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AFT and Center for American Progress Agree on NCLB “Principles”

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2015 //
22

The American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress issued a joint statement expressing their agreement on what should be contained in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB). The key point is that the AFT agreed to support annual testing so long as it was used for information, not accountability; and the CAP agreed to using grade span tests for accountability instead of the annual tests. As the article below notes, the AFT had previously opposed annual testing. The CAP’s point person is Carmel Martin, a former assistant secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration, who is a strong supporter of testing.

 

My view, for what it’s worth: The mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8 should not remain in federal law. Even though the signatories to this agreement say the scores should not be used for accountability, habits die hard. They will be, even though doing so is inaccurate and invalid. There really is no point to testing every child every year unless you want to know whether they have mastered the art of test-taking. Grade span testing (elementary, junior high school, and high school) should be quite enough. No high-performing nation tests every child every year from 3-8. Unless you happen to be a shareholder in Pearson or McGraw-Hill, it is a massive waste of children’s time and taxpayer’s money.

 

 

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AFT, Obama-Linked Think Tank Champion Annual Testing—With a Caveat

By Alyson Klein <http://www.edweek.org/ew/contributors/alyson.klein.html&gt; on January 14, 2015 2:41 PM

By guest blogger Stephen Sawchuk. Crossposted from Teacher Beat. <http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2015/01/aft_obama_linked_think_tank_promote_annual_testing.html&gt;

 

UPDATED

 

As you should know by now, the hottest issue over the pending rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act is whether the law’s core requirement for accountability based on the results of annual student tests should be maintained, or scrapped in favor of fewer exams. <http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/01/09/nclb-rewrite-could-target-mandate-on-annual.html&gt;

 

Now, the American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank long associated with the Obama Administration, have proposed a sort of compromise. Their statement <https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/AFT-CAP-Shared-Principles-on-ESEA.pdf&gt; , first reported <http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/aft-backs-annual-testing-with-an-asterisk/2015/01/14/56a6675a-9c0a-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html&gt; by The Washington Post, says that annual testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school should be maintained. But, the scores from the exams should only factor into state accountability systems once in each grade span (elementary, middle, and high school).

 

This is a big surprise, marking a significant policy shift for both groups. The AFT has been among those leading the charge against the annual testing requirement. See the accountability resolution it passed <http://www.aft.org/resolution/real-accountability-equity-and-excellence-public-education&gt; just six months ago saying such tests should not be given annually, for example.

 

Similarly, CAP’s Executive Vice President for Policy, Carmel Martin, is a former Education Department employee who had supported the annual testing-and-accountability requirements at the heart of the law. (Is the Obama administration signalling what it might be willing to compromise on through a trusted channel?)

 

Both groups add that new state accountability systems should take factors other than test scores into account, a change the AFT has been pushing for a while.

 

“These systems should also include high school graduation rates at the high school level and other academic measures. While academic indicators should be substantial factors, states should also—as some are doing currently–include qualitative criteria such as school-quality reviews, climate and safety measures, success of students on college-preparation curricula, and/or measures of social and emotional learning,” the statement reads.

 

And the groups say that the federal government should double the currently $2.4 million federal teacher-quality grants to invest in better teacher preparation and professional development. New money for teacher quality is something U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hinted at in a recent wide-ranging speech defending annual tests.

 

Read the full statement here. <https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/AFT-CAP-Shared-Principles-on-ESEA.pdf&gt;

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

DFER: Without Annual Testing, How Can We Compare States?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2015 //
38

According to Politico.com, Senator Lamar Alexander is considering eliminating the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8. Charles Barone of the hedge fund managers’ “Democrats for Education Reform” is alarmed by this proposal, claiming it is an “equity” issue that would make it impossible to compare states.

Why the need to compare test scores is an equity issue is unexplained. Apparently Barone–who used to work for Congressman George Miller, senior Democrat on the House Education Committee–is unfamiliar with NAEP. That is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has been testing American students since 1969. It has been comparing states since 1992 and disaggregating scores by race, gender, language, and disability status. I hope proponents of annual testing will soon explain how comparing states creates equity. We know that Mississippi has lower scores than Massachusetts, whether we test annually or every three years. The gap is not changed by knowing about it more frequently but by funding schools attended by low-performing students so they can have smaller classes, more arts programs, more specialists, better paid professionals, and amply supplied and staffed libraries.

Here is the story:

THE GOP DRAFT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR: Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander unveiled a discussion draft Tuesday night detailing his plan for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. It borrows heavily from his 2013 proposal [http://1.usa.gov/1C4GZNS ] and if passed, it would take the federal government right out of some of the Obama administration’s most contentious policies – providing relief to states that haven’t met the administration’s bar for accountability systems and teacher evaluations. The bill would give states the option to make more than $14 billion in Title I funding portable across public schools. Alexander’s draft also makes clear that the federal government would have no involvement in states’ academic standards – although states would have to set high standards. When it comes to testing, one option would allow districts to forgo annual exams. Maggie Severns reports: http://politico.pro/14SYoPQ Read the discussion draft here: http://1.usa.gov/1swgqBH

– Some feel that testing option would make it impossible to compare results at the state level. “This, by extension, becomes an equity issue,” said Charles Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform. “Any effort to advance equity requires comparability of student circumstances across zip codes, incomes, race, disability, etc. Any accountability system that drives to improve the achievement of those students and target resources toward them is out the window if every school or district is held accountable based on a different set of numbers.”

