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The NAEP for Urban Districts Was Released Today

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
18

You can view here the results for the NAEP for urban districts, known as TUDA, or Trial Urban District Assessments.

Five districts volunteered to take the NAEP in 2002.

Since then, the number has grown to 21 districts.

Test scores have generally risen, though not in all districts and not at the same rate.

Demographics affects the scores, not surprisingly.

Watch for changes over time in the proportion of high-poverty students.

As a New Yorker, I was very interested in the progress of what was once known as the “New York City miracle.” It disappeared.

On NAEP TUDA 2013, there was no “New York City miracle.” For almost every group and grade, scores have been stagnant since 2007. This year, the only group that saw a gain was white students in eighth grade. Black students and Hispanic students in fourth and eighth grades saw no gains at all. Black and Hispanic scores have been flat since 2005.

Knowing of Mayor Bloomberg’s large public relations staff and his pride in having “transformed” New York City’s public schools, I was curious to see how they would spin these flat results.

Here it is, in the Wall Street Journal:

“NYC Student Test Scores Rise Slower Than Other Cities”

“City Says Its Already High Scores Are Tougher to Improve”

But New York City is not number 1; it is not even number 2.

It is in sixth, or seventh, or eighth place in reading and mathematics, as compared to cities like Charlotte, Austin, Hillsborough County, Boston, and San Diego, yet its officials feel compelled to claim that they are just too darn accomplished to make improvements.

 

 

Categories NAEP, New York City, Testing

The New York Times Editorializes on Teachers and PISA, with Multiple Errors

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
38

Once again, we are treated to a New York Times editorial on education that is a mix of good and bad.

Bottom line: The Times blames teachers for the U.S. scores on PISA. And once again, the Times assumes that the scores of 15-year-olds on a standardized test predict the future of our economy, for which there is no evidence at all.

On the good side, the Times recognizes that entry standards into teaching in this country are far too low. In many states, a college graduate may become a teacher with no professional training or with an online degree or with only five weeks of training (TFA). That is not what the much-admired nations cited by the Times do.

On the good side, the Times notes that Finland has extensive social services for children in its schools. Entry into teacher education programs in Finland is rigorous. Teacher education is a five-year program.

On the bad side, the Times fails to mention that state after state is busily dismantling the teaching profession by eliminating collective bargaining (which Finland has); teacher tenure; salary increments for masters’ degrees; and actively discouraging and demoralizing experienced teachers. To call for an improved teaching profession, as the editorial does, while demonstrating total indifference to the widespread attacks on the teaching profession shows an astonishing ignorance of the political realities on the ground.

On the bad side, the Times never acknowledges that Finland has NO standardized testing until the end of high school.

On the bad side, the Times never notes that nearly one-quarter of children in the U.S. live in poverty, as compared to fewer than 5% in Finland. The editorial completely ignores poverty as a cause of low academic performance.

On the bad side, the Times cites the NCTQ as if its review of course syllabi and reading lists made it a credible research organization, which it is not.

On the bad side, the Times assumes that Shanghai has included all the migrant children in its schools and in its PISA testing, when Tom Loveless has demonstrated that this is an aspiration for 2020, not a reality.

Here is Tom Loveless’s comment on the New York Times‘ gushing praise for Shanghai: “dumb and dumber.”

Here are some tweets from this morning:

  1. @chingos Draws causal conclusions from X-sectional data. And praises Shanghai for equitable migrant ed. Dumb and dumber.

  3. @pasi_sahlberg @nytimes NYT draws causal conclusions from X-sectional data. Praises Shanghai for equitable migrant ed. Dumb and dumber.

  4. @NeeravKingsland @nytimes Bold isn’t the right word. Too bad NYT didn’t do some reporting before it editorialized.

    •  More

  5. Amazingly uninformed! NY Times praises Shanghai for equity in migrant education. Why Other Countries Teach Better

Categories International, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

“Governing” Magazine Recognizes the Power of This Blog LINK ADDED!

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
25

Mark Funkhouser, the director of the Governing Institute in Washington, D.C. and former mayor of Kansas City, wrote a terrific article recognizing how social media–specifically, this blog–is changing the national conversation about education.

