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Texas State Board Member: Too Much Testing!

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2012 //
23

Thomas Ratliff was elected to the Texas State Board of Education in 2010. A Republican, he has emerged as one of the most eloquent and powerful voices for public education in the state. In this article, explains; Testing in Texas is out of control.

But wait: here is Sandy Kress, architect of the reviled NCLB, insisting that every child in Texas has the right to be tested with super frequency. Testing is the very foundation, it seems, of the state’s economy. without it, where would Texas be? Kress is now a lobbyist for Pearson, which won a five-year contract for almost $500 million from the state of Texas. The legislature found the testing money at the same time they cut the public schools’ budget by $5.4 Billion. That’s B for Billions.

Sara Stevenson, a librarian at O. Henry Middle School in Austin, sent the following letter to the editor in response to Kress’s spirited defense of standardized testing:

“Surprise, surprise. Sandy Kress, a current lobbyist for Pearson, the
British testing company with a $468,000,000 five year contract with
Texas, argues in favor of the new tests. He believes that these new
tests will guarantee the state’s constitutional responsibilities for
“a general diffusion of knowledge” among the population. But Article 7
of the Texas constitution is more specific. It calls for the “support
and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

“Article 7 is about the state’s obligation to support public schools,
not to test them. Texas did not meet this standard when it cut 5.4
billion dollars for public education in the current biennium. Texas
successfully educated its citizens for over a century without these
increasingly onerous, standardized tests.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing, Texas

Stephen Krashen: Our PISA Scores are Just Right

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2012 //
8

Stephen Krashen is an expert on linguistics and literacy. He read Arthur Levine’s scathing criticism of US test scores on the PISA exam and decided to do his own analysis. He decided Levine was far too negative.

Krashen decided that: “the US does quite well, controlling for SES. And maybe American scores are ‘just right.'”

He writes:

“In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Levine discusses the performance of high socio-economic status (SES) students on the PISA math examination, thus controlling for the effect of poverty (the PISA is an exam given to 15 year olds in countries throughout the world). Levine concludes that high social class American students fall in “the middle of the pack” in PISA mathematics.

“Levine’s definition of high social class was having at least one parent with a college education. After reading Levine’s article, I decided to do my own analysis. I used a different measure of SES: the PISA index of economics, social and cultural status. I looked at reading scores for students in 66 countries who were at the 75th percentile of this measure, in other words the upper quarter of socio-economic status.

“According to my calculations, students in only 12 “countries and economies” scored significantly higher than American students on PISA reading and students in 44 “countries and economies” had significantly lower scores. Levine says the US scored in the “middle of pack” in math. Controlling for poverty, they certainly did not score in the middle of the pack in reading but were well within the upper quarter. (See note 1 below; I was unable to find the data necessary to do an analysis of mathematics scores controlling for SES in this way.)

“Yong Zhao of the University of Oregon has reported that countries that score high on international tests score low on measures of “perceived entrepreneurial capabilities.” This result is consistent with research cited by D. K. Simonton in his book Genius, Creativity and Leadership: an optimal amount of formal education is best for creative accomplishment in science and the arts and humanities – not too much and not too little. Simonton also concludes that that those who achieve high scholastic honors do not always attain eminence in their work.

“Maybe US scores are just right.”

Note 1: American students scored 569 on the PISA reading test, with a standard error of 4.6. As mentioned, 12 “countries and economies” scored significantly higher (i.e. their scores fell outside the 95% confidence interval around the US’ score, 560 to 578).

Of the 12 scoring higher than the US, several were not countries. Shanghai is a city, with 23 million people, about 1.5% of the population of China and is a clear outlier: Even Shanghai students in the lowest quartile in socio-economic status scored 500, close to the overall average for all OECD countries.

Singapore is considered a “city-state” and has a population of five million. Hong Kong is a “special administrative region (SAR)” of China with a population of seven million. Both Singapore and Hong Kong have fewer people than Los Angeles County, states of Michigan or Georgia, all around 10 million.

Thus, only nine actual countries did better than the US. Note also that other countries doing better than the US also have small populations: Finland, 5.5 million, New Zealand, 4.5 million, and Belgium, 11 million.

Sources:

Levine, A. 2012. The Suburban Education Gap. Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2012.