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

What Education Policy Do Civil Rights Groups Want?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2015 //
37

Now begins the great wrangle over federal education policy.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the senior Republican in the Senate on the HELP (health, education, labor, and pensions) Committee is at work revising No Child Left Behind. On January 20, he will hold hearings on testing. He is deciding whether to eliminate NCLB’s annual testing mandate and allow states to make their own decisions, to switch to grade-span testing, or to leave the current system in place. The Obama administration is lobbying hard to keep the current system, designed by the second President Bush’s administration, intact. In other words, Secretary Duncan wants to preserve the status quo, over the opposition of parents and educators, and despite the fact that no high-performing nation tests every child every year.

Earlier this week, nearly 20 civil rights groups endorsed the status quo. Valerie Strauss wondered what these civil rights groups were thinking.

She wrote:

“There are important problems with this thinking.

“It presumes that high-stakes standardized testing has led to more equity for students. There is no evidence that it has. It presumes that high-stakes standardized tests are valid and reliable measure of what students know and how much teachers have contributed to student progress, but assessment experts say they aren’t. It presumes that requiring testing is the only way to ensure that minority and disabled students get attention. That’s shallow thinking.”

After 13 years of NCLB, have we learned nothing?

A few days ago, I questioned whether the civil rights groups understood that standardized tests never close achievement gaps: they measure them. The children who have the greatest disadvantages are not served by stsndardized testing; the tests accurately reflect family income. They confer privilege on the privileged.

Most curious to me is that some of the leading civil rights groups issued a statement opposing high-stakes testing in October 2014!

What changed their views between October and January?

At that time, civil rights groups wrote:

““he current educational accountability system has become overly focused on narrow measures of success and, in some cases, has discouraged schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire. This particularly impacts under-resourced schools that disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color. In our highly inequitable system of education, accountability is not currently designed to ensure students will experience diverse and integrated classrooms with the necessary resources for learning and support for excellent teaching in all schools. It is time to end the advancement of policies and ideas that largely omit the critical supports and services necessary for children and families to access equal educational opportunity in diverse settings and to promote positive educational outcomes.”

They called for “Appropriate and equitable resources that ensure opportunities to learn, respond to students’ needs, prioritize racial diversity and integration of schools, strengthen school system capacity, and meaningfully support improvement.”

Among the needed resources, they said them, are:

“Qualified, certified, competent, racially and culturally diverse and committed teachers, principals, counselors, nurses, librarians, and other school support staff, with appropriate professional development opportunities, including cultural competency training, and support and incentives to work with students of greatest need; and

Social, emotional, nutritional, and health services”

But now they support the Bush-Obama emphasis on test-based accountability, with testing that exempts only 1% of children with the most severe cognitive disabilities and that exempts English learners for only one year.

Very puzzling.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

German Scholars Revolt Against OECD and PISA Domination by Exam

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2015 //
33

I recently received a letter from Professor Dr. Jochen Krautz, a professor of art education at the University of Wuppertal. Dr. Krautz is a critic of the PISA examinations, for reasons he makes clear in the posted article, which he wrote with economist Silja Graupe.

 

The article is aptly titled “From Yardstick to Hegemony,” and it analyzes the steady expansion of PISA, first seen as a yardstick, but eventually evolving into a means of disrupting the cultures and educational systems of every nation it tests.

 

As early as 1961, the OECD issued a conference volume in which its goals were clear:

 

The conference was explicitly not about setting standards which would do justice to respective national traditions of education and education policy. On the contrary, the new standard was geared toward overruling all traditional concepts. The same conference volume states that, with regard to developing countries, it would be “nothing short of cutting a million people loose from a way of life that has constituted their living environment for hundreds or thousands of years. Everything achieved by these countries‘ schools and education until now has served social and religious aims which have primarily allowed for resignation and spiritual comfort; things that completely go against any economic sense of progress. Changing these century-old approaches may perhaps be the most difficult yet also most important task for education to accomplish in developing countries.”5 It is important to note here that the OECD includes the nations of Europe in this circle of developing countries. Germany, for example, “due to its decentralized school administration system (…) may also be considered a somewhat underdeveloped country with regard to its education policy“.6 The obvious consequence is that Germany is to be subjected to cultural uprooting as well.

The OECD program has declared war on the established plurality of educational goals and discourses (which have consistently reflected and renewed these goals) in order to replace it with a single novel concept: “Schools should lay the very foundation for the attitudes, desires and expectations motivating a nation to pursue progress and to think and act economically.”7 It is no longer about teaching people how to set their own standards in a socially responsible manner. Instead, the goal of education is to achieve “competency in constant adaptation“,8 particularly with regard to adaptation to abstract economic demands. The OECD Conference documentation of 1961 declares unequivocally:9 “It goes without saying that the educational system must be an aggregate of the economy, it is just as necessary to prepare people for the economy as real assets and machines. The educational system is now equal to highways, steel works and chemical fertilizers”.10 Thus the claim can be made “without blushing and with good economic conscience“ that “the accumulation of intellectual capital is comparable to the accumulation of real capital – and in the long range may outmatch it”.11 The OECD has adhered to this same human capital theory until the very present. In the OECD book Human Capital of 2007 one reads for instance that “individual capabilities” are „a kind of capital – an asset just like a spinning wheel or a flour mill” which can “yield returns”.12 Congruously the OECD has since 1961 considered education to be an „economic investment” in humans,13 where teachers – as the “production factor”14 – and students – as the “raw material“15 – play a decisive role. Today the willingness and ability to adapt is even considered by the OECD as a core competence.16 Its concept of literacy – embodied in the term reading competency – has meanwhile become the basis for Germany’s education standards and is primarily geared to “how well adults use information to function in society and the economy”….

