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NY Test Score Collapse: What Now?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
55

What should happen next in New York after the Common Core testing debacle?

I won’t share my thoughts here, which are strong, but instead share the views of an experienced educator. Jere Hochman is superintendent of the Bedford Central school district in Westchester County. This is what he concludes:

“Schools have always used standards, designed curriculum, taught kids, and assessed learning and acknowledged there is a lot of room for improvement. Still, SAT, ACT, and AP participation and scores are up as is college attendance and hundreds of thousands, millions of student success stories.

“But after the “Nation At Risk Report” in the ‘80s and other critiques going back to the late ‘90s, politicians and CEOs saw an Achilles heel that would advance their interests on the backs of kids and teachers while ignoring administrators and local school boards. Well intended efforts to “level the playing field” and “a new civil rights movement” were about as sincere as billionaires using the momentum of sincere Tea Party activists and the same billionaires converting the original Peace Corps mission of Teach for America into a business model to bust unions and segregate and oppress kids.

“Since 1999, since 2009, and since last spring, many of us have written about the attack on public education in the form of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the most recent New York reform measures. While trying to make them work and being supportive, protecting local norms and curriculum, and making the best of bad laws, this week the politicos and CEOs chicken little mantras came home to roost.

“So What?
“After numerous position papers, calls for cost-benefit analyses, pleas to slow down, and cries for communication; the convoluted efforts of Race to the Top became the proverbial and overused perfect storm: unproven college and career ready standards, excessive standardized testing, and a rushed teacher and principal evaluation plan. And, the storm hit this week when kids became collateral damage of tests that said, “You used to be smart – not so much now.”

“Yes, “We told you so.” We told you so when NCLB was railroaded under the shadow of 9/11. We told you so when we pointed out that RTTT was just the carrot version of the NCLB’s stick approach. We told you so when we illustrated APPR was not “building the plane while flying it” but rather a train wreck about to happen. We asked for information, explanations, test samples, and definitions. We asked for seats at the table, time, communication, and input.

“So, here we are. We hold our students to high standards and we have the data and work products to prove it. We hold ourselves to high professional standards. Maybe we needed to be hit over the head with a two-by-four to get our attention to high academic standards and meaningful professional evaluation. So, yes, you got our attention but then kept hammering away. And, all the while, you diverted funds from our schools and championed segregated, regimented, uniformed, information regurgitated charter schools.

“Now What? In order to be part of the solution that raises standards and expectations constructively, uses professional evaluation, and fair and meaningful testing, demand that the Board of Regents and Governor

“Re: CCSS and State Testing

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on State testing
2. Implement State testing only in transition grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 beginning in 2014-2015
3. Utilize transition year testing as benchmarks for student and cohort progress in multi-year clusters and review of curriculum implementation and alignment
4. Analyze 2013 tests and result for validity, reliability, and grade level match
5. Provide opportunities for teachers and principals to analyze all test questions, results, and standards for alignment and gaps
6. Utilize 2013-2014 to field test common core standards aligned state tests
7. Provide an extensive comment period reviewing PARCC assessments and other testing options

Re: APPR

1. Declare a one-year moratorium on the 40% tested subject and local assessments component of APPR
2. Utilize 2013-2014 to concentrate on rubric application confidence and inter-rater reliability
3. Utilize 2013-2014 for school districts and BOCES regions to field test local assessments
4. Provide irrefutable evidence for the use of Value-added measures or declare the application ceased

Re: RTTT, CCSS, State Testing, APPR, and State Reform Efforts

1. Report a complete expenditure review of RTTT funds
2. Provide a cost-benefit analysis of all components of CCSS, APPR, and state testing
3. Provide irrefutable evidence of privacy assurances on all aspects of data collection
4. Develop a revised timeline leading to 2014-2015 implementation with bi-weekly communications to the field
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Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Reader: What We Learned from the New York Test Score Debacle

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
20

The first Common Core test produced a massive decline in test scores across the state. Charter schools fared even worse than public schools, with many dropping by 50 percentage points in their proficiency rates.

