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Lawmakers Propose End to Annual Testing

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2015 //
4

Congressman Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are sponsoring legislation to banish federally mandated annual testing. Everyone who is opposed to the overuse and misuse of standardized testing should support this bill. It is called The Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act.

To download a one page description, click here

For a one page letter Gibson and Sinema wrote to the other Congress people, click here

For the full text of the proposed bill, click here

For the official description from congress.gov, including the list of co-sponsors, click here

 

Categories Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

A Comment on the President’s SOTU

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2015 //
90

There was a new tone in the President’s brief comments about education in his State of the Union address. Of course, he promoted his proposal for 2 tuition-free years of community college and the need to help students from debt incurred when pursuing higher education. That was welcome but not surprising.

What was welcome was the absence of fear-mongering about our public schools. No crisis talk about how nations with higher scores would take away our jobs and ruin future economic growth. The President instead highlighted the facts (that I documented in “Reign of Error” in 2013) that the high school graduation rate is at an historic high, as are test scores.

I don’t know if anyone gave much thought to this shift to a positive tone, but it definitely represents a repudiation of the “reformers'” sky-is-falling rhetoric. No reference to “obsolete” high schools, to “failing schools,” or to the ludicrous claim (advanced by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice) that our public schools threaten our national security.

Even better, the President did not attribute the slow, steady gains to Race to the Top, nor did he pitch merit pay or teacher evaluation by test scores (VAM) as panaceas as he has done in previous SOTU. There were no paeans of praise to charters or to turning schools around by firing their staff.

It would have been nice if he had expressed the widely shared view that our children are over tested and it is time to focus on creativity, not test prep. But you can’t ask for everything.

The President stated the facts, stayed positive, and for that we can be grateful.

Categories Graduation rates, Obama, Testing

Join Me Tomorrow Night in Manhattan to Talk Testing

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
3

I will be part of a parent-organized discussion of testing at PS 3 in Manhattan at 490 Hudson Street, from 6-9 pm.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT AGAINST

TEST-OBSESSED SYSTEM:

How Do We Put the Focus Back on Learning in our Schools?

A WORKING STRATEGY SESSION

Presentation by Diane Ravitch Followed by Breakout Action Groups

Welcome by Lisa Siegman, Principal PS3; City Councilmember Corey Johnson; and PS3 PAC co-Chair Nick Gottlieb

Presentation by Diane Ravitch followed by Question & Answer session

Breakout Action Groups

Reconvene for presentation by Action Groups and summation

Wednesday Jan. 21, 2015, 6:00 – 9:00pm

PS 3 Auditorium, 490 Hudson Street

Categories Parents, Resistance, Testing

A Néw Bill to Abolish Annual Testing

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
32

Legislation will be introduced to end annual testing and to replace it with grade span testing. This is a bipartisan bill. For those sick of the money and time wasted on annual testing, support this legislation.

FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY
January 20, 2015

Gibson and Sinema to Host Joint Press Call on Reintroduction of Grade Span Testing Bill

Washington, D.C. – Representative Chris Gibson (R-NY-19) and Representative Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ-9) will host a joint press call to announce reintroduction of their legislation, the Student Testing Improvement & Accountability Act. The bill will be reintroduced on the same day that the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee holds a hearing focused on federal testing requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Student Testing Improvement & Accountability Act amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), replacing current federal yearly testing requirements for math and language arts/reading with the exact same grade span testing requirements that are in current law for science. This returns federal requirements on testing frequency to pre-No Child Left Behind standards.

Date: Wednesday, January 21

Time: 11:30AM – noon

Location: Dial-in: (712) 775-7031, meeting ID 493-479-058

Speakers: Representative Chris Gibson and Representative Kyrsten Sinema

Media Note: Speakers will start promptly at 11:30AM. Media will have the opportunity to ask questions following remarks from the Representatives.

