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Steven Rasmussen: The SBAC Common Core Tests in Math Are So Flawed They Should Not Be Used

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
5

Steven Rasmussen is a mathematics educator and co-founder of Key Curriculum Press. He studied the mathematics tests of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and concluded that the tests are so flawed that they should not be used.

He has written a report, analyzing sample questions, which can be found here, by opening a pdf file. 

This is his summary:

This spring, tests developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium will be administered to well over 10 million students in 17 states to determine their proficiency on the Common Core Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). This in-depth analysis of sample mathematics test questions posted online by Smarter Balanced reveals that, question after question, the tests (1) violate the standards they are supposed to assess, (2) cannot be adequately answered by students with the technology they are required to use, (3) use confusing and hard-to-use interfaces, or (4) are to be graded in such a way that incorrect answers are identified as correct and correct answers as incorrect. No tests that are so unfair should be given to anyone. Certainly, with stakes so high for students and their teachers, these Smarter Balanced tests should not be administered. The boycotts of these tests by parents and some school districts are justified. In fact, responsible government bodies should withdraw the tests from use before they do damage.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Testing

Las Vegas: What Happens When Reform Is Not Reform But Destruction?

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
8

In an article published in 2013, journalist Launce Rake comments on the departure from Nevada of two “reformers.” He takes the opportunity to explain why the word “reform” should never be used to describe events, individuals, or organizations.

 

He writes:

 

A GOOD EDITOR, YEARS AGO, told me to jettison the word “reform.” Calling a policy change “reform” is a way to dress it up and make it acceptable to the public, she explained.

 

If you want to award less money to people who sue after being horribly maimed by bad products or services, don’t call it “giving victims less money.” Call it “tort reform.”

 

Likewise, if you want to take apart the teachers unions and make it easier to fire teachers, don’t say “make it easier to fire teachers”. Call it “education reform.”

 

And they have. For a decade, education reform — that is, administrative and policy changes to public schools — has been a train barreling down the tracks, embraced by elected and appointed officials at all levels, across the political spectrum. Everybody loves reform!

 

That’s as true in Nevada as anywhere in the nation; schools in Nevada and the Clark County School District, the nation’s fifth largest, consistently rank among the worst-performing in the nation. While some wags also point out that they are also among the worst funded in the nation, political leaders, unable or unwilling to address the funding issue, have instead called for “reform.”

 

Isn’t it amazing that this writer gets it, but no one in the mainstream media does?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Denisha Jones: Beware the Education “Reformers” Who Co-Opt the Language of the Civil Rights Movement

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
15

Denish Jones is a contributor to EmPower magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University. She has taught kindergarten, preschool, served as a campus based preschool director, and taught college for over 10 years. Currently she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Howard University.

 

In this article, Jones warns that so-called “reformers” have stolen the language of the civil rights movement to advance their goals of privatization and deprofessionalization. Their aims actually contradict the aims of the civil rights movement.

 

 

She writes:

 

1. Privatization is inherently unequal.

The corporate reform movement that is waging war against public education has one goal in mind: privatization. Free-market advocates do not believe in a system of public education and are on a mission to see every aspect of a public society privatized from our prisons to our schools. But with privatization comes the loss of public ownership. Public systems are open to inspection by the public. Records are made public and the process is transparent so that community members can understand what is happening and voice their concerns. Privatization removes the ability of the public to know what is happening with their tax dollars. Private companies can use proprietary laws to prevent them from disclosing documents and following laws pertaining to public records….

 

Without the transparency of how our tax dollars are spent how do we hold private corporations accountable? Some businesses do well but others fail to garner enough capital to stay afloat; that is the nature of capitalism. But when the business model of winners and losers is applied to public education, the losers tend to be children who struggle academically and families without the social capital needed to advocate for their children. The winners are CEO’s and stock holders who earn high salaries with public money but can use their private status to shield themselves from public accountability.

 

2. School choice is not about parents choosing good schools it’s about schools choosing good students.

 

School choice has been pushed by corporate reformers since the creation of charter schools and vouchers. Using the plight of underfunded poverty ridden urban schools reformers argued that low-income and minority families should be given a choice in where they send their child to school. Choice and competition would force low-performing schools to compete for students or be closed. Why should low-income and minority families have to settle for a failing neighborhood schools when parents with more money could choose better schools? This is how the argument for school choice is often framed as a benefit for certain groups. But the research paints a different picture….

