StudentsFirst Weak Core Endorsement

Andy Cuomo's Common Core Task Force is supposed to be busily working today to come up with a new name for the Common Core to carefully examine and consider educational modifications to the Core because it's politically expedient to do so because it's politically expedient to do so.

StudentsFirst NY was only too happy to get involved with a forum sponsored by High Achievement New York, a coalition that asks the question, "If you rub a whole bunch of astroturf together, can you light a fire under New York politicians?" Today they're reporting the testimony of four parents, and it's a sign of how weak the pro-Core argument has become. I'm not going to list the parent names, though SFNY does. I just want to concentrate on the actual argument being pushed here.

Parent #1

Parent #1 has a third grade student who will be taking his first CCSS-aligned test in February. And he has a story to tell.

In the past, I had no way of really knowing if he was making the grade. Last year, he fell behind academically and the only way I found out was after I asked his teacher at a parent teacher conference.  I don’t understand why they didn’t let me know he needed extra help. 

Let me be clear-- this is a real problem, and Parent #1 has every reason to be upset. However, the Core and and Core-aligned tests are not a solution.

The Common Core will make sure my son is on track. I’ll have a way to make sure he’s making the grade – and his teachers will be able to show me clearly what he needs to work on.

What way to make sure he's on track? The CCSS-aligned test? The one he's taking in February??? Because otherwise I'm not clear on how the Core makes the teacher more transparent and communicative about the student's progress (or lack thereof). 

Parent #2

This parent's child is in sixth grade. 

I was lucky enough to grow up in a school environment where my parents and teachers could track my progress. I want my child to have that same opportunity.

Excellent! Did you grow up with Common Core in your school? No? Then let's talk about how to install that excellent system and environment that you grew up with, because there's no reason to think that it had anything to do with CCSS.

I am sick and tired of hearing that every child doesn't deserve high standards. 

And yet I don't think I've ever heard anybody say it ever, at all, even once. 

Parent #3 

Two daughters who have both taken Core-aligned tests, and boy were they hard, but now the girls are proud of having "made it through."  This parent asserts that the daughters "are getting a better education now because of the Common Core." No indication of how, exactly. The Core is a critical tool for teachers, somehow, and it is "critical for parent to hold the system accountable." Again, not clear how that works, exactly, or more importantly, why one needs Common Core to do it..

Parent #4

Fourth grade son. And this parent loves the Core a lot.

I believe that all parents should be able to track their children’s progress – and that’s exactly what the Common Core does 

Because of one aligned test a year? That may seem bizarre, but next up is this false equivalency built of straw.

There are some parents who don’t want their kids to take the annual tests. I just don’t understand why they don’t want to know if their kids are learning what they need to learn. Burying your head in the sand may make you feel better, but it’s not going to help your child learn the skills he needs to be successful.

Not such a mystery. I'm going to bet those parents figure that the Big Standardized Test does not actually tell them whether their kids are learning. They might even suspect that there's no reason to believe that the Common Core is an actual list of what students need to learn.


And that's it

Let me point out, for the record, that when Core advocates complain that folks conflate the Core Standards and the Big Standardized Tests, this is the sort of piece they should be looking at-- all four parents draw no distinction at all between the standards and the tests and treat them as part of the same swell Corey creature. Which is as it was always designed-- I'm just saying that Core fans need to stop asking, "Where did people get such an idea? The standards and the tests are totally different things!"

Beyond that, this weak sauce is a reduction of the classic reformster stew of real problems and fake solutions. Every one of these parents is concerned about something worth being concerned about, and every one of them puts in a plug for a solution that is not a solution.

If you are really concerned about getting lots of useful feedback about your child's progress, call your child's teacher. If your child's teacher is not forthcoming, that's a problem, and you should raise a ruckus. But no matter what, a once-a-year BS Tests that tests only for narrow areas of math and English will not address your concern about useful feedback. Agitate for a transparent system-- heck, the technology is already in existence and in use to make a teacher's electronic gradebook available for student and parent view. My students and their parents can see exactly where they stand every single day, and if more detailed explanation is needed, I am only a phone call or email away. Compared to the dark ages when I went to school, we live in an age of unparalleled transparency and availability of school information.

The advocacy here is representative of the current state of the Core itself-- weak, vague, and confused. The problems listed are real, legitimate concerns, but there isn't one of them that isn't better addressed by something other than the Common Core. If this is what StudentsFirst has mustered to fight off their own reformy buddies in Albany, then the Common Core brand is in big trouble in New York.

NAEP: Further Evidence of Reformy Failure

Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute has gone so far as to call the new NAEP scores "heartbreak." The scores on the Nation's Report Card are crappy, ranging from "barely stagnant" to "plunging."

Petrilli and other reformsters have started the business of finding an explanation for this tragic result (more about that in a moment), but while we are thinking about what did make this happen, let's not lose sight of what didn't happen.

Test-driven accountability tied to national standards did not make NAEP scores rise.

Fifteen years of reformsterism has not moved the needle. Well, actually, that's not entirely true-- the NAEP trend has been ever upward since before the Reformster Era, so we could argue that ed reform actually stopped the needle from moving. So, worse than nothing.

But let's not quibble for the moment. The bottom line is still clear: reformsterism is failing. The reform programs, which are in fact our current status quo, are failing. And we all know what reformsters have been telling us, over and over and over again, about the status quo-- when it's not working, it must be changed.

Now, honestly, I'm not all that concerned about the Nation's Report Card. There are many reasons to suspect that the NAEP is not a reliable benchmark of student learning. But it was part of the rules that reformsters wanted to play by, so it's worth noting that by their own rules, reformsters have failed.

The most entertaining part of the failure is the discovery by reformsters that poverty matters!! Who knew? Oh, wait-- everybody except the reformsters, who could not stop themselves from repeatedly criticizing people who wanted to use poverty as an "excuse."