Matt Sheehey
Press Secretary
Congressman Chris Gibson (NY-19)
1708 Longworth House Office Building
Office: (202) 225-5614
Cell: (802) 598-1156

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

A Teacher in New York Writes Senator Lamar Alexander: Annual Testing is Destroying American Education

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
63

Dear Senator Alexander:

I am a middle school English teacher for grades 6–8 at a small public school in the Hudson Valley. We’re a good school, no doubt about it. In 2010 my school was awarded Blue Ribbon status for the strength or our program and test scores. You would think that we would be in a great place in terms of the yearly testing that the NCLB and RTTP programs have required, but let me assure you that the truth is very different.

As I mentioned before, my school is quite small, and I am the only English teacher in the middle school. The students’ English education is my responsibility, and mine alone, something I take very seriously. Yet this mission is constantly being thwarted by federal testing mandates. A true English education would mean that kids get a great exposure to complicated, challenging, and interesting texts, yet the need to do test prep pushes me in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of classic literature, I am forced to give my students short essays, dozens and dozens of them, and then make them answer questions about them. My students hate this. They’d rather be learning poetry, or sailing with pirates, or crafting short stories, or strutting across Shakespeare’s stage. Yet NCLB has created just this, test preparation instead of a rich curriculum.

The critics may counter with, “No! That’s not how it’s supposed to be! You’re supposed to integrate the test prep within the curriculum!” True, there’s only a certain amount I can organically integrate test prep. After a point, I need to Xerox those hated essays and drop them on my kids’ desks. I estimate something like 10–20% of my year is engaged in test prep skills. This is the reality that NCLB has created. It’s made these tests so important that they dominate my curriculum like nothing else. Truly, was that the goal of NCLB?
Let us not forget that every student’s test score is also a measure of me. I am now evaluated by this one test, as if this is the very best way to know what I do in my classroom. How about that Shakespeare play I do every year? Sorry, that’s not on the test. What about the colonial era party, where every student makes a dish from the Revolutionary War period? Nope, not tested either. What about my journey through Ancient Greece through myths or leaping through space in my science fiction unit? Should I stop these? The testing regimen forced upon me seems to say that I should, because all that content doesn’t count anymore. My students and I are only measured by that score.

And what shall we do with the students who don’t do well, the ones who struggle? I can control, mostly, what happens in my classroom, but what about at home? I can’t force a kid who doesn’t study to put his nose to the grindstone. I can’t heal a child whose family life is chaotic, whose emotional turmoil prevents him or her from learning well. I can’t finance a family that’s stressed by poverty, who isn’t eating well and can’t focus. NCLB seems to insist that I employ god-like powers to fix these children so they do well on the yearly tests. It will even punish me with low evaluations if I don’t fix these children. How is this fair to my students or me? How is this even rational?

A testing moment I’ll never forget happened in the spring of 2013. One of my best students, let’s call him “Sam”, was taking the new Common Core tests for the first time. Sam was a student who wanted to do well, who always did well. His average for me was over 95 for three years straight. After the second day of testing, Sam came to me in tears. He pleaded for more time on the test because he hadn’t been able finish. My heart sank, because that was impossible. All I could do was say to this child, one who painstakingly wrote essay after essay for me, was “I’m sorry.”

If you want to use annual testing in a sane and meaningful way, you must take away its stigma. If you must test, give them in the beginning of the year and give teachers results in a timely manner to see what deficits that child has and help him/her. Right now we receive results about five months after they are given. It’s such a long period of time that the kids have already graduated to the next grade. What good is a test where you don’t get timely results? My tests evaluate what my students have learned and what I still need to teach them. The NCLB results come so far after the actual test that they are meaningless in terms of helping that child.

Even more importantly, you must remove the “high-stakes” part of the testing. Punishing kids, teachers, and schools for low test scores is damaging. It doesn’t help kids, or teachers, or schools. We are all trying our best to help children. We want to help kids no matter what his/her ability. Every child deserves our best efforts. Unfortunately teachers are now being punished for not being perfect. Who among us is that? Who among us can heal every wound? Who among us can lift up every single child? We do our best, of course, but that perfection is denied us. We are human. Yet NCLB demands my perfection, and my students and I will be punished because of low test scores. How is this ethical?

