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Release the Tests

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2012 //
8

A parent recently wrote an article in the New York Times explaining why he planned to file a Freedom of Information Act suit to demand the release of all test questions.

He is right. Now that the tests have assumed so much importance, the public has a right to know what they were asked.

Now that the tests have such a decisive effect on so many people’s lives, the public has a right to know.

Based on these tests, students will be promoted or will fail.

Based on these tests, students will get into the college of their choice, or will not.

Based on these tests, some teachers will get a bonus, and others will be fired.

Based on these tests, some schools will be closed.

Based on these tests, lives will be changed for better or worse.

Who pays for the tests? The public.

Who is affected by the tests? The public.

Who has a right to know what was asked? The public.

Who has a right to know how many pineapples are on the test? The public.

Who has a right to know how many questions are stupid? The public.

Who has a right to know if there are questions with multiple answers or no answer? The public.

If a person accused of a crime has a right to confront their accuser and hear the evidence, why shouldn’t test-takers have the right to know whether the tests that shaped their fate are reasonable?

Publish them. Let everyone see what is on them. Publishers can write new test questions or they can create a database of released test questions so large that students can dip into them for test preparation.

Or, someday we may regain our wits, and decide to move on to far better forms of assessment, where students actually demonstrate what they know and can do instead of picking a bubble.

Unless, of course, we have become so dumbed down by decades of bubble testing that we can no longer think differently.

Diane

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

60 Minutes on the Gulen Charters

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2012 //
16

I was curious to see how Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes would deal with the Gulen Charter schools in their program last night.

The Gulen charters are the largest charter chain in the United States, with something like 135-140 charters. Few people realize that the Gulen charter chain is far larger than the KIPP chain.

They focus mainly on math and science. Some of the Gulen charters get high test scores.

That seems to seal the deal for 60 Minutes. Stahl was very impressed with the schools’ test scores and with the students’ interest in math and science.

The show points out that the Gulen schools are tied, in some non-specific way, to a Turkish imam named Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos in Pennyslvania. It notes that the Gulenists run a vast media, financial, and political empire inside Turkey, and that critics of the Gulen movement in Turkey are reluctant to appear on camera. Stahl made no reference to the page one story in the New York Times about the critics of Gulen in Turkey who are fearful and intimidated (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/middleeast/turkey-feels-sway-of-fethullah-gulen-a-reclusive-cleric.html?pagewanted=all).

Stahl says that the Gulenists are moderate and devoted to education (they told her so), and it sounds as though we are lucky that the Gulenists have imported large numbers of Turkish teachers (some of whom can barely speak English) to teach math, science, and even English! She never gets a good answer to the question of why the Gulen movement has opened so many publicly-financed schools in the United States, and she does not reflect on whether this is a good idea.

Maybe one day we will also have a chain of Japanese charter schools, Korean charter schools, Singaporean charter schools, Finnish charter schools, etc., and we can raise our test scores by importing teachers from other nations to run charter schools; what’s odd about this is that Turkey is not, unlike Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Finland, a high-performing nation. Allowing foreign nationals to open and manage charter schools, run by boards composed of their fellow nationals, opens up a new world of possibilities, especially when they need not come from high-performing nations. We might have Iranian charters, Mexican charters, Malaysian charters, Argentinean charters, Haitian charters, Cuban charters, Portuguese charters, the possibilities are endless.

But back to 60 Minutes:

Stahl interviews the head of the Texas charter school association, who defends the Gulen schools strongly. The show quotes an ex-teacher at a Gulen school who claims that the schools get kickbacks from the Turkish teachers they import (she married one of them), but the Gulen spokesman says she is not creditable because she is a disgruntled employee. No other critic appears on camera, though there are many who wonder about the propriety of funneling taxpayer dollars to a foreign-run “public” school enterprise.

CBS News did not ask one very important question. What about the role of public schools in building our democracy? The reason that taxpayers pay for public schools is to develop citizens, people who are prepared to vote and to serve on juries and to sustain our democracy into the future. That does not mean that public schools should be jngoistic or that their teachers must be true-blue patriots, but that the schools must take seriously their responsibility to prepare young people to assume the full responsibilities of citizenship: to think critically and independently; to understand our form of government; to understand other forms of government; to have a deep knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; to understand American culture and history; to know enough about world history to be able to form a thoughtful opinion of events and to look critically at how the mainstream media portrays ideas and events. In other words, we pay for public schools to develop our future citizens, and we want them to think for themselves. That is why we have historically taken a dim view of public money being used to subsidize any partisanship or special interests in education.