This reader read the handwriting on the wall:

 

“These test scores emphatically highlight the failure of vision that the corporate reformers bring to the table.

What scares me is the tremendous profit motive that drives and informs so much of what is happening in education. It’s as if capitalism, as a system, has its own needs and agendas that operate outside any kind of moral frame- work. Those who stand to gain, like hedge-fund managers, Rupert Murdoch styled billionaires, the industrial complex built up around curriculum and assessment, and the many charter chain operators are all aligned to push data driven, high stakes testing, and privatizing education with very little awareness or concern for the real implications that the free market has on public education.

I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that they are dismantling a free public education system that is premised on equity, and established along with the founding of our democracy. They are replacing it with, well-connected, chain charters that don’t even address the needs of students and communities whose needs are highest. (These get counseled out, or lack the self efficacy to opt in in the first place.)

These “reformers” under-write politicians, thus gaining undemocratic access and influence. They own media outlets and know how to shape the national conversation. They tell us teachers suck, not poverty. They tell us teacher tenure undermines student achievement, not chronic underfunding of low-income school districts. They tell us that the labor movement and unions are a threat to our economy and to our way of life. When, in-fact, unions helped to establish and stabilize our middle class with the five day work week, the eight hour work day, a living wage, and more. They tell us public schools are failing when, in fact, every assessment, and decades of studies demonstrate that poverty is hurting children, not public schools. They tell us they know how to fix education, though they have been “fixing” it with charters and vouchers for over a decade, while sucking the life out of, low income, public schools with little to show for all their bluster.

They are still waiting for superman.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Testing

A Hero Principal Speaks Out Against Absurd State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
19

Anna Allanbrook, principal of PS 146 in Brooklyn, is not afraid. She is one of the remaining veteran principals in a city that has ruthlessly pushed out veterans and replaced them with teachers who have only a few years experience. Allanbrook is 58. She remembers what it was like to be an educator before the state and city leaders became obsessed with test scores.

Her school is highly popular. Last year, 1,538 students applied for 175 openings. Teachers love the school and seldom leave. In contrast to many of the charters, where staff turnover is 40-50% every year, only 4% of PS 146 teachers leave annually.

In a New York Times article by the experienced education writer Michael Winerip, Allanbrook recognizes the absurdity of the state testing regime.

Allanbrook is here added to our honor roll for her courage in telling the truth about a state testing system that is not only unreliable and erratic, but is reckless with the lives of children and teachers.

“As a senior principal I feel a duty to speak honestly about what’s going on,” she said in an interview. “By my age, my position is relatively safe; I feel like I’ve learned a lot and should express what younger principals and teachers are too scared to say.”

“At 58, she is part of a generation that remembers when standardized testing did not dominate. She says from the time she started teaching in the 1980s, there has always been a place for testing to help assess student performance. But she worries that over the last decade, tests have superseded a teacher’s judgment.

“The P.S. 146 fourth-grade classes where 94.9 percent were proficient in math last year? This year, as fifth graders, only 25.6 percent of those same students passed. How did such gifted fourth graders become such challenged fifth graders? The problem isn’t the fifth-grade teachers, she says. Last year, with the same teachers, 83 per cent of fifth graders passed.

“Neither the 94 percent or the 25 percent reflects reality,” Ms. Allanbrook says. In the 1990s, when students took the tests, she says, results weren’t distorted by test prep. “You got a clearer sense of a child’s strengths and weaknesses,” she says. “What could parents possibly learn about their child’s abilities from such crazy results?”

“Here’s one way to think about it: Suppose your worth was measured by how much money you earned for a company, but the fellow who kept track of everyone’s earnings periodically forgot how to count.

“During the last decade, she has watched as state officials have repeatedly thrown out test results or rejiggered them.”

The state education department cannot be trusted. The test scores do not show what students know and can do. The scores do not show–as Arne Duncan claims–that the adults have been “lying” to the children. The results show that the adults in charge are incompetent.