 

The environment to which pupils and students are to adapt is not the economy of real experience but rather a mere ideal concept generated by mainstream economists, particularly those of the Chicago School of Economics who, in their pursuit of “economic imperialism”18, have applied it to education: Its concept of a market is a purely abstract super-conscious price and coordination mechanism according to which all human activity must be aligned. What this unrealistic worldview setting in turn impedes is any critique or will to change because rather than being understood by the public as a theoretical construct it is, according to the neoliberal economist August Hayek, accepted by most as an immediately evident truth.19 Whether they are true or false, economic theories and all assessments based on these (such as PISA) determine reality. Those who choose criteria as a yardstick for everything else establish an arbitrary point of standardization where verification need not be feared.20 These ungrounded criteria then become – untested and without further thought – the defining norm for all further actions. As long as people believe having more PISA points is better than less in order to be successful economically they will, of course, do everything they can to acquire more. Education is then forced to uncritically yield to the pressure of comparative assessment, even if it is based on pure assertion.

 

If you believe that education should be based on humanistic goals, or that it should be tied to concepts of democratic citizenship, or to some other paradigm, you are out of luck. PISA has decided that the purpose of education is economic competition and development.

 

Please read this essay. It is enlightening.

 

Categories International, Testing

Peter Greene: Who Sets the Passing Marks on Standardized Tests?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2015 //
24

Peter Greene thinks you should know the truth. There is no objective way to set passing marks (known as “cut scores”) for standardized tests. The line between “excellence,” “proficient,” “basic,” and “failing” is arbitrary.

 

Peter writes:

 

If you are imagining that cut scores for the high-stakes accountability tests are derived through some rigorous study of exactly what students need to know and what level of proficiency they should have achieved by a certain age– well, first, take a look at what you’re assuming. Did you really think we have some sort of master list, some scholastic Mean Sea Level that tells us exactly what a human being of a certain age should know and be able to do as agreed upon by some wise council of experty experts? Because if you do, you might as well imagine that those experts fly to their meetings on pink pegasi, a flock of winger horsies that dance on rainbows and take minutes of the Wise Expert meetings by dictating to secretarial armadillos clothed in shimmering mink stoles.

 

Anyway, it doesn’t matter because there are no signs that any of these people associated with The Test are trying to work with a hypothetical set of academic standards anyway. Instead, what we see over and over (even back in the days of NCLB), is educational amateurs setting cut scores for political purposes. So SBAC sets a cut score so that almost two thirds of the students will fail. John King in New York famously predicted the percentage of test failure before the test was even out the door– but the actual cut scores were set after the test was taken.

 

That is not how you measure a test result against a standard. That’s how you set a test standard based on the results you want to see. It’s how you make your failure predictions come true. According to Carol Burris, King also attempted to find some connection between SAT results and college success prediction, and then somehow graft that onto a cut score for the NY tests, while Kentucky and other CCSS states played similar games with the ACT.

 

Actually, both of the federally-funded testing consortia (PARCC and SBAC) agreed to align their cut scores with those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, so that “proficient” would be the same as NAEP proficient. The problem there is that Massachusetts is the only state in the nation where as many as 50% of students reached NAEP Proficient. In fact, NAEP proficient is a very high standard. NAEP has four achievement levels: advanced (which is about 8-10%) of students, truly superior performance; proficient (which is “solid academic achievement,” which I consider to be akin to an A or A-); basic (which is akin to the range of B or C); and below basic (failing).

 

Writing in Education Week, Catherine Gewertz wrote that:

 

It’s one thing for all but a few states to agree on one shared set of academic standards. It’s quite another for them to agree on when students are “college ready” and to set that test score at a dauntingly high place. Yet that’s what two state assessment groups are doing.

 

The two common-assessment consortia are taking early steps to align the “college readiness” achievement levels on their tests with the rigorous proficiency standard of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a move that is expected to set many states up for a steep drop in scores.

 

After all, fewer than four in 10 children reached the “proficient” level on the 2013 NAEP in reading and math.

By aligning with NAEP proficient, the two consortia assured that the majority of students would not pass either test. That is entirely predictable, because less than 40% typically reach NAEP proficient. Although the U.S. has seen significant improvement over the past 20 years, especially from “below basic” to “basic,” most students have not reached NAEP proficient. Thus, unless the two consortia change their cut scores, we can anticipate that most students in the U.S. will “fail” the Common Core tests for the foreseeable future. “Reformers” think this will set off popular demand for charter schools and voucher schools, but in New York, the charter schools performed no better on the Common Core tests than the public schools, and voucher schools have never outperformed public schools in any city. The likely outcome of this absurd decision about cut scores will be to encourage the anti-testing movement.

 

 

Categories Testing

Michael Hynes: Where Did We Go Wrong?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2015 //
18

Michael Hynes, who is superintendent of schools of the Patchogue-Medford (NY) district, writes in Education  Week that our nation may still be at risk. He believes the “reform” agenda of the New York Board of Regents is wrong and merely echoes the wrongheaded agenda of the U.S. Department of Education. How did we go so wrong, he wonders.

 

He writes:

 

As a school system seeks to progress one should often ask, “Is this best for kids?” I believe this question was never asked by the U.S. Department of Education or the New York State Education Department. They are paving a road as “we” drive on it. As this road is paved, we have little to no say as to the road conditions that we see ahead of us, how fast we are going and where our destination is.