This is why schools have mock trials, conduct student elections, have a student council, and adopt a pedagogical style that involves questioning and challenge.

Are the Gulen schools preparing young people to assume their roles as citizens and to improve the practice of democracy in the United States?

Those questions were never asked.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Testing

What Do NAEP Scores Mean?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2012 //
10

Every once in a while, a new set of test scores is released by the National Assessment Governing Board, the federal agency that supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Just a few days ago, the NAEP scores for science were released for 4th and 8th grades, and once again there was woe and gnashing of teeth in the land (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/10/31naep_ep.h31.html?tkn=VPXFO3wzO2s%2Bbex2WwFqNNnCfYtzrpCNzSmA&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1). The scores had improved, but not enough to satisfy the nay-sayers.

The media react with alarm every time the NAEP scores appear because only about one-third or so of students is rated “proficient.” This is supposed to be something akin to a national tragedy because presumably almost every child should be “proficient.” Remember, under No Child Left Behind, ALL students are supposed to be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014.

Since I served on NAGB for seven years, I can explain what the board’s “achievement levels” mean. There are four levels. At the top is “advanced.” Then comes “proficient.” Then “basic.” And last, “below basic.”

Advanced is truly superb performance, which is like getting an A+. Among fourth graders, 8% were advanced readers in 2011; 3% of eighth graders were advanced. In reading, these numbers have changed little in the past twenty years. In math, there has been a pretty dramatic growth in national scores over these past twenty years: the proportion of students who scored advanced in fourth grade grew from 2% in 1992 to 7% in 2011. In eighth grade, the proportion who were advanced in math grew from 3% in 1992 to 8% in 2011.

Proficient is akin to a solid A. In reading, the proportion who were proficient in fourth grade reading rose from 29% in 1992 to 34% in 2011. The proportion proficient in eighth grade also rose from 29% to 34% in those years. In math, the proportion in fourth grade who were proficient rose from 18% to 40% in the past twenty years, an absolutely astonishing improvement. In eighth grade, the proportion proficient in math went from 21% in 1992 to an amazing 35% in 2011.

Basic is akin to a B or C level performance. Good but not good enough.

And below basic is where we really need to worry. These are the students who really don’t understand math or read well at all. The proportion who are below basic has dropped steadily in both reading and math in fourth and eighth grades since 1992.

When the scores are broken out by race, you can really see dramatic progress, especially in math. In 1992, 80% of black students in fourth grade were below basic. By 2011, that proportion had dropped to 49%. Among white students in fourth grade math, the proportion below basic fell in that time period from 40% to only 16%.

The changes in reading scores are not as dramatic as in math, but they are nonetheless impressive. In fourth grade, the proportion of black students who were below basic in 1992 was 68%; by 2011, it was down to 51%. In eighth grade, the proportion of black students who were reading below basic was 55%; that had fallen to 41% by 2011.

The point here is that NAEP scores show steady and very impressive improvement over the past twenty years. Our problems are tough, but they are not intractable. The next time someone tells you that U.S. education is “failing,” or “declining,” tell them they are wrong.

Diane

Categories NAEP, Testing

A Test Question Stupider Than Pineapplegate

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2012 //
12

This has to be the stupidest question of the 2012 testing season. Third grade students in New Jersey were asked to reveal a secret. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57432728/nj-school-exams-secret-question-angers-parents/

What exactly is the point of this question? It does not ask the students to explain what he or she has learned. It is not related to what they were taught or should have learned.

It is intrusive, nosy, pointless, and stupid.

Questions like this add fuel to the popular outrage against high-stakes testing.

Someday, people will look back on this era and wonder: “What were they thinking?”

Diane

Categories New Jersey, Testing

A Parent Chooses

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2012 //
6

This is one of the best stories I have read in days.

Here is an example of a parent who said “enough is enough.”