It needs to be said too that in my high-end public school I am shielded from many of these problems. Those who work in poverty-stricken or stressed neighborhoods are under much more stress from NCLB. These true heroes of education, those that spend their lives helping disadvantaged kids, are now failures because of low test scores. Their students too are punished. They must attend remedial class after class in this quixotic quest for high numbers, denying these needy kids art, music, and creative expression. How is this improving education? But of course, according to NCLB this enrichment is no longer important. It doesn’t measure a child’s musical ability, or verbal expression. Only test scores matter.

Please consider how damaging NCLB is to public education. It hurts rather than helps. It punishes children in poverty, stress, or those who struggle in a subject as well as their teachers. That said, if you truly want to design an effective education policy, please speak to teachers. We in the trenches of education are the experts in this matter, and we can help you. Too much education policy is designed by those who are not teachers, and this is one reason why it has gone so wrong. Listen to us. We speak the truth because we care very deeply about the children of America. So when we say high-stakes NCLB testing is destroying American education, we say this because that is the truth.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Stephanie Jones: The Testing Regime Is a Farce

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
24

Stephanie Jones of the Univetsity of Georgia wonders what would happen if the federal government mandated that doctors be evaluated by the longevity of their patients. Those who choose to practice in low-income communities would get lower scores than those who practice in affluent communities. (So would oncologists and heart surgeons, as compared to dermatologists.)

What if evaluations got even more far-fetched by rating medical schools by the longevity of the patients of the doctors they prepared?

Yet this is the absurd mandate that the U.S. Department of Education is planning for colleges of education.

Jones writes:

“The era of testing has failed miserably, but we can only begin undoing the damage and rebuilding our K-12 students’ and families’ trust in and value from public education when we call it quits on high-stakes testing.

“If teachers don’t impact standardized test scores very much, what do they impact? Lives, motivation, understanding of content and concepts, non-standardized tests, grades, students’ willingness to learn, creativity, critical thinking, crucial skills for communication in the 21st century, and the ability for children and young people to see themselves as powerful actors in the world around them.

“So why would policymakers want to keep high-stakes testing in place – and furthermore – to embed it in the very fabric of the entire education system from kindergarten through university teacher education?

“Perhaps pride is getting in the way. It must be terribly difficult to admit that billions of dollars have been given to corporations, millions of children have been retained and put at further risk of dropping out of high school, high school students have been denied diplomas, teachers have been punished, schools have been taken over, others have been closed, communities have been ripped apart, education has narrowed to test preparation, and parents and children have been absolutely tormented because a small group of people insist – against all evidence – that high-stakes testing is valuable.

“Please, policymakers, don’t make the mistake of pinning Colleges of Education against the wall with test scores, and release the pressure from K-12 schools so they can implement the learning-focused instructional approaches they have learned in their teacher preparation programs.
Just take a deep breath and whisper “mea culpa” so we can join together as allies in the disaster relief effort.”

Categories Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

From Diane Ravitch to Senator Lamar Alexander: Don’t Forget Rule #84 in the “Little Plaid Book”

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
35

Senator Lamar Alexander

U.S. Senate

Washington, D.C.

 

Dear Lamar,

 

I wish I could be in Washington for the hearings about the reauthorization of NCLB. I can’t make it for two reasons: I wasn’t invited, and I have a date to speak to parents at P.S. 3 in Manhattan who are outraged about all the testing imposed on their children.

 

I learned a lot about education policy and federalism after you chose me to serve as your Assistant Secretary of Education in charge of research and improvement and as counsel to the Secretary of Education (you). I am imagining that I am still advising you, as I did from 1991 to 1993 (remember that you and every other top administrator in the Department left a day before the inauguration of Bill Clinton, and you told me I was Acting Secretary for the day?).