The push for privatization distorts the picture of who really gets to choose under school choice schemes. Reformers would have us believe that parents are doing the choosing but in reality it is the charter schools, many which are for-profit corporations, who get to choose.

 

3. Underprepared teachers for other people’s children.

 

Privatization of public education cannot be fully implemented unless the system for educating teachers is also privatized. Typically teachers were prepared through colleges and universities were they took a variety of courses and completed a semester long student teaching internship before they could apply for a teaching license through their state. Today fast-track teacher preparation programs like Teach for America (TFA) are turning teacher preparation into a business. Recent college graduates are recruited to spend a few years teaching in inner-city schools with high needs students. Armed with five weeks of training and a desire to give back, these recruits are placed in classrooms and expected to outperform educators with teaching degrees and years of experience. TFA is touted as noble program that will change the teaching profession by removing the union thugs who only care about themselves and replacing them with young idealistic people who have the commitment to do what needs to be done and will not use poverty as an excuse.

 

Armed with language of from the Civil Rights movement, TFA claims to be champion of low-income and minority children. Statements like this, “Nearly 50 years after landmark civil rights marches throughout the region, deep, entrenched poverty still persists along racial lines” and “From Birmingham to Selma, corps members are helping to prove that all kids can achieve at high levels, even those living in poverty” can be found on their website and are clear examples of how TFA has co-opted the language of the Civil Rights movement. But hidden behind these nice quotes is the assumption that other people’s children deserve underprepared “saviors” as their teacher…..What the richest and most educated parent wants for their own child should be what we aspire to give all children.

 

Denisha Jones concludes:

 

There is much work to done as we continue to march towards Dr. King’s dream. Corporate education reform is not an ally in our fight for educational justice. We must not be fooled by those who seek to use the legacy of our struggle to turn a profit at the expense of our children’s education. A strong democratic republic needs high quality public schools that offer a free and appropriate public education to all.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

Read With Care: Washington Post Editorial Board Endorses Rahm

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
27

I say read with care, because if you are fed up with Rahm Emanuel’s attacks on public education and unions, you may need to have a barf bag nearby. If you live in New York, and you are aware of Governor Cuomo’s pandering to Wall Street, you will have the same reaction. As you read this encomium to the great Rahm, you may wonder how the term “progressive Democrat” became a definition for someone who attacks teachers, unions, and public education, and exactly how they differ from conservative Republican governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Mike Pence. But bear in mind that this is the same editorial board that thought Michelle Rhee was a great success as chancellor of the D.C. schools and cheered her every move.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Wow!! 18 Million Page Views!

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
57

Overnight, the blog reached 18 million page views. The last time it hit the million mark was January 28, when it hit 17 million. I had no idea when I started blogging on April 26, 2012, that this would happen.

 

My goal since the blog started was to let others know that what was happening in their state and district was not an isolated phenomenon. I wanted you to know that if you don’t like the status quo in education today, you are not alone. If you don’t like the attacks on teachers, you are not alone. If you are alarmed by the way testing has become the main focus of schooling, you are not alone.

 

The movement to turn public education over to private management and entrepreneurs is national, not local. The movement to take away due process and collective bargaining rights for teachers is national, not local. The indifference to segregation and poverty is national, not local. I wanted to help build a movement against privatization and high-stakes testing by providing the information people need.

Over time, I realized I could magnify the audience for brilliant bloggers like Anthony Cody, Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Paul Thomas, Paul Horton, Bruce Baker, and many others. When I saw how many insightful comments were posted by teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, and concerned citizens, I realized I could give them a platform to be heard. When new research appears that is relevant to our issues, I could share it. Most of what I post is written by others, not by me. I set the rules, I decide what to post, but it is your blog too.

 

I have posted more than 10,000 times; I have read more than 250,000 comments. I turned many of your comments into posts because I thought they were smart, provocative, informative. I love the conversation among the readers. Many are regulars. Others jump in when they feel the urge. All are welcome (so long as they don’t use certain four-letter words or spout conspiracy theories or insult me).

 

I have repeatedly tried not to overwhelm you with too many posts in a single day, but I usually fail. When I see something I really like or really don’t like, I feel a need to share it. So, despite my best intentions, you get too many emails from me. No one has to read them. No one has to sign on. So, I will go on doing what I love doing–being a disseminator of my thoughts, your thoughts, and the thoughts of others, in the service of “a better education for all.”

