The national conversation will now swing around to figuring out exactly how many standardized test should be given in schools. What, we will all wonder, is the correct number of standardized tests necessary for every student to experience in a year, or in an entire school career.
Here's the correct answer.
None.
Zip. Zero. Nada.
Students need standardized tests like a fish needs a bicycle. Standardized tests are as essential to education as a mugging is essential to better financial health.
Is there a benefit to the child to be compared and ranked against the rest of the children in the country, to be part of the Great Sorting of children into winners and losers? No. Having such rankings and ratings may advance the agenda of other folks when it comes to writing policy and distributing money, but those benefits are for those folks-- not the children. The mugger may benefit from mugging me, but it does not follow that I enjoy a benefit.
Are there standardized tests from which a classroom teacher can glean useful information? Sure-- but those tests are best chosen to fit the needs and concerns of one particular teacher and one particular collection of students. A diagnostic test might help me with Chris, but there's no reason to believe it would help me better understand Chris if it were given to every other student at the same time.
Do the poor children of some non-white non-wealthy
neighborhood need to take the Big Standardized Test just like the rich
white kids so that we have equity? Maybe-- but you know how else we
could even that out? We could have all the public school kids do what
the very wealthy private school students do-- take no BS Test at all.
That would also provide equity.
Can I squeeze some useful information out of some standardized tests? Sure. I can grow and learn important lessons from being mugged, but that doesn't mean that getting mugged is still great and worthwhile. Do not tell me what I can learn from student standardized test results-- tell me what I can learn from those results that I cannot learn in faster, better, clearer, easier, cheaper ways on my own. Getting mugged might teach me not to take a lot of money with me when I leave the house, but are you sure I couldn't learn that lesson without getting punched in the face?
Do we need tests so that teachers, parents and students know "how the student is doing"? Only if the teacher, parents and students are clueless. Parents and teachers who are paying attention and doing their jobs know how the children are doing (and those who don't care still won't care when you wave a test score at them). And the students should be learning one of the most important lessons and skills of an educated person-- how to evaluate and assess yourself, so that you can be a self-directed, self-actuated human being, answerable to your own judgment, goals and assessment. You cannot learn that from a standardized test.
If you want me to inflict a Big Standardized Test on every single one of my students, you need to be able to answer one question:
What will I be able to do to further my students' education that I could not possibly accomplish any other way? If your BS Tests were denied access to my classroom, what benefits would my students be cheated of? If the universal one-size-fits-all BS Tests were banned today, what would my students be missing from their education tomorrow?
Nothing. The number of necessary standardized tests is zero.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Sunday, October 25, 2015
ICYMI: Edu-reading for the week
Hey, remember back before everyone was busy writing responses to the latest administration PR blitz? Let's travel back to that land of a Few Days Ago, shall we, and look at some of what deserved reading this week.
Is Success Academy Fighting Inequality
A good look at SA's policy's and involvement in NY lobbying
As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor
This is a long form piece that originally ran in Harper's back in 1997. It's Earl Shorris writing about his launch of the Clemente Class project, and if you don't know about any of that, this is a good introduction. But it's also an answer to a fundamental question-- is there a point to teaching classical humanities to the poor (or anyone)?
Dear USD, Testing Disaster Is Yours
Don't miss Paul Thomas's take on the current kerfluffle, including a great reading list to put the whole testing biz into historical perspective.
Newark: The Day the Dream Died
Bob Braun takes a look, from right on the front lines, at how things are headed south in Newark. A bummer, but a necessary read.
Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?
Reading expert Russ Walsh takes a look at this question and handles it with intelligence and balance, as always.
This Is What Has To Be Done
Jose Luis Vilson, as always an articulate advocate for both the positive and the challenging. A good positive note to end this week's list on.
Is Success Academy Fighting Inequality
A good look at SA's policy's and involvement in NY lobbying
As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor
This is a long form piece that originally ran in Harper's back in 1997. It's Earl Shorris writing about his launch of the Clemente Class project, and if you don't know about any of that, this is a good introduction. But it's also an answer to a fundamental question-- is there a point to teaching classical humanities to the poor (or anyone)?
Dear USD, Testing Disaster Is Yours
Don't miss Paul Thomas's take on the current kerfluffle, including a great reading list to put the whole testing biz into historical perspective.
Newark: The Day the Dream Died
Bob Braun takes a look, from right on the front lines, at how things are headed south in Newark. A bummer, but a necessary read.
Should Reading Be Taught in Kindergarten?
Reading expert Russ Walsh takes a look at this question and handles it with intelligence and balance, as always.
This Is What Has To Be Done
Jose Luis Vilson, as always an articulate advocate for both the positive and the challenging. A good positive note to end this week's list on.
Obama's Testing Action Plan Sucks (And Changes Nothing)
As I noted yesterday, the administrative announcement of "Wow, this testing things sure is out of control. We should do something." is absolutely nothing new-- we went through the exact same exercise last year. I know I have readers who don't care for the snark or language over something so serious, but damn-- this makes me so frustrated and angry that it's what I do to cope. So, warning, snark ahead, because I cannot believe that we are going through this same dance of lies and obfuscation again.
What's new this time around is a Presidential video and an action plan. But there's a problem with the action plan. The problem is that it sucks. More specifically, it doesn't represent any shift in administrative policy at all.
Let's take a look at this action plan that some folks are so excited about.
Start with the first three sentences:
One essential part of educating students successfully is assessing their progress in learning to high standards. Done well and thoughtfully, assessments are tools for learning and promoting equity. They provide necessary information for educators, families, the public, and students themselves to measure progress and improve outcomes for all learners.
Read those sentences carefully, because they make one thing crystal clear-- the administrations philosophy on Big Standardized Testing has not shifted so much as a micro-millimeter. The rest of the document simply underlines that.
The preamble goes on to talk about "bad" tests that have been proliferating out there:
--unintended effects of policies that have aimed to provide more useful information to educators, families, students, and policymakers and to ensure attention to the learning progress of low-income and minority students, English learners, students with disabilities, and members of other groups that have been traditionally underserved. These aims are right, but support in implementing them well has been inadequate, including from this Administration. We have focused on encouraging states to take on these challenges and to provide them with flexibility. One of the results of this approach is that we have not provided clear enough assistance for how to thoughtfully approach testing and assessment.