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/11/a-request-to-make-the-pearson-tests-public/?partner=rss&emc=rss
This parent filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding that the Pearson tests be released for public review.
He is right. Why should this company and this state have the power to make decisions about our children (and my grandchildren) without showing us what their criteria are?
I say to him, “Thank you!”
It’s time for parents to stand up and stop this top-down controlling of children and misuse of testing.
Standardized tests have their place as diagnostic tools. They have their place, used sparingly, for information purposes.
But they are being overused and misused.
Parents, say no.
Diane
Categories Parent Groups, Pearson, Testing

The Dangerous Facts About New Orleans

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2012 //
4

I wrote in a blog yesterday about a balanced news story about the New Orleans story. It began with the usual paeans of praise to the charter miracle and the miracle of having great (inexperienced TFA) teachers, but then shifted gears and gave time to critics of this narrative. This is the link:
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/05/sen_mary_landrieu_touts_new_o
r.html

However, the story did not appear in the print edition, and critics of the miracle in New Orleans are worried that it may disappear from the Times-Picayune’s website and its archives. I guess no one told the reporter that he was supposed to write only about the miracle and to disregard any questions about whether the miracle was real.

So in the interest of my readers and of posterity, I reprint below the story in full. By doing so, it may encourage the editors of the Times-Picayune to preserve the story online, at the least, and deter them from scrubbing it out of their archives. Here is the full story:

Sen. Mary Landrieu touts New Orleans charter schools on ‘Morning Joe’

Published: Tuesday, May 08, 2012, 10:10 AM
WASHINGTON – Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., touted the success of New Orleans charter schools on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday. “Eighty percent of our children in the city are now in public charter schools,” said Landrieu. “As my brother said, who is the mayor, we’re not rebuilding the city we were, we’re rebuilding the city we’ve always dreamed we could be, building it just better, the old New Orleans but better and that includes a brand new entrepreneurial, public school system that’s attracting middle class white and black families, Hispanics, back to the system and seeing extraordinary gains in academics, freeing up our principals to be great and expecting our teachers to be great.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu at College Prep.jpgFile photoSen. Mary Landrieu tweeted this photo of her recent visit to New Orleans College Prep Charter School.

“New Orleans has really led the way,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R- Tenn., who served as Education Secretary in the first Bush administration, and joined Landrieu on the show to talk up charter schools. Alexander said “the holy grail” of education reform was to find ways to get great teachers in the classroom, and the way to do that was to pay them more than less able teachers.

Landrieu said “unions can be a part of reform, there is nothing to keep them from it,” and, as she has in the past, complemented Gov. Bobby Jindal‘seducation reform efforts, while cautioning that “our governor’s gone a little too far with vouchers.” But, she said, “charter schools are transforming outcomes for students, and, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.”

The relative success of the massive charter school experiment in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has become a source of both local and national debate.

“So sure are New Orleans officials of the work being done to turn around schools that they think they can become a model for urban education reform, proof that students of any color, income level or social background can achieve if schools do their job,’ Jo-Ann Armao, a member of the editorial page staff for The Washington Post, wrote recently in a piece in her paper, “The Big Easy’s School Revolution.”

Armao wrote that when “the levees broke and the city was devastated … out of that destruction came the need to build a new system, one that today is accompanied by buoyant optimism. Since 2006, New Orleans students have halved the achievement gap with their state counterparts. They are on track to, in the next five years, make this the first urban city in the country to exceed its state’s average test scores. The share of students proficient on state tests rose from 35 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2011; 40 percent of students attended schools identified by the state as `academically unacceptable’ in 2011, down from 78 percent in 2005.”

But in a recent essay, “How, and How Not, To Improve the Schools,” in The New York Review of Books, New York University educational historian Diane Ravitch, offered a very different take on the New Orleans experience. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/how-and-how-not-improve-schools/?pagination=false

“As for New Orleans, it is the poster child of the corporate reformers because the public school system and the teachers’ union were wiped out by Hurricane Katrina,” wrote Ravtich. “Now about 70 percent of the students in the district attend charter schools, staffed by TFA (Teach for America) and other young teachers. Reformers have portrayed New Orleans as an educational miracle, and the media have faithfully parroted this characterization as proof that nonunion charter schools are successful. But few paid attention when the state of Louisiana recently released grades for every school in the state and 79 percent of the charter schools formed by the state received a grade of D or F.”

“Teach for America is a worthy idea,” wrote Ravitch, who served as Alexander’s assistant secretary of education and counselor. “It is wonderful to encourage young people to commit themselves to public service for two years. The program would be far more admirable if the organization showed some modesty, humility, and realism in its claims for its inexperienced teachers. Many foundations, corporations, and even the US Department of Education treat TFA as a systemic solution to the critical needs of the teaching profession. But it is foolhardy to expect that a profession of more than three million teachers will be transformed by the annual addition of a few thousand college graduates who agree to stay for only two years.”