What I always admired about you was your deliberateness, your thoughtfulness, your ability to listen to discordant voices, and your respect for federalism. You didn’t think you were smarter than everyone else in the country just because you were a member of the President’s Cabinet. You understood federalism. You didn’t think it was your job to impose what you wanted on every school in America. You respected the ability of local communities to govern their schools without your supervision or dictation.

 

NCLB was not informed by your wisdom. It set impossible goals, then established punishments for schools that could not do the impossible. I remember a panel discussion in early 2002 at the Willard Hotel soon after NCLB was signed. You were on the panel. I was in the audience, and I stood up and asked you whether you truly believed that 100% of all children in grades 3-8 would be “proficient” by 2014. You answered, “No, Diane, but we think it is good to have goals.” Well, based on goals that you knew were out of reach, teachers and principals have been fired, and many schools—beloved in their communities—have been closed.

 

NCLB has introduced an unprecedented level of turmoil into the nation’s public education system. Wearing my conservative hat, I have to say that it’s wrong to disrupt the lives of communities, schools, families, and children to satisfy an absurd federal mandate, based on a false premise and based too on the non-existent “Texas miracle.” Conservatives are not fire-breathing radicals who seek to destroy community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, conservatives believe in incremental change, not in upheaval and disruption.

 

I urge you to abandon the annual mandated federal testing in grades 3-8. Little children are sitting for 8-10 hours to take the annual tests in math and reading. As a parent, you surely understand that this is madness. This is why the Opt Out movement is growing across the nation, as parents protest what feels like federally-mandated child abuse.

 

Do we need to compare the performance of states? NAEP does that already. Anyone who wants to know how Mississippi compares to Massachusetts can look at the NAEP results, which are released every two years. Do we want disaggregated data? NAEP reports scores by race, gender, English language proficiency, and disability status. How will we learn about achievement gaps if we don’t test every child annually? NAEP reports that too. In short, we already have the information that everyone says they want and need.

 

NCLB has forced teachers to teach to the test; that once was considered unethical and unprofessional, but now it is an accepted practice in schools across the country. NCLB has caused many schools to spend more time and resources on test prep, interim assessments, and testing. That means narrowing the curriculum: when testing matters so much, there is less time for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, civics, and other valuable studies and activities. Over this past dozen years, there have been numerous examples of states gaming the system and educators cheating because the tests determine whether schools will live or die, and whether educators will get a bonus or be fired.

 

I urge you to enact what you call “option one,” grade span testing, and to abandon annual testing. If you keep annual testing in the law, states and districts will continue to engage in the mis-education that NCLB incentivized. Bad habits die hard, if at all.

 

Just say no to annual testing. No high-performing nation does it, and neither should we. We are the most over-tested nation in the world, and it’s time to encourage children to sing, dance, play instruments, write poetry, imagine stories, create videos, make science projects, write history papers, and discover the joy of learning.

 

As I learned from you, the U.S. Department of Education should not act as a National School Board. The Secretary of Education is not the National Superintendent of Schools. The past dozen years of centralizing control of education in Washington, D.C., has not been good for education or for democracy.

 

The law governing the activities of the U.S. Department of Education states clearly that no federal official should attempt to “exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration….of any educational institution.” When I was your Assistant Secretary and Counselor, I was very much aware of that prohibition. For the past dozen years, it seems to have been forgotten. Just a few years ago, the current administration funded tests for the Common Core standards, which will most assuredly exert control over the curriculum and program of instruction. The federal tests will determine what is taught.

 

The nation has seen a startling expansion of federal power over local community public schools since the passage of NCLB. There is certainly an important role for the federal government in assuring equality of educational opportunity and informing the American people about the progress of education. But the federal role today is taking on responsibilities that belong to states and local districts. The key mechanism for that takeover is annual testing, the results of which are used to dictate other policies of dubious legality and validity, like evaluating teachers and even colleges of education by student test scores.

