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Maryland Superintendents Protest Rushed Implementation of “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2014 //
17

Valerie Strauss reports that almost all the superintendents in the state of Maryland signed a letter protesting the rushed timetable for Arne Duncan’s favorite reforms.

She writes:

“Nearly all of the superintendents of Maryland school districts have signed a statement that criticizes federal and state education officials for forcing them to implement several major reforms, including the Common Core State Standards, on what they say is an unrealistic timetable.

“The document, approved by 22 of Maryland’s 24 superintendents from districts educating more than 800,000 students, asks for more time and resources to put the reforms in place, including the use of new Common Core tests expected in the 2014-2015 school year. The statement (which you can read here) represents the first time that such a high percentage of schools chiefs in Maryland have come together to publicly call out education officials over school reform.

“Parents, elected officials, community leaders and pundits are reacting sometimes with alarm as local school systems throughout the state deal with the challenges of implementing the many components of education reform,” says the document, obtained by The Washington Post. Carl Roberts, executive director of the Public School Superintendents Association of Maryland and a former superintendent, organized the joint statement but would not identify the two superintendents who did not sign on.

“Though affirming that they wholeheartedly support the Common Core standards as “a more rigorous path through pre-kindergarten to grade twelve for all students,” the superintendents wrote that there are serious problems with the introduction of the reforms. They specifically cited the fact that Maryland plans to continue using an outdated test — the Maryland School Assessments — while the state has shifted to a new curriculum that isn’t aligned with the old test. They also said it is inappropriate for new test-based teacher evaluations and accountability measures to roll out before the reforms have been fully put in place.”

It bears noting that Duncan’s faith in evaluating teachers by test scores has not worked anywhere it has been tried. In New York, for example, tens of millions of dollars (perhaps more) were spent to determine that 1% of teachers were “ineffective,” and that 1% might have been misidentified. The Common Core standards have not yet been validated for any purpose, except on paper. Some 500 early childhood experts have declared them to be inappropriate for the early grades.

The federal government apparently wants everyone to jump into the deep end of the pool, whether they can swim or not, and without looking to see if the pool has any water in it.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Connecticut Teacher: Why I Want to Quit Teaching: UPDATE

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2014 //
68

[Note to readers: I abridged this article to comply with copyright limits. Please open the link and read the article in full at the Hartford Courant, which had the good sense to publish it.]

Thanks to the punitive actions and policies of the U.S. Department of Education and the states, there is a new genre of writing by teachers, explaining why they are quitting. The most famous was written by Kris Neilsen of North Carolina, whose letter of resignation went viral, was viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, and went around the world.

This column was written by Elizabeth Natale, a middle-school teacher in Connecticut. This state has one of the best public school systems in the United States, yet its governor and state commissioner continually bash teachers and public schools, while lauding charters and showering them with extra money. The leaders are certain that public schools and teachers are failing and need tough measures to shake them up. In time, what the leaders are doing will be revealed as a mighty hoax whose goal is to increase market share for charters.

Natale writes:

“Surrounded by piles of student work to grade, lessons to plan and laundry to do, I have but one hope for the new year: that the Common Core State Standards, their related Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium testing and the new teacher evaluation program will become extinct.

I have been a middle school English teacher for 15 years. I entered teaching after 19 years as a newspaper reporter and college public relations professional….

Although the tasks ahead of me are no different from those of the last 14 years, today is different. Today, I am considering ending my teaching career.

When I started teaching, I learned that dealing with demanding college presidents and cantankerous newspaper editors was nothing. While those jobs allowed me time to drink tea and read the newspaper, teaching deprived me of an opportunity to use the restroom. And when I did, I was often the Pied Piper, followed by children intent on speaking with me through the bathroom door.

I loved it!

Unfortunately, government attempts to improve education are stripping the joy out of teaching and doing nothing to help children….

The Smarter Balance program assumes my students are comfortable taking tests on a computer, even if they do not own one…

I am a professional. My mission is to help students progress academically, but there is much more to my job than ensuring students can answer multiple-choice questions on a computer. Unlike my engineer husband who runs tests to rate the functionality of instruments, I cannot assess students by plugging them into a computer….

My most important contributions to students are not addressed by the Common Core, Smarter Balance and teacher evaluations. I come in early, work through lunch and stay late to help children who ask for assistance but clearly crave the attention of a caring adult…

Teaching is the most difficult — but most rewarding — work I have ever done. It is, however, art, not science. A student’s learning will never be measured by any test, and I do not believe the current trend in education will lead to adults better prepared for the workforce, or to better citizens. For the sake of students, our legislators must reach this same conclusion before good teachers give up the profession — and the children — they love.”