While Funkhouser focuses on the debate about Common Core, he acknowledges that the underlying issue goes to the heart of our democracy. Blogging and social media have given parents and teachers a means of speaking back to the powerful.

This blog in particular has created a means by which those who lack vast resources of money and political power can be heard, and just as important, can find allies.

He mentions the role of the blog in supporting the Badass Teachers Association, as well as the Network for Public Education.

What he sees is that I have relied on my readers to inform me and each other as we struggle to protect our children from excessive testing and our public schools from privatization. Together, we are powerful. We are redefining democracy to allow many more voices to be heard, not just those who own the media.

Categories Common Core, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Testing

MIT Researchers: Higher Test Scores Do Not Translate into Higher Levels of Thinking

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2013 //
54

A new study by researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Brown cast doubt on the value of pursuing higher scores on standardized tests as an end in themselves.

Since this has been the highest goal of federal policy since 2002, when No Child Left Behind was signed into law, the study raises questions about the billions spent on testing, test preparation, evaluating teachers and schools by test scores, firing teachers and principals because of test scores, and closing schools based on test scores.

Are test scores the Golden Fleece? No.

Yet with the release of every NAEP test or every international test, the media go into a frenzy, and Arne Duncan leads a national day of high anxiety and breast beating about our nation’s imminent peril because test scores did not rise as much as they should.

The new study raises the question of how much those standardized test scores mean.

The study found:

In a study of nearly 1,400 eighth-graders in the Boston public school system, the researchers found that some schools have successfully raised their students’ scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). However, those schools had almost no effect on students’ performance on tests of fluid intelligence skills, such as working memory capacity, speed of information processing, and ability to solve abstract problems.

The researchers calculated how much of the variation in MCAS scores was due to the school that students attended. For MCAS scores in English, schools accounted for 24 percent of the variation, and they accounted for 34 percent of the math MCAS variation. However, the schools accounted for very little of the variation in fluid cognitive skills — less than 3 percent for all three skills combined.
…
Even stronger evidence came from a comparison of about 200 students who had entered a lottery for admittance to a handful of Boston’s oversubscribed charter schools, many of which achieve strong improvement in MCAS scores. The researchers found that students who were randomly selected to attend high-performing charter schools did significantly better on the math MCAS than those who were not chosen, but there was no corresponding increase in fluid intelligence scores.

U.S. News describes “fluid intelligence”:

Those skills are described as fluid because they require using logical thinking and problem solving in novel situations, rather than recalling previously learned facts and skills.

“It doesn’t seem like you get these skills for free in the way that you might hope, just by doing a lot of studying and being a good student,” said the study’s senior author, John Gabrieli, in a statement.

What improving test scores does do, Gabrieli said, is raise students’ “crystallized intelligence” – the ability to access information from long-term memory to use acquired knowledge and skills.

The importance – or lack thereof – of standardized tests has been widely debated by educators and state policymakers. While some argue that testing is important to track students’ performance and progress, others say there is a culture of over-testing in the United States.

He added that “crystallized intelligence” is important, but should not be the only goal of schooling:

But Gabrieli, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, said improving crystallized skills – such as recalling previously learned facts – is still important, and that the findings should also be used to push educational policymakers to add practices that help enhance cognitive abilities as well.

“It’s valuable to push up the crystallized abilities, because if you can do more math, if you can read a paragraph and answer comprehension questions, all those things are positive,” he said in the statement. “Schools can improve crystallized abilities, and now it might be a priority to see if there are some methods for enhancing the fluid ones as well.”

“Fluid intelligence” seems to be the “higher-order thinking skills” that policymakers claim to value. But they are not measured by standardized tests.

Categories Testing

Please Join Me in Westchester County, New York, on January 16

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2013 //
9

Please join me at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York, on January 16 to discuss Common Core, testing, and other issues.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

European Scholars: PISA Rankings Are “Utterly Wrong” and “Meaningless”

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2013 //
16

Professor Svend Kreiner, a prominent statistician and psychometrician at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and Dr. Hugh Morrison of Queens University in Belfast have published studies blasting the reliability and validity of the PISA league tables. They describe PISA’s rankings as “useless,” “utterly wrong,” and “meaningless.”