 

I believe this is true at both the state and national level in relation to public education. Over the years I have seen many things come and go. It’s the perpetual pendulum of mandates, ideas, movements, etc. There are some things that are still around that I wish were gone, and some things are gone but I wish were still here. I won’t mention which things because it really is a matter of perspective. My perspective, my opinion. However; I believe it is a fact that public education is under assault and “we” are driving on a road that will lead to it crashing and crashing hard….As a superintendent it is imperative that I am accountable (for myself and others) as well as building up other people’s capacities to reach their potential. If an employee is not the right fit in my district, it is my job to find someone else who is. Every aspect of the Regents Reform Agenda has very little to do with child development and everything to do with the wrong drivers for improving schools.

My question is, how are they accountable?

 

Where did we go wrong, he wonders. He reviews the findings of the famous 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” and discovers to his surprise that it did not promote the road we are now on (though it may have focused too much on test scores as the ultimate gauge of “success”):

 

This document made recommendations to focus on curricula and learning from other advanced countries. What I found most interesting was that the report doesn’t mention anything about how schools should run and rarely makes any remarks about testing. I was surprised and found that extremely refreshing.

 

Furthermore, Dr. Hynes noted what was missing from “A Nation at Risk”:

 

When I read the recommendations, I found the following items absent:

*Test children into oblivion;
*Use tests from our children to grade and assess teachers and principals;
*Develop new standards that have very little input from the educators who will teach the new standards to our children;
*Do not trust teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards to make informed decisions about what is best for their children in relation to assessments, curricula and best practices at the local level;
*Ensure that state and federal government (Governor and President) has significant influence over teacher accountability systems and assessments. They should decide what is best for children in public education (even if their children don’t attend public school);
*Guarantee corporations will make billions of dollars in the age of compliance and testing

 

Is there an alternative to our present disastrous path? Dr. Hynes believes there is.

 

Some of us believe in trusting the local control of our school systems. I believe in the capacity building of our teachers individually and collectively. It’s about climate control within our schools and trying to work with the command and control mentality outside of them. State Education Departments should be working with school districts, not against them…. I believe the underpinnings of the New York Regents Reform Agenda have never been proven to work successfully AND longitudinally in any school district…. As Alfie Kohn stated, “The goal beyond testing is about building a thriving democracy. It is about helping each child reach his/her potential as a human being and learner.” Strip away the over-testing of students, tying student scores to teachers and principal evaluations, using the new poorly designed standards and the command and control mentality from our state and national education departments.

 

It seems the world of education is divided into two camps. Those who think we are on the wrong road, and those who say full speed ahead, regardless of the warning signs. Dr. Hynes is in the first camp. He is truly putting students first.

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

Jason Stanford: What is the Point of Testing?

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2015 //
49

Jason Stanford of Austin asks, what is the point of testing? The answer, he supposes, is to collect data. What is the point of data? Stop and think about it.

“To many, the answer is more testing. And because they’re testing darn near every child in America in most core subjects, now education reformers are going after the K in K-12. The Education Commission of the States says kindergarteners are now being given standardized tests in 25 states as well as the District of Columbia to measure whether they are ready for the rigor of crayons, naptime, and singing the alphabet song.

“These tests aren’t kid stuff, either. In Maryland, where teachers are asking for the state to suspend the tests, the average kindergartener takes more than 1 hour and 25 minutes to complete the tests. Teachers report that students don’t understand that they’re being tested to measure what they don’t know. When these 5-year-olds don’t know an answer, they think they’re stupid. We’re talking oceans of tears here.

“Remind me what the point of the tests is? To one state education official, the tests “will help improve early education,” which confuses things further. Remember, the thermometer doesn’t cook the meat.”

“So let’s go back to the original question: What is the point of data? With standardized tests, the point was supposed to be to diagnose which schools and students needed extra help. At least, that’s how they sold it to Dallas schools in the 1980s, then Texas schools in the 1990s, and then the whole country with No Child Left Behind.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Data and Data Mining, Testing

Marie Corfield: A Bombshell in Néw Jersey

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2015 //
5

Education activist Marie Corfield reports a stunning development in Néw Jersey. The president of the Néw Jersey State Board of Education, Mark Biedron, said at a public hearing:

“We know we can’t force any kid to put their hands on a keyboard.”

Marie thinks he is listening to the voices of parents and educators who object to PARCC testing.

Marie says: “For Biedron to say this in public is huge. Print it out and attach it to your opt-out letter. This is a game-changer.”

Categories Common Core, New Jersey, Opt Out, Testing

Gary Rubinstein Explains To Joel Klein What is Wrong with the “Reform” Movement

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2015 //
16

Gary Rubinstein has written a series of letters to leaders of the “reform” movement. Some have replied. Up to this point, he wrote to people he knew during his years at TFA. Now he has started what (hopefully) will be a series written to “reformers I don’t know,” and he writes his first letter to Joel Klein, whose book he is reading. He patiently and civilly explains to Klein why the reform movement is floundering and foundering. He explains why TFA doesn’t make much difference; why merit pay doesn’t work; why ed tech is limited as a classroom tool; and why value-added measurement of teachers by test scores doesn’t work.

 

Since Gary has made a specialty of calling out inflated claims, he ends on this note:

 

 

The one that I really got you on was P-Tech. I wrote about how they only had a school average of about 30% on those tests. You thought this number was skewed by the fact that they require so many of their students to take the test so it is unfair to compare to a school where not so many kids take it. But when I dug deeper into the public data I learned that only 1.8% of the P-Tech students passed Geometry and 1.6% passed Algebra II. Even if every student in the school took those tests, that would be only about 5 kids passing for each test. That is really bad. P-Tech is a test score disaster. I know that you used it in the introduction to your book about how the choice to shut down a school and open another can lead to great improvement. In this case, this particular school hasn’t accomplished much. Yet, you defend this school so vigorously. Why? I think you would have more credibility if you were to admit that P-Tech is a disaster, at least when it comes to math Regents. When you give free passes to people you have relationships with — whether it is P-Tech or AP scores in Louisiana or KIPP schools in New Orleans that have low test scores — aren’t reformers supposed to be all about ‘increased autonomy for increased accountability’? When you selectively hold people and schools that you don’t have a connection to more strict accountability than the ones you do, I don’t respect that.