Emphasis mine. Because before you get excited about the administration taking "some" blame for the testing mess, please notice what they think their mistake was-- not telling states specifically enough what they were supposed to do. They provided states with flexibility when they should have provided hard and fast crystal clearcommands directions for what they were supposed to do.
Because yes-- the problem with education reform has been not enough federal control of state education departments.
Now, here come the guidelines for getting "fewer and smarter assessments."
1. Worth taking.
The assessment should provide info about how the student is doing in a quick and actionable manner. It should be part of good instruction. And, my favorite line, "No standardized test should be given solely for educator evaluation." Emphasis on "solely" is mine.
2. High quality.
That means it covers all the state standards (looking forward to those speaking, listening and collaborating tests), elicits complex demonstration of knowledge, accurately measures student achievement, and provides accurate measure of student growth. Now personally, I think they just ruled out every single BS Test currently on the market. But I'm pretty sure the administration believes the opposite-- that they have just described the PARCC, SBA, and all their bastard cousins.
3. Time-limited
Here's the famous 2% rule. Only 2% of instructional time can be spent on testing. I've seen many computations here, but my back-of-envelope figures say 180 days times 6 hours a day times 2% equals 21.6 hours for testing. Thanks a lot.
The action plan also forbids "drill and kill" test prep, and while they're at it, banning quill pens would be great, too. Let's also ban riding penny-farthings. Test prep, of which we all do a great deal, and of which we continue to do a great deal, is not drill and kill.
4. Fairness
There's a bunch of pretty language, but what it boils down to is the same old administrative position-- the BS Test, unmodified and unadapted, must be taken by all students, including students with special needs and English language learners (because taking the same test will magically erase all their obstacles).
5. Fully transparent to students and parents.
This sounds great until you look at the fine print. "Transparent" here means that students and parents are told the purpose of the test, the source of the test requirement, when the information from the test comes back to teachers, how the school uses info from the test, and how parents can use it. So the content of the test, the validity and reliability of the test, the questions on the test, the development of cut scores, and the exact questions that resulted in the student's score-- all of that will remain completely opaque.
But extra kudos to that second requirement, which is basically that the school has to say "This is not a federally required test" whenever they're doing local assessments or one of those many pre-test practice test tests (like LWEA's MAP).
6. Just one of multiple measures.
Sooooo... states must have fewer assessments, but those tests are only allowable if they are conbined with other assessments. Plus other measures. Don't worry. The feds will have a handy list of exactly what is needed.
7. Improve student learning
Test results have to be used to shape teachers, instruction, etc etc etc.
Things the Department of Education Will Do To Help Out
The feds will be providing money for getting rid of excess unnecessary tests that aren't as awesome as the tests that meet the above criteria. The feds will also provide "expertise" which seems to mean "guidelines" for what states should do and somebody sitting by a phone that states can call for consultation. The feds will provide more flexibility to meet their more specific mandates-- good lord, but what kind of mind-twist does one have to go through to do government work?
They also note that they will reduce reliance on test results for decision making. Then they elaborate the opposite. For instance, remember how they had that wacky idea to evaluate teacher education programs based on the student test scores of the teacher program graduates? Yeah, they're still totally doing that. They'll just throw in some more data, of some sort, on top. They also still want student test scores to factor in teacher evaluations, but states can go ahead and throw in other measures "such as student and parent surveys, and observation and feedback systems." So, a combination of Things States Already Do and Really Terrible Ideas.
Some exemplars
The action plan lists some good examples, like-- hey, look! It's New York, the state previously goobered up by incoming Fake Secretary of Education John King, who previously tried to "reduce testing" by trying to get everyone to drop all tests except the BS Test.
And North Carolina is an example, which is impressive since these days North Carolina is mostly an exemplar of How To Turn Your State Into The Worst Place in America For Public Education. Their cliff-bound bus has been driven by conservative GOP leadership, prompting me to wonder for the sixty gazillionth time if our current administration remembers which party they theoretically belong to. But hey-- North Carolina has a Task Force! About Stuff! So, do that, everyone.
Exemplary states also include Tennessee, Florida, the District of Columbia and Delaware, among others. The array of examples are all completely in line with long-standing administration policies and represent absolutely no change in direction whatsoever. Just saying.
About the ESEA
The action plan has a wish list for the new ESEA. Since all of these items involve making states more accountable to and guided by the feds when it comes to all testing in public schools, I think we can safely say that these items have less future than a sculpted ice swan on the banquet tables of hell.
What the action plan doesn't include
The action plan does not address the issue of grad-span testing. There is not a word here, not a comma, to back one inch away from testing every student every year. Pretending to address over-testing without addressing every-student-every-year policies is a sham.
And it certainly doesn't examine the premise of whether or not we need any BS Tests at all, ever, for anything.
The action plan does not address what test data will be, and what it will be used for. Talking about actionable data is great, but there's nothing here to address that the actual outcome of BS Testing is ranking a student as either Great, Okay, or Not So Hot-- and that's it. There is no depth or detail to the data, absolutely nothing that is of the slightest use to a classroom teacher over and above what we already collect ourselves on a daily basis. BS Testing is not just a waste of time-- when the "results" come back, it is a farce.
Nor does the administration back away from using test results to judge teachers, schools and students-- the number one policy choice responsible for the emphasis on testing in schools (an emphasis the policy was always meant to create). To ignore that policy linkage and its effects is to declare yourself uninterested in really changing the culture of testing that is poisoning public education.
The action plan does not address the question of test quality. Not really. It does not address the issue of doing the work necessary to see if the BS Tests actually measure any of the things they claim to measure.
And the action plan certainly doesn't include any statement about how the judgment of classroom teachers should not be superseded by a standardized test.
Have we been heard?
Despite the fact that the action plan offers no real change and no actual examination of the issues around test-driven education, many folks have been dancing the happy dance all weekend. They should probably stop.