 

Sir, please revise the federal law so that it authorizes the federal government to do what it does best: protecting the rights of children, gathering data, sponsoring research, encouraging the improvement of teaching, funding special education, and distributing resources to the neediest districts to help the neediest students (which was the original purpose of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).

 

In closing, may I remind you of something you wrote in your book of advice:

No. 84: Read anything Diane Ravitch writes about education.

—Lamar Alexander, Little Plaid Book, page 44

I agree with you.

 

Yours truly,

 

Diane Ravitch

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Students, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Chicago Public Schools Will Administer PARCC Tests to Only 10% of Schools

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
23

The PARCC Common Core test is in trouble. Mississippi canceled its participation last week, bringing the number of states participating in PARCC to only 10. Now the Chicago Public Schools have decided to give the test in only 10% of the district’s schools.

 

According to Sarah Karp in Catalyst:

 

CPS officials say that the district will go against the state’s testing plans and refuse to give all students the controversial new PARCC exam. Spokesman Bill McCaffrey said Friday evening that district leaders plan to have only 10 percent of schools take the PARCC, the new state-mandated test that is geared to the Common Core standards. McCaffrey called it an expanded pilot and said that the schools taking the PARCC will be representative of the entire district.

 

He said he was not immediately certain of the possible consequences for CPS. State officials, who have insisted that all school districts in Illinois administer the PARCC to all students, said they will continue to work with Chicago.

 

New Governor Bruce Rauner has not taken a stand on the PARCC or whether the state should go forward with full implementation. Several states that originally said they were going to administer the PARCC have pulled out and now only 11 states are still committed, according to PARCC’s website.

 

“It is a big victory for right now,” said Raise Your Hand’s Wendy Katten. Katten’s group, More than A Score, and other active parents fought diligently against the PARCC. They gathered more than 4,000 signatures on a petition and met with more than 20 legislators.

 

The parent groups argued that the PARCC is not yet ready to be rolled out, asserting that the test questions are confusing and the test is too long. In general, the groups also are against high-stakes standardized testing.

 

While the delay is something to celebrate now, Katten said it could be short-lived if the PARCC isn’t improved and the state insists on keeping it for next school year. Katten said her group will continue to push for a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. As it is now, students must refuse the tests themselves.

 

Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher at Saucedo Elementary who helped lead a testing boycott last year, said she thinks CPS made the decision because they were afraid that large numbers of parents would have their children opt out.

 

The Chicago Tribune reports that Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett says the district is not prepared to give the tests. Almost 2/3 of the students, especially in the younger grades, do not have regular access to computers, and the PARCC test is given online.

 

The Chicago Teachers Union also opposes the test and has approved a resolution opposing implementation of the test, which replaces the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. CTU President Karen Lewis said she shared concerns similar to those of Byrd-Bennett.

 

“When we have teachers without desks and students without books, and we’re still trying to mandate a computer-driven test without any of the infrastructure we need to do that with,” Lewis said. “This is another unfunded mandate that comes down to punishing people for being poor.”

Categories Chicago, Opt Out, Resistance, Testing

Jeff Bryant: Making Sense of the Testing Debate

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
14

Jeff Bryant analyzes the debate about the federal testing mandates and concludes it’s all about politics, not education.

By now, it is obvious that the testing required by “No Child Left Behind” did not leave no child behind. Child poverty, which is the root cause of low test scores, has increased, and testing does nothing to reduce it.

Bryant writes:

“How is the debate going? See if this makes sense to you:

“Conservatives want to let states have potentially more options for wasting taxpayer money on wayward attempts in “accountability,” and liberals are insisting on continuing measures that have been mostly bad for the education of black and brown students.

“Huh?”

According to the Southern Education Foundation, 51% of public school pupils–a new majority–are poor. More testing does not reduce poverty.

