Archives for category: Testing
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An Assessment Expert Explains What’s Wrong with Computer Adaptive Tests

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2013 //
6

Jem Muldoon has decided that it is time to speak and act. It is time to do what is right, not what is expedient. She wrote to tell me she has become an activist for education and will not follow orders that conflict with her knowledge and ethics. Hem is trying to find meaning and purpose at a time when public policy requires educators to do what they know is wrong.

She says, we are the ones we have been waiting for.

So she started a blog.

Here she explains how computer adaptive testing conflicts with genuine learning and is not even good testing. The kids quickly figure out how to game the system and turn it into a test of their ability to outwit the program. And here is no feedback about what they need to know.

Categories On-Line Education, Testing

NYC’s Biggest Tutoring Company Under Investigation

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2013 //
6

Ah, those private companies sure know how to do it right, don’t they?

In New York City, the city’s biggest provider of tutoring services is under investigation for inflated bills and other little financial issues. Since 2006, the company has collected $87 million from the city.

The tutoring company was founded in 2005 by a 22-year-old college graduate. The firm has been investigated and sanctioned for previous financial misbehavior but the city Department of Education, controlled by Mayor Bloomberg, awarded it a new contract last November. The City Comptroller refuses to honor the contract.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, New York City, Privatization, Testing

The Corporate Reform Movement Vs. Dr. MLK

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2013 //
1

Reader Mike Dixon commented on a post about Martin Luther King Jr.‘s definition of the purpose of education:

A cynical person might suspect that corporate education reform is intended to promote exactly what MLK warned about.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Testing

Is This the Broad Academy Playlist?

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2013 //
13

A reader offered this comment in response to the post about school closings in Sacramento:

A “Broad” superintendent who follows its “play-list” to “capture” the school board and privatize the district as much as possible:

– Convinced the board of education to turn all the power over to the superintendent.

– Keeps secret all the contracts and consultants hired by the superintendent. In fact, it’s been said that the latest consultant working with the superintendent was the principal of Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope H.S. None of this information can be found on the district’s web site. Even the organization chart with unfilled positions is dated July 2012.

– Consistently and knowingly breaches the contract to keep the union busy with grievances and court procedures.

– Whittles away at teacher tenure by creating a class of teachers in the district’s “priority schools” whose jobs are protected from last hired, first fired. (Yes, the union is
grieving this.)

– Increases class size to 30+ in all grades except those in “priority” schools.

– In “failing” schools the district insists on split grades rather than keeping class sizes
low.

– Forces remedial programs (more test prep on top of test prep) onto “failing” schools
without any input from the teachers and wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars on
consultants and test prep companies.

– Closes the neighborhood schools under the pretext that there are too few students in
the school. But in fact, it’s because they are “failing” (read: poverty and neglect.)

– “Allows” a private charter school to locate in the former “neighborhood ” school.

– Parents who want and need a neighborhood school drop out of the public school and send their kids to the charter.

– Pink slips for union teachers.

Categories Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Poverty, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

NYC: Better Than Buffalo?

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2013 //
1

Jersey Jazzman continues his series of posts in which he closely examines the record of Joel Klein’s tenure as chancellor. One of the claims of that era was: “Look at our scores. We are better than the upstate cities.”

Categories Klein, Joel, New York City, Testing

AFT Endorses Garfield Teachers’ Test Boycott

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2013 //
34

AFT Stands with Garfield High School Teachers

Washington—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued this message of support to Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers standing up against the use of high-stakes testing.

Dear Garfield High School Teachers:

Thank you. Thank you for taking a courageous stand against the fixation on high-stakes testing and its harmful impact on our ability to give our students the high-quality public education they deserve.

Your actions have propelled the national conversation on the impact of high-stakes testing. Every educator understands that appropriate assessments are an integral part of a high-quality education system. But an accountability system obsessed with measuring, which punishes teachers and schools, comes at a huge cost to children. This fixation on testing has narrowed our curriculums and deprived our students of art, music, gym and other subjects that enrich their minds and make learning fun. Teachers have been forced to spend too much time on test preparation and data collection, at the expense of more engaging instruction. Ironically, this fixation on high-stakes testing actually does the opposite of what its proponents tell us it will do.

