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‘Twas the Night Before Testing

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2012 //
3

Fred Smith worked for many years for the New York City Board of Education as a testing expert. Now he is a watchdog to guard against the misuse of tests. He writes opinion pieces and advises parent groups about the excesses of the testing industry. For non-New York City folk, Tisch is Merryl Tisch, the head of the New York State Board of Regents, which never sees the harm in adding more tests. The Tweed Courthouse is the building that houses the leaders of the NYC Department of Education. Klein is Joel Klein, former chancellor of the schools. Walcott is Dennis Walcott, current chancellor. Polakow-Suransky is the deputy chancellor, once a progressive, who now oversees the city’s obsessive testing regime and answers very question with the promise that the Common Core will bring Utopia and an end to all concerns.

The Night Before…

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the state

Tisch was telling the Regents that she couldn’t wait.

The new year was coming, surely bringing the best;

Every school overflowing with test after test.

The Common Core Standards would arrive any day,

Educational nirvana was well on its way.

And in the Tweed Courthouse joy was also in season.

Tests, yet more tests on top of tests were the reason.

Dasher Klein passed the torch to Walcott, the Dancer;

Year-round testing, K-12 was the obvious answer.

On Bloomberg’s A team was no reindeer named Cupid,

But Polakow-Suransky was left to play stupid,

Explaining how tests were mere all-purpose tools

For holding back kids, judging teachers and schools:

If test prep and drilling took the entire school day,

Such a sacrifice was but a small price to pay.

If History was lost and Music and Art,

Well, you know everybody has to do their part.

If kids are nervous and are sick or are stressed,

That’s kinda sad, but the state and Fed say we must test.

When tests make special need and ELL kids feel dumb and sob,

Again, blame the Fed, we’re only doing our job.

If teachers feel pressured and are tempted to cheat,

We’re sure that’s so rare it’s not worth a tweet.

When teachers are rated by tests that won’t let them teach,

Hmm. I’ll get back to you soon. That’s not part of my speech.

If teachers don’t add value and their names make the press,

I really don’t like that either, I must confess.

When teachers quit because they can’t stand the grinding,

We’ve not done a survey that proves what you’re finding.

And so on and so forth on this Christmas Eve.

Here’s a list to check twice of things I believe:

If children come first, then parents come second.

That’s a clear truth that never gets to be reckoned.

So Albany and Tweed, you must let in the sun;

You and the privateers are not Number 1.

And that goes for Pearson and all of the charters;

We’ll call you if we need you! How’s that for starters.

Don’t keep parents in the dark about testing you’ve planned.

And spring tests on our children with your high hand.

Inform us of field tests and all other exams;

We’re not here to be led around like little lambs.

Let us decide to opt out or give our consent,

If we think taking these tests is time that’s well spent.

Be sure to assess what’s important to measure,

The work kids can do and the growth that we treasure.

Not the bubble sheet tests sold by grubby green vendors

To the grinches on Tweed Street—education’s pretenders.

That’s the kind of New Year that I hope will be seen;

Merry Christmas to all and Happy 2013.

~fred

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

Kudos for Superintendent Joshua Starr

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2012 //
9

Joshua Starr is superintendent of the Montgomery County public schools. He has stepped forward as an outspoken critic of standardized testing. He is emerging as a national voice against the national obsession with testing, ranking and rating students, teachers and schools. He has a different agenda: education. He recently was criticized for failing to follow the lead of ex-superintendents Rhee, Klein and Brizard, none of whom has a record of success.

Here, Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, expresses support for Starr.

Starr is working with Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., superintendent Heath Morrison to counteract the failed national agenda of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Categories Education Reform, Testing

How Test Errors Prevented Students from Graduating

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2012 //
15

A post on the NYC Parents Blog tells the sad story of a middle-school student who was not allowed to graduate with her class because she had supposedly failed the ELA exam. She was an honor student, and it made no sense, but the NYC Department of Education was adamant. The tests don’t lie, do they?

When her class walked across the stage to pick up their diplomas, she was not among them. She felt awful.

Except the tests were wrong. She had not failed the test. There was a mistake. She did pass the test. So many weeks after the graduation, she was able to report to the school and pick up her diploma, like picking up a letter, not like walking across the stage with her classmates in a meaningful ceremony.

And she was not the only victim of the mistake. Thousands of students like her were denied their diploma because of a testing error.

Why do we let fallible machines govern our lives? Why have we become so hostile to human judgment? Surely her teachers knew that she deserved to graduate. Yet we let the machines, which may be more error-prone than mere humans, destroy the lives of children.

Categories Students, Testing

Edweek Questions Finnish Success

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2012 //
14

Education Week reports that there was no significant difference between the performance of eighth grade students in Finland and the US in mathematics on the TIMSS.

Four American states had higher scores in eighth grade mathematics on TIMSS than Finland: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Indiana.

This is not what you hear in the media, nor what you hear from the corporate reformers in these states, who are still crying wolf about the “crisis” in public education and the need to turn public schools over to private management as soon as possible.

Finland excels on the PISA exams, which tests have students use their learning to solve real-life problems. The TIMSS exams are aligned with the curriculum. Take your pick.

As I have written before and will write again, we should forget the horse race.

Once a nation reaches a certain level of economic and social development, the test scores predict nothing and are of far less importance than income inequality, poverty, and the physical and mental health of its people.

Categories International, Testing

Burris: NY Regents Plan Promotes Tracking

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2012 //
43

Carol Burris is the principal of an outstanding high school on Long Island in New York. She is a leader of the principals’ group opposing the new state evaluation system.