 

There is a movement against the status quo of privatization and high-states testing. It is growing by the day. It includes students, parents, educators, and others. It won’t succeed in a matter of months. But it will succeed. I don’t know if it will take a year, five years, or ten years. It will succeed. Everything the “reformers” have imposed has failed. Merit pay has failed. Charters are no better and are very often much worse than public schools, especially when they are run by non-educators or by people seeking to make a profit. Vouchers have failed. The usual punitive accountability schemes–like grading schools A-F or stack-ranking teachers–are a farce. The parent trigger has failed. The effort to measure teacher quality by test scores has failed. Despite all the money of the billionaires and the Wall Street hedge fund managers, despite their control of the U.S. Department of Education, their plan to privatize public education is a failure. They can make it happen here and there, but they can’t produce any real improvement that benefits all children. They can’t produce equality of educational opportunity. They produce more testing, but they can’t produce better education. They can cherry pick students and show off their Potemkin Village schools, but they dare not take responsibility for an entire district because they don’t know what to do with the children who won’t conform, the children with disabilities, and the children who can’t speak English.

 

Might there be common ground? Yes, I think so. But common ground must begin by ending the boasting, ending the false claims. Education in a large and diverse society is hard, not easy. There is no secret sauce. Common ground requires that charter promoters stop bragging that they are better than public schools. Teach for America must stop bragging that their idealistic and dedicated young recruits are better teachers than experienced teachers. And the funders of these institutions must stop the attacks on public education and on the teaching profession. Common ground begins when everyone recognizes that complex problems require collaboration and mutual respect. Common ground also requires that charter promoters stop using their students as political shock troops at school board meetings, City Council hearings, and state legislative meetings.

 

Every high-performing nation has a strong public school system with strong community support and equitable funding. They do not rely on competitive markets to provide education; competitive markets exacerbate segregation and inequality. A better education for all means a better education for all. It means equality of educational opportunity. It means well-educated, well-prepared teachers. It means a respected teaching profession. It means parent and community support for the mission of the schools.

 

These are my principles. And these are the principles of this blog. Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for sending me articles and links. I rely on you and I thank you.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

A Reading List for Students Who Refuse to Take the Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
10

This is an excellent reading list of books for children who are not taking the state tests. The books are mostly for students in grades 3-8. It was assembled by the parents and teachers who are members of New York State Allies for Public Education. The list probably would not pass muster with the Common Core Commissariat because most of the books are fiction. But they are all enjoyable books, the kind that inspire children to read on their own, for pleasure. An old-fashioned idea, but a good one.

Categories Common Core, Opt Out, Resistance, Testing

Test Developer and Tutor: I Feel Sorry for Students Who Will Take the PARCC

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
32

Susan Chyn, who worked for many years in the testing industry and now tutors students in writing and English language arts, left the following comment after reading Russ Walsh’s review of the readability level of sample questions of the Common Core PARCC examination:

 

Reading level is but one issue. There are many other reasons to worry about PARCC, if the practice tests are representative of what the students of NJ will face in March. Having developed relatively rigorous tests at a standardized testing company for over 20 years, I am rather shocked by the quality of PARCC questions. Reading passages are presented out of context (i.e., no prefatory blurbs like “The Red Badge of Courage is a story about the Civil War,” easing test takers into the texts). The multiple-choice questions are often unclearly (ambiguously) worded; the intended answers, arbitrary. And my experience so far is that the A-B format, though trendy, leads kids to the very worst kind of back-and-forth second guessing. Suffice it to say, I have a queasy feeling about how the students I tutor (who run the gamut ELA skillwise) will fare. I hope I am wrong, but right now, I feel bad for the public school teachers, the parents and students who all will be judged by this very blunt instrument.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Testing

12 Reasons to Refuse PARCC

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
22

Activist parents and educators who belong to SaveOurSchoolsNJ helpfully assembled a dozen reasons to refuse the Common Core PARCC test.

 

 

 

1. PARCC is poorly designed & confusing

 

“For many of the sample released questions, there is, arguably, no answer among the answer choices that is correct or more than one answer that is correct, or the question simply is not, arguably, actually answerable as written.”

 

Why?

