CBS News reported on the growing backlash against PARCC testing in Néw Jersey, where many object to the test and plan to refuse it.
The State Commissioner of Education David Hespe dismissed concerns about a high failure rate (which other states have experienced), saying that students needed to be challenged because life isn’t easy.
It is also the case that life is not a multiple-choice test.
Someone gave Anthony Cody a copy of a secret training document created by public relations consultants to corporate reformers. The document is only six pages; it is printed in bright colors. Its purpose is to show reformers how to answer complaints about testing.
Is there too much testing? Agree, yes , there is too much testing but the new Common Core tests will solve that problem.
Whatever the complaint, answer by saying the new tests are better, the new tests are different, the new tests solve that problem. No more teaching to the test. Why ? Because the new tests are better, the new tests are different, the new tests solve that problem. Teachers want more time for creative teaching? No problem. Because the new tests are better, the new tests are different, the new tests solve that problem.
The New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE)–a coalition of more than 50 parent and teacher groups–is raising funds to pay for two billboards on key highways in Albany and possibly other cities.. They need your help. Can you send a contribution of any size to help them meet their goal? The message will be something like “Less testing. More teaching.” I gave $100. Give whatever you can. Please.
This is how they describe their campaign:
“Despite the protests of tens of thousands of public school parents, Governor Cuomo intends to double down on his misguided education reforms and require an increased reliance on harmful high stakes tests.
“Test refusal is our best chance to save our children from a test-driven education and the privatization of public education in New York State. Please help New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of more than 50 parent and community groups, in our final push to fund billboards in key areas of NY state urging parents to refuse the tests this spring.”
The latest from Politico on NCLB reauthorization: Democrat Patty Murray saves annual testing. Wonder if George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, Sandy Kress, and Pearson will thank her.
“GRADE-SPAN’S LAST GASP?: Now that Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray are working together [http://politico.pro/1zMZ2Zn ] on a No Child Left Behind bill, it’s all but certain that any deal will keep the federal annual testing mandate. Nonetheless, anti-testing advocates are more vocal than ever: Over the weekend, congressional education staffers’ inboxes were flooded with more than 1,000 emails sent by Save Our Schools New Jersey asking Congress to roll back the federal testing requirement and “stop using test scores to punish students, teachers and public schools.” Save Our Schools NJ volunteers told Morning Education that they didn’t intend to bother the aides. They had asked New Jerseyans to copy the aides on letters they were sending to their legislators and stopped once they realized the blunder. The fact that so many Garden State residents “contacted their federal legislators in one day,” the volunteers wrote in an email, “says a lot about how passionately people feel about the negative impact that high-stakes standardized testing is having.”
Jersey Jazzman pulls together a host of reformer ideas in this post and shows that none of them has any evidence behind it.
How can public schools, which take everyone, compete with and match the braggadocio of charter schools, which promise that every student will graduate and go to a four-year college, even if it isn’t true?
Why do policymakers continue to push merit pay, even though it has failed again and again for nearly a century?
Why the conservative love affair with vouchers, when we now have evidence from Milwaukee, Cleveland, and D.C. that vouchers drain money from public schools without producing better education?
Jersey Jazzman asks for proof. Before accepting any of the reformer policies, reformers should show the evidence? Indignation is not evidence. Nor are promises of miraculous results.
LIndsay Wagner of the NC Policy Watch reports that nearly 30 percent of the public schools in the state received a letter grade of D or F.
Surprise: Almost all of them are high-poverty schools.
“The only thing these grades tell us is where our poor children go to school and where our rich children go to school,” said Lynn Shoemaker, a 23 year veteran public school teacher representing the advocacy group Public Schools First NC at a press conference held by Senate Democrats.
The North Carolina General Assembly joined more than a dozen other states in adopting A-F school letter grades — a system of accountability that former governor of Florida Jeb Bush conceived more than 15 years ago. Eighty percent of North Carolina’s school grades reflect student achievement on standardized tests on one given day, and 20 percent reflect students’ progress on those tests over time….
“Is this data for shaming purposes?” said Rep. Tricia Cotham (D-Mecklenberg) in an interview with N.C. Policy Watch.
Rep. Cotham, who has worked at a low-wealth school, said it’s very damaging to receive yet another strike that these letter grades bring when low-wealth schools already battle against so many obstacles.
Since poverty is the root cause of low academic performance, why isn’t the North Carolina leadership working on that problem instead of shaming schools?
– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/02/05/high-poverty-schools-receive-vast-majority-of-states-d-and-f-grades/#sthash.2qix4ld8.dpuf
A press release this morning from ASCD:
In a statement released today, ASCD calls on policymakers to institute a two-year moratorium on using new state standardized assessments for accountability purposes.
“This does not mean we should do away with testing,” said David Griffith, ASCD director of public policy. “But we must recognize there is an imbalance. A two-year break from the high stakes attached to the tests will allow states to administer the assessments and share the results with districts, schools, and families, while providing schools with adequate time to thoughtfully consider and address student performance.”
Read the full statement and watch a video of David Griffith discussing its contents at http://www.ascd.org/moratorium.
