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Peter Greene Explains Pearson’s Marching Orders, Part 4

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2014 //
10

Up to this point, Peter Greene has described. “Pearson’s new world order,” as explicated by Michael Barber and John Hill in their 88-page document.

Here he reveals the plans for implementation.

1. Think long-term. “So we have to think long term. The arrival of the assessment renaissance, like the Second Coming of Christ, will appear on a day unlooked for. Everyone best be ready.”

2. Build partnerships. “They particularly like the example of a competition to propose solutions (competitions are great because you can get lots of people to work for you, but you only have to pay the winners).”

3. Create the infrastructure, preferably by getting government to pay for it.

There is more. Read it and be informed.

“If you’ve never read Barber before, know this– he speaks repeatedly about changing the world’s education system not as a business opportunity, but as a moral imperative. He is, in fact, carrying the white man’s burden, fixing all the schools in the world because he Knows how they are supposed to work.”

Categories Pearson, Testing

Peter Greene on Pearson’s Néw Testing Paradigm, Part 3

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2014 //
5

Peter Greene continues his analysis of Barber and Hill’s projection of a test-dominated future.

Come the Pearson Renaissance, testing will be the linchpin of education.

As Greene writes:

“How do we tie curriculum and teaching together? How do we fix the achievement ceiling an finally make students smarter? How do we make learning really “professional” and not just something filled with human frailty? How do we collect and crunch more data than God? How do we create an ungameable system?

All assessing, all the time.

This is assessment with a new purpose– not to give a grade, but to determine whether Pat and Chris are ready to move on to the next stage of the curriculum. I once posited that Common Core standards were not so much standards as they are data tags for marking, storing, cataloging and crunching everything students do.”

Human judgment is replaced by the Pearson matrix.

Categories Pearson, Testing

Peter Greene: Pearson Explains Why Assessment Should Drive Instruction, Part 2

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2014 //
13

Continuing his review of Pearson’s 88-page manifesto for a revolution in educatiion (led by Pearson), Peter Greene here reviews the claim that assessment should drive instruction.

To summarize,

“In other words, we need to teacher-proof classrooms. Teachers are human and variable and not reliable cogs in the educational machine. If we could get them all bound to assessments, that would tie them into a system that would be smooth and elegant. And profitable.

“Assessment is the new Missing Link for transforming education into a teacher-proof, school-proof, techno-driven, highly profitable process.”

Categories Pearson, Testing

Wendy Lecker: Connecticut Chooses Tests Designed for Failure

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2014 //
25

In their eagerness to prove that public schools are failing, Connecticut’s leaders have agreed to passing marks on Common Core tests that are guaranteed to fail most students.

Wendy Lecker explains that the “cut scores” (or passing marks) were selected with full knowledge that most students would fail.

Outgoing state commissioner Stefan Pryor (soon to be state commissioner in Rhode Island) and his aides:

“……voted to set the SBAC [Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium] cut scores so that only 41 percent of 11th graders will pass in English and 33 percent will pass in math. In elementary and middle school, only 38-44 percent of students will pass in English and only 32-39 percent will pass in math.

“Standardized test passing rates are based on arbitrary and political decisions about how many students decision-makers want to fail. SBAC admits it cannot validate whether its tests measure college readiness until it has data on how current test takers do in college. In fact, SBAC declares that the achievement levels “do not equate directly to expectations for `on-grade’ performance” and test scores should only be used with multiple other sources of information about schools and students.

“Since the vast majority of factors affecting test scores occur outside school, test scores are poor measures of school quality, teacher quality and student performance.

“Yet, with his November vote, Pryor guaranteed that many successful Connecticut students and schools will now arbitrarily be declared failures.”

Since NAEP state testing began in 1992, Connecticut has consistently been one of the top three states in the nation, along with Massachusetts and Néw Jersey. Yet most of its students, teachers, and schools will arbitrarily be stigmatized as “failures,” by design.

