Jose Banda, the Seattle superintendent of schools, will not discipline the Garfield High School teachers who boycotted the MAP tests as a waste of time and resources. He urged them to resume work as usual. They were heard, he said.
This was a wise decision.
Congratulations to the Garfield teachers for your courage and unity!
For a full copy of Superintendent Banda’s statement, and a critical assessment of the story, see the report here.
Arthur Camins has written numerous thoughtful essays about the current ruinous trends in American education.
Here he reflects on some important lessons from the Atlanta cheating scandal.
He writes:
“I’m waiting for the national editorials, leading policy makers and major foundations to speak out honestly about the lessons learned from the Atlanta cheating scandal. I’m waiting for them to change course. But, I am not holding my breath.
“From Enron to Arthur Anderson to the sub-prime lending debacle we have unambiguous evidence of a lethal combination. Unquestioned hierarchy, the arrogance of power and a singular focus on short-term metrics yield no integrity and subsequent cheating. When fear and financial rewards are combined honesty is lost.
“Cheating, especially of the erasure kind, is not new and was certainly known to Beverly Hall. Back in the 1990’s, when she was rising through the ranks, I worked as a District Science Coordinator in New York City. One day during the annual spring testing period we were summoned to the District Office and sent out to proctor testing in the classrooms of teachers who had been identified by the Central Board’s testing division as having an unusually high percentage of erasure marks on previous tests. The pressure was high then even without the threat of job loss or the promise of bonuses. Even then, there was no “speaking truth to power.”
“I was struck in the reporting this morning that Beverly Hall’s reign in Atlanta was characterized by fear. In the end, it is the absence of democracy, the primacy of bureaucracies over learning organizations that allows and encourages cheating. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov from one of his Foundation Trilogy novels, “Despotism is the last refuge of the incompetent.” I think some people rise to power for many reasons and at a certain point realize they really don’t have answers, but do not have the courage to admit it either to themselves or others. That’s when the cover up and self-righteousness take over.”
Arthur
Bedford Central Superintendent Jere Hochman poses the inevitable questions:
How did we let this happen?
Could we have stopped it?
What can we do now?
It must end. It will end. What is happening in education today is nothing less than educational malpractice. It is not education. It is bad for students.
Hochman writes:
Absolutely no excuse for cheating, threatening teachers, and the culture of lying.
But where were we in 2002 when NCLB was passed unnoticed under the shadow of 9/11? Why did those of us writing and criticizing the testing movement not press harder? Where were the professional organizations (NCTE, NCSS, NCTM …)? Why did we allow Mr. Obama to drink the Kool-aid left on the DOE table? Why didn’t we expose the Michelle Rhee’s, the quick fix reformers, and charter scammers when we saw what was happening Why did we allow our state legislators to fall into line so they could get re-elected based on test score results (or criticize the other guy for not getting them)?
Atrocities in history raise two questions: 1) How in the world could anyone be so evil, so toxic, so driven that such atrocities occurred? 2) Where were the bystanders and how could they let it occur?
Occupy DOE, keep writing, and then let us all make 2013-2014 be the year the professionals and parents took back public education.
By now, everyone has been duly warned that the new Common Core tests will be “harder.”
The passing rates are expected to drop by 30%.
Advocates of privatization are excited and hoping the bad news will encourage parents to abandon their community schools.
Entrepreneurs are poised to sell stuff when everyone is desperate for the latest new thing.
But what about the kids?
This teacher describes what she sees in her classes: fear.
“I have been chatting with my classes explaining that we expect the tests to be tougher and that we are taking our best guesses as to how to best prepare them. They (6th graders) have looked at me incredulously and asked, “You mean you don’t know what is going to be on the test?” I have used the “good, better, best” terminology this year to help them ramp up the rigor in vocabulary, reading, and their writing. I replied, “I expect higher than “best”….(for the level they can be prepared for). They looked stricken. They expect me to know and to be able to help them prepare. I know in my heart they think I am letting them down. I have never been a teach to the test teacher. I am flummoxed by this unbelievable plan of teacher destruction.