Simonton, D.K. 1984. Genius, Creativity and Leadership. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

PISA 2009. Overcoming Social Background. Programme for International Student Assessment. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2009/pisa2009resultsovercomingsocialbackgroundequityinlearningopportunitiesandoutcomesvolumeii.htm

Zhao, Y. 2012. Flunking innovation and creativity. Phi Delta Kappan 94 (1): 56-60.

The scores: (from: Table 11.1.1, PISA 2009, p. 152).

Shanghai
613 (2.8)
Finland
597 (2.2)
Singapore
597 (2.1)
New Zealand
595 (2.8)
Korea
595 (3.4)
Hong Kong
592 (2.5)
Japan
590 (3.0)
Canada
588 (1.7)
Australia
584 (2.7)
Belgium
583 (2.2)
Netherlands
575 (5.4)
France
572 (4.0)
Switzerland
569 (3.0)
USA
569 (4.6)
Norway
568 (2.9)
Germany
567 (2.8)
Iceland
567 (2.0)
Poland
565.(3.2)
Sweden
565 (3.2)
Ireland
562 (2.8)
UK
561 (3.2)
Liechtenstein
560 (4.5)
Estonia
559 (2.8)
Hungary
559 (3.6)
Italy
556 (1.7)
Taipei
555 (2.9)
Israel
554 (3.4)
Denmark
554 (2.8)
Portugal
551 (3.4)
Greece
550 (3.1)
Slovenia
550 (1.7)
Luxembourg
547 (1,7)
Austria
545 (3.3)
Czech Rep
545 (3.3)
Austria
545 (3.3)
Czech Rep
545 (3.3)
Slovak Rep
543 (2.7)
Spain
543.(2.0)
Latvia
541 (3.3)
Leichtenstein
541 (3.3)
Macao-China
540 (1.4)
Croatia
539 (3.1)
Dubai
536 (2.4)
Lithuania
530 (3.1)
Turkey
522 (4.5)
Russian Fed.
519 (3.2)
Bulgaria
512 (6.5)
Serbia
501 (2.5)
Trinidad/Tobango
496 (2.3)
Uruguay
495 (3.1)
Romania
488 (4.7)
Mexico
485 (1.9)
Brazil
474 (3.9)
Argentina
473 (7.1)
Columbia
473 (3.9)
Thailand
469 (2.6)
Indonesia
468 (3.5)
Tunisia
462 (3.4)
Albania
458 (4.8)
Kazakstan
452 (4.2)
Qatar
450 (1.4)
Indonesia
447 (4.6)
Peru
437 (5.2)
Panama
436 (7.7)
Azerbaijan
413 (4.0)
Kyrgystan
377 (4.2)

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

Setting Schools Up to Fail

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2012 //
14

A teacher in California writes:

I am just about finished with your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and as a public high school teacher of 22 years, I would like to thank you for your eloquent defense of public education. My wife is also a public school teacher, and we have made it a point to send our two sons to our neighborhood public schools. This means that as teachers and parents we have been eyewitnesses to the injustices that are being done to public schools in the name of “reform.”

A particularly egregious story comes from our sons’ elementary school, Toyon Elementary, in San Jose, California. The school was designated Program Improvement under the terms of NCLB some years ago, and struggled hard to escape the designation. This is not an easy thing to do: the school where I teach is also laboring under the PI designation (and stigma), and my experience suggests that it’s a bit like quicksand: the more you struggle to get out, the more you get sucked in.

Still, through hard work and determination and no small amount of heroism on the part of its teachers, Toyon Elementary managed to escape the quicksand of Program Improvement a couple of years ago. It was a wonderful thing to see. We likely disagree on this, but I believe that the shortcomings in NCLB are no mere design flaws, but in fact a very conscious attempt to destroy the public schools. So to see a school actually beat the devil that is NCLB was for us a sight to behold.

But soon after the school got out of PI, we received a letter informing us that Toyon was now designated “Low Performing,” under the terms of Race to the Top. It seems that the effort of some in our state to qualify for Race to the Top funds–particularly state senator Gloria Romero–had given us and our children whole new categories under which to be called “failures.”

So there you have it: public schools in this era are not even allowed to take satisfaction in their success–especially success as defined by their adversaries. Since its true goal is annihilation of the public schools, the beast of reform will not countenance even the slightest defeat; in such an emergency, it will merely change the rules and declare victory.

Sincerely,
Martin Brandt

Categories California, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

What Do U.S. Schools Spend on Testing?

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2012 //
8

Brookings researcher Matthew Chingos estimates the annual cost of testing as $1.7 billion, but Anthony Cody says that is a very low estimate.