According to TES (London),

“Professor Svend Kreiner, a statistician from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said that an inappropriate model is used to calculate the Pisa rankings every three years. In a paper published this summer, he challenges their reliability and shows how they fluctuate significantly according to which test questions are used. He reveals how, in the 2006 reading rankings, Canada could have been positioned anywhere between second and 25th, Japan between eighth and 40th and the UK between 14th and 30th.

“Dr Hugh Morrison, from Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, goes further, saying that the model Pisa uses to calculate the rankings is, on its own terms, “utterly wrong” because it contains a “profound” conceptual error. For this reason, the mathematician claims, “Pisa will never work”.

“The academics’ papers have serious implications for politicians, including England’s education secretary Michael Gove, who justified his sweeping reforms by stating that England “plummeted” down the Pisa rankings between 2000 and 2009.

“The questions used for Pisa vary between countries and between students participating in the same assessment. In Pisa 2006, for example, half the students were not asked any reading questions but were allocated “plausible” reading scores to help calculate their countries’ rankings.

“To work out these “plausible” values, Pisa uses the Rasch model, a statistical way of “scaling” up the results it does have. But Professor Kreiner says this model can only work if the questions that Pisa uses are of the same level of difficulty for each of the participating countries. He believes his research proves that this is not the case, and therefore the comparisons that Pisa makes between countries are “useless”.

“When the academic first raised the issue in 2011, the OECD countered by suggesting that he had been able to find such wild fluctuations in rankings only by deliberately selecting particular small groupings of questions to prove his point. But Professor Kreiner’s new paper uses the same groups of questions as Pisa and comes up with very similar results to his initial analysis.

“He is sceptical about the whole concept of Pisa. “It is meaningless to try to compare reading in Chinese with reading in Danish,” he said.

“Dr Morrison said that the Rasch model made the “impossible” claim of being able to measure ability independently of the questions that students answer. “I am certain this (problem) cannot be answered,” he told TES.”

To read Dr. Kreiner’s studies, google his name.

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Testing Expert Calls for Moratorium on Common Core Testing

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2013 //
82

Fred Smith, who worked for many years in the research department of the New York City Board of Education (back when it had a research department, not a public relations department), offered the following testimony at public hearings in New York City on the Common Core testing (he was limited to only two minutes to speak):

My Two Minutes at the December 11, 2013 Forum in Manhattan – Spruce Street School

Chancellor Tisch, Commissioner King, thank you for visiting us.

I didn’t come here to discuss the merits of the Common Core, or rigorous standards, or high expectations, or equity for all children.

I’m here to call for a moratorium on all New York State testing associated with the Common Core, because the tests themselves are indefensible.

The 2013 exams were developed by trying out items on samples of children in June 2012.  The State Education Department and its test publisher, Pearson, were well aware the stand-alone method they used to field test material for future exams was not viable, because children are not motivated to do well on items and field tests that they know don’t count—and in June, no less.

SED and Chancellor Tisch also knew the separate, stand-alone field testing approach had failed in 2009 when that year’s operational test results were so implausibly high the Chancellor could no longer sustain an obvious farce. That’s why she led us on the path to the Common Core.

So, it is outrageous to learn the 2013 tests were assembled by replicating the same discredited field testing approach that produced the 2009 fiasco.

Yet, the Chancellor and the Commissioner have described the April 2013 test results as the baseline against which students will be measured in relation to the Common Core Standards.

That the 2013 tests were poorly developed is evidenced by the fact that less time was allocated to finishing the exams than had been allocated in 2012 (7% less for ELA; and 13% less time in math). And, correspondingly, my research finds a significantly higher percentage of students were unable to complete this year’s exams. 

How can tests that purport to tap critical thinking, deeper understanding and college readiness give students less time to complete?  How can the results of such ill-conceived exams possibly serve as a baseline? It’s simply irrational and points to defective testing.

To make matters worse, the upcoming 2014 statewide tests are built on the same unworkable stand-alone field testing framework—trying out items this past June. Saying that you now intend to embed more items on the 2015 exams, the preferred way to field test them, acknowledges but fails to address the deficiencies in the pivotal 2013 and 2014 exams.