 

“The tests consist largely of objective-format items (multiple-choice and EBSR). These item types are most appropriate for testing very low-level skills (e.g., recall of factual detail). However, on these tests, such item formats are pressed into a kind of service for which they are, generally, not appropriate. They are used to test “higher-order thinking.” The test questions therefore tend to be tricky and convoluted. The test makers insist on answer choices all being “reasonable.” So, the questions are supposed to deal with higher-order thinking, and the wrong answers are all supposed to be plausible, so the test questions end up being extraordinarily complex and confusing and tricky, all because the “experts” who designed these tests didn’t understand the most basic stuff about creating assessments–that objective question formats are generally not great for testing higher-order thinking, for example.” i

 

2. PARCC’s online testing format is very problematic, particularly for younger students
“In the early grades, the tests end up being as much a test of keyboarding skills as of attainment in [English Language Arts or Math]. The online testing format is entirely inappropriate for most third graders.” i

 

3. PARCC is diagnostically & instructionally useless
“Many kinds of assessment—diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, performative assessment, some classroom summative assessment—has instructional value. They can be used to inform instruction and/or are themselves instructive.

 

The results of [the PARCC] tests are not broken down in any way that is of diagnostic or instructional use.

 

Teachers and students cannot even see the tests to find out what students got wrong on them and why. So the tests are of no diagnostic or instructional value. None. None whatsoever.” i

 

4. Taking and preparing for PARCC & other high-stakes standardized tests is replacing learning
Administrators at many schools “report that they spend as much as a third of the school year preparing students to take these tests. That time includes the actual time spent taking the tests, the time spent taking pretests and benchmark tests and other practice tests, the time spent on test prep materials, the time spent doing exercises and activities in textbooks and online materials that have been modeled on the test questions in order to prepare kids to answer questions of those kinds, and the time spent on reporting, data analysis, data chats, proctoring, and other test housekeeping.” i

 

5. PARCC will further distort curricula and teaching
“The tests drive how and what people teach, and they drive much of what is created by curriculum developers…Those distortions are grave. In U.S. curriculum development today, the tail is wagging the dog.” i

 

6. PARCC & other high-stakes standardized tests undermine students’ creativity and desire to learn
The research on motivation and creativity is very clear: externally imposed punishment and reward systems, like those associated with high-stakes standardized testing, suppress our intrinsic motivation, dramatically undermining creativity and love of learning.

 

High-stakes standardized tests also suppress motivation and creativity because the endless test preparation narrows the curriculum and creates a boring learning environment, filled with anxiety and fear.

 

7. PARCC & other high-stakes standardized tests have an enormous financial cost
“In 2010-11, the US spent $1.7 billion on state standardized testing alone.” With the Common Core State Standards tests, this cost increases substantially.

 

The PARCC contract by itself is worth over a billion dollars to the Pearson [Corporation] in the first three years, and you have to add the cost of [the Smarter Balanced Common Core Assessment] and the other state tests (another billion and a half?), to that.

 

No one has accurately estimated the cost of the computer upgrades that will be necessary for online testing of every child, but those costs probably run to 50 or 60 billion.

 

This is money that could be spent on stuff that matters—on making sure that poor kids have eye exams and warm clothes and food in their bellies, on making sure that libraries are open and that schools have nurses on duty to keep kids from dying. How many dead kids is all this testing worth, given that it is, again, of no instructional value?

 

IF THE ANSWER TO THAT IS NOT OBVIOUS TO YOU, YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ANYWHERE NEAR A SCHOOL OR AN EDUCATIONAL POLICY-MAKING DESK.” i

 

8. PARCC is completely experimental. It has not been validated as accurate & yet it will be used to evaluate students, schools and teachers
“Standardized test development practice requires that the testing instrument be validated. Such validation requires that the test maker show that the test correlates strongly with other accepted measures of what is being tested, both generally and specifically (that is, with regard to specific materials and/or skills being tested).

 

No such validation was done for [PARCC and Smarter Balanced common core] tests…So, the tests fail to meet a minimal standard for a high-stakes standardized assessment—that they have been independently validated.” i

 

9. PARCC & other high-stakes standardized tests are abusive to our children
Reports of students throwing up during high-stakes standardized tests or inflicting harm to themselves as a result of test stress are already common.

 

PARCC is an intentionally much more difficult test that will increase students’ anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

 

PARCC is extra-frustrating to our children because it is entirely on-line, creating additional test-taking challenges not related to the test content.

 

The combination of the more brutal PARCC tests and the more stressful on-line PARCC testing experience will result in more of our children feeling abused, anxious and afraid.