This post includes her recent letter to the Regents in opposition to a new diploma program that she fears will encourage tracking. Her own high school has no tracking and she explains why it is a bad idea.

Categories Accountability, New York, Students, Testing

On TIMSS: Black Students in Mass. Do as Well as Finland!

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2012 //
11

The Daily Howler is all over the media for its sour reporting about the latest international test (TIMSS). He finds that they reverted to their “doom and gloom” scenario without bothering to dig into the data.

He dug into the data and found lots to cheer about.

In this post, Bob Somerby parses the data and discovers that black students in Massachusetts did as well as students in Finland on the eighth grade math test.

Surely that is newsworthy, isn’t it? I mean, if the media wants to find headlines, this ought to be one. But it was not, because they can’t break free of their customary lens.

Hello, New York Times! Hello, newspaper of record!

Categories International, Testing

What the Media Didn’t Tell You About Latest International Tests

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2012 //
8

Bob Somerby, taught for many years in the Baltimore public schools. His blog The Daily Howler offers a fearless critique of media coverage of critical events.

His post on the latest international assessments (TIMSS) and the media’s decision tiresome putdown of American students is a classic.

He points out that on the math portions of the TIMSS tests, US students performed about the same as their peers in Finland. On the eighth grade TIMSS math tests, American students in several states outperformed Finland.

This should have been major news, in light of the constant ballyhoo about how poorly U.S. students have been doing for years on international tests. Decrying American student performance is the reformers’ trump card.

But instead of pointing to the real news, most papers told the same old story, which they might as well have written 20 years ago: “US Lags…”

At least a few thoughtful testing experts (Yong Zhao, Pasi Sahlberg, Keith Baker) recognize that the international horse race is nonsensical.

Once a nation reaches a certain level of development, the scores don’t tell you much about the national system or about the future of the economy.

Not everyone can be first. And it really doesn’t matter who is first.

Perhaps we should look at other metrics as more important, for example, what proportion of children are healthy? What proportion live in poverty? What proportion have access to high-quality preschool?

 

 

 

Categories International, Testing

A Terrific New Teacher Blogger

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2012 //
7

Here is someone you should follow.

In a recent post, this teacher writes:

In order to forestall state-takeover, our district is scrambling to find ways to make “substantial improvement.” By improvement, of course we mean in our MCAS scores. One way we are responding is to get a private company called “Achievement Net” or “A-Net” to help us administer standardized tests throughout the year, which are “tailored” for our curriculum. We put an entire grade into lockdown mode, administer the test, and send the bubble sheets off to be corrected. They come back with lots of statistics and forms to fill out. Every student will do this a total of 12 times this year. We spend hours poring over the results, breaking kids into daily half-hour pull-out groups, filling out A-Net forms handed to us that have questions like, “Today I will _ to make sure my students understand the material,” or “Today I will reteach _ to make sure my students understand the concept of_.”

Bottom line: more money intended for instruction diverted to the booming Edubusiness.

Categories Accountability, Massachusetts, Testing

Governor Perry: Won’t Back Down on Guns

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2012 //
12

Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a gathering of Tea Party faithful that he felt bad about what happened in Connecticut but warned that people should not have a “knee-jerk reaction” by trying to restrict guns. he made clear that Texas had no intention on changing its gun laws, which allow a person with a license to carry a handgun anywhere in the state.

The meeting was picketed by 30 members of the Save Texas Schools group protesting the cuts of $5.4 billion in state funding in the last legislative session.

In the new session this coming spring, the Legislature plans to restore some cuts but will increase the burden of testing and will take up vouchers.

Save Texas Schools plans a massive rally at the state Capitol in Austin on February 23.

I will be there to speak as will the great Texas superintendent John Kuhn.

If you care about public education in Texas, please join us.

Categories Connecticut, Testing, Texas, Vouchers

A Member of NY Regents: Are We Asking the Right Questions?

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2012 //
11

For the past year and more, the New York State Board of Regents has spent a huge proportion of its time designing and debating a test-based educator evaluation system. The system was developed by AIR (American Institutes for Research) and has been criticized as inaccurate by Bruce Baker, who says that even AIR recognizes how flawed the system is. Yet Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Tisch say “full speed ahead.”

Regent Roger Tilles, who represents Long Island on the state Board of Regents, wrote the following letter and distributed it to many people. He asks the right questions:

Last Thursday, Chancellor Tisch and I had a chance to tour some of the schools most affected by Hurricane Sandy. We met with teachers, principals and superintendents, hearing stories of how teachers, many of whom had lost their own homes, had gone door to door in an effort to determine where their students were living and trying to insure that their one constant, their school, would continue as best it could.

 

Friday, we were all witnesses to the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. As the story unfolded, we learned of the selfless devotion of the teachers and administrators, putting themselves in danger while trying to protect their students, their children.

 

In trying to put these events in a context that we, as policymakers must try to do, I asked myself these questions:

1.      What kind of algorithm measures the kind of devotion that we saw and I am sure we would see in crisis after crisis in all of our schools?

2.      How do you establish a pre- and post-test for the kind of personal responsibility that these professionals demonstrated?

3.      How do we measure the trust that these children and their parents have placed in us as educators “in loco parentis”?

4.      What kind of virtual teacher would be able to foster the communication needed to create a trusting atmosphere where learning can take place?

 

Let us remember these questions as we are asked to develop policies that insure the future of our children and our country.

Roger Tilles, Member

New York State Board of Regents

Categories Accountability, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing
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