As an aside: Welcome back to Michael Winerip, the nation’s most knowledgeable education beat reporter, who was inexplicably switched by the New York Times from covering education to writing about The Boomer generation. Every once in a while, he manages to write a column about education that reminds us how much we miss him.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing

Chile: The Most Pro-Market School System in the World, Part 2

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2013 //
32

This is the second is a series of three articles written by Professor Mario Waissbluth of Chile for this blog. In this series, he describes the school system in Chile, which is based on testing and choice.

 

Chile´s Education (II): The results of the most neoliberal system in the world

Yesterday I described the Chilean economic and educational system. Now I shall explore its good and ugly results.

Unleashing market forces generated steady growth in per capita income since 1985 until now. As compared with Latin America, this index was the same in 1990, but today Chile’s is 50% higher. Similarly, the UNDP’s Human Development Index is far above that of the region, although well below the average OECD value.

Under Pinochet, the number of people below the line of poverty skyrocketed, beyond 40% of the population. However, since 1990 it has come down to 13%, thanks to more redistributive policies. So, why complain? Maybe Milton Friedman was right after all.

Nicanor Parra is our most prestigious living poet. He summed up Mr. Friedman´s error: “There are two loaves of bread. You eat two, I eat none. Average consumption: one loaf per capita”. Our income inequality Gini index is awful (0.52), and the tax structure does not help much in correcting it (0.50). The line dividing the poorest from the richest 50% of the population is a daily income of US$ 8 dollars a day… and from there down to US$ 2 dollars a day for the poorest 10%.

The children in the lower half are, on the average, getting out of high school without understanding what they read. They are admitted with no selection to for-profit low-quality universities or institutes, dropping out without a college degree in about 50% of the cases, and heavily indebted after this. This is the powder keg that exploded in 2011 and the firestorm has not stopped until today.

It should be said that, as in the economy, in education there have been some promising results. Attendance to basic school, high school and tertiary education is similar to the OECD average. PISA results have shown one of the best improvements in the world from 2000 to 2009, although, strangely, the internal testing system does not show any significant improvement in the average or in the inequality of results. Public spending in education is 4% of GDP, as compared with 6% in the OECD countries.

Things look ugly in the teacher´s staffroom. Their average salary is 40% that of engineering, law, business or medical careers. 40% of them drop out from schools before 5 years. Morale is generally low, confrontation with authorities is high, especially in the public sector which has been under attack for 30 years, by action and/or neglect. Teaching to the test, taken to the extreme, is making robots out of children and teachers. The best proof is that the very expensive Chilean private schools show international results well below the OECD average.

As a professor in one of the best and most selective public universities in the country, I can attest that 50% of my students are not capable of drafting an understandable two page essay on anything. They spent 12 years in school, training to answer multiple choice sheets, speedily forgotten to open brain space for next year´s new payload of material… which meant little to them.

The worst part, by far, is the social and academic segregation of Chilean schools, the worst in the world after Macao, according to PISA statistics. Thanks to market competition and generalized skimming practices, 21% of our children attend socio-culturally integrated schools, compared with 35% in Latin America, 46% in OECD countries, and above 50% in Finland or Canada. Educational apartheid.

In the low income academic ghettos it will be almost impossible to improve results, no matter how much money is poured into them. Even worse, Chilean education has enhanced segregationist and individualistic attitudes in all levels of society. This is steadily undermining social cohesion, to the point that it will be difficult to regain social peace, no matter which the next coalition in power is.

Mario Waissbluth (www.mariowaissbluth.com) has a PhD in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974). Currently he is a professor at Universidad de Chile and President of Fundación Educación 2020, an advocacy movement for equity and desegregation of the chilean school system (www.educacion2020.cl). His soon to be published book, with Random House (in spanish) is “Change of Course: A new way for Chilean education”.

Categories International, Testing, Vouchers

How Come Commissioner King Knew the Test Scores in Advance?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
5

Carol Burris is not only the principal of the year in New York, as chosen by her colleagues, but she knows her statistics.

In this article, she explains Commissioner of Education John King’s magic trick of predicting the scores before the tests were given.

It was magic of the highest order.

