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Pearsonizing Our Children

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2012 //
3

On Tuesday, I posted a blog at Bridging Differences (Education Week) called “The Pearsonizing of the American Mind.”

The title was a reference to Allan Bloom’s bestselling book of the 1980s, The Closing of the American Mind. His book referred to the insidious ways that popular culture interferes with the goals of liberal education. My article described the ways in which one giant corporation was taking control of the education “industry,” through testing, online instruction, ownership of the GED program, online charter schools, and proprietary control of instructional materials for the Common Core. Truly, the reach of Pearson across all of American education is astonishing.

As often happens, I got many wonderful comments. This one came from a regular reader who (from the moniker) is a chemistry teacher:

Yes, our focus has to be on the “locus of control”. Pearson and Gates goal in testing isn’t to improve education outcomes; it’s to increase market control. For corporate reformers, holding districts, schools, teachers and children (yes, children!) “accountable” means having the legal power to take control of them, and run them for their own purposes. Yes, we’ve politically given actual legal authority over our children’s minds to the same monopolists who crashed our finance system. The price isn’t just the damage of the testing, though. Now that they own our public schools, the corporatists have removed many unprofitable costs. Brick and mortar buildings, breathing teachers, playgrounds and libraries, are now all hopelessly out of the reach of many children. With the advent of the common core and the “revolution” of online delivery of proprietary learning materials, our children can sit home in front of a screen, not even moving around the room, and be assessed by computer programs aligned to the one true Core. We’ll have Pearsonized their minds, their lives, and their bodies. Here is one true example of the cost we contemplate: “She’s pretty typical. She is a very sedentary child, has been for a long time, really has no experience with activity, no way to think about being active. She’s relatively socially isolated, doesn’t really have very many social opportunities. She’s homeschooled. She has a number of medical problems, in addition to her diabetes.” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june12/diabetes_06-06.html

We must worry about what we are doing to our children, our society and our future as we drift along into a world we did not make and do not want.

Diane

Categories Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Pearson, Testing

Parents Vs. Goliath

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2012 //
3

This morning, parent groups in New York City are leading a protest against high-stakes testing at the headquarters of Pearson. They call their action “a field trip against field tests.” It happens to be a professional development day, so many parents plan to bring their children. Half a dozen different parent groups are coordinating their plans. Among other planned highlights of the demonstration, there will be a marching band!

They hope to inspire parents in other cities and across the nation.

The parents are demonstrating against the Pearson field tests that will be administered in schools across the city and the state this month, wasting another day of instruction to help develop test items for future tests. Pearson needs the field tests for its purposes but the parents don’t want to see more time spent on testing to prepare for more testing.

Yesterday parent activists discovered that Pearson had created a Facebook page called “Parents Kids & Testing.” They began bombarding the site with their comments, which disappeared as soon as they were posted. One parent wrote that her comment was still up, after thirty-six minutes, “maybe they are sleeping,” but soon wrote to say that it was gone. Soon there was a contest to rename the Pearson Facebook page, and one suggestion was “The Black Hole,” to identify the fact that any dissident comments would soon be gone. So many of the Parent Voices continued the game, posting their comments of outrage and watching a faceless person on Facebook delete them.

Another parent soon made the connection from Pearson to Students First, and she recounted her Twitter exchange with that group, which was purposely confusing “learner-centered” education (computer instruction) with “child-centered” education (engagement of the teacher with children’s individual needs and interests).

“Is it wrong that I’m a little excited to have more Pearson b.s. to debunk?
In a similar vein, I just picked a fight with @studentsfirst on Twitter re an article they Tweeted on “learner-centered” education. Not to be confused with CHILD-centered education, which presupposes the humanity of both the student and the teacher, learner-centered education replaces teachers with computers that can deliver “individualized” content. http://gettingsmart.com/news/digital-learning-is-critical-for-move-to-learner-centered-instruction/ I mean….REALLY? How could I not?