 

One of your friends and now a co-worker at Amplify is education reform celebrity Geoffrey Canada. I actually am very much in favor of wrap-around services as a way of helping kids overcome some of the out-of-school factors that serve as obstacles to their learning. Unfortunately when you look at the test scores at Harlem Children’s Zone, they are horrible. I know this may make it seem like wrap-around services are underrated, but in this case the poor test results are an example of a very badly run school, despite the wrap-arounds. I know this because a former student of mine who is now a very happy teacher at Success Academy spent her first miserable year of teaching at Harlem Children’s Zone. She said it was a very toxic environment where nobody in charge knew what they were doing. You surely know that Canada ‘fired’ two different cohorts of students since their bad test scores were, I suspect, dragging down his reputation. To throw away two groups of struggling kids is completely at odds with the sorts of things you write in your book about how all kids can thrive if permitted to learn in the right environment.

 

Finally, I’ve noticed many inconsistencies in many of your arguments. When critics say that graduation rate is up to back up their point that schools are not in crisis, you point to the flat long term NAEP scores to refute them. Then when critics say that New York City has not made great improvements during your tenure and use the lack of NAEP gains (that first test that was administered before you got there doesn’t count, you know!) you point to the increased graduation rate. I think you need to pick what metrics you think are valid and stick to them.

 

I hope Klein writes Gary Rubinstein a reply.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology, Computers, Testing

Parents and Educators Respond to Governor Cuomo

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2015 //
12

New York State Allies for Public Education wrote a research-based response to a letter written on behalf of Governor Cuomo by his director of state operations Jim Malatras. The letter makes incisive points that are relevant to every state and every district in the nation, so I am posting it in full. Please open the post to see the links to research.

 

 

NYS Allies for Public Education
January 5, 2015

 

Dear Governor Cuomo,

 

We, the undersigned members of NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), are writing in response to the December 18th letter to the Commissioner and Chancellor that Mr. Malatras wrote on your behalf. By responding to the questions posed, we want to separate fact from misinformation. We are also very troubled by several questions that were not included in your letter which continues to demonstrate a disconnect between your office and the public.

 

We strongly believe in the importance and power of public education for all children. While the vast majority of our students are successful, we cannot rest until our struggling students are supported and given the needed resources to be successful.

 

Unfortunately, you have based your vision of school reform on a misguided agenda. That agenda includes ineffective strategies for school improvement. If current policies are not corrected, more state resources will be wasted and our students’ futures will be put at even more risk.

 

Let’s start at the beginning of the letter. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has established capricious and inaccurate measures of proficiency and college readiness. The proficiency rates that are quoted in the letter (34.8% and 31.4%) reflect arbitrary cut scores set by Commissioner King in 2013. In 2012, proficiency rates in ELA and Math were 55% and 65% by the cut scores set by then-Commissioner Steiner, based on a college readiness study that he commissioned in 2010. Prior to 2010, proficiency rates were higher still under Commissioner Mills. In short, proficiency is an arbitrarily defined standard, and there is good evidence to suggest that NYSED has now set the Common Core standards unreasonably high, for political rather than pedagogical reasons.

 

We understand that you believe that over the past four years “much has been done to improve public education.” We disagree. Our high school graduation rate has barely budged since 2011, and the percentage of students earning a Regents diploma with Advanced Designation has been stagnant for several years and decreased this year. During the past four years, the graduation rate for the state’s English Language learners has dropped by 6 percentage points.

 

The Common Core proficiency rates were essentially flat between year one and two of the new tests (as were the rates on the final two years of the prior test) and our state’s SAT scores have decreased since 2010. In short, although we have engaged in four years of market-based corporate reforms—expansion of charter schools, evaluating teachers by student scores, imposing the Common Core standards and more time-consuming, and developmentally inappropriate tests–there is no evidence that New York schools are improving, and there is some evidence that results are moving backward instead. We believe that there is sufficient evidence to change course.

 

Clearly the public agrees. The 2014 Times Union/Siena College poll indicates that 46% of New Yorkers oppose the implementation of the Common Core standards, compared to only 23% who support them, while 46% oppose the current use of standardized testing, compared to 29% who support it. We believe it is time to listen to your constituents, rather than double-down on damaging policies that are hurting our children. It is our intent, by answering the questions that your office posed, to help you advocate for a better and wiser course in the months ahead.

 

Question 1

 

How is current teacher evaluation system credible when only one percent of teachers are rated ineffective? The NYC system was negotiated by Commissioner King directly and no one claims it is an accurate reflection of the reality of the state of education in NYC. What should the percentages be between classroom observations (i.e. subjective measures) and state assessments, including state tests (i.e. objective measures)? What percent should be set in law versus collectively bargained? Currently, the scoring ·bands and “curve” are set locally for the 60 percent subjective measures. What should the scoring bands be for the subjective measure and should the state set a standard scoring band? In general, how would you change the law to construct a rigorous state-of-the-art teacher evaluation system?