And Burris has a brilliant idea about how to close the achievement gap:

“And so to all of the wannabe Kreskins in other Common Core States, here is my plea — align your proficiency cut scores with SATs that predict A+ in college courses. Your proficiency rates will drop to less than 1 percent and then all of the gaps will close. It will be the greatest disappearing act of all time, and perhaps then we can end the show and get back to the business of teaching kids.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

UFT: Call Arthur Goldstein, Classroom Teacher

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
5

[I am reposting this article because the formatting was not clear the first time round. Arthur was quoting the linked article, but I did not set off the quoted sections correctly. My mistake, not his. I think I got it right this time.]

 

Edwize, the house publication of New York City’s powerful teachers’ union, just published a strange and somewhat incoherent article, saluting the collapse of test scores and the arrival of Common Core, which is sure to return authority to teachers and end teaching to the test. Got it? Neither do I.

Here is what high school teacher Arthur Goldstein says about this essay:

A rather incredible piece is up at Edwize right now. It makes several assumptions about Common Core tests that are tough to comprehend. Commenting on the as yet untested and unproven standards, the writer ventures:

“And here’s the thing: these are the very skills educators want to teach and have had to forego in favor of test prep.”

I’m certainly glad that’s clear to the writer, who I very much doubt is a working teacher. Personally, I like to teach kids to love to read. This will help them greatly when they face more challenging reading tasks later. All the Common Core analysis, according to teachers I actually know and speak with, is making their students crazy. Even their quickest and brightest students are pressed for time and find it difficult to even answer the questions in the time allotted.

The assumption that this will preclude test prep, particularly considering the increased volume of testing due to Common Core, is nothing short of preposterous. Couple that with the fact that value-added measures will determine whether or not teachers keep their jobs, and you don’t have to wonder very much how those of us who actually have to work feel about them.

There is then some largely incomprehensible nonsense about forcing “accountability to grow up,” and placing “standardized tests back to their rightful, and less overblown, place.” How we are supposed to accomplish that when there are more tests is an utter mystery to me. And “accountability,” from all I read, tends to relate to ways to fire unionized teachers more than anything else.

“So less than a third of students meet standards. Well, what else do we know? How do students perform on social studies projects, lab work, art and music, sports, leadership activities, group tasks, or community service? What 21st century skills do they have; what ones need to be developed? What are the best models for teaching those skills? What can students tell us about what they do and don’t understand and what helps them learn? And how do we measure those?”

This is the same writer who told us paragraphs ago that Common Core Standards were the very things we wanted to teach. Now, apparently, we are checking their art, music, and leadership activities, none of which are measured by the tests that could very well determine whether or not working teachers are fired.

Why can’t we assess students that way?

One big reason is that we’ve supported not only the Common Core, with its additional layer of testing, but also taken part in crafting a law designed fire teachers based solely on test scores. I have no idea whatsoever why we’ve done that. I would love to assess students in the ways the writer suggests. But there’s now a gun to my head, and I’ll certainly be fired if my kids don’t get sufficient test scores, likely as not on tests that have little or nothing to do with what my kids need to learn. Creative and carefree assessment does not remotely seem the way to go here.

“It would be a relieve if tests became more the province of educators.”

It would be a “relieve” indeed. On this astral plane, Common Core adds to standardized testing and makes that more difficult. Furthermore, there is now a NY State law that prohibits us from grading standardized tests of our own kids. Much to my disappointment, I can’t recall my union objecting to that at all. In fact, working teachers, who know their classes even better than Meryl Tisch or John King, should be testing our own classes and making judgements about our own students.

Sadly, Common Core takes us even further from that. This article, sadly, does not remotely address the concerns of working teachers. Anytime UFT leaders or writers would like to speak to me, they need only reach out. I only wish they had done so sooner.

I’m a real working teacher, and I hear from others each and every day. I’m not at all averse to sharing.

Categories Common Core, New York, New York City, Testing

A Hero Educator in Long Island

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
16

This superintendent saw the scores on the Common Core tests and hit the ceiling. He was not shy in contacting his legislators and parents to tell them that he smelled a rat. The state commissioner predicted a 30-37% fall in scores last fall, and lo and behold, there was a 30-37% fall in scores.