What does all this mean? It means that parents–the sleeping giant–have been awakened. If their movement against high-stakes testing continues to build, the conversation will change. They will not sit idly by as their children’s education is sacrificed to the insatiable need for more and more testing, producing more and more data, and less and less education.
Diane
Categories Parent Groups, Pearson, Testing

Is Blended Learning a Silver Bullet?

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2012 //
27

I just read that Indianapolis has okayed the opening of 19 new charter schools based on the concept of “blended learning.” The schools will lean heavily on technology to reduce the teaching staff and save money while promising higher test scores.

Embedded in this approach is the belief that computers do a better job of teaching basic skills than live teachers. Or that vast sums of money can be saved by dividing instruction between computers and teachers.

The article includes claims about test score gains that resulted from blended learning. Was there more or better test prep? Do the students have the knowledge and skills to think critically, to read thoughtfully, or just to pick the right bubble? It will take a while longer before we know.

But in the meanwhile, there was a major study of technology in education by the federal government that has been almost completely ignored. The bottom line: There is no evidence for blended learning as a superior approach to education. Maybe there will be some day, but there in none right now.

My old-fashioned brain says that what matters most in a classroom is a teacher who engages in a deeply human way with students: to encourage them, enlighten them, inspire them, teach them. There is a place in every classroom for technology. I use it every day. And certainly students can use their computers to do research and writing and explore.

But in the current environment of high-stakes testing, computers are geared to passing the tests.

And that’s not teaching. That’s testing. The end of education is not to pass tests, not even to get higher scores.

The goal of education is to lead us out from our ignorance; to develop our humanity; to give us the tools to take control of our life.

For that, a teacher is still the best of all technologies.

Diane

Categories Blended Learning, Testing

Why the Federal Tutoring Program Is Failing

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2012 //
9

An expose in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune uncovered fraud, waste, and incompetence in the federal program for tutoring called Supplementary Educational Services. This program is part of No Child Left Behind, and it created the equivalent of a voucher program for after-school tutoring. Instead of encouraging schools to provide trained and certified teachers for the extra tutoring that low-performing students need, NCLB inspired the creation of a tutoring “industry.”

Ten years ago, when Congress created the tutoring program as part of No Child Left Behind, proponents believed the private market would accomplish what the public sector had failed to do.

For the first time, many parents would have a say in how their kids were educated. If they didn’t like the troubled school their children were attending, they could switch and districts would pay for transportation. If they wanted to take advantage of free tutoring, they would have plenty of options, and districts would foot the bill.

 Entrepreneurs saw their opportunity and they took it. Thousands of brand-new businesses sprung up to take advantage of the federal dollars. For-profit online corporations leapt to get into this new and lucrative market. The money for SES comes out of the district’s Title I allocation. The cost of SES soared from $375 million in 2005-06 to $970 million last year. That is quite a tempting market.
In Minnesota, more than 80 tutoring services vie for $20 million in federal funds. The most aggressive of the tutoring companies are the online for-profit operators, who pitch their wares to unwary parents. According to the article, they charge as much as $90 an hour, as compared to the nonprofits, which charge as little as $5 an hour. A lucrative business for the corporation, not so profitable for the students. At those sky-high rates, the money runs out long before the student has gained much from the “tutoring.”
The SES program has never had adequate federal or state oversight. Numerous studies concluded that the SES tutoring was ineffective. “It wasted a lot of money and a lot of people’s time,” said Steven Ross, an education professor at Johns Hopkins University who led at least 15 state studies analyzing the program. “It was inadequately funded and developed. The policies don’t work. The whole concept was a bad turn. … It turned out to be very dysfunctional.”
The article documents numerous cases of fraud, occasionally leading to termination of a company’s contract. In several instances, tutoring companies billed for sessions that never  happened; typically, they recruit aggressively, but deliver subpar services to students.
As an aside, the Romney education plan envisions turning over even more money and programs to the private sector, with minimal regulation.
Why do we keep wasting money on private vendors instead of providing our public schools with the resources they need to give students intensive tutoring? At least, we would have the assurance that the services were supplied by certified teachers rather than profit-seeking amateurs.
Diane
Categories Privatization, Testing, Tutoring

Why Do We Treat the Tests As Scientific Instruments?