 

10. PARCC will worsen the achievement and gender gaps
“Both the achievement and gender gaps in educational performance are largely due to motivational issues, and these tests and the curricula and pedagogical strategies tied to them are extremely demotivating. They create new expectations and new hurdles that will widen existing gaps, not close them.”

 

PARCC and other Common Core exams “drive more regimentation and standardization of curricula, which will further turn off kids already turned off by school, causing more to tune out and drop out.” i

 

11. High-stakes standardized tests fail to improve educational outcomes
“We have had more than a decade, now, of standards-and-testing-based accountability under [No Child Left Behind]. We have seen only miniscule increases in outcomes, and those are well within the margin of error of the calculations. Simply from the Hawthorne Effect, we should have seen SOME improvement!!! And that suggests that the testing has actually DECREASED OUTCOMES, which is consistent with what we know about the demotivational effects of extrinsic punishment and reward systems. It’s the height of stupidity to look at a clearly failed approach and to say, ‘Gee, we should do a lot more of them.’” i

 

12. PARCC and Smarter Balanced Common Core aligned tests are designed to brand the majority of our children as failures
The Smarter Balanced test consortium announced in November that it would use very high cut scores for the test, which would result in more than half of all students labeled as failures.

 

In third grade, for example, only 38% of students taking the Smarter Balanced test are expected to achieve a proficient score in English and only 39% in math. ii

 

As numerous testing experts have pointed out, a “cut score” is “NOT an objective measure. It is a judgment call, a matter of group opinion, shaped by assumptions, and it can be manipulated to make scores appear higher or lower, depending on what” those in control want. iii

 

The PARCC test will set its cut scores next summer, but it is very likely to follow the same pattern, creating a false narrative of failure and causing great harm to our children and our public schools.

 

 

 

i Source: https://dianeravitch.net/…/bob-shepherd-why-parcc-testing-i…/
ii Source: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/11/17/13sbac.h34.html
iii Source: https://dianeravitch.net/…/how-pearsons-common-core-tests-a…/

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Testing

MUST-READ! Chicago Principal Writes Scathing Letter to Parents in Support of Opting Out

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
27

Troy LaRaviere is a champion of children and a champion of public education. He is the principal of Blaine Elementary School in Chicago and president of the Chicago principals’ association. He has spoken out strongly against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s anti-public school agenda. He created a four-and-a-half minute video for the Chuy Garcia campaign where he says, “Of the 50 highest-performing schools in Chicago, all 50 are public schools that were here before he [Rahm Emanuel] arrived….Of the 20 lowest-performing schools in Chicago, 13 of them – over half – are turnaround and charter schools, which are cornerstones of the Rahm Emanuel education reform agenda.”

 

And now, in a letter to the parents of his school, he has advised them that they have his permission to opt out of PARCC testing. He even said that he planned to opt his own son out of PARCC next year when he is in third grade. He calls for all parents in Chicago, in Illinois, and in America to opt out. He definitely belongs on this blog’s honor roll!

 

The PTA of Blaine sent letters to parents encouraging them to opt out of the tests. Remember that teachers and parents were told by the city superintendent that the schools were not ready for the PARCC test, and that it would be given to only 10% of students. A few days ago, the city caved in to the state and federal government’s demand that it give the test to all students or the state would lose $1.3 billion in funding. It was undoubtedly an empty threat; Mayor Emanuel could have called either his friend Governor Rauner or his friend Arne Duncan and persuaded them to back off but he did not. So with only a few days notice, the children are expected to take a test for which neither they nor their teachers are prepared.

 

Principal LaRaviere wrote to his parents as follows:

 

I am writing to make it clear that the Blaine administration fully supports the PTA’s effort to maximize Blaine students’ instructional time. As a result we will respect and honor all parent requests to opt-out their students from the PARCC. Students whose parents opt them out will receive a full day of instruction. Teachers are developing plans that will provide enriched learning experiences for non-testing students during the testing window. I want to clearly state that whether you opt-out or not, Blaine’s administration and teachers will respect and support your wishes for your child…..

 

Opting out will not affect your child’s promotion and selective enrollment status for Fall 2015. There is also a belief that opting out will affect Blaine’s funding. There is no evidence for this belief. In fact, the test itself is decreasing resources that could have otherwise been targeted for school improvement. Each year, states and school districts spend billions of dollars on testing, while at the same time cutting budgets for instruction and learning. Our PTA believes it is time for parents to say “enough.” For more on the issue of funding, please see the statement released by the parent education advocacy organization, More Than a Score, at the following link:

 

http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/response-isbes-misinformation-regarding-parcc-and-opt-out.