 

The first question implies that the teacher evaluation system called Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), which you insisted be quickly adopted, is deeply flawed. We strongly agree. When it was put in place, over one third of the principals of New York State signed a well-documented letter explaining why APPR would have negative consequences for students and harm the profession of teaching. Since that time, the evidence against evaluating teachers by test scores has only increased.

 

The New York State School Boards Association recently passed a resolution against the use of student test scores for teacher and principal evaluations, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals has also disavowed their use for this purpose. In April of 2014, the American Statistical Association clearly outlined how unreliable this methodology is. Opposition to the evaluation of teachers by test scores is growing among parents as well, with only 31% approving of the practice in national polls.

 

Your question implies that test-score based evaluations are good because they are “objective”—that is, generated by an algorithm devised by the New York State Education Department. We strongly suggest that you review the evidence—just because a number can be generated based on other numbers does not make it a valid measure of performance. To revise APPR to give more weight to test scores would be a grave mistake.

 

You seem troubled that only 1 in 100 teachers were found to be incompetent, according to the APPR evaluation system. Do you have research that indicates that the number should be higher or lower? We strongly suggest that you return the decision on how to evaluate teachers to local education officials and each community’s elected school board. Your recent veto of your own Common Core APPR bill demonstrates that your office does not have a clear understanding of teacher evaluation, and the problems associated with Common Core testing. Albany bureaucrats should not be in the business of designing evaluation systems and arbitrarily determining what acceptable outcomes for each district should be.

 

Question 2

 

How would you address the problem of removing poor-performing educators when the current 3020-a process makes it virtually impossible to do so? Likewise, how would you change the system in New York City where poor-performing educators, with disciplinary problems, continue to be paid in the absent teacher reserve pool as opposed to being terminated?

 

No one wants incompetent teachers in the classroom. Tenure assures due process, not a job for life. You have been misinformed if you believe that the removal of teachers using the 3020a process is impossible.

 

The 3020a proceeding, which was streamlined in 2012, can lead to the termination of a teacher in 125 days or less. Teachers can be terminated for insubordination, immoral character, conduct unbecoming a teacher, inefficiency, incompetency, physical or mental disability, neglect of duty, or the failure to maintain certification.

 

Most experts say the real crisis in teacher quality, specifically in our high needs districts, is teacher turnover. According to a study of New York City schools by researchers Ronfeldt, Loeb, and Wycoff, “teacher turnover has a significant and negative impact on student achievement in both math and ELA. Moreover, teacher turnover is particularly harmful to the achievement of students in schools with large populations of low-performing students of color.”

 

We will not attract and retain the most talented teachers, especially in high-needs schools, by removing their right to due process.

 

Question 3

 

What changes would you make to the teacher training and certification process to make it more rigorous to ensure we recruit the best and brightest teachers? Do you agree that there should be a one-time competency test for all teachers currently in the system? What should be done to improve teaching education programs across the state?

 

We also want “best and the brightest” to be recruited to teaching, which happens by making the profession more attractive to highly talented people who have a desire to commit their lives to guiding and instructing children.

 

Since 2012 and the onset of “reform”, teacher morale is at a 20 year low. New reports have shown that there has been a dramatic drop in enrollment in teacher preparation programs—with a 22% decline in New York State in just the last two years. This suggests that the overwhelmingly negative rhetoric targeted to teachers and the assignment of blame for any and all problems in the way our schools are run have made the profession far less attractive. If the current trends continue, there will soon be a critical shortage of teachers, especially in STEM, special education and foreign languages –areas in which it is already very difficult to find sufficient candidates.

 

If you are interested in advancing teacher education programs, practicing educators should be surveyed, especially recent graduates, to ascertain how their preparation could have been improved. The idea that the quality of a teacher education program can be assessed by using the student test scores of its graduates is even more unreliable than evaluating teacher quality by means of student test scores. Likewise, creating a single high-stakes “test” to weed out practicing teachers is a gimmick, not a sound basis for judgment.

 

Question 4

 

What financial or other incentives would you provide to high-performing teachers and would you empower administrators to make those decisions?

 

The idea that teachers should be financially rewarded when their students receive high test scores has been proposed for decades, despite the fact that numerous studies have shown that merit pay does not work, including a recent three year study conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University.

 

Merit pay would be a waste of taxpayer dollars that would be far better spent on proven reforms.

 

Question 5

 

Do you think the length of a teacher’s probationary period should be extended and should the state create a program whereby teachers have to be recertified every several years, like lawyers and other professions? What other changes would you propose to the probationary period before a teacher is granted tenure?

 

New York State has a rigorous pathway for teacher certification. In order to earn Initial Certification, a candidate must be awarded a bachelor’s degree, pass no fewer than three certification exams, spend a semester of mentored student teaching with a certified educator, pass a written exam, and complete the performance –based assessment known as the edTPA.

 

In order to maintain teaching certification and progress to the required Professional Certification, teachers must have 3 years of satisfactory teaching experience, including one year of mentoring. Additionally, they must earn a Master’s Degree. Once teachers have completed all of these requirements and obtained their Professional Certificate, they must accrue 175 hours of additional professional development every five years.

 

A three-year probationary period during which they are frequently observed and given feedback from principals and other certified observers provides ample opportunity for a school district to assess an educator’s professionalism, growth and ability to incorporate best practices into his or her instruction. It is not unusual for that probationary term to be extended to four or even five years if there are doubts that sufficient progress has not been made. During probation, many struggling teachers leave the profession through the resignation process, so that fewer need to be formally dismissed.

 

Although teachers are not required to undergo recertification, they are required to engage in ongoing professional development and yearly evaluations, which is comparable or goes beyond the requirements of other, high level professions. Local school districts should be encouraged to continue to develop robust programs and protocols to monitor and support both new and veteran teachers.