Yes, I get it-- the POTUS actually made some mouth noises that he knows something is up with testing. But look.
When someone says, "I hear you," you have to wait for the rest of the sentence.
Because there is a difference between "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to fix this" and "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to shut you up."
The fact that the administration noticed, again, that there's an issue here is nice. But all they're doing is laying down a barrage of protective PR cover. This is, once again, worse than nothing because it not only doesn't really address the problem, but it encourages everyone to throw a victory party, put down their angry signs, and go home. Don't go to the party, and don't put down your signs.
What's new this time around is a Presidential video and an action plan. But there's a problem with the action plan. The problem is that it sucks. More specifically, it doesn't represent any shift in administrative policy at all.
Let's take a look at this action plan that some folks are so excited about.
Start with the first three sentences:
One essential part of educating students successfully is assessing their progress in learning to high standards. Done well and thoughtfully, assessments are tools for learning and promoting equity. They provide necessary information for educators, families, the public, and students themselves to measure progress and improve outcomes for all learners.
Read those sentences carefully, because they make one thing crystal clear-- the administrations philosophy on Big Standardized Testing has not shifted so much as a micro-millimeter. The rest of the document simply underlines that.
The preamble goes on to talk about "bad" tests that have been proliferating out there:
--unintended effects of policies that have aimed to provide more useful information to educators, families, students, and policymakers and to ensure attention to the learning progress of low-income and minority students, English learners, students with disabilities, and members of other groups that have been traditionally underserved. These aims are right, but support in implementing them well has been inadequate, including from this Administration. We have focused on encouraging states to take on these challenges and to provide them with flexibility. One of the results of this approach is that we have not provided clear enough assistance for how to thoughtfully approach testing and assessment.
Emphasis mine. Because before you get excited about the administration taking "some" blame for the testing mess, please notice what they think their mistake was-- not telling states specifically enough what they were supposed to do. They provided states with flexibility when they should have provided hard and fast crystal clear
Because yes-- the problem with education reform has been not enough federal control of state education departments.
Now, here come the guidelines for getting "fewer and smarter assessments."
1. Worth taking.
The assessment should provide info about how the student is doing in a quick and actionable manner. It should be part of good instruction. And, my favorite line, "No standardized test should be given solely for educator evaluation." Emphasis on "solely" is mine.
2. High quality.
That means it covers all the state standards (looking forward to those speaking, listening and collaborating tests), elicits complex demonstration of knowledge, accurately measures student achievement, and provides accurate measure of student growth. Now personally, I think they just ruled out every single BS Test currently on the market. But I'm pretty sure the administration believes the opposite-- that they have just described the PARCC, SBA, and all their bastard cousins.
3. Time-limited
Here's the famous 2% rule. Only 2% of instructional time can be spent on testing. I've seen many computations here, but my back-of-envelope figures say 180 days times 6 hours a day times 2% equals 21.6 hours for testing. Thanks a lot.
The action plan also forbids "drill and kill" test prep, and while they're at it, banning quill pens would be great, too. Let's also ban riding penny-farthings. Test prep, of which we all do a great deal, and of which we continue to do a great deal, is not drill and kill.
4. Fairness
There's a bunch of pretty language, but what it boils down to is the same old administrative position-- the BS Test, unmodified and unadapted, must be taken by all students, including students with special needs and English language learners (because taking the same test will magically erase all their obstacles).
5. Fully transparent to students and parents.
This sounds great until you look at the fine print. "Transparent" here means that students and parents are told the purpose of the test, the source of the test requirement, when the information from the test comes back to teachers, how the school uses info from the test, and how parents can use it. So the content of the test, the validity and reliability of the test, the questions on the test, the development of cut scores, and the exact questions that resulted in the student's score-- all of that will remain completely opaque.
But extra kudos to that second requirement, which is basically that the school has to say "This is not a federally required test" whenever they're doing local assessments or one of those many pre-test practice test tests (like LWEA's MAP).
6. Just one of multiple measures.
Sooooo... states must have fewer assessments, but those tests are only allowable if they are conbined with other assessments. Plus other measures. Don't worry. The feds will have a handy list of exactly what is needed.
7. Improve student learning
Test results have to be used to shape teachers, instruction, etc etc etc.
Things the Department of Education Will Do To Help Out
The feds will be providing money for getting rid of excess unnecessary tests that aren't as awesome as the tests that meet the above criteria. The feds will also provide "expertise" which seems to mean "guidelines" for what states should do and somebody sitting by a phone that states can call for consultation. The feds will provide more flexibility to meet their more specific mandates-- good lord, but what kind of mind-twist does one have to go through to do government work?
They also note that they will reduce reliance on test results for decision making. Then they elaborate the opposite. For instance, remember how they had that wacky idea to evaluate teacher education programs based on the student test scores of the teacher program graduates? Yeah, they're still totally doing that. They'll just throw in some more data, of some sort, on top. They also still want student test scores to factor in teacher evaluations, but states can go ahead and throw in other measures "such as student and parent surveys, and observation and feedback systems." So, a combination of Things States Already Do and Really Terrible Ideas.
Some exemplars
The action plan lists some good examples, like-- hey, look! It's New York, the state previously goobered up by incoming Fake Secretary of Education John King, who previously tried to "reduce testing" by trying to get everyone to drop all tests except the BS Test.
And North Carolina is an example, which is impressive since these days North Carolina is mostly an exemplar of How To Turn Your State Into The Worst Place in America For Public Education. Their cliff-bound bus has been driven by conservative GOP leadership, prompting me to wonder for the sixty gazillionth time if our current administration remembers which party they theoretically belong to. But hey-- North Carolina has a Task Force! About Stuff! So, do that, everyone.
Exemplary states also include Tennessee, Florida, the District of Columbia and Delaware, among others. The array of examples are all completely in line with long-standing administration policies and represent absolutely no change in direction whatsoever. Just saying.
About the ESEA
The action plan has a wish list for the new ESEA. Since all of these items involve making states more accountable to and guided by the feds when it comes to all testing in public schools, I think we can safely say that these items have less future than a sculpted ice swan on the banquet tables of hell.