“What has been completely lost in all of this is the students. They are going to have to sit and struggle with these Ela tests for three days knowing by the end of the first day that they are not doing very well. Imagine what this will feel like to our plucky special education students whom we have supported throughout the year. Or, how about the ESOL kids who are valiantly interpreting every thing they read in a second language. Their reward? They will do the same the following week for the math tests. Highly regarded teachers have been in tears trying to understand how to convey very abstract mathematical concepts to our concrete thinking 6th graders. Rigor is important but not at the expense of known developmental benchmarks. The sample sent out by the State Ed. Dept. for Ela had reading passages at levels more than four or five years higher than our middle schoolers read.
“Who said yes to this? Who said yes?! And even more importantly, how will this end?”
Barbara Stam describes what passes for “reform” as “the rich folks hoax.”
The hoax is the idea that constant testing and test prep improves education.
This is a hoax.
It is not for their children.
But it is good enough for other people’s children.
So what if the teachers of art and music and PE lose their jobs?
Someone else can do it, even though it is not their subject.
It is good enough for other people’s children.
One of the most adamant critics of the Texas legislation to reduce the number of tests that students must take to graduate happens to own franchises for Sylvan Learning Centers, which offer test preparation and tutoring.
Was it a conflict of interest? No, he said, everybody votes on things that affect their self-interest.
He was just concerned about keeping standards high.
In Texas, that is known as “bidness as usual.”
According to the story in the New York Times, the schools in Atlanta where the scores soared lost federal aid for struggling learners. One school where cheating is alleged lost $750,000 that could have been used for reduced class size and to provide enrichment classes and tutoring. And that was only one school among many.
The rise in scores gained Beverly Hall a bonus of $500,000.
That must be one of the strategies that the Atlanta school board learned when they received training by the Broad Foundation about reaching targets and using incentives to succeed.
Remember the stories about the “New York City miracle”? That’s when the passing rates went up so fast and so high that very few children were eligible for extra tutoring. When the state revealed in 2010 that the state scoring was defective, the “miracle” disappeared. But the children never got the extra help that they needed as officials crowed about “their” accomplishments. NYC even won the Broad prize in 2007 for its vastly inflated test scores. The prize was announced just a few weeks before NAEP reported that NYC had made no gains at all.
I posted earlier today a letter from a parent to a high-level NYC official, complaining about the city’s threat to cut the school’s funding if too many children opted out of state testing.
What do you think the official replied: we must follow the law. We must do as we are told.
Don’t you long to hear a governor or mayor or superintendent say to the parent: You are right. The law is idiotic. We will join you in a mass action of civil disobedience.
Don’t expect to hear it from anyone who works for the testing-obsessed Bloomberg administration. This is a mayor who has used his autocratic control to close more than 140 public schools based on their test scores. Without those scores, he would not know what to do next.
Here is the response from Shael Polansky to Jeff Nichols:
Jeff, the State Education Department has issued guidance that all eligible students are expected to participate; there is no formal provision allowing parents to opt their students out of State tests. The State also requires that all students in attendance during test administration are given the opportunity to take the exam.
With respect to the federal rule on participation – this is something that is out of our control – the application of this rule is governed by federal law and only impacts state accountability designations.
That said, any consequences that flow from being designated as a Priority or Focus school by New York State are within our purview and we carefully look at all the quantitative data as well as the qualitative information we have about the school. The purpose of this review is to come to a decision on the best way to improve the school. I can’t imagine a good school being penalized on our watch solely because they didn’t meet AYP as a result of the 95 percent participation rule.
Last year, there weren’t many students who opted out of the exams, approximately one hundred students out of several hundred thousand, and in these cases parents kept students at home.
For promotion purposes in NYC, we always use a combination of exams and student portfolios so students who miss exams for any reason can be considered for promotion based on a rigorous assessment of a portfolio of their work.