And the State intends to give two more rounds of stand-alone field tests this spring.  If precedent holds, SED will not inform parents in advance that taking field tests is not mandatory.  Keeping parents in the dark prevents them from withholding consent should they decide they do not want their children to be unpaid subjects in commercial research that only begets unreliable exams.

The State has acted in bad faith by administering a dishonest testing program for over a decade. This shows no signs of changing with the rush to make the flawed 2013 “core-aligned” exams the new baseline. Therefore, nothing short of a moratorium on these tests is acceptable.

~Fred Smith

Fred Smith – Retired from BOE – Worked in Test Department – Member of Change the Stakes

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

New York Regent Betty Rosa: State’s Program Designed to Create Failure

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2013 //
36

The New York Board of Regents is determined to pour unprecedented sums into more standards, more tests, and more tests and more standards.

Two Regents have opposed this determined focus on standards and testing: Regent Betty Rosa of the Bronx and Regent Kathleen Cashin of Brooklyn. Interestingly, these are two of the few experienced educators on the state board.

In this article, Regent Rosa blasts the board’s agenda.

“In fact, she thinks the Common Core program is based on incomplete, manipulated data.

“They are using false information to create a crisis, to take the state test and turn it on its head to make sure the suburbs experience what the urban centers experience: failure,” said Rosa, a former teacher, principal and superintendent from the Bronx.

When even members of the Regents recognize that state policy has generated a “manufactured crisis,” wouldn’t you think that other members of the board might stop and think?

Time for the Regents to step back and ask whether higher standards and harder tests are the best way to improve academic performance.

If students can’t jump over a four-foot bar, will they do better if the bar is raised to six feet?

Why not use those billions to provide the support that students and teachers need–like smaller classes, universal pre-K, and after-school programs– instead of pouring it into more measurement?

 

Categories New York, Testing

EduShyster on KIPP, Padded Cells, and the Great Test Score Game

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2013 //
20

EduShyster notes the convergence of three happenings:

1. The New York Daily News breaks the story of KIPP’s “padded cell” for disruptive children. KIPP officials declare they will continue using the padded cell–actually, a closet with a window–as a “calming” space.

2. Simultaneously, the New York Times writes an editorial praising KIPP for its successful methods in educating black and Hispanic children.

3. A new study from researchers at MIT and other universities concludes that higher scores on standardized tests do not predict the development of “fluid” intelligence, the higher-order thinking needed for the thinkers and innovators of the future.

This is one of EduShyster’s most powerful posts. Humorous, of course, but containing valuable information.

Categories KIPP Charter Schools, Testing

What Happens to Kids Who Don’t Graduate?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2013 //
73

In Kentucky and New York, the Common Core tests caused test scores to tumble by 30 points or more.

State officials assume–with no evidence–that the scores will go up every year. What if they don’t? What if they go up only by a small increment? What if 50-60% of students don’t pass?

In New York, the “passing” rate on the Common Core tests was 30% statewide. Only 3% of English learners passed, and only 5% of students with disabilities. The pass rate for African American and Hispanic students was 15-18%.

If the state continues to insist upon a wildly unrealistic passing mark, the percentage of students who do not graduate will soar.

If Pearson aligns the GED with the Common Core, a startling number of students will never have high school diplomas of any kind. They won’t even qualify for the military. Will they be doomed to a life of poverty, of working in fast-food shops at minimum wage?

It is time to think of multiple ways to earn a diploma. It is time to think about career and technical education for students who want and deserve a chance to have a fruitful life. It is time to re-think what schools should do in addition to preparing students for college.

School should be a place for opportunity, not a single program–not one-size-fits-all, where the losers end up on the streets with no diploma and no hope.

What exactly is the point of making tests so “hard” that only 30% or 40% or maybe 50% can pass them? What will happen to those who never get a diploma? Do we really want to manufacture failure, knowing that those who fail will be those who already have the fewest advantages in life? As we follow this path, what kind of a society will we be 10 years from now?

Categories Common Core, Testing
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