What the action plan doesn't include
The action plan does not address the issue of grad-span testing. There is not a word here, not a comma, to back one inch away from testing every student every year. Pretending to address over-testing without addressing every-student-every-year policies is a sham.
And it certainly doesn't examine the premise of whether or not we need any BS Tests at all, ever, for anything.
The action plan does not address what test data will be, and what it will be used for. Talking about actionable data is great, but there's nothing here to address that the actual outcome of BS Testing is ranking a student as either Great, Okay, or Not So Hot-- and that's it. There is no depth or detail to the data, absolutely nothing that is of the slightest use to a classroom teacher over and above what we already collect ourselves on a daily basis. BS Testing is not just a waste of time-- when the "results" come back, it is a farce.
Nor does the administration back away from using test results to judge teachers, schools and students-- the number one policy choice responsible for the emphasis on testing in schools (an emphasis the policy was always meant to create). To ignore that policy linkage and its effects is to declare yourself uninterested in really changing the culture of testing that is poisoning public education.
The action plan does not address the question of test quality. Not really. It does not address the issue of doing the work necessary to see if the BS Tests actually measure any of the things they claim to measure.
And the action plan certainly doesn't include any statement about how the judgment of classroom teachers should not be superseded by a standardized test.
Have we been heard?
Despite the fact that the action plan offers no real change and no actual examination of the issues around test-driven education, many folks have been dancing the happy dance all weekend. They should probably stop.
Yes, I get it-- the POTUS actually made some mouth noises that he knows something is up with testing. But look.
When someone says, "I hear you," you have to wait for the rest of the sentence.
Because there is a difference between "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to fix this" and "I hear you, and we are going to find a way to shut you up."
The fact that the administration noticed, again, that there's an issue here is nice. But all they're doing is laying down a barrage of protective PR cover. This is, once again, worse than nothing because it not only doesn't really address the problem, but it encourages everyone to throw a victory party, put down their angry signs, and go home. Don't go to the party, and don't put down your signs.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
USED: Recycled Empty Course Change on Testing
Remember that theoretical problem where someone keeps moving half the distance to a point, and how that means they'll never actually get there? Well, today Arne Duncan once again moved half the distance to the point at which he will someday theoretically accept responsibility for the administrations failed education policies and then actually do something about them.
Duncan issued a statement about testing, and I'd like to be excited that he almost admitted culpability in the Great Testing Circus while stating some actual policy changes to address the problem. But he didn't get there, and I've seen the Duncan "I'll Kind of Say the Right Thing Almost and Then Go On Acting As If I Haven't Said Anything At All" show far too many times.
So what did Duncan actually say, according to the New York Times?
“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”
Get that? It's a "problem in implementation." It's not a policy that's Just Plain Wrong. It's not a flat out mistake to demand that all states make Big Standardized Test results part of teacher evaluation or of rating and ranking schools. It's not educational malpractice to use the force of law-ish regulations to force states to use these unproven BS Tests.
No, it's just a "problem in implementation." The policy of using tests to measure, evaluate and rank everything in education-- that's still great policy, apparently.
In fact, if this all seems vague4ly familiar, it's because we did this at almost exactly the same time last year. CCSSO and the CGCS announced that it was time to rein in the testing juggernaut. They even had John King up there helping to announce how golly bob howdy it was time to stop wasting so much time on inessential testing. And the Duncan chimed in to say, "Yessirree, we've gots to roll back the testing." In fact, here's what Arne said a year ago:
Policymakers at every level bear responsibility here — and that includes me and my department. We will support state and district leaders in taking on this issue and provide technical assistance to those who seek it.
Wow. We've come so-- oh, no, wait. We're exactly in the same place. And it was Downtown Baloneyville then, and the bus is stopping on the same corner today.
The new USED "cap" on testing is a suggestion for just 2% of the year to be wasted on actual testing. Big deal. That's peanuts compared to the vast time wastage of getting ready for the BS Testing. Mike Petrilli chimes in to say, "Let's be careful not to cut really useful and important tests," as if any tests are actually going to be scaled back.
And buried deep in the story is some actual useful information from the Council on Great City Schools report:
There was no evidence, the study found, that more time spent on tests improved academic performance, at least as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a longstanding test sometimes referred to as the nation’s report card.
So, although reformsters repeatedly insist that the ultimate measure of any education policy choice is whether or not it raises tests scores, we will not be applying that metric to the BS Tests. Because reasons.
The administration said it would issue “clear guidance” on testing by January. Some of the language of the announcement Saturday was general; it said, for example, that tests should be “worth taking” and “fair.” Like new guidance from many states, it stressed that academic standards and curriculum are to be fleshed out locally.
Yes, one year later we are still offering pointless PR nuggets and avoiding the real discussion, which is why, exactly, we need the BS Tests at all, and what possible justification there is for using the BS Tests to measure, rank and rate students, teachers or schools. The USED will still punch us all in the nose and take our lunch money, but they promise to try really hard not to take up too much of our time doing it. And the media, with its goldfish-sized memory, reports this as if it's a great step forward and not a recycling of last year's account of this incremental journey to nowhere. Gah.
(And Obama's testing action plan? That's a crock, too.)
Duncan issued a statement about testing, and I'd like to be excited that he almost admitted culpability in the Great Testing Circus while stating some actual policy changes to address the problem. But he didn't get there, and I've seen the Duncan "I'll Kind of Say the Right Thing Almost and Then Go On Acting As If I Haven't Said Anything At All" show far too many times.
So what did Duncan actually say, according to the New York Times?
“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”
Get that? It's a "problem in implementation." It's not a policy that's Just Plain Wrong. It's not a flat out mistake to demand that all states make Big Standardized Test results part of teacher evaluation or of rating and ranking schools. It's not educational malpractice to use the force of law-ish regulations to force states to use these unproven BS Tests.
No, it's just a "problem in implementation." The policy of using tests to measure, evaluate and rank everything in education-- that's still great policy, apparently.