In March, Charles Hatfield, the former director of educational accountability for the Orleans Parish School Board, issued a scathing critique of the successes being claimed for New Orleans charter revolution in a report for Research on Reforms, which he co-founded, entitled, “Should the Educational Reforms in New Orleans Serve as a National Model for Other Cities?”

Hatfield wrote that the “aggregation of achievement data,” by those proclaiming success, “makes it impossible to determine whether, and to what extent, the RSD (Recovery School District) has provided the poor, disadvantaged, and public school students with the quality education originally promised as justification by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) to dismantle the Orleans Public School System.”

What provides a better picture, he said, are the letter grades assigned to RSD charter and traditional schools by the Louisiana Department of Education, which he said “demonstrate the very low level of academic performance that still exists in these schools after 6 years of direct control by the LDOE.”

On “Morning Joe,” Landrieu cited the Audubon Charter School, where, she said, “children are speaking fluent French by the third grade.” Audubon gets an A+ on the state report card, and most of the Orleans Parish School Board charters score relatively well on the state rating.

But, Hatfield writes, “A cursory examination of the RSD schools clearly shows that the general achievement level of the vast majority of RSD schools, as measured by the assigned letter grades, is pathetic at best. Some of the major highlights that can be observed from the tables with respect to the current achievement levels of the RSD after 6 years are as follows:

  • 100% of the 15 direct-run RSD schools assigned a letter grade received a `D’ or `F’ as compared to 20% of the 5 OPSB direct-run schools graded;
  • 79% of the 42 charter RSD schools assigned a letter grade received a `D’ or `F’ as compared to 0% of the 11 OPSB charter schools graded;
  • Of the RSD students attending direct-run schools with letter grades, 100%, or 5,422, are attending schools with assigned letter grades of either `D’ or `F’;
  • Of the RSD students attending charter schools assigned a letter grade, 76% ,or 15,040, are attending schools with assigned grades of either `D’ or `F’;
  • Schools that were just opened or opened for less than three years were not assigned a letter grade at this time;
  • Although the RSD’s public relations machine glorifies the tremendous gains made over 6 years, the overall performance of the RSD in New Orleans remains at or near the bottom in Louisiana, i.e., RSD received an overall letter grade of `D’ as compared to the overall letter grade of `B’ received by the OPSB;

The state will raise the failing bar from a SPS (school performance score) below 65 to SPS below 75 for the 2011-12 school years. Unless there is significant improvement among the current `D’ and `F’ and `C’ schools, there will be a significant increase in the number of failing and poor performing RSD charter and direct run schools.”

Categories Charter Schools, Jindal, Bobby, New Orleans, Teach for America TFA, Testing

Are Test Scores the Point?

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2012 //
5

We have reached a point in our public life where the only way to demonstrate the success of a school is to say it has higher test scores than some other school. But we all know–or should know–that there are many ways to get higher test scores without having a better school.

Some schools get higher test scores because they have a selection mechanism. The selection mechanism might be as simple as a test for entry. That screens out low-scoring students. But no one would be so brazen as to say that an exam-entry school was therefore better than an open-admission school.

But there are more subtle ways to get higher scores. Another is to have a lottery for admission. That means that parents must fill out papers to apply for admission. That screens out parents who don’t have the knowledge or the motivation to fill out an application.

Another way is to limit the admission of special-education students because your school doesn’t have the personnel or resources to help them. That screens out students who might present problems, require expensive trained staff, and possibly have lower scores because of their disability.

Another way is to have a high attrition rate and not to admit new students as current students leave the school. The ones who leave are likely to be those who are having trouble meeting the academic demands of the school or who are in trouble because of breaking school rules. That means that each successive class is smaller and more compliant and likelier to have higher grades.

Another way is to accept few or no students who are English language learners. That helps raise the school’s test scores.

Another is to have more money to spend on smaller classes, on intensive tutoring, and on other things that produce higher test scores.

In a blog for CNN, Gary Rubinstein identified the many kinds of cheating that are now being employed to inflate schools’ test scores: http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/12/my-view-the-other-types-of-cheating/.

Some researchers believe that the best way to measure the performance of students who enter a charter lottery is to compare the scores of those who won the lottery and those who lost. That is widely trumpeted as “the gold standard” of research, but even this method has a defect. The ones who win are enrolled in a small school with small classes, the latest technology, and peers who are equally motivated. The ones who lose the lottery are likely to enroll in the neighborhood school with larger classes, obsolete technology, and peers who include students who are unmotivated, as well as peers with disabilities and peers who are just learning English. So, this is by no means a fair comparison since the two groups of students will have access to unequal resources and opportunities.