 

For more on the PTA’s opt-out initiative, please see http://blainepta.weebly.com/.

 

In closing, our PTA’s focus on teaching your children rather than over-testing them is commendable, and we applaud their efforts on behalf of Blaine students.

 

Very Respectfully,

 

Troy LaRaviere, Principal

 

But then, READ THIS!

 

Since releasing the above letter, I’ve been asked questions like, “Since the PARCC might count for something next year, do you think the kids should just take it this year so they can get used to it?” My response is as follows: If the schools announced that next year they were going expose your children to exhaust fumes for five minutes per day, would you be resigned to that inevitability and submit your child, starting his or her exposure this year so he or she can “get used to it”? That analogy may seem harsh and over-the-top, but it is my lived experience that this massive over-testing has been as toxic to education in Chicago as breathing exhaust fumes would be to a living organism. Over-testing–and the punitive measures that have come with it–has narrowed our curriculum; it has led to massive cheating scandals across the country; it has led to the shutting down of good schools in low-income neighborhoods; and it has led to a reduction in practices that would actually improve schools, like collaboration and increased professional development time.

 

Over-testing has also given politicians a way to blame public schools for things that are clearly a result of the actions and inactions of the failed politicians themselves. When students in a low-income neighborhood show up on day-one of kindergarten three years behind their counterparts in a high-income community, that is not the result of the failure of public schools; it is the result of failed public policies; it is a result of a political system that has failed to deliver critical human services to the people who need them most. From Rahm Emanuel to most local aldermen, our city’s politicians have failed low-income children from conception to kindergarten, and they use attainment based test scores to chastise public schools for picking up the pieces of their monumental failures.

 

So no. We don’t need to get used to this. We need to stop this.

 

My son is in second grade. Next year he will be among thousands of 3rd graders who are scheduled to take the PARCC for the first time. He will not take it. He will not take it in 3rd grade to get used to it by 4th grade; and he will not take it in 4th grade to get used to it by 5th grade.

 

We do not want our children–or our schools in general–to continue to have to get used to unproven backward education policy ideas like the theory that testing our children is going to somehow magically improve our education system. It’s time to end the PARCC; not just opt-out of it. It’s time to implement real evidence-based strategies for enhancing our education system. We’ve been blindly following the testing theory for 14 years now. The No Child Left Behind law launched this era of testing and accountability in 2001. Remember? The massive testing and accountability the law called for was supposed to lead to 100% of children meeting standards by 2014. Those years have come and gone with no appreciable difference in outcomes for our children. Testing and accountability did not work in the last 14 years and it won’t work in the next 14. It’s time to call a failure, a failure.

 

Let’s all say it together:

 

“The theory of testing and accountability has failed our children.”

 

Opt Out Chicago.

 

Opt Out Illinois.

 

Opt Out America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Chicago, Honor Roll, Opt Out, Testing

Christine Langhoff: 15 Years of Disruption

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
12

Reader Christine Langhoff says it is amazing that teachers and students have persevered. One big event that is missing from her catalogue of catastrophes is Sandy Hook and other inexplicable school shootings, where educators laid down their lives for their students:

“The test scores are always supposed to rise, n’est-ce pas? And it’s assumed that the students are somehow static, unchanging from year to year. But teachers know it’s not true: one year you have all lovely children whom you want to adopt and the next it’s the class from hell.

“So, what has changed since 2000? Well, we went to war in two countries, sending parents away from their children. We had a nearly total destruction of our financial system. Unemployment reached record numbers and we have had a jobless recovery. Tens of thousands of families went through foreclosures, many became homeless. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and its public schools. TFA became a hurricane of its own. The rate of poverty among school children rose above 50%. Public school budgets have been slashed and not restored. Class sizes have grown. Teachers have lost job protections as well as hard-earned pension benefits, making teaching a tenuous profession. An unproven, developmentally inappropriate curriculum has been forced on children and teachers by a few billionaires. Money has been sucked away to charters and to paying for Ipads and Chromebooks.

“Since test “results” reflect the circumstances of those who take them, it must be only the hard work of classroom teachers everywhere, who have remained focused on delivering the best education they can muster to the kids in their care, which has prevented the tests scores from plummeting to the very bottom of the reformsters’ charts.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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