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2012 //
25

I posted a blog called “A Reader Wants to Know,” in which a teacher asked how he could be evaluated on test scores when the students were in the middle of the second semester. How were the scores affected by the teacher of the previous years? Other teachers have asked how they can be evaluated by scores when so many other factors affect test scores.

A reader commented on this blog with the most pertinent question of all. Why do we (and state legislatures and the U.S. Department of Education and the media) treat these tests and the scores they produce as accurate measures of what students know and can do? The reader, who clearly is a teacher, reminds us that the tests can’t do what everyone assumes they can do. They are subject to statistical error, measurement error, and random error. They are a yardstick that ranges from 30″ to 42″, sometimes more, sometimes less. Yet we treat them as infallible scientific instruments. They are not. He or she wrote:

In a way, I hate these questions. It’s in the same category as “Kid having a bad day on the day of the high stakes test”. They are all searching for explanations of why scores vary so widely, when the real answer is that all of these effects are dwarfed by the innate inaccuracy of the test. Even though these tests provide nice distinct numbers, there is a large random component to them.

To repeat: These tests are inherently inaccurate at the individual level.

Addressing anything but that just provides fodder for distraction for those who want to use them to loot our educational system.

This comment reminds me of something that has long occurred to me. The entire edifice of school-bashing and teacher-bashing relies on these shoddy tests. In the name of “accountability,” schools are being closed, people are being fired. And nothing is done to improve education. The students are shuffled from old school to new school, and in time they will be shuffled yet against from old new school to new new school.

What’s the game here and what does it have to do with improving education?

Diane

Categories Testing

A Reader Wants to Know

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2012 //
15

I get many thoughtful comments. I read them all because I learn from readers. This reader asks a very good question. Can you answer the question?

“There is an observation regarding these high stakes tests that has been nagging  me as I witnessed, another year of my 3rd through 8th grade students painfully struggle through the hours, days and weeks of these insane and brutal standardized tests. All the while wondering what my future will be based on the quality of their  performance.   Now, perhaps someone reading this, can  add their discussion on the topic. Here goes:

 The legally mandated  student school year in PA is set at 180 instructional days covering from Sept to June.   That computes to be  the equivalent of 180 instructional days times 6.5 hrs/day  or,  approximately 1170 instructional hours per school year.  These are hours for which I am financially compensated.  These are hours for which I am also expected to be accountable for the achievement effect my instruction has on  my students during the 11-12 school year. A test administered to each of  my students regardless of their variations in strengths, weaknesses, tolerances and language proficiencies will determine my very professional survival, let alone my personal survival, quality of life as well as that of my family.   I understand that. These are the life changing stakes. What I realized this year is that this test was administered on day # 125 of my district’s school calendar.

 My students are being tested on their recall of content and on their literacy proficiencies assumed to have been ‘acquired’ from their instructional time in my charge during the duration of the 11-12 school year. This, by law, is supposed to be 180  calendar days. However, the actual truth is, my students are being assessed and scored based upon only 125 days of my instruction, or 812.5 instructional hours. What happened to the rest of the legal school year? What happened to  those other valuable and precious instructional hours/days of lessons? What happened to the measurement of the other 56 days X  6.5 hours that equal 364 hours?  My students, my district and I are facing the potential for  major disastrous consequences of  these test scores, because it is deemed by the funding powers to be the ONLY recognized accountability measure of our professional worth. When in fact, the state is not permitting the public schools a full legal school year to engage in instruction. This year we were permitted only 2/3 of the instructional time mandated by law before the state imposed its accountability gauge on our practices.  Perhaps, the Dept of Ed feels that the balance of that instructional time (April to June) will be assessed the during via the next year’s 12-13  tests.  Well, hold on there! That means I was assessed THIS year for 56 days of last year teacher’s instructional time with my students.  One third of my students’ instructional time was with another teacher (s), yet my salary, my retention /dismissal, and my certification  are to be determined based on the productivity of someone other than myself for 56 instructional days!    My students’ 56 days duration with another teacher or teachers from a previous year  is an crucial variable which the state has put beyond my control. And yet, I am being held responsible for it as if it were instructional time for which I indeed, had controI!