So, I am left with the view that we need a far better way to describe successful schools. Test scores alone are not the way. They may define a school where students spend every day engaged in test prep. They may describe a school producing compliant student-robots.

We need better definitions of success. We need a far more thoughtful way of educating the future generation.

Diane

Categories Testing

Please Take the Tests & Publish Your Scores

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2012 //
10

We have a plethora of governors, legislators, and state commissioners of education who are gaga over standardized testing, They can’t imagine a child who is not taking a test today, tomorrow, and next week. They want to test everything: not only reading and math, but the arts, science, civics, history, foreign languages, physical education, you name it and they want to test it.

When the test-lovers see low scores, they want to find the teacher swho did it and fire them. They can’t see any reason for low scores other than those darn teachers. They want “great” teachers and they figure the way to get them is to keep teachers insecure and intimidated. That’s sure to attract the best and brightest!

When the test-lovers see low scores, they not only want to fire teachers, they want to close the schools where those kids are enrolled and hand them over to private managers. The private managers will kick out the kids with low scores and find some students who have a better shot at getting those better scores. That’s called progress. Nobody wants those kids with low scores. Send ’em back to the public schools that haven’t been closed yet.

I have a modest proposal for the officials–elected and appointed–who are so test-happy.

They should take the tests and publish their scores. If they aren’t willing to take the tests and publish their scores, they should pipe down.

Just a thought.

Diane

Categories Testing

Pearsongate?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2012 //
3

Teachers and principals discovered yet another error on one of New York state’s mandated tests. This one was on the fifth-grade math test and it required students to know mathematical processes that are not taught in fifth grade. See here:

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/02/state-officials-throw-out-another-pearson-test-question/

Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents said that she takes “full responsibility,” and that she  hopes Pearson too will take responsibility. Commissioner John King apparently was not reached for a comment, but he earlier deflected any responsibility for errors on the state tests.

So if those at the top are indeed responsible, will heads roll? Will anyone at Pearson or SED be held accountable? Apparently not. After all, when the State Education Department made an even bigger error and lowered the passing mark on state tests for several years (which SED admitted in 2010), no one took responsibility and no one was held accountable.

To paraphrase the very wealthy Leona Helmsley, who once said that “Taxes are for the little people,” when it comes to state testing snafus, “Accountability is for the little people.” If the scores are flat, teachers may lose their jobs. But no one at SED or Pearson will lose his or her job for what they are doing to a generation of children.

Diane

Categories Pearson, Testing

BLOCK THAT EUPHEMISM!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2012 //
4

I wonder why our policymakers in Washington, D.C., love euphemisms. Ten years ago, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, and by now, is there anyone in the United States who takes seriously the idea that “No Child” has been “Left Behind”? Since Congress can’t agree on how to change the law, maybe they could just rename it and call it “Many Children Left Behind” (MCLB) or “No Child Left Untested” (NCLU). When the name of a federal law is so clearly at odds with its actual results, either we must rename the law or declare it a failure or both. But, please, no euphemisms, no flowery predictions in the title of the legislation.

Then there is Race to the Top. No one has explained what it means to “race.” Does it mean that with more and more pressure on teachers, their students will get higher test scores? Surely, a “race to the top” has nothing to do with equality of educational opportunity. And what, exactly, is “the top”? Does that mean that if we just test everyone with greater frequency, then student scores will rise to the top of the world? Where is the evidence for that? Another deceptive euphemism.

The euphemisms that are most annoying, however, are “turnarounds” and “transformations.” When we think of a turnaround, we are likely to think of a charming little dance, perhaps one where we all hold hands and circle the Maypole, with rosebuds fluttering around the heads of the children. But “turnaround” means something dark and sinister, not a happy dance. It means that if you get the money, you must fire the principal, fire half or all of the staff, close the school, give it a new name. That’s harsh medicine, not a turnaround. Whether the new school will be better or worse than the old one is by no means clear. What is it about closing a school that promises that the achievement gap will close or that children who don’t read English will now learn English and speak it fluently? I don’t see the logic or the sense.

Honesty is the best policy. If the federal government really wants to fire the principals and teachers in the 5,000 schools with the lowest scores, why don’t they call it the Close Bad Schools policy? Or something that approximates the brutal reality? Why don’t they explain the mechanism by which mass firing leads to better education?

Just call it what it is.

Diane

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