Categories Common Core, Connecticut, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Rhode Island Town Says No to Common Core Testing

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2014 //
27

The school committee of Tobrtton, Rhode Island, voted 4-1 to delay Common Core testing.

The state education department insisted that Rhode Island educators were deeply involved in the creation of the standards.

“In its resolution, the committee states that that local school committees, teachers and parents were not involved in the development of the Common Core, a set of education standards developed the National Governors Association and the most of the nation’s state school commissioners.
The state Department of Education, however, says that several Rhode Island educators served on the national committees that reviewed the standards. RIDE also said that public meetings were held in 2009 and 2010, before the standards were adopted.”

Does RIDE mean it is too late to step back as citizens learn more?

Whatever happened to critical thinking?

Categories Common Core, Testing

A New Day in New York City: Veteran Educators in Charge, not Whiz Kids

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2014 //
29

The new Di Blasio team is off to a good start in education. The Bloomberg team is quietly exiting stage right. One of the key players, Marc Sternberg, has moved to the Walton Family Foundation to promote vouchers. Another, Shael Suransky, will be president of Bank Street College, which does not share his enthusiasm for test-based accountability.

The new chancellor, Carmen Farina, is assembling her own team, and unlike Bloomberg and Joel Klein, she is selecting veteran educators.

When she met with principals as a group for the first time, she was greeted with a standing ovation. She made clear that the days of derision were over and a new era of respect and collaboration. She also made the startling announcement that the city would require a minimum of seven years’ experience, in contrast to the Bloomberg policy of fast-tracking inexperienced newcomers to lead schools.

Her second in command, Dorita Gibson, has more than 30 years’ experience in the schol system.

The Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, Philip Weinberg, a high school principal in Brooklyn, has nearly thirty years in the system, and the Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development has 27 years in education.

This is quite a change from the early years of the Klein regime, when the inner circle consisted of fresh-faced MBA graduates, and 20-something’s with no classroom experience. As one insider told me later, “I would look around and realize that no one making decisions had ever worked in a school.”

Philip Weinberg, who takes charge of teaching and learning, was a signer of the New York principals’ letter opposing the New York State Annual Professional Performance Review, the evaluation system designed by John King that created enormous pushback.

In this article, he explains why more than 1,000 principals signed the letter and why it is wrong to remove the job of evaluating teachers from principals.

This is part of what Weinberg wrote:

“My concern about the agreement is that a large portion of a teacher’s evaluation is to be taken out of the hands of principals. I am disturbed by this, not just because I think this will lead to inaccurate ratings and will pressure teachers in unproductive ways (it will), but also because I believe it speaks to a growing distrust of or disrespect for principals. I am surprised that the teachers’ union would trade a principal’s rating for that of a student’s test score, especially given the recent teacher data report debacle. Are most principals less fair or trustworthy than reductive data? I think not. I think most principals feel exactly as Mr. Mulgrew does when they work with an ineffective teacher, and they communicate those concerns with the same intelligence, honesty and kindness Mr. Mulgrew expressed above.

“The desire to use multiple measures to rate teachers seems like a smart idea. However, New York City’s two experiments with value-added ratings in education, the teacher data reports and the school progress reports, have not produced reliable information. So far we have not discovered any measures which clearly correlate teacher performance to student learning. This new agreement will generate a teacher’s rating by using data which we know does not answer the question we are asking. Why? Are principals incapable of understanding data, incapable of interpreting it based upon what they see in their schools? I think not.

“I think we can review our schools’ data in a much more nuanced and accurate way than any measure designed to encapsulate and compare the work of thousands of teachers working with hundreds of thousands of students. No less a prominent voice in this discussion, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, was recently quoted as saying: “The principals’ job is to decide who’s good, who’s bad. It’s their judgment; that’s their job.” Who could disagree?”

“But we principals, too, are part of the problem. Not because we have promoted the use of bad data to rate teachers, but because we may have allowed our attention to stray from our chief job of promoting professional growth, training staff, documenting teacher performance, creating community and defining what quality teaching and learning look like in our schools. Newly necessary distractions like marketing and fund-raising and data analysis may have seemed more important than getting into classrooms and working with teachers on how to plan lessons and ask questions. But if we let our attention waiver from those things which we know should be our primary focus, if we asked “How can we help students earn more credits?” instead of “How can we help students learn more?” then some of the distrust we see driving this new agreement is our fault, even if we believe that is what the school system and the general public wanted us to do. We may have felt less incentive to concentrate on the quality of classroom instruction in our schools because we are rated on other things, but we know our jobs. If we chose to focus on tasks outside of instruction, it makes sense that the void such a choice created was filled by psychometricians.”

Imagine that: a deputy chancellor who believes that professional judgment is wiser than data!