In fact, if this all seems vague4ly familiar, it's because we did this at almost exactly the same time last year. CCSSO and the CGCS announced that it was time to rein in the testing juggernaut. They even had John King up there helping to announce how golly bob howdy it was time to stop wasting so much time on inessential testing. And the Duncan chimed in to say, "Yessirree, we've gots to roll back the testing." In fact, here's what Arne said a year ago:
Policymakers at every level bear responsibility here — and that includes me and my department. We will support state and district leaders in taking on this issue and provide technical assistance to those who seek it.
Wow. We've come so-- oh, no, wait. We're exactly in the same place. And it was Downtown Baloneyville then, and the bus is stopping on the same corner today.
The new USED "cap" on testing is a suggestion for just 2% of the year to be wasted on actual testing. Big deal. That's peanuts compared to the vast time wastage of getting ready for the BS Testing. Mike Petrilli chimes in to say, "Let's be careful not to cut really useful and important tests," as if any tests are actually going to be scaled back.
And buried deep in the story is some actual useful information from the Council on Great City Schools report:
There was no evidence, the study found, that more time spent on tests improved academic performance, at least as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a longstanding test sometimes referred to as the nation’s report card.
So, although reformsters repeatedly insist that the ultimate measure of any education policy choice is whether or not it raises tests scores, we will not be applying that metric to the BS Tests. Because reasons.
The administration said it would issue “clear guidance” on testing by January. Some of the language of the announcement Saturday was general; it said, for example, that tests should be “worth taking” and “fair.” Like new guidance from many states, it stressed that academic standards and curriculum are to be fleshed out locally.
Yes, one year later we are still offering pointless PR nuggets and avoiding the real discussion, which is why, exactly, we need the BS Tests at all, and what possible justification there is for using the BS Tests to measure, rank and rate students, teachers or schools. The USED will still punch us all in the nose and take our lunch money, but they promise to try really hard not to take up too much of our time doing it. And the media, with its goldfish-sized memory, reports this as if it's a great step forward and not a recycling of last year's account of this incremental journey to nowhere. Gah.
(And Obama's testing action plan? That's a crock, too.)
Staying the Common Course
I've asked (and answered) the question before-- is there any conceivable argument that a teacher could muster in favor of the Common Core? I remain certain that the answer is, "No." But I've now read one that makes a lightly better attempt.
A friend sent me a copy of a guest editorial for the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State (teachers belong to all the best-sounding organizations) by teacher Michael Siuta, who wants to make a case for staying the course. Siuta is in his 22nd year of teaching, which means he counts four different high school mathematics curricula in his career. And he would like not to change again.
This is the inertia argument that is often made for the Core-- we've already come so far and invested so much. It's a weak argument, like riding in a car, discovering you're on the wrong road, and deciding that you'll just keep driving in the wrong direction because you've already come so far. And Siuta echoes the worst part of that argument:
Change is not always a bad thing; change just for the sake of change, however, is never a good thing and does more harm than good.
Yeah, I've heard that argument before, somewhere, some-- oh, yeah. From every single person who fought against the implementation of Common Core in the first place. It was supposedly a terrible argument then, but apparently it has improved with age.
But there is a more interesting point hiding inside Siuta's plea.
It is the nature of education; the ever present underlying question being, “How much of this topic do students need to know?” which leads to the next question of, “To what depth do I need to teach it?” These are questions that can never be answered by simply looking at a set of standards on a piece of paper; they can only be answered by teaching the course, seeing the state exam, revising it for the following year, seeing another state exam, revising the course again … and repeating this pattern for another 4-5 school years. While this is not something that NYSED, parents, or administrators want to hear, it is reality. No amount of training or consultant-led workshops will ever take the place of experience, but constant change has prevented us from ever gaining the amount of experience needed to refine our courses into well-oiled machines. Just when we start to get a feel for the best way to teach a course, we begin working on a new course. How many times over the past few years have you or one of your colleagues uttered the phrase, “I feel like a first year teacher.” That, in and of itself, speaks volumes about the state of education in New York.
But there is something that happens as the Common Core and any clump of pedagogy and content and curriculum are passed through the meat grinder of experience-- each teacher edits, rewrites and revises what has been handed them.
This has been my argument for a while now-- the Common Core, as originally conceived and created, simply doesn't exist any more. What we have is a wide range of various educational stuffs, all carrying the Common Core label and all completely different in style, content, focus, and implementation.
One of the goals of Common Core was to get everyone on the same page. It has failed, failed utterly and completely and absolutely, to do that.
A text publisher reads the core and filters it into a textbook, which come packaged with a curriculum guide attached, both representing the writers' interpretation of the Core. These are handed off to the district mucky-mucks who buy them and "implement" them by laying over them the district's own ideas and priorities. Finally these materials arrive in a classroom, where a teacher adds 'experience."
Here's what that process looks like. Open book to lesson. Teach lesson. Collect immediate first-hand data from students, and adjust accordingly. The books explanation of this sucks. These examples are bad. This test is crap. The time set is too short. Teachers rewrite these programs on the ground. Who wants to guess in how many Common Core-infused math classrooms, teachers have added units teaching students how to do certain functions "the old way" so that they can "get it."
"Implementing" Common Core was like dumping a barrel of deep red food coloring into Lake Erie. At first, it creates a shocking new coloration, alarming and disturbing. Then, as time passes, the coloration disperses, and the lake restores its own equilibrium. Now, dump in too much, too often, and the lake gets truly hurt.
But that's the implementation process. Everybody but teachers shows up with a new barrel of baloney. They dump it into the classroom, and teachers slowly but surely get back to What Actually Works. Siuta isn't really arguing in favor of the Core-- he's just pleading not to be hit with one more barrel of food coloring.
While there are topics in the standards that I do not think should be there, and some that I think are inappropriate for a specific course, in the end I don’t believe that really matters. I truly believe that we as educators can handle any curriculum, but without the time and experience needed to adapt to the change in pedagogical approach, we will never improve our system.
So here's a real argument that UI almost buy for not "getting rid of" the Common Core (not that anybody is really doing it, but that's another essay)-- just let us keep pretending that we're implementing the Core while we figure out how to do what we know works in the classroom in spite of whatever baloney paperwork the state requires.