 Logically that makes any assumption regarding my teaching skill, based on the score of  test,  a faulty premise. Statistically, it invalidates the score as a measure of my functioning during ‘11-12.  The truth is: the test score can only assume to measure 125 days of my instruction time, not a full 180 days. At best , the score can only be deemed to represent 2/3’s of my teacher quality, not 100%
 I am being held accountable for 180 days of instruction, despite the fact that I have only been allowed to engage with my students for 125 days.  This is no petty matter. I can be fired based on this score. I can be denied salary based on this score, or (hah) merit pay.  My district can lose funding for the arts, science, music, athletics, counseling and its very existence.  This, I do believe, is a  scandalous injustice, one which has the potential to cause hundreds of thousands of teachers and school employees to be  unemployed.
For those who interpret all of existence from a business model perspective. Let me use corporate jargon…
Would a financial entity allow one of their investment instruments be evaluated for dividends gained  derived from only 2/3  of its fiscal investment period? And furthermore, would they see as fair, if the other 1/3 of fiscal investment period assumes the  dividend performance of an unknown investment instrument managed by an unknown competitive financial entity?
Certainly not.  They would be in a court room faster than you can say, RIP OFF!
We should not stand for it either.  Any thoughts?”

Do you think that it is fair to judge a teacher by scores that reflect the work of previous teachers? The teacher might also have added that the tests reflect the students’ willingness to study, the students’ sense of urgency about the test, the family’s support for the student, whether the student has a quiet place to study, whether the student is working after school and has no time to study, whether the student can read English, whether the student is experiencing a major life crisis during the school year, whether the school has good leadership, whether teachers collaborate, whether the school has a strong curriculum, adequate resources, reasonable class sizes, and what the weather was on testing day, as well as about 100 other factors.

Diane

Categories Testing

A Solution to the Testing Mania

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2012 //
23

The popular rising against high-stakes testing grows larger every day.

In Texas, more than 500 school boards have endorsed a resolution opposing high-stakes testing.

A coalition of organizations and individuals prepared a national resolution against high-stakes testing. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have signed it. (Please add your name.)

Florida parents are up in arms against the FCAT. Even editorial boards are beginning to see the sham perpetrated on students using tests of dubious quality.

Parent groups around the country are organizing to resist, as they see the unnecessary pressure applied to their children. The issue is personal, not theoretical. They may not have read the policy briefs, but they see their own children spending weeks preparing for the state tests, weeks in which there is no instruction, just test prep. Parents know this is wrong.

In New York City, parents are planning a public protest on June 7 at the headquarters of testing behemoth Pearson. Their immediate grievance is the field tests in June, which Pearson needs for its R&D but which steals away yet another day of instruction. But their underlying grievance is with the whole lockstep top-down regime of high-stakes testing, which distorts the meaning of education.

All of this is happening because our elected and appointed leaders are in love with accountability. For accountability, they need data. They will use the data to rank students, to rate teachers, to grade schools, and then to apply sanctions and–in rare circumstances–rewards (but there is little or no money for the rewards). Based on test scores, some teachers will be fired. Some principals will be fired. Some schools will be closed. Students will learn that they are not as good as other students. Schools will get a letter grade. Everyone will be ranked, rated, graded.

And this whole structure rests on the standardized tests.

Folks, the tests were not designed for high-stakes purposes. And they are not good enough to bear the weight now placed upon them.

The basic rule of psychometrics is this: Tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.

That rule is violated every time a student is flunked, a teacher is fired, a principal is fired, or a school is closed, based on test scores.

Tests should be used to help, not to punish or reward.

So, as the title of my blog promises, I have a solution.

All of this will end if we do this one simple thing.

Insist that all policymakers, think tank gurus, academic experts, and politicians who believe so passionately in standardized tests do this:

Take the tests in reading and mathematics and publish your scores.