Superintendent Joseph V. Rella of the Comsewogue School District in Long Island joins the honor roll today, for his courage, his clear thinking, and his willingness to stand up to the bullies in Albany.

Here are his letters.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, Testing

A Hero Educator in Upstate Néw York!

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
7

Imagine the superintendent of a high-performing district who is fearless and speaks boldly about the political manipulation of the Common Core test scores. Imagine a woman who defends the students and staff against the rigging of scores by ambitious politicians and bureaucrats.

That is Teresa Thayer Snyder of Voorheesville in upstate Néw York, a district that has a 97% graduation rate.

Scores crashed in her district and she spotted the fraud. She saw that the distribution of scores was unchanged, and the gaps were unchanged.

She wrote: “Over the past several months school leaders have been receiving countless messages from the State Education Department preparing us for the dire outcomes associated with the most recent spate of State testing in grades 3-8 in Math and English Language Arts. As the date for the releases of the test scores approached, we received many notices of “talking points” to inform our communities about the outcomes, with explanations of new baselines and how these tests do not reflect the efforts of students and teachers this year. I have rejected these missives because they reek of the self-serving mentality the ‘powers that be’ have thrust upon our students and parents.

“Our community is sophisticated enough to recognize a canard when it experiences one. These tests were intentionally designed to obtain precisely the outcomes that were rendered. The rationale behind this is to demonstrate that our most successful students are not so much and our least successful students are dreadful. If you look at the distribution of scores, you see exactly the same distances as any other test. The only difference is that the distribution has been manipulated to be 30 to 40 percent lower for everybody. This serves an enormously powerful purpose. If you establish a baseline this low, the subsequent growth over the next few years will indicate that your plans for elevating the outcomes were necessary. However, it must be recognized that the test developers control the scaled scores—indeed they have developed a draconian statistical formula that is elaborate, if indecipherable, to determine scaled scores. I would bet my house on the fact that over the next few years, scores will “improve”—not necessarily student learning, but scores. They must, because the State accepted millions and millions of dollars to increase student scores and increase graduation rates. If scores do not improve from this baseline, then those ‘powers that be’ will have a lot of explaining to do to justify having accepted those millions.”

For telling the truth, for standing up to the bullies in Albany, for seeing through the vicious game that the State Education Department is playing and refusing to go along, I hereby name Teresa Thayer Snyder a hero of American education. She joins our honor roll of distinction for her service to her students and her community.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing

Our Kids Are OK, the Tests Are Not

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
25

Stephen Dyer in Ohio can’t believe that 2/3 of the children in New York failed the state tests. He says if he or his wife wrote an exam that 69% of students failed, the shame would be on them or the tests, not the students.

The Néw York scores lack face validity.

Dyer says: “Does anyone really, I mean really, believe that more than 2 out of every 3 children in New York State are failing? Or that only 5% of some subsets pass? Or that the schools in New York State (which consistently rank pretty well in EdWeek’s rankings) are really that bad?”

And he adds: “High standards don’t mean that more than 2 out of 3 kids have to fail. High standards and normal test scores are perfectly compatible.”

Maybe, he suggests the problem is the tests, not the kids.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Jersey Jazzman Explains NY’s Triple Lindy Testing Mess

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
14

Remember when teachers wrote the tests for their students to determine way they knew and what they needed to study again? Remember when testing was feedback intended to inform instruction?

It’s all over!

Jersey Jazzman explains the crazy way that Néw York state decided to grade the tests.

Only a mad psychometricians would come up with a process so convoluted. It’s a triple Lindy. Maybe a quadruple Libdy. It’s dazzling. It’s complex. It is totally insane.

And this mad process will determine whether teachers have a job or get fired, whether a school is closed.

Hats off to John King, our state commissioner, who sacrificed the lives of children and teachers to perfect this nutty scheme.

It may be punitive. It may be costly. It may be wrong.

But it is what John King wants. And whateverJohn King wants, the Regents say yes yes yes. After all, he taught in a charter school for three years.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing
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