Categories Common Core, Connecticut, Testing

Illinois Principal: Who Are Our Masters?

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2014 //
16

Michael Beyer, a principal in Illinois, was invited to participate in a task force on assessments for the State Board of Education. As he put it:

“I pose this question with absolute seriousness. I was invited to participate on a task force for the Illinois State Board of Education to review the assessments currently mandated across the state. I originally assumed this would be a group pulled together to serve as a political charade during our municipal election period. My cynicism proved wrong when, at our first meeting State Senator Lightford herself described the statewide discomfort with PARCC. It was evident this task force will be able to share authentic input on informing the state legislature. This is hopeful.

“What concerns me is how we spoke of education. The rooms, one in Chicago and one in Springfield, meeting concurrently and in real time linked via a webcast, were filled with real stakeholders and experienced educators representing the P-20 spectrum, including parents, teachers, superintendents, deans and principals like myself. There was not a single person representing what has become known as the ‘corporate reform’ agenda.”

Eventually the task force asked, “Who are our masters?” The Federal Department of Education, of course. And the Illinois State Legislature.

Beyer notes:

“The fact is the Illinois State legislature, and I would venture to say every legislature, doesn’t know much of anything about effective education. It was laid bare when it was revealed key lawmakers didn’t know the difference between interim, formative and summative assessments, yet have passed laws mandating high-stakes assessments that have been highly questioned as to their validity.”

And then he had a radical idea: everything was upside-down:

“We need to flip on its head our notion of who controls education. We need a libertarian movement in education. The real reform has to happen in who we perceive our masters to be. Our masters need to be our students and teachers. That is where all decisions need to begin and end. Not at the district, state or federal level…

“We need to stop asking how we serve our masters and recognize that teaching and learning begins with the teacher and the student. We need to scrap all of our systems and begin by asking our students and teachers what they need. This is a radical proposition, but it is also simple and the most effective. Instead of disentangling the ball of yarn and deciding which assessment and curricula vendors will receive our millions of dollars, and billions of dollars nationwide, let’s build a system using backwards design that begins with the classroom and enables teachers to receive the support and professional development they need. We can continue to hold teachers accountable, and we don’t need high-stakes, highly-questionable assessments to do so. Let’s make sure we begin to serve our true masters, which are our students and teachers, not the countless assessments and legislative bodies.”

Categories Illinois, Testing

Missouri Wants Out of Common Core Testing

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2014 //
12

States continue to distance themselves from either the Common Core or the federally-funded Common Core tests. The following was reported by politico.com:

“DIVORCING ‘SMARTER BALANCED’: Anti-Common Core activists in Missouri activists opposed to the Common Core are revving up their legal fight to pull the state out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Last month, they won a temporary restraining order barring the state from paying membership fees to SBAC. But that order has expired, so they’ve filed motions asking for another such order – or, better yet, for a summary judgment declaring the state’s affiliation with SBAC an illegal interstate compact. The activists know they can’t stop Missouri from administering SBAC this coming spring; state law requires it. But state committees made up of teachers, parents and administrators are writing new standards to replace the Common Core. In future years, the state will be free to pick a new test aligned with those standards. The lawsuit aims to ensure the state can start that process with a fresh slate rather than be tied to SBAC. In the meantime, the activists want to be sure that Missouri is free to set its own cut scores and control test administration without interference from the consortium. “We want local control, which means that we control the test,” plaintiff Anne Gassel told Morning Education.

– Missouri owes Smarter Balanced $4.2 million for the complete package of formative, interim and summative assessments for this school year. The state has already paid a portion of that fee and Sarah Potter, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said it will have to find a way to pay the remainder no matter what happens in court, since the law requires that the SBAC test be used this school year. A renewed restraining order “could impact our membership in the consortium, but we don’t think it will affect our actually buying and administering the test,” Potter said. In the event that the Show Me State’s payments are affected, the consortium is developing a policy for dealing with deadbeat states. Among the issues being discussed: Whether to block states from using the assessments if they fail to pay their bills, Potter said.