Do not demand for other people’s children what you are not willing to do yourself.

Take the tests and publish your scores.

Say that. Say it whenever they praise the tests. Say it whenever they impose them on your children.

And watch what happens.

Diane

Categories Pearson, Testing

Test, Test, Test, Test: Another Day in Bridgeport

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2012 //
44

Paul Vallas has taken over as superintendent in Bridgeport, Connecticut, while running a consulting business on the side (he just won a $1 million contract to help fix the Illinois schools).

He is concerned that students and teachers slack off after they take the state tests in March, so he has just imposed yet another round of tests for the end of year, which will precede the administration of even more tests.

You see, this is the way corporate reformers think. If students don’t have tests to face, they won’t learn anything. If teachers don’t have a test to prepare students for, they won’t teach anything. They think that no one in school will do anything unless someone at the top is holding out a stick or a carrot.

What they do not understand is the basic idea of intrinsic motivation. By relying so heavily on extrinsic motivation, the corporate reformers will snuff out any outcroppings of intrinsic motivation.

What the Bridgeport approach will do with certainty is to eliminate any time for creative activities and projects; to remove any time for exploration and un-regimented learning. It will substitute testing for teaching. It relies on coercion as the prime motivator for learning.

It is a plan that will prepare students for factory work in the early twentieth century.

Diane

Categories Testing, Vallas, Paul

Singapore Wants Creativity, not Cramming

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2012 //
0

Since “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, American policymakers (the ones who make decisions but never worked in a school) have looked with envy towards the Asian nations that get high test scores. It became a commonplace to complain that American students didn’t work hard enough and there had to be more “accountability” tied to test scores. How many times have we heard that our middling scores on international tests are proof we won’t be “globally competitive” in the future?

The other side of the story is that we have remained the global economic leader despite our ranking on international tests, which ought to make more people wonder whether the international tests tell us anything important about global competitiveness. They may actually reflect a nation’s ability to train its students to take examinations, and nothing more.

Every so often, I see stories that Japan or Korea really wishes its students would cram less and be more  creative. Now it is Singapore that is going in search of Dewey, looking for methods that would awaken student interest and creativity. Getting high test scores is not enough, Singapore’s education leaders are now saying. Something is missing. That something is creativity, critical thinking, engaging activities.

One very interesting point made in the article linked here is the reference to teacher quality. The U.S. has been obsessed with the issue of raising teacher quality, and has decided that the best way to identify it is to evaluate teachers by student test scores. In Singapore, however, raising teacher quality has meant improving teachers’ prestige and working conditions.

Our policymakers can learn something from Singapore.

And we can learn something else from Singapore: We must take care not to crush ingenuity and creativity while calling for “reform.” The willingness to “think differently” may be more important for our future than the ability to reliably sit for exams.

Diane

Categories Testing, US Education

NY State Ed Dept: Lie to Students

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2012 //
16

As you may know, there has been growing parent dissatisfaction about the amount of testing that their children are subjected to.

initially, the tests and test prep increased because officials wanted to measure student growth on tests.

Then, the testing increased because officials want to measure teacher quality.

From the vantage of parents, the school day and year are increasingly devoted to testing, not teaching.

Just weeks ago, students sat for the annual spring testing. Now, in New York state, there will be testing in June, but this time it will be a field test, part of the testing company’s trials of its test items.

When parents got wind that there would be more tests in June, and that the tests were for the benefit of Pearson, several parent groups began organizing boycotts. After all, neither the school nor the teachers would be penalized if students didn’t take the field tests, so it is an opportune time to opt out and make a statement.

Last week, the New York State Education Department sent out a memo instructing teachers that they must not tell students that the June tests are field tests. They must pretend that it is a real test.

Parents were aghast that the State Education Department would tell teachers to lie to students.

I’m beginning to sense a trend. Once the public understands that all this testing is counter-productive, that it steals time from instruction, that it has become an end and not a means, the game will change. The bureaucrats are hunkering down. But once the tide turns, there will be no going back.

Diane

Categories New York, Pearson, Testing
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