The larger issue you are raising though is about the quality of the exams and how they impact teaching and learning in our schools. I would agree that historically our state exams have not done a good enough job measuring the deeper skills of critical thinking and problem solving. This is beginning to change, partially in response to concerns that both parents and educators have raised.
I would welcome the opportunity to continue this important dialogue in person as I don’t think the exams are going away, but I do believe we can work together to strengthen them and ensure the information they generate is used in a thoughtful and balanced way.
Best, Shael
Last year, Jeff Nichols and his wife Ann Stone wrote an article that appeared in the New York Times about taking the “practice” version of the third-grade English language arts test. The test was sent home with one of their children as “vacation homework,” an oxymoron in itself.
Both college professors, they did it for fun with two friends. All have Ph.D.s. they couldn’t agree on the right answers and concluded the test was ridiculous. They became activists in the opt-out movement.
Recently, Jeff wrote a high-ranking official at the New York City Department of Education to inform him that his children will not be taking the tests this spring. The official (who was once an anti-testing activist when he was a teacher long ago) replied that parents have the right to t out but their school may be punished if the participation rate falls below 95%. Is this not a profile in courage? By the way, there is no risk that anyone at the DOE will see this blog, because the computers are set to block all WordPress sites.
Jeff Nichols wrote this letter, which he sent to many others, including me:
“Dear Mr. Suransky,
“An email you recently sent to various CECs in the city affirms that families in New York City do have the right to substitute a portfolio assessment for the mandated state tests, yet seems to hold over those families the threat that such individual acts of conscience can cause adverse consequences for schools:
· State accountability: Under No Child Left Behind, New York State measures each school’s rate of participation in state tests. If 95% of a school or one or more of its subgroups of students (e.g. Hispanic students, students with disabilities, Limited English Proficient students) do not take the assessment, the school does not make Adequate Yearly Progress – which has funding and intervention consequences for schools.
I am just a parent with a child in the NYC public schools. That is my only standing to challenge this statement. But I believe if the era of “accountability” in which we find ourselves is to mean anything at all, then education officials must be held accountable to children and the parents who raise them. So I would appreciate a forthright answer to the following questions:
Is it not a distortion of the original intent of NCLB’s 95% rule to penalize schools, not because the schools are concealing low performance on the part of their students (by having their least capable students stay out of the testing in order to receive a more favorable rating by the state), but because parents who are deeply involved in and concerned about their children’s educations (and whose children therefore are, if anything, likely to perform well on state tests) are choosing to opt their children out of a regime of high-stakes testing that the best minds in education in our country have long since repudiated?
And if the actual effect of a federal law as upheld in our state is not only destructive to schools but also directly contrary to the original intent of that law, then why would you and your colleagues not seek all means to mitigate the situation? In my opinion, local education officials with decision-making authority should be exercising their powers to the utmost to prevent such unjustifiable and unintended consequences from being realized, rather than passing along to parents a passive, worst-case interpretation of the potential impact of this malfunctioning federal law on their children’s schools.
My wife and I will not be allowing our children to take state-mandated standardized tests until those tests are designed and implemented in a manner we regard as consistent with best educational practices. This is our constitutional right, and we do not appreciate the DOE’s continuing efforts to intimidate parents with threats against schools that, given the mayor’s policy of shuttering dozens of schools for no discernible reason other than low test scores, are all too credible. The opt out movement is not going away and it is time for city officials to treat those of us taking this conscientious and proactive step to better our children’s educations with the respect we deserve.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these questions.
Sincerely,
Jeff Nichols
father of: Xxx, grade 3, and Xxx, grade 4″
G.F. Brandenburg is a retired math teacher who has a habit of plain speaking and a math teacher’s ability to get right to the point. His ability to dissect false claims using data is almost unparalleled; I say “almost,” because another math teacher, Gary Rubinstein, is good at this too.
In this post, he asks whether today’s indictments in Atlanta might be followed by similar indictments in the District of Columbia.
This is the question that many readers have raised.