Bryant writes:

“Tests do uncover disparities in our education system, as the National Assessment of Education Progress has revealed for many years long before NCLB. Gerwerz, again, at Education Week, notes about NAEP, “When I look at it, I see the absence of nearly every single trigger point in today’s testing debates. Every kid required to sit for hours and hours of tests? Nope. Here we have only two hours of testing, given to a sample of the school’s students. Weeks of test prep? Nope. Students tied in knots over potentially bad test scores? Nope.”

“Further, as [Bruce] Baker concludes in a subsequent post, if the federal government really wanted to do something about inequities in our education system, it would develop policies that gave states more incentive to correct what’s really causing inequities: the ways “in which our schools are organized and segregated.”
Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Because the discussion over testing, at least how it’s being carried out in Washington, DC, isn’t really about education. It’s about power politics. Seen in this frame, it’s really hard to believe the Democrats are going to win.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Camins on the Federal Role: Should It Be Curtailed or Redirected?

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
17

This is one of Arthur Camins’ best articles about education and its ills. He poses the question of whether there is too much federal meddling in education or whether the federal role has been corrupted by pursuing the wrong goals.

 

He argues on behalf of a vigorous federal policy in education by referring to other areas–like Social Security, Medicare, and civil rights laws– where the only “fix” was federal policy. The reason that so many are now disgusted with federal policy in education is that the Obama administration has pursued the wrong goals and alienated its allies. Its reckless promotion of high-stakes testing and privatization has actually undermined the appropriate goal of federal policy, which should be equity and justice. The so-called “reform” movement relies on federal power to impose unpopular and failed mandates, wielding power in a manner which is inherently undemocratic and even anti-democratic.

 

Camins writes:

 

The problem over the last several decades of education policy is not overreach. It is that the federal government has been reaching for the wrong things in the wrong places with the wrong policy levers. For example, the nation has largely abandoned efforts to end segregation, arguably a prime driver of education inequity. The large-scale, community-building infrastructure and WPA and CCC employment efforts of the Great Depression have given way to the limited escape from poverty marketing pitch of education policy following the Great Recession. Whereas the 1960s War on Poverty targeted community resource issues, current education efforts target the behavior of individual teachers and pits parents against one in other in competition for admission to selected schools.

 

It cannot be repeated often enough: No country that has made significant improvement in its education system has done so through test-based accountability, teacher evaluation systems, charter schools or other school choice schemes. Improvements will only come from a national commitment to the values of equity, democracy, empathy, respect and community responsibility and by providing the funding for solutions based on those values.

 

Community and individualist values have been in tension throughout U.S. history. The diminishment of inequality that characterized the 1930s-1970s was the result of empathetic community responsibility values and strong unions. The growing inequality of the 1980s through the present is the result of the dominance of competitive individualist values. When inequity is the norm, policies that favor competition over collaboration turn potential allies into foes. When competition is the norm among parents for their children’s schools and among teachers for professional advancement, narrow individual solutions undermine broad systemic solutions.

 

The rhetoric to support current education reform is that individual poor families should have choices about which schools their children attend just like rich folks. Tellingly, this does not mean that rich and poor or black and white children attend the same schools. Instead, new charter schools are located in racially and economically isolated communities so that poor families compete with one another for admission. The result has been increased segregation with no effort to ameliorate resource allocation differences between wealthy and poor communities.

 

We do not need the federal government to specify teacher evaluation mechanisms, rank teacher preparation programs based on the test scores of their graduates students, fund privately operated charter schools or promote education entrepreneurs. The proper role for the federal government is to be the guarantor of justice and equity.

 

Unfortunately, given the Obama administration’s ties with the uber-wealthy philanthropists who believe in free-market competition, there is no hope that it will change direction. It will continue to push for the very policies that promote “competitive individualist values” and pay lip service to the “values of equity, democracy, empathy, respect and community responsibility.” We can only hope that the next administration changes course from the status quo. If not, the public will turn against the federal role altogether as the values of “justice and equity” are sacrificed and abandoned. And this will be the sad legacy of the Obama administration.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing
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