 

Question 6

 

What steps would you take to dramatically improve priority or struggling schools that condemn generation of kids to poor educations and thus poor life prospects? Specifically, what should we do about the deplorable conditions of the education system in Buffalo?

 

The current practice of shutting down schools that are deemed failing is not an effective long-term strategy. Replacement schools usually do not serve the students in the so-called failing school. These displaced students then remain in a phase-out school with fewer resources, and drop out, or are displaced to another school, with an even higher concentration of at-risk students, thus continuing the cycle of school failure and closure.

 

Your question is based on the false assumption that schools are solely responsible for the outcomes of poor and disadvantaged students. Neither high-stakes testing, the Common Core, or the continual closing of schools can fix the systemic problems of our high-needs schools. NY State has one of the most inequitable funding systems in the nation, despite the decision of the state’s highest court in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that the funding system should be reformed. You have refused to address this inequity–schools with the greatest needs continue to receive the least resources and support.

 

As a result, class sizes in our highest need districts have grown each year. Let’s take Buffalo as an example. In Buffalo, many kindergarten classes have grown to 30 students or more, compared to a statewide average of twenty students per class. In New York City, class sizes have increased sharply since 2007, and last year they were the largest in 15 years in kindergarten through third grades. If you are truly interested in improving outcomes in our highest needs schools, these schools must be provided with the resources to reduce class size, a proven reform that benefits all students, but especially those most at risk.

 

In addition, providing resources for health services, counseling, after school child care and recreational programs to reduce truancy and improve attendance would likely have a positive impact on student learning.

 

Question 7

 

What is your vision for charter schools? As you know, in New York City the current charter cap is close to being reached, so would you increase the charter school cap? To what? What other reforms would you make to improve charter schools’ ability to serve all students?

 

The charter cap should not be raised. Many researchers including Macke Raymond, head of CREDO, a pro-charter research organization funded by the Walton Family Foundation, now agree that charter expansion and enhanced “competition” do not work to improve public schools. Moreover, charters do not enroll their fair share of high needs students – especially English language learners and special needs students, as acknowledged by the NYC Charter Center and independent researchers. According to the 2010 amendment to the New York charter law, before charters are renewed or allowed to replicate, they must show they enroll and retain equal numbers of at risk students as the districts in which they are located, and yet neither the Board of Regents nor SUNY have ever rejected a charter proposal on these grounds – despite the fact that many charters have sky high student suspension and attrition rates. Neither SUNY nor the Regents have provided adequate financial oversight, and in 95 percent of charter audits, the State Comptroller’s Office has found corruption or mismanagement. Yet when the Deputy Comptroller wrote a letter to the state’s major charter-school regulators asking for stronger oversight, he received no response.

 

The recent approval by the Regents of a charter school started by a 22 year old who faked his educational background only further reveals the inability of authorizers to carry out their current responsibilities, no less authorize yet more charters that could waste taxpayer funds. Meanwhile, in New York City, where the vast majority of the state’s charter schools are located, about two thirds of these privately-managed schools receive more public funding per pupil than district public schools – a disparity that will grow even worse with the new law requiring that charters receive free space paid for by the city or be provided space within the district’s already overcrowded public schools. This year, NYC charters are siphoning off $1.3 billion in public funds – while leading to the concentration of the most at-risk students in public schools with fewer resources and less space. It is no wonder that more NYC voters believe the number of charters should remain the same or decrease than be raised.

 

Question 8

 

Do you support using technology to improve public education, like offering online AP courses by college faculty to high schools students who do not have any such courses now, even though these changes have been resisted by education special interests?

 

The push towards using more technology in public education is not being “resisted by special interests,” as your letter claims, but instead is promoted by special interests – including software companies eager to get a larger share of the $8 billion education technology market. There is no rigorous research showing that more exposure to online learning improves student learning or outcomes in K12 schools, and many studies suggest that expanding the amount of time students spend in front of computer screens has negative effects.

 

Question 9

 

What would you do about mayoral control in NYC and do you support mayoral control in other municipalities? What changes and improvements would you make to NYC Mayoral control?

 

In general, mayoral control is an unproven experiment that has NOT worked to improve NYC schools compared to other large urban districts across the country, and should not be expanded across the state. In New York City, the mayoral control law should be amended to give more local control to the city’s residents, by giving the City Council the authority to provide checks and balances, since the city lacks an elected school board. Our democratic system of government relies on the separation of powers, and an omnipotent executive inevitably leads to abuse and poor decision-making. At the same time, the new state charter law should be amended, with local control returned to NYC officials, to enable them to determine whether or not privately run charter schools should receive space at city taxpayer expense.

 

Question 10

 

There are approximately 700 school districts in New York many of which have declining enrollment. Do you think we should restructure the current system through mergers, consolidations or regionalization? If so, how would you do it?

 

This question implies that through mergers, consolidations, and regionalization we can improve education while reducing costs. The research, however, contradicts that suggestion. Studies show that consolidations and mergers actually increase costs to districts and there is typically no gain in academic achievement. The following summary is from Penn State College of Education:

 

“School consolidation continues to be a topic of great concern for many small rural school and districts. While advocates for consolidation commonly cite fiscal imperatives based upon economies of scale, opponents have responded with evidence undermining this argument and pointing out the prominent position of the rural school in the economic and social development of community. Additionally, evidence continues to build demonstrating the advantages of small schools in attaining higher levels of student achievement. Larger schools, in contrast, have been shown to increase transportation costs, raise dropout rates, lower student involvement in extra-curricular activities, and harm rural communities’ sense of place.