It's not a great argument, and it doesn't address the deeply wrong practice of districts that require teachers to stay in lockstep with a pacing guide or teaching script, or the many ways that teachers are being kept from doing what works in the name of one version of Common Core or another. Those are ultimately fatal weaknesses in the argument. But it's the closest thing to a real argument for staying the course (or at least pretending to stay the course) that I've seen.
A friend sent me a copy of a guest editorial for the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State (teachers belong to all the best-sounding organizations) by teacher Michael Siuta, who wants to make a case for staying the course. Siuta is in his 22nd year of teaching, which means he counts four different high school mathematics curricula in his career. And he would like not to change again.
This is the inertia argument that is often made for the Core-- we've already come so far and invested so much. It's a weak argument, like riding in a car, discovering you're on the wrong road, and deciding that you'll just keep driving in the wrong direction because you've already come so far. And Siuta echoes the worst part of that argument:
Change is not always a bad thing; change just for the sake of change, however, is never a good thing and does more harm than good.
Yeah, I've heard that argument before, somewhere, some-- oh, yeah. From every single person who fought against the implementation of Common Core in the first place. It was supposedly a terrible argument then, but apparently it has improved with age.
But there is a more interesting point hiding inside Siuta's plea.
It is the nature of education; the ever present underlying question being, “How much of this topic do students need to know?” which leads to the next question of, “To what depth do I need to teach it?” These are questions that can never be answered by simply looking at a set of standards on a piece of paper; they can only be answered by teaching the course, seeing the state exam, revising it for the following year, seeing another state exam, revising the course again … and repeating this pattern for another 4-5 school years. While this is not something that NYSED, parents, or administrators want to hear, it is reality. No amount of training or consultant-led workshops will ever take the place of experience, but constant change has prevented us from ever gaining the amount of experience needed to refine our courses into well-oiled machines. Just when we start to get a feel for the best way to teach a course, we begin working on a new course. How many times over the past few years have you or one of your colleagues uttered the phrase, “I feel like a first year teacher.” That, in and of itself, speaks volumes about the state of education in New York.
But there is something that happens as the Common Core and any clump of pedagogy and content and curriculum are passed through the meat grinder of experience-- each teacher edits, rewrites and revises what has been handed them.
This has been my argument for a while now-- the Common Core, as originally conceived and created, simply doesn't exist any more. What we have is a wide range of various educational stuffs, all carrying the Common Core label and all completely different in style, content, focus, and implementation.
One of the goals of Common Core was to get everyone on the same page. It has failed, failed utterly and completely and absolutely, to do that.
A text publisher reads the core and filters it into a textbook, which come packaged with a curriculum guide attached, both representing the writers' interpretation of the Core. These are handed off to the district mucky-mucks who buy them and "implement" them by laying over them the district's own ideas and priorities. Finally these materials arrive in a classroom, where a teacher adds 'experience."
Here's what that process looks like. Open book to lesson. Teach lesson. Collect immediate first-hand data from students, and adjust accordingly. The books explanation of this sucks. These examples are bad. This test is crap. The time set is too short. Teachers rewrite these programs on the ground. Who wants to guess in how many Common Core-infused math classrooms, teachers have added units teaching students how to do certain functions "the old way" so that they can "get it."
"Implementing" Common Core was like dumping a barrel of deep red food coloring into Lake Erie. At first, it creates a shocking new coloration, alarming and disturbing. Then, as time passes, the coloration disperses, and the lake restores its own equilibrium. Now, dump in too much, too often, and the lake gets truly hurt.
But that's the implementation process. Everybody but teachers shows up with a new barrel of baloney. They dump it into the classroom, and teachers slowly but surely get back to What Actually Works. Siuta isn't really arguing in favor of the Core-- he's just pleading not to be hit with one more barrel of food coloring.
While there are topics in the standards that I do not think should be there, and some that I think are inappropriate for a specific course, in the end I don’t believe that really matters. I truly believe that we as educators can handle any curriculum, but without the time and experience needed to adapt to the change in pedagogical approach, we will never improve our system.
So here's a real argument that UI almost buy for not "getting rid of" the Common Core (not that anybody is really doing it, but that's another essay)-- just let us keep pretending that we're implementing the Core while we figure out how to do what we know works in the classroom in spite of whatever baloney paperwork the state requires.
It's not a great argument, and it doesn't address the deeply wrong practice of districts that require teachers to stay in lockstep with a pacing guide or teaching script, or the many ways that teachers are being kept from doing what works in the name of one version of Common Core or another. Those are ultimately fatal weaknesses in the argument. But it's the closest thing to a real argument for staying the course (or at least pretending to stay the course) that I've seen.
Eva & Charter Priorities
Yes, we're getting a little tired of the story of how Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy got some bad press and Eva went berserk, throwing a ten year old child under the bus in response.
But there's one more point I want to make.
After many critics cried FERPA rights violation and the mom in the case slapped Moskowitz with a cease and desist letter, here comes the First Amendment argument. Roughly summarized, it goes something like this: if a person bad mouths you to the press, you have the right to violate their privacy.
It's an interesting argument, and one that I'm a little familiar with. A few years back, a film-maker "featured" our school in a film about two young men who claimed to be victimized in their school settings. It had a moment, and our school took a lot of heat for it, and it was a challenging time for us because a quick stroll through the student's disciplinary file or life after the filming would have created a much different picture. In short, we could have defended ourselves by simply opening the student's confidential files to public scrutiny. But we didn't do that-- and I'm not being more specific with you right now-- because that would be the grossest kind of violation of that student's rights as well as a violation of our most fundamental ethics as a school.
As teachers and school systems, we know things about students and their families that nobody knows, and we have a front row seat to an unending cavalcade of Youthful Indiscretions. Yes, at times it can be hugely frustrating when our hands are tied and people are playing fast and loose with the truth, but the power differential between schools, with our access to a massive amounts of personal and private information, and students, who are just children-- that power differential is so huge that our hands need to be tied, both by the law and by our own professional restraint. It can be hugely frustrating to be under attack in the public sphere from which we can't defend ourselves, but the alternative is to become an institution collecting ammo to use against our most vulnerable citizens, a practice that would both poison the atmosphere inside a school, and which would be deeply, deeply wrong, on the order of a hospital that took pictures of patients when they were naked and sedated, just in case those photos were ever needed to shut a former patient up.