To learn more about the statement, the value of a new accountability model, and how educators can get involved, read the full release below or at this link: http://www.ascd.org/news-media/Press-Room/News-Releases/ASCD-demands-moratorium.aspx
Regards,
Ross
Ross Romano · Publicist
1703 N. Beauregard Street · Alexandria, VA 22311-1714
P 703.575.5607 · M 571.282.1612 · http://www.ascd.org · http://www.wholechildeducation.org
Contacts:
Ross Romano, publicist, 1-703-575-5607 or by e-mail.
Katie Test, communications director, 1-703-575-5608 or by e-mail.
Education Association Demands Two-Year Moratorium on High-Stakes Testing
Alexandria, VA (2/9/2015)—In a statement released today, ASCD calls on policymakers to institute a two-year moratorium on using new state standardized assessments for accountability purposes. High-stakes decisions about student readiness, teacher performance, and school quality should never be based on a single assessment. The hiatus will allow time for policymakers and education leaders to design and implement a new accountability model that more accurately reflects the full range of student learning and school support.
Read the full statement at http://www.ascd.org/moratorium.
“Standardized test results have become the overriding measure of student achievement and school quality, and it’s time to rethink our accountability model,” said David Griffith, ASCD director of public policy. “This does not mean we should do away with testing, but we must recognize there is an imbalance. A two-year break from the high stakes attached to the tests will allow states to administer the assessments and share the results with districts, schools, and families, while providing schools with adequate time to thoughtfully consider and address student performance.”
The unintended and undesirable consequences of the current accountability model include overtesting, an overemphasis on test preparation, and a lack of focus and funding for untested subjects and concepts, such as the arts, civics, and social and emotional skills. A whole child education is not antithetical to testing, but student achievement and readiness for long-term success cannot be determined by standardized test scores alone.
The moratorium will help educators, policymakers, and communities:
Develop accountability systems that incorporate multiple measures and provide actionable information.
Reexamine whether annual state standardized testing is necessary.
Refine educator professional development and evaluation systems.
Build technological infrastructure and capacity.
Educators can share their perspective by participating in the ASCD Forum on next-generation accountability systems, which is designed to keep the educator voice at the center of this crucial discussion. The ASCD Forum — a series of online and face-to-face discussions between educators at all levels—will take place from February 2 through April 15 and determine how systems can more fully and accurately support long-term student success.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Billionaire Eli Broad is suspending the annual Broad prize for the most improved urban district. He will continue to award a prize for charter schools.
“Billionaire Eli Broad has suspended a coveted, $1-million prize to honor the best urban school systems out of concern that they are failing to improve quickly enough. And, associates say, he’s no longer certain that he wants to reward traditional school districts at all.
“The action underscores the changing education landscape as well the evolving thinking and impatience of the 81-year-old philanthropist.”
The truth comes out. Broad has low regard for public education. He thinks it works best when technocratic managers make data-driven decisions, close struggling schools, and open privately managed charter schools. He likes mayoral control, not democratic engagement. He funded a campaign to block a tax increase to support public schools in California. He thinks poverty can be overcome by good management .
“Some observers wonder whether Broad’s expectations for urban systems, including Los Angeles Unified, have been realistic.
“Urban schools are faced with huge challenges, some of which are simply related to concentrated poverty, and so many kids are coming to school with unmet needs,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University.”
Republican Chris Gibson recently criticized Governor Cuomo for his recent proposals to “reform” education by attacking teachers. Gibson understands that you can’t reform education by harassing those who do the daily work of education. He also criticized Cuomo for his love of standardized tests.
Blogger Perdido Street quoted this news story:
“This idea that Cuomo thinks he is basically going to ride roughshod over education and somehow end up with a better product, I don’t see how he does that,” Gibson told The Daily Star in an interview from Washington, D.C. “He has got to include teachers in that process….
“Gibson also graded Cuomo’s education agenda as being deficient for not addressing what he contends is New York’s over-reliance on standardized tests via the so-called Common Core curriculum.
“When you rely heavily on this standardized testing, you end up with teachers teaching to the test,” said the congressman, a former assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “That is stifling creativity and it’s stifling learning.”
“He also predicted Cuomo’s approach to solving problems in the classrooms is doomed to fail.”
Perdido Street blogger says Gibson’s comments are a hopeful sign that some members of Congress are listening to their constituents, the voters who elected them.
“The governor’s approach I think is wrong-headed, and ultimately I think he is going to be frustrated,” Gibson said.
Rachel Levy sent out an alarm about terrible legislation proposed in Virginia.
Evidently the Republicans in the legislature have been taking their marching orders from ALEC. ALEC wants deregulation of schools. It would like a free market in education, with charters, vouchers, and public schools chasing dollars and students. ALEC doesn’t believe that local school boards will approve enough charters, so ALEC recommends that governors create commissions that can override local resistance to charters. Thus ALEC prefers Big Government and is quite happy to crush local control.
There are other parts of this legislation and other bills that are odious. Unfortunately, a bill to decrease the number of required state tests was defeated.
If you live in Virginia, now is the time to get active. Let your elected representatives hear you!