 

The consolidation of services is already underway and should be incentivized when it makes sense and benefits students. It is interesting that while you have proposed consolidation for school districts, you have also supported charter school expansion, each of which are considered a separate local education authority or school district –which appears to be a contradiction.

 

Question 11

 

As you know, the appointment and selection process of the Board of Regents is unique in that, unlike other agencies, selections and appointments are made by the Legislature. Would you make changes to the selection and appointment process? If so, what are they?

 

We believe the Board of Regents must stay independent of the executive branch and the Governor should not interfere in matters of education policy. The authority should remain with the legislature to intervene when necessary.

 

There is a fair balance of powers in the NYS Constitution Articles V and XI requiring that the Governor and the Senate have the authority to appoint heads of departmental agencies, and the joint legislature to elect members of the Board of Regents, which in turn appoint the Commissioner of Education.

 

We do believe the nomination of Regent candidates should be a more transparent, inclusive process, and involve stakeholders from each judicial district, including parents, educators, students, and local legislators. For the at-large Regent seats, there should be a state-wide committee consisting of parents, educators, and legislators to nominate candidates after assessing gaps that may exist in the Board of Regents’ expertise, diversity in background and geographical balance.

 

Question 12

 

Chancellor, the Board of Regents is about to replace Dr. King; can we design an open and transparent selection process so parents, teachers and legislators have a voice?

 

We strongly believe there should be a more rigorous, inclusive, and transparent process to appoint the next New York State Commissioner of Education as well. While the appointment process is at the discretion of the Board of Regents as per Article V of the NYS Constitution, the overwhelming dissatisfaction of New Yorkers with the current policies — and the failure of state education officials to listen to parents and teachers – has revealed the need for a new Commissioner who is more responsive to stakeholder needs and concerns.

 

Questions That Should Be Asked

 

We were disappointed by the omission of important questions that should have been asked in your letter. During the past year, members of the public, especially parents, expressed serious opposition to the current education policies during forums that were held across the state. Those concerns, however, were excluded from your list. Here are three questions, which are very much on the minds of parents and that we would like to be asked of state officials:

 

How will the State Education Department review and modify the Common Core standards given the enormous public outcry against the standards and their implementation?

 

In October of 2014, Governor, you said that you were working to roll the standards back. You recognized that implementation had been rushed and that there were questions regarding whether the Common Core standards were the best standards for the students of New York State. The public has clearly expressed its dissatisfaction. A plurality of New Yorkers believes that the implementation of the Common Core should be halted entirely. Many other states are now engaging in a thorough analysis of the standards as they make revisions, both large and small. New York students deserve the best possible standards. Please join us in urging the State Education Department to provide a date when an open review of the Common Core standards will begin in New York.

 

How will we reduce the time students spend on state standardized testing?

 

Polls consistently report that New York parents do not support the grueling and inappropriate Common Core tests. Time spent on state testing has dramatically ballooned since 2012. Last year between 55,000 and 60,000 students “opted out” of the grade 3-8 New York State exams. Make no mistake—this was a deliberate decision on the part of parents to show how displeased they are with the Common Core exams and the way in which these tests have narrowed and diminished the education of their children.

 

Your support for reducing the effects of test scores on students was but a small step in the right direction. Please join us in asking the State Education Department to provide a plan to radically reduce the time spent on state exams, rolling it back to 2010 levels, as long as yearly testing is mandated. Please also inquire as to when teachers will be allowed to author better assessments, so that the state is no longer spending millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations that have consistently produced shoddy products.

 

How will personally identifiable student data be protected?

 

Data privacy of student’s personally identifiable information is still not protected, nor is the privacy legislation that was passed last spring being enforced. While the legislation helped to stop sharing with inBloom, it did not address the concerns of parents of the widespread collection and sharing of their children’s personal data that is occurring without their knowledge or consent.

 

Moreover, allowing data-mining vendors to access children’s personal data has huge risks, including to student privacy and safety. Yet the State Education Department still has not implemented or enforced the new student privacy law, passed last spring, which requires the appointment of a chief privacy officer who will create a parent bill of rights with public input. As a result, numerous districts and schools throughout the state continue to disclose highly sensitive personal student data to vendors without parental knowledge or consent, and are ignoring several federal privacy laws, including FERPA and COPPA, without enforcement or oversight by the state.

 

In summary, it is apparent that the punitive education agenda of testing and privatization is not working to improve student achievement and instead is having a deleterious impact on our schools. It is time to change course rather than intensify these policies through requiring more school closings, expanding charters, and putting even more emphasis on unreliable test scores.

 

What New York badly needs is a new Commissioner with a strong background in public education and a deep understanding of how students learn. He or she should have a healthy respect for local autonomy and the need to work collaboratively with stakeholders. The era of top down, bureaucratic, and monopolistic control of our schools by state officials must end.

 

We believe that the members of the Board of Regents should be thoughtfully selected with input from the communities that they represent. Most importantly, parents and teachers demand appropriate learning standards that allow teachers to focus on learning, not testing. With equitable funding, thoughtful standards, sufficient teacher autonomy, local control, and community support, we know public education will better accomplish what we all want–a brighter future for all students. We also urge you to hold public forums, so you can hear directly from parents, teachers, and other stakeholders how they want their schools improved –rather than remain in a bubble up in Albany, separated from the constituents whose interests you should be dedicated to serve.

 

Sincerely,
NYS Allies for Public Education

 
– See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-response-letter-to-governor-on-public-education.html#sthash.A4nPHMa8.dpuf

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform, Testing
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