Since Texas alone pays $100 million every year to Pearson, it does sound like an underestimate, since the cost of the tests doesn’t really cover all the costs of assessment (and accountability).

Nor does it cover the cost of lost creativity, lost instructional time, and diversion of attention from more important educational outcomes than test scores.

When Texas former state commissioner of education Robert Scott said that testing had become “the heart of the vampire” and that it was all about money, not about education, it was not just the dollar cost to which he was referring.

For having spoken what educators believe about the current testing fanaticism, Scott is no longer state commissioner of education.

Testing has many costs other than paying for the product.

 

Categories Testing

Reasons for Hope: The Pushback

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2012 //
31

We are all aware of the destructive policies that are being pushed into the schools, despite any evidence for their value and considerable evidence that they do harm.

The good news is that parents and educators are pushing back, in city after city and state after state. The resistance to overtesting, to attacks on educators, and to privatization is growing, as Mark Naison reports here

Next year, it will blossom and grow.

If you are part of a grassroots group supporting your public schools, please send me the name of your group and website.

We will continue the pushback.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Pre-K, Privatization, Race to the Top, Supporting public schools, Testing

Jersey Jazzman and a Generation of Mendacity

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2012 //
3

Jersey Jazzman has his plate full just trying to keep up with the nonsense and prevarication now tumbling from the mouths of reformers. . In this post, he corrects a self-proclaimed member of “the new majority,” who wrote in the Washington Post that young teachers are just itching to be judged by the test scores of their students.

He belongs to a Gates-funded group of young teachers who glory in the idea that teachers with less than 10 years experience are “the new majority.” Gates drops a million or more on groups like this who push the unions to endorse Gates’ ideas.

The young fellow corrected here by the Jazzman chastises the Chicago Teachers Union for striking for more pay and tenure, but that’s not why they struck. He might start by getting his facts straight. JJ offers him help.

He might read this to learn more about why 90% of his brothers and sisters in Chicago authorized a strike. That is, 90% of all the CTU members voted to strike, and they were 98% of all those who cast a ballot. Surely, some of that number were young teachers too.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

Gates Assists Jindal “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2012 //
16

The Jindal reforms of 2012 are among the most hostile to teachers of any legislation passed in recent years. Under the terms of the law, every teacher’s job hinges on student test scores, which count for 50% of the teacher’s evaluation.

As readers of this blog know, the Jindal reforms are hostile not only to teachers but to public education, in that more than half the students in the state are eligible for vouchers, and dozens if not hundreds of charters will open, draining resources from public education.

Why would anyone outside the fringes of the far-right facilitate this bold attack on a democratic institution?

The Gates Foundation has just awarded $300,000 to Jefferson Parish to assist in implementing test-based accountability for teachers.

When I met with a very high-ranking official of the Gates Foundation last year, he insisted that the foundation was not supportive of high-stakes testing. I think there is a disconnect here. The foundation is helping a district implement a law that promises to fire teachers based on the test scores of their students.

The same is true in Florida, where a Republican legislature passed legislation that stripped away all job protections from teachers and tied their future to test scores. Hillsborough County in Florida is one of the Gates Foundation’s major teacher evaluation sites.

I wonder: how many years must we wait before we see “a great teacher” in every classroom in those sites that take the advice of the Gates Foundation?

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

NYC’s Meaningless High School Report Cards

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2012 //
8

Gary Rubinstein has produced a stunning analysis of New York City’s high school report cards, its so-called progress reports.

He asks: “Why does the ‘worst’ NYC high school have higher SAT scores than the ‘best’ one?”

This is what Gary found: the SAT scores of the city’s highest-rated high school are lower than those of its lowest-rated school.

Read that again.

Maybe you don’t think much of SAT scores. But then look at those report cards again, and you will see some very unimpressive high schools–by any measure–ranked far above the city’s top high schools.

What a fraud these report cards are.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, NYC, Testing

Wireless Generation Wins Common Core Contract

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2012 //
27

From NYC Parent blog (by Leonie Haimson):

Wireless Generation, owned by Murdoch/run by Joel Klein, Wins the $4.9M Contract to develop the software that will be used to report & analyze results for the new #CommonCore Assessments – both the interim and “summative” exams being developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium for 25 states (blue states in map below.)