Moskowitz probably violated FERPA, and as a Frank LaMonte of the Student Press Law Center points out, that no school has ever suffered an actual penalty for violating FERPA in forty-one years.
Are there public schools that cross this line, public school administrators who violate student confidentiality in ways that are just plain wrong? Sure. We hear about them because everybody understands that such behavior is a serious breach of professional ethics and a violation of the public trust. Moskowitz's letter does not show the slightest inkling that she is over the line.
Moskowitz (and she did it personally, in a letter signed with her own name) violated a basic trust of any school. And in doing so, she underlined one of the problems with modern charters.
Moskowitz made a clear statement about the school's priorities, and the well-being and rights of the child come far down the list.
Moskowitz publicized the private disciplinary records of a child because the child's mother was making the school look bad. If I were a parent looking at Success Academy, I would have to ask myself-- what information would the school collect about me and my child, and under what circumstances would Moskowitz violate my confidentiality to use the information (and would she go so far as to claim it was her constitutional right to do so)? If I enroll my child in Success Academy, do I then have to hold my breath and hope it is never in her best interest to breach my confidentiality? Does the application give me a place to sign where I agree that if I ever cross her, I can expect her to come down on me with whatever information she has collected about my child during that child's time in the school?
Moskowitz didn't just fight bad PR by throwing a child under the bus. She showed just how little she understands about what it means to be a public school, just how hollow are her claims of running Success Academy "for the children."
But there's one more point I want to make.
After many critics cried FERPA rights violation and the mom in the case slapped Moskowitz with a cease and desist letter, here comes the First Amendment argument. Roughly summarized, it goes something like this: if a person bad mouths you to the press, you have the right to violate their privacy.
It's an interesting argument, and one that I'm a little familiar with. A few years back, a film-maker "featured" our school in a film about two young men who claimed to be victimized in their school settings. It had a moment, and our school took a lot of heat for it, and it was a challenging time for us because a quick stroll through the student's disciplinary file or life after the filming would have created a much different picture. In short, we could have defended ourselves by simply opening the student's confidential files to public scrutiny. But we didn't do that-- and I'm not being more specific with you right now-- because that would be the grossest kind of violation of that student's rights as well as a violation of our most fundamental ethics as a school.
As teachers and school systems, we know things about students and their families that nobody knows, and we have a front row seat to an unending cavalcade of Youthful Indiscretions. Yes, at times it can be hugely frustrating when our hands are tied and people are playing fast and loose with the truth, but the power differential between schools, with our access to a massive amounts of personal and private information, and students, who are just children-- that power differential is so huge that our hands need to be tied, both by the law and by our own professional restraint. It can be hugely frustrating to be under attack in the public sphere from which we can't defend ourselves, but the alternative is to become an institution collecting ammo to use against our most vulnerable citizens, a practice that would both poison the atmosphere inside a school, and which would be deeply, deeply wrong, on the order of a hospital that took pictures of patients when they were naked and sedated, just in case those photos were ever needed to shut a former patient up.
Moskowitz probably violated FERPA, and as a Frank LaMonte of the Student Press Law Center points out, that no school has ever suffered an actual penalty for violating FERPA in forty-one years.
Are there public schools that cross this line, public school administrators who violate student confidentiality in ways that are just plain wrong? Sure. We hear about them because everybody understands that such behavior is a serious breach of professional ethics and a violation of the public trust. Moskowitz's letter does not show the slightest inkling that she is over the line.
Moskowitz (and she did it personally, in a letter signed with her own name) violated a basic trust of any school. And in doing so, she underlined one of the problems with modern charters.
Moskowitz made a clear statement about the school's priorities, and the well-being and rights of the child come far down the list.
Moskowitz publicized the private disciplinary records of a child because the child's mother was making the school look bad. If I were a parent looking at Success Academy, I would have to ask myself-- what information would the school collect about me and my child, and under what circumstances would Moskowitz violate my confidentiality to use the information (and would she go so far as to claim it was her constitutional right to do so)? If I enroll my child in Success Academy, do I then have to hold my breath and hope it is never in her best interest to breach my confidentiality? Does the application give me a place to sign where I agree that if I ever cross her, I can expect her to come down on me with whatever information she has collected about my child during that child's time in the school?
Moskowitz didn't just fight bad PR by throwing a child under the bus. She showed just how little she understands about what it means to be a public school, just how hollow are her claims of running Success Academy "for the children."
Friday, October 23, 2015
Hillary's Teacher PAC Goes to DC
Well, not actually to DC. More like LA. But our old friends at America's Teachers are having a good time right now making connections with real DC players.
You may recall that we first talked about America's Teachers back in June, when the teacherPAC first showed up on the radar. At the time it looked like they could turn out to be a shadowy dark money funnel aimed at the Clinton campaign. But upon closer examination, and an entirely pleasant phone conversation, America's Teachers turned out to be a couple of young guys with a dream.
Naveed Amalfard and Luke Villalobos are a pair of very recently graduated just-getting-started TFA guys. You will have to take my word for it that Amalfard sounds kind of charmingly pleasant on the phone, because when you read any of his "Hey, I've taught for a year and I'm here to tell you all Great Truths About Teaching" he sounds like a self-important jerk. These two had adapted the Clintonian/Democrat approach of simply ignoring the major issues facing K-12 education and focusing on warm fuzzy things like pre-K and free college; maybe that way they could unite an otherwise world of splintered-over-education folks. In late August, they didn't seem to have gained a lot of traction.
But this week, they surfaced again. Joy Resmovits covered the boys for the LA Times, where they scored some meetings with some heavier hitters.
So how are they doing? Well, apparently they have so far raised a whopping $1,500 so as SuperPAC's go, they are more Clark Kent than Kal-el.