This will be interesting.

Categories New York City, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Providence Student Union: The Guinea Pigs Protest!

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2014 //
10

The creative Providence Student Union is staging another brilliant protest against high-stakes testing. It’s their lives!

PRESS RELEASE

CONTACT: Aaron Regunberg | Aaron@ProvidenceStudentUnion.org | (847) 809-6039

“GUINEA PIGS” PROTEST EXPERIMENTATION AT STATE HOUSE –

STUDENTS, DRESSED AS LAB ANIMALS, DEMONSTRATE AGAINST HIGH-STAKES TESTING

Providence, Rhode Island – January 29, 2014 – High school students, joined by parents, community members and legislators, held a demonstration today at the Rhode Island State House to protest what participants called “the ill-conceived experiment” of Rhode Island’s new high-stakes testing graduation requirement. To illustrate this message, students showed up dressed as guinea pigs and lab rats, complete with whiskers, animal ears and more.

“The reason we are dressed like guinea pigs and lab rats is simple – that is how we are being treated,” said Jose Serrano, a member of the Providence Student Union (PSU), the youth organization holding the event. “The Department of Education hypothesized that high-stakes testing alone, without the extra resources our schools need, would solve our education problems. But this was an unproven gamble, which is becoming clearer with every exemption and waiver and backtrack that RIDE releases. This crazy experiment is playing with our futures, and we are here to say this needs to stop!”

The event, titled “Operation: Guinea Pig” by students, was held just two days before the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) is set to publicly release the results of the NECAP exam seniors retook in fall 2013, revealing how many students remain in danger of being denied a diploma because of the state’s new testing graduation requirement.

As State House officials looked on, students performed a skit dramatizing RIDE’s policy, with “scientists” from RIDE injecting students with “NECAP formula” from an over-sized syringe. “What’s the worst that can happen?” one scientist character asked at the beginning of the skit. “We can always try to clean up the experiment with waivers if our hypothesis fails. And besides, they’re not our kids.” The scientists then began giving injections left and right, producing handcuffs and McDonald’s hats for students to symbolize their possible futures without a high school diploma.

Participants were joined by numerous state legislators who joined them in calling for a change to the high-stakes testing policy. Representative Gregg Amore (D-East Providence) said, “We have tried the test-based reform movement for over a decade now and there is absolutely no evidence that it improves student learning or outcomes. We need to start to look at what works and begin to attack the root causes of the achievement gap that exists between well-off students and students struggling with poverty. There are far more effective tools to improve learning than high-stakes tests that punitively label students and schools.”

Representative Teresa Tanzi (D-Narragansett) also spoke, asking her colleagues to take action. “I have spent time in five different schools in my community, engaging with PTOs, meeting extensively with teachers, and speaking with my Superintendent,” she said. “The themes that appeared through all of these hours of conversations have been stark. Learning has taken a back seat to test preparation, the culture of the classroom has changed dramatically, and the quality of education suffers. This is an experiment that has no winners: the stakes are too high, the payoff uncertain, and the risk too big for our students to bear. It is more clear to me now than ever, that we cannot count on the Commissioner, or the Board of Education, to address the serious concerns surrounding the High Stakes Testing graduation requirements, and that we, as legislators, must exert our authority to ensure that the future of our students is not devastated by these inconsistent and arbitrary policies.”

Students also called for alternatives to high-stakes testing to strengthen their schools. “We need proven, evidence-based reforms to improve our education,” said Sam Foer, another student member of PSU. “Instead of these experiments, we should be focusing on what our schools really need – student-centered learning, more arts and elective classes, more engaging and hands-on curricula, smaller class sizes, infrastructure repairs so our buildings aren’t falling down while we try to study, better transportation so students can actually get to school when it’s freezing out, more real-world learning, more guidance counselors so students can actually get the support they need to apply to college, and on and on. Why have we wasted so much money, time, energy and resources on this flawed high-stakes testing experiment when we could have used it so much more effectively?”

The many legislators in attendance received a strong plea for help from the whiskered assembly. Sam Foer said, “The experiment results come out tomorrow when the NECAP scores are released. In the end, it’s the legislators here in this building that have the power to shut down this risky experiment. You have the final say: do you support treating students like nothing more than guinea pigs in an experiment, or do you want to put an end to this gamble with our lives? We leave it up to you.”

###

Categories Resistance, Students, Testing

Indiana: Legislative Committee Wants to Ban Testing for Voucher Schools

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2014 //
9

Phyllis Bush of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education sent word that it is -16 degrees in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

But the legislature never rests, she says:

“At 1:30 the Senate Education Committee will be discussing taking away the Statewide testing requirements for voucher schools. Anything for keeping the playing field level….just in case you are a glutton for punishment, here is the live stream link: http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2014/committees/education_and_career_development_3400”

Ever busy, the legislature also expects to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is already illegal.