Wireless is also developing the software/ infrastructure for the Gates-funded Shared Learning Collaborative, which is collecting confidential student & teacher data in states throughout the country, including NYS, & planning to turn this information over to for-profit commercial ventures, without parental consent, to help companies develop and market their “learning products.” The information will include among other things, names, addresses, grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, and learning disability status.

The SLC has now named a new CEO, Iwan Streichenberger, who is going to direct SLC’s transition from a project to a nonprofit enterprise; to “ manage the technology and related services.”

Streichenberger was formerly the Chief Marketing Officer of a for-profit company called Promethean, where he was “responsible for product development, marketing, and sales strategy for the education technology company’s newest division.

He says he will “look forward to telling the story about the transformative technology we are building and how we are working with our industry partners to help education technology achieve its potential for students” and will be speaking about this at the SXSW Edu conference in Austin Texas March 4-7.

Here we go.

http://shar.es/6uSxE

Wireless Generation Wins Contract for Common Assessments

By Jason Tomassini on November 29, 2012 12:00 PM | No comments

As the two consortia developing assessments around the Common Core State Standards move closer to the tests’ adoption, for the 2014-15 school year, they are starting to award contracts that will shape how the assessments look and operate. On Wednesday, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium announced that the software used to report and analyze results from its assessments will be developed by Wireless Generation, the education software company.

Wireless Generation will partner with Educational Testing Service (ETS) on the contract. The terms of the contract were not disclosed, but the Request for Proposal stipulated the project could not exceed $4.9 million. Smarter Balanced’s projects are funded through a four-year, $175 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The reporting system will be used for the common assessments students will take in Smarter Balanced’s 25 member states (you can view those states in the map below). The system will collect data from interim and summative assessments given to students and also track their progress toward college and career readiness, as determined by the individual standards. The data will be available to administrators and teachers as well as parents, according to a news release from Smarter Balanced. Schoolwide and districtwide reports will also be available.

The entire system will be open source, which means other computer programmers can build applications using the software’s source code. For instance, Moodle is an open source learning management platform that is used as the framework for companies like Moodlerooms.

Early next year, the public will have a chance to provide input on the system requirements. You can read the Request for Proposal here, and Wireless Generation’s winning proposal here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Some important notes regarding Wireless Generation. News Corporation, the international media conglomerate implicated in a widespread phone hacking scandal last year, owns 90 percent of Wireless Generation, which is part of the company’s new Amplify education business. Since the acquisition, for $360 million in November 2010, concerns over possible connections between Wireless Generation’s data operations and its parent company have arose. In response, Wireless Generation has pointed out that its data operations are independent from News Corp. and the company has always complied with the many laws governing student data, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. In August 2011, the company did lose a $27 million contract to develop assessment tracking software for New York state education department because of the scandal embroiling News Corp.’s newspaper division.

(Larry Berger, a co-founder and executive chairman of Wireless Generation, serves on the board of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week.)

In somewhat related news, the Brown Center on Education Policy, at the Brookings Institution, released a report Wednesday on the cost of state assessments around the country, including a recommendation for states to join testing consortia in order to lower costs. Read more about it here.

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director

Class Size Matters

124 Waverly Pl.

New York, NY 10011

212-674-7320

leonie@classsizematters.org

http://www.classsizematters.org

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson

Follow me on twitter @leoniehaimson

Make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!

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Categories Common Core, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Klein, Joel, Race to the Top, Testing

Jeb Bush: Testing and Privatization Are the Right Path

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2012 //
8

Jeb Bush recognized at his summit meeting that the policies he champions were soundly rebuffed by voters in Indiana (and did he mention Idaho?).

But he assures his rightwing allies that testing, evaluating teachers by student scores, vouchers and charters are the right course, even if educators, parents, and other citizens don’t agree. He apparently compared himself to Lyndon Baines Johnson, fighting to push civil rights legislation when it was unpopular.

Someone should inform him that he is fighting to preserve a failed status quo, not a struggling dissident movement. Someone should tell him that NCLB is federal law and that its ugly step-child Race to the Top bribed the states to double down on the punitive strategies of NCLB.

His lament of “stay the course” is very good news indeed. It is a public admission that the privatizers know they have no popular base.

Their strategies have failed for more than a decade.

When do they admit to themselves that it’s over?

At some point, they will stop pouring money into a losing and unpopular cause.

That’s the day when we can begin to build a genuine movement to improve our schools.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), On-Line Education, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Technology, Computers, Testing, US Education, Vouchers
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