– “We are committed to working with the state of Missouri to provide the best tools and assessments to teachers and students,” Smarter Balanced spokeswoman Jacqueline King told Morning Education. “Beyond that, I cannot comment.”

Categories Common Core, Missouri, Testing

Schneider: The Rapid Decline of Pearson’s PARCC Test

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2014 //
30

Mercedes Schneider describes the remarkable shrinkage of states enrolled to give Pearson’s Common Core PARCC test from 2011-2014.

In 2011, Pearson boasted that 31 million students in 25 states plus D.C. Would take PARCC. By 2014, the numbers are down to 10 states and D.C. with 5 million students.

Categories Common Core, Pearson, Testing

If Jeb Bush Runs for President, Remember This

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2014 //
40

If Jeb Bush should run for President, this article bears re-reading.

Bush spoke at a rightwing policy conference in Michigan, where he “trashed” public schools.

“MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — Jeb Bush praised charter schools and slammed traditional public schools and teachers unions in a speech here Wednesday, saying that public education “dumbs down standards to make adults look better,” a phrase often used by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

“We must expand [school] choice,” said Bush, delivering a keynote speech at the annual Mackinac Policy Conference in northern Michigan. “Our governance model includes over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.”

“Since he left office, the former Florida governor has become an evangelist for a certain strand of education reform; through his $19 million Foundation for Excellence in Education, he advocates for online education, grading schools based on test scores and forcing students to repeat grades if they don’t pass standardized exams.”

Bush is also an ardent fan of vouchers.

In his speech, he praised Michigan’s charter sector. Not everyone agrees with his enthusiasm. The Detroit Free Press ran a series of articles in July 2014 concluding that the state of Michigan spends $1 billion every year on charters with no accountability.

Here are the newspaper’s findings:

“What the Free Press found:

A yearlong Free Press investigation of Michigan’s charter schools found wasteful spending, conflicts of interest, poor performing schools and a failure to close the worst of the worst. Among the findings:

Charter schools spend $1billion per year in state taxpayer money, often with little transparency.

Some charter schools are innovative and have excellent academic outcomes — but those that don’t are allowed to stay open year after year.

A majority of the worst-ranked charter schools in Michigan have been open 10 years or more.

Charter schools as a whole fare no better than traditional schools in educating students in poverty.

Michigan has substantially more for-profit companies running schools than any other state.

Some charter school board members were forced out after demanding financial details from management companies.

State law does not prevent insider dealing and self-enrichment by those who operate schools.”

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Watch a 10-Year-Old Eviscerate PARCC

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2014 //
12

Sarah Blaine, a lawyer and parent, writes a terrific blog about education. In this one, she describes how her 10-year-old daughter Elizabeth testified at a school board meeting in Montclair, New Jersey, about what’s wrong with the Common Core PARCC test.

Watch the video.

Elizabeth wrote her own remarks and delivered them with poise. She begins by saying, “I love to read, I love to write, I love to do math. But I don’t love the PARCC. It stinks.” When she finished, she received an ovation from the audience.

And a litttle child shall lead them.

Categories Common Core, New Jersey, Testing

Long Island District Says NO to Field Testing

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2014 //
22

The board of the Southold, Néw York, school district on the North Fork of Long Island voted not to participate in field testing for state tests as a protest against over testing.

Superintendent David Gamberg–a man of gentle demeanor–is a leader in the struggle to rescue genuine education from the mandates and data-driven decision-making. He is proud of his schools’ arts and music, as well as the garden where children grow produce for lunch.

Gamberg is so trusted by locals that when the superintendent retired in the neighboring district of Greenport, Gamberg was invited to lead both districts. The Greenport board is likely to pass a resolution not to give the field tests.

For their courage and integrity and their love of children, I add David Gamberg and the Southold school board to the honor roll as champions of American education.

Categories Honor Roll, New York, Resistance, Testing
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