Categories Indiana, Testing, Vouchers

NH Teachers Take CC Test, Find Serious Flaws

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2014 //
45

Here is a question: Answer in five sentences or less. Who decided all the students of the U.S. should be tested online? Another question: Who benefits? What can we do about it? Opt out.

Teachers in Nashua, Néw Hampshire, took an early version of the online Common Core test, Smarter Balanced Assessment, and encountered multiple problems.

“NASHUA – If there was any question about how well the state’s transition from the New England Common Assessment Program to the Smarter Balanced assessment for 2015 is progressing, a recent letter by Fairgrounds Middle School Principal John Nelson to Nashua Superintendent Mark Conrad paints a rather disturbing picture.

“Teachers at Fairgrounds Middle School staff took an early version of the assessment in December and say the new computerized test required as part of the Common Core standards is confusing, doesn’t work well and leads to frustration.

“Teachers shared frustrations they had when they were taking the test and disappointment in test format and the difficulties they had trying to use their computer to take this test,” Nelson said in his letter shared with members of the Nashua Board of Education.

“Based on the experience at Fairground, Nelson said teachers agreed the test should not be used on Nashua students.

“The FMS staff collectively believe that the Smarter Balance Test is inappropriate for our students at this time and that the results from this test will not measure the academic achievement of our students; but will be a test of computer skills and students’ abilities to endure through a cumbersome task,” Nelson wrote.”

Conrad’s answer was not encouraging: he said, more or less, follow orders.

Where have we heard that kind of obedience to authority line before?

Here is his response:

“Conrad, though, called any discussion to avert the Smarter Balanced assessment as counterproductive.

“The reality is there is going to be a new assessment,” Conrad said.

“The superintendent said his focus would be to meet with principals in February “to look at ways to better prepare our students to take the test.”

Categories Common Core, Testing

Peter Greene: Do Choice Schools Need Testing?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
16

Peter Greene, a teacher in Pennsylvania, has emerged as a favorite blogger of mine.

He is on top of the news with sage observations, and he is pithy.

In this post, he looks closely at University of Arkansas’ professor Jay Greene’s argument that schools of choice do not need testing. Jay Greene, a professor in the “department of education reform,” thinks that the marketplace provides accountability so why bother testing.

Peter Greene has an “I-told-you-so” moment, as he remembers all the times he warned his voucher-loving friends that public money never comes with no strings attached. With public money comes public accountability, which these days means standardized testing. The joke is that J. Greene ends up making (almost) the same case against high-stakes standardized testing as many–like P. Greene–who find those standardized tests to be worthless.

Categories Accountability, Testing, Vouchers

Whitehurst: Test More, Not Less

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2014 //
46

Grover (Russ) Whitehurst is worried that the public is turning against standardized testing. As George W. Bush’s director of education research, he was and is a true believer in testing. As head of the Brown Center at Brookings, once known as a bastion of liberal thought, Whitehurst wants to see the programs he tended under Bush’s NCLB survive.

Yet they are, as he puts it, “in a bit of trouble.”

He is upset to see that Néw York City elected a new mayor who does not share his love of testing, accountability, and choice. Bill de Blasio is a progressive Democrat.

He is not happy that the Texas legislature rolled back some of its testing requirements, responding to public protest.

But most of all, he is upset that Linda Darling-Hammond, who is senior advisor to one of the federally funded testing consortia, recommends testing in only a single grade in each of the three levels of schooling: elementary school, middle school, and high school.

He frets: What would that do to teacher assessment? How could growth scores be calculated?

Whitehurst’s recommendation: we should test more, not less!

I am not sure I follow the logic here.

How will more testing quell the growing rebellion against testing? There will be more angry moms and dads, more Bill de Blasio’s elected. Maybe he is on to something.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Jason Stanford: Why Is Duncan Asking Pearson for Advice?

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2014 //
48

Jason Stanford, a Texas journalist, is appalled that President Obama and Arne Duncan met with Pearson to get advice about how to prepare low-income students for college. The White House refers to Pearson as “the world’s leading learning company,” instead of the world’s largest testing company.

What advice do you think Pearson offered? Stanford bets: more testing, better testing.

He notes that Texas has a contract with Pearson for nearly $500 million. Thanks to high-stakes testing, 76,000 students will not graduate. Testing did not make them smarter. Instead they have been effectively consigned to lifetime struggle and poverty.

The mind meld between Duncan and Pearson is alarming.

Even more alarming is Duncan’s contempt for America’s students, parents, and teachers.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Pearson, Testing
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