On the other hand, if they were hoping to keep bridging the gap between classroom teachers, the unions, and education reformsters-- well, that bridge seems to have collapsed. When Amalfard talked to me in August, he was unhappy about being lumped in with outfits like CAP and DFER, but here's where Resmovits caught up with him:
Hours after Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not seek the nomination, they joined about 30 people in the 15th-floor mid-Wilshire offices of consulting group Propper Daley. Appearing with them was Clinton advocate and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D), and Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot Public Schools and chairman of California Democrats for Education Reform.
Amalfard is a TFA product. When I asked him where he saw himself in ten years, and if he might still be in teaching then, he said, "I surely am considering it." But he seems to understand optics. When I talked to him, he said he had turned down a chance to be an AFT union rep, but in Resmovits piece, he seems to have reconsidered and taken the job, which makes for great PR positioning. Howard Dean also appears in Resmovits piece:
America’s Teachers visited Dean in his Washington, D.C., office, and he agreed to support them because as Teach for America and union members, “they’re the perfect example of how you can work together regardless of your background,” he said.
Dean is a whole reformy story himself.
Standing in the middle of that debate is Dean, who formerly led the Democratic National Committee. “I was a total union person,” he said in an interview. But recently, he warmed to policies that have been less than union-friendly. His views evolved when he visited the school of his son, a former Teach for America teacher, in New Orleans. He started rifling through students’ papers and discovered they were “functionally illiterate.”
"Standing in the middle" would be a generous assessment of Dean's education stance, which is too bad. He has positioned himself as one more Democrat who either cannot or will not see what is going on in education.
But in the meantime, America's Teachers has opened up an internship for anyone who can answer these three question affirmatively:
Are you excited to help elect Hillary Clinton President in 2016?
Are you passionate about improving American education?
Are you skilled at online research, communications, or speaking on the phone?
Are they are real PAC? Are they real players? Are they an actual voice for teachers? On the one hand, I kind of doubt it. Nice guys, earnest guys, but no. On the other hand, we live in an age of powerful wishful thinking. Want to be a teacher? Just join TFA and say you're a teacher? Want to be a superintendent? Just go to Broad Academy and call yourself a superintendent. Want to be an important educational expert? Just get ahold of some Gates money and declare yourself an expert? Hell-- want to be a commentator/journalist about the education world? Just start a blog and get a-typing. Nowadays we can all become anything we want to be-- we just have to say it's so. America's Teachers has moved from a modest two-man operation to a modest two-man operation that gets to meet with major national players in the ed reform politics biz. It's the new American Dream!
You may recall that we first talked about America's Teachers back in June, when the teacherPAC first showed up on the radar. At the time it looked like they could turn out to be a shadowy dark money funnel aimed at the Clinton campaign. But upon closer examination, and an entirely pleasant phone conversation, America's Teachers turned out to be a couple of young guys with a dream.
Naveed Amalfard and Luke Villalobos are a pair of very recently graduated just-getting-started TFA guys. You will have to take my word for it that Amalfard sounds kind of charmingly pleasant on the phone, because when you read any of his "Hey, I've taught for a year and I'm here to tell you all Great Truths About Teaching" he sounds like a self-important jerk. These two had adapted the Clintonian/Democrat approach of simply ignoring the major issues facing K-12 education and focusing on warm fuzzy things like pre-K and free college; maybe that way they could unite an otherwise world of splintered-over-education folks. In late August, they didn't seem to have gained a lot of traction.
But this week, they surfaced again. Joy Resmovits covered the boys for the LA Times, where they scored some meetings with some heavier hitters.
So how are they doing? Well, apparently they have so far raised a whopping $1,500 so as SuperPAC's go, they are more Clark Kent than Kal-el.
On the other hand, if they were hoping to keep bridging the gap between classroom teachers, the unions, and education reformsters-- well, that bridge seems to have collapsed. When Amalfard talked to me in August, he was unhappy about being lumped in with outfits like CAP and DFER, but here's where Resmovits caught up with him:
Hours after Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not seek the nomination, they joined about 30 people in the 15th-floor mid-Wilshire offices of consulting group Propper Daley. Appearing with them was Clinton advocate and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D), and Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot Public Schools and chairman of California Democrats for Education Reform.
Amalfard is a TFA product. When I asked him where he saw himself in ten years, and if he might still be in teaching then, he said, "I surely am considering it." But he seems to understand optics. When I talked to him, he said he had turned down a chance to be an AFT union rep, but in Resmovits piece, he seems to have reconsidered and taken the job, which makes for great PR positioning. Howard Dean also appears in Resmovits piece:
America’s Teachers visited Dean in his Washington, D.C., office, and he agreed to support them because as Teach for America and union members, “they’re the perfect example of how you can work together regardless of your background,” he said.
Dean is a whole reformy story himself.
Standing in the middle of that debate is Dean, who formerly led the Democratic National Committee. “I was a total union person,” he said in an interview. But recently, he warmed to policies that have been less than union-friendly. His views evolved when he visited the school of his son, a former Teach for America teacher, in New Orleans. He started rifling through students’ papers and discovered they were “functionally illiterate.”
"Standing in the middle" would be a generous assessment of Dean's education stance, which is too bad. He has positioned himself as one more Democrat who either cannot or will not see what is going on in education.
But in the meantime, America's Teachers has opened up an internship for anyone who can answer these three question affirmatively:
Are you excited to help elect Hillary Clinton President in 2016?
Are you passionate about improving American education?
Are you skilled at online research, communications, or speaking on the phone?
Are they are real PAC? Are they real players? Are they an actual voice for teachers? On the one hand, I kind of doubt it. Nice guys, earnest guys, but no. On the other hand, we live in an age of powerful wishful thinking. Want to be a teacher? Just join TFA and say you're a teacher? Want to be a superintendent? Just go to Broad Academy and call yourself a superintendent. Want to be an important educational expert? Just get ahold of some Gates money and declare yourself an expert? Hell-- want to be a commentator/journalist about the education world? Just start a blog and get a-typing. Nowadays we can all become anything we want to be-- we just have to say it's so. America's Teachers has moved from a modest two-man operation to a modest two-man operation that gets to meet with major national players in the ed reform politics biz. It's the new American Dream!
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