Learning is more than a test score, and teaching and learning—not testing—should drive classroom instruction. We need to be focused on growing and nurturing the minds of our students—to ensure that they can think creatively and analytically. It’s no longer enough to teach kids to memorize a bunch of numbers and terms; they must think critically and be able to absorb and interpret knowledge. We must ensure that our children are able to not only dream their dreams but also achieve them. At the same time, we must prepare students for civic engagement and to value that we all have a collective responsibility to one another.

The AFT and tens of thousands of educators, parents and students stand with you in this effort. The AFT passed a resolution at our national convention last summer focused on rebalancing our national education priorities and ensuring that teaching and learning drive our education policies. And we are focused on uniting communities across the country around this issue.

Thank you for leading this conversation.

Randi Weingarten
AFT President

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions, Washington State

Will a Bar Exam Improve the Teaching Profession?

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2013 //
149

Randi Weingarten proposed a national bar exam for future teachers, and it stirred quite a reaction. Most worrisome is that the idea appeals to certain figures in the public eye who are known for making negative comments about teachers.

Some on this blog complained that Randi was echoing the corporate reformers’ complaint that teachers are the problem and must be blamed for the achievement gap, low scores, and every other issue.

But I’m inclined to agree with Randi that the profession needs higher entry standards or it will never get the respect it deserves.

One of the admirable aspects of Finnish education is that there are high standards for entry into teaching. Only 1 in 10 applicants is accepted into teacher education programs. Teachers have high prestige, as high as other professions. There is no Teach for Finland.

By contrast, many US states have low standards for entry into teaching and welcome teschers with little or no professional preparation. Growing numbers of teachers acquire their masters degree through dubious online “universities.”

I don’t think that a bar exam, by itself, will make much difference, although in the long run it may raise the prestige of the profession.

The question that must be faced is that any such exam is likely to have a disparate impact on minorities. The courts might even strike down an exam that excluded disproportionate numbers of black, Hispanic and Asian applicants. And there are unintended consequences; I am thinking of a story I read a year or two ago about a great music teacher, beloved by his students, who had to leave teaching because he could not pass the math section of the state test.

It’s always wise to look before you leap.

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. education

Why Garfield Teachers Boycotted the MAP Test

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2013 //
16

Jesse Hagopian a teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, explains why every teacher in the school voted to boycott the MAP test.

The teachers at Garfield are an inspiration to friends nd supporters of public education acros America.

They are champions of students, and they are already on the honor roll for their courage and heroism.

Categories Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Washington State

John White Is #1, And So Is Louisiana

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2013 //
9

Crazy Crawfish has a regular blog where he skewers the mighty, the powerful, the phonies, and the masters of data manipulation.

Like EduShyster, CC knows data, and he has humor. And he seems to know more about state school data–and the games people play–than most people.

Read this brilliantly witty report of John White’s statistical legerdemain.

So what if Education Week gave Louisiana an F for academic performance? Michelle Rhee placed it at the top.

Horace Mann wrote in one of his annual reports that it was dangerous to allow partisan politicians to get their hands on the schools. John White and Bobby Jindal remind us on a daily basis of Mann’s wisdom.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Testing

$50 Million. 3 Years. No Clue.

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2013 //
41

Gary Rubinstein, the brilliant math teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, has done it again.

He has dissected the Gates MET study–the one that says test scores are better at determining teacher quality than observations–and he says that the data in the study don’t make the point that has been widely reported.

Gene Glass, Research Professor at the University of Colorado, takes apart the MET study, and like Gary, says that the $50 million was a waste.

I wonder when Gates will abandon his mission to find the perfect metric to measure teacher quality. It isn’t working anywhere; it has perverse incentives; it is inaccurate and unreliable.  How long will he stick with this failed idea?

Just think how many musical instruments that $50 million would have bought, how many librarians could have been rehired, how many after-school programs might have been funded.

 

 

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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