out of her mostly affluent, mostly white district.

“District 5: There was no way “reformers” were going to lose this seat. This was the only remaining obstacle to a unanimous board, the only thing standing between public dialogue and silent acquiescence to all staff proposals.

“At large: Had the election been held on Friday, October 28, 2015, the challenger, Robert Speth, parent not politician, would have defeated Board President Allegra “Happy” Haynes.”

Read on.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Denver, Testing
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