Kevin Welner at the National Education Policy Center has a great piece collecting many of the prominent reformster "NAEPscuses". "Look," they declare. "There are powerful forces outside of schools that have an effect on how students fare on Big Standardized Tests." I try not to use a lot of salty language here at the blog, but is there any better response than, "No, shit, Sherlock."

How much further will reformsters insist on driving us down this same failed road? How deep into the Big Muddy do we need to get before the Big Fool decides to turn around? How many versions of "maybe the critics had a point" do we have to hear before reformsters finally switch to, "we'd like to talk to teachers and professional educators before we finish developing this policy."

It is 2015, and none of the promised benefits of reformster policies have appeared. Colleges are not announcing, "Man, we are swamped with college and career ready freshmen." Charters are not learning brand new educational techniques that can be adopted by public schools. High stakes testing is not bringing social justice to every corner of the nation. Rich, standardy goodness is not ushering in an end to inequity.

And the NAEP scores are not going up.

It will be natural at this point for many classroom teachers to want to engage in a round of "I told you so." But that's really not the important thing. Instead, we need to ask some big questions. How many more education reform failures must we endure, wasting time and money and grinding teachers and schools down? How many more years will we keep pursuing these failed policies? How much longer will we drift helplessly in the wasted waters of a stagnant status quo?

High stakes standardized testing, national standards, and test-based accountability are wasting time, money, effort, and people, while providing not a glimmer of success in return. Let's be done, already.

Cartman Rules

What is absolutely guaranteed to pop the wheels right off the school bus when it comes to order and atmosphere and culture and just plain treating children with the decency to which they are entitled because they are A) living human beings and B) here?

Cartman rules. (NSFW ahead)

Yeah, that's the whole point of a Cartman Rule. You will respect my authoritah. You will acknowledge that I am The Man. You will do whatever the hell I say because I AM the boss of you.

Is there anything more ridiculous, more silly, more counterproductive, more flat out disrespectful than getting in a grudge match with a child or young adult with absolutely no intent except to force them, through word or deed, to acknowledge that they respect your authority?

I wish it weren't true, but we've all seen it too many times within the walls of a school. The kid laughs with the wrong kind of smile. The kid responds to a direction with a shrug instead of quick compliance. The kid gives all the appearance of not giving a rat's rear about what he's just been told.

And the Enforcer of the Cartman Rule completely loses the thread. What were we trying to do? Were we trying to cover the instruction for today's lesson? Were we trying to get the class focused on a goal, or engaged with some practice? Never mind-- we're going to drop it all so that we can back this kid into a corner and browbeat him into submission.

Hell, we've now got entire schools devoted to Cartman Rules, where the first rule of the school is not about learning or growing but about recognizing the absolute authority of the school over every student action, and no excuses for failing to comply.

Cartman Rules have nothing to do with education, though the justification is always that we have to have order and control in order to teach Those Children. Cartman Rules are recognizable because they are tiny and picky and unrelated to any sort of instructional goals. You must sit just so. You must address me with the correct tone. You must not look at me with the wrong expression. Many Cartman Rules are never written down because in print it would be obvious just how wrong-headed they are.

Cartman Rules clash with race and class. Students who belong to my tribe already know how to play the game and show respect. But Those Students-- you know the ones-- are always too loud, too brash, not respectful enough in the way my tribe understands it. When a student from my tribe says something to a neighbor and laughs, I know nothing's wrong because he's Good People. But when one of Those Students does it-- well, you know how Those Students are and it is undoubtedly one more example of failing to respect my authoritah. Sometimes a Cartman Ruler is so sure that Those Students are out there that he will go looking for them, prodding and provoking until he can push some child to react, "proving" that he was right all along.

Cartman Rules believe in the slippery slope. We must not give an inch. I once heard an administrator explain that if we were going to let students violate parts of the dress code, we might as well just let them start murdering each other. Because dress code violations and murder are totally the same thing.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that those who live by Cartman Rules will make judgments that stick. Cartman Rule folks tend to sort the world into good and bad. That student who failed to respect my authoritah? His behavior just proves he's a Bad Kid, and once I know he's a Bad Kid, I can start seeing disrespect and defiance in every single thing he does.

Folks who live by Cartman Rules will always come off the rails sooner or later, and then they'll start flailing about and damaging everyone in sight. Sometimes they'll make such a mess they'll lose their position; sometimes they're so protected that they can get away with awful stuff. Another fictional teacher who lives by Cartman Rules-- Dolores Umbrage.

So (a Cartman Rules teacher will say) do you want chaos and disorder? Are you one of those touchy feely teachers who just lets the students run riot in your classroom?

The answer is no. The antidote to Cartman Rules ("Everyone must respect my authoritah") is another, simpler classroom and school rule. Everyone must treat everyone else with respect-- and "everyone" means everyone. If you like a simpler wording, try "everyone must treat everyone else as if they are a live human person."

Build an atmosphere of respect and decency and human consideration, and the order will follow. Try to build a system where rules and authority are the highest values, and nothing will thrive, not order, not education, and certainly not the students. Are there students out there who present a huge, huge challenge to a functioning classroom? Sure. But they are still human beings, and are entitled to be treated as such.

Every time you see one more news story about a student who was assaulted by a school official (though we never call the assault by its name) or about a child who was slapped in handcuffs or some other horrifying treatment of a student, you are seeing Cartman Rules in action. You are seeing an adult who put his or her own power and authority ahead of student needs or concerns. It's not okay. It's never okay. And the excuses are always lame because they always boil down to the same damn thing-- Cartman bleating "she wouldn't respect my authoritah."

The Correct Number of Standardized Tests

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.

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.

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 clear commands 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.

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.)