Sunday, November 8, 2015
NEA's Lily Eskelsen García on What Teachers Do
Lord knows I can be as critical of some of Lily Eskelsen Garcia's choices as NEA president as anyone around, but the woman can speak. Here's a quick three minutes on what teachers need and what teachers do. It's worth a view.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
How Assessment Ruins Standards
Long time readers know that I do not subscribe to the whole "The standards are swell; it's just those evil tests that screw everything up" school of thought. I think there are plenty of reasons to oppose national standards no matter what standards they are, and plenty of reasons to believe that no set of national standards will ever accomplish any of the goals set for them.
But let's set all of that aside for a moment and talk about how the very attempt to assess standards-based outcomes ruins those standards.
For my example, I'm going to pick the oft-noted CCSS standards about evidence.
I pick it because it's a part of the Common Core that doesn't particularly bother me. Like most English teachers, I've been encouraging (in many cases, quite vigorously) my students to provide support for whatever idea they are trying to assert. ("No, Chris-- saying Huck Finn is a dynamic character because he does dynamic stuff in a dynamic way does not really make your case"). When I assign a paper, two of the main questions I consider when assigning a grade are 1) did you actually have a point and 2) did you support it with actual evidence.
So in this area, the Core and I can co-exist peacefully.
But this kind of evidence use is a tool, a technique, and so it can't be assessed in a vacuum, just as you cannot judge somebody's hammering skills by just watching them hold a hammer or judge their free-throw shooting skills without handing them a ball. And that's where we get into trouble.
Assessing this skill is easiest when tying it to an act of critical thinking. But critical thinking has to be an open-ended activity. (Here's a quick tip-- if your question only has a single possible correct answer, it is not assessing critical thinking skills.) In my classroom, the most obvious avenue is a response to literature, though it will also work to deal with social issues, human behavior puzzles, historical research, or evaluating somebody else's essay work. Just to name a few.
To make this assessment work, I have to really know my stuff. I have to know Huck Finn frontwards and backwards, and perhaps augment my own expertise with lots of reading of scholarly critiques of the work. I have to know the work well enough that I can give the student freedom to go where his ideas lead him without me having to say, "Sorry, but I don't know anything about that, so I can't grade it, so you can't do it."
Every area of study is like a big patch of real estate, and I need to be a well-informed native guide who knows the territory so well that no matter where the student wanders off to, I'll know the terrain. When I don't know the territory, I end up fencing students in. "Just stay on the path-- don't stray." At the very worst, I will lay rails and make everyone ride through the territory on a train that only goes where it is meant to. The train tour is by far the least interesting, the least useful, the least rewarding, the least educational, and the least authentic way to explore the territory. It rules out all discovery and invention, and it is certainly hard on any prospect for joy or excitement.
But again-- we can only scrap the train and the pathway if we have a knowledgeable native guide. That's how my juniors can do a unit built on research of local history-- because I've made myself a little bit of an expert on the subject. That's how my colleague can do a massive end-of-year project with her AP seniors about Paradise Lost-- because she knows and loves that work. If we had to trade projects, we would both be lost.
But within our areas, we are qualified to tell the difference between evidence that is really evidence, and evidence that is just a piece of camouflaged baloney.
So here's why a standardized test can't test this standard.
First, a standardized tests starts with the assumption that any person (or computer program) should be able to evaluate the student's work without possessing any actual expertise at all.
Second, the answers have to be evaluatable in a very short time span.
And that means we will travel through the territory strapped into a seat on a tightly run train.
Look through the PARCC samples. These are slightly spiffed up multiple-choice single answer questions. The new SAT essay is just a wordier version of the same thing-- look at a piece of writing, determine what point the test manufacturers think you should see, and support it with the evidence that the test manufacturers believe are the correct pieces of evidence. These folks keep coming up with more complicated ways to ask closed-ended questions. This is partly, I suspect, because it's simply faster and more efficient to have a test of closed-ended questions that can be scored by any non-expert (or non-human). But also partly because some of these folks just have a narrow, cramped, stilted view of life and the world. "I handed you a brush, a small flat surface, and a jar of blue paint. What else would any normal person do except paint the flat surface solid blue?"
But that's not critical thinking, and it's not supporting your ideas with evidence.
Now, what is often shortened to "support with evidence" in discussion of the CCSS is actually mangled pretty badly in the actual wording of the standards, but even if it weren't, the Big Standardized Tests would mangle this idea to death anyway.
What this should properly mean is, "Come up with an idea that makes sense to you, and support it with evidence that you believe backs up your idea." But the only person who can evaluate that is a classroom teacher who possesses 1) enough expertise to evaluate the student's process 2) fewer than 1,000 students so that said evaluation can occur within the next week or so.
So what the standard means in a standardized test situations is, "Figure out what idea the test manufacturer wants you to find, and then locate the details that the test manufacturer wants you to pick out."
When we talk about test prep in the ELA world, we're talking about getting students into that second mindset, about training them to figure out the One Correct Answer associated with each piece of reading and the Only Correct Evidence located as well. And then repeat it, year after year after year.
And what really sucks is that we are getting good at it, and our students are paying the price. This whole blog piece is the result of a conversation I had with a colleague, both of us concerned because, despite our best efforts, we find our students over the past few years have become progressively worse at really engaging with reading and writing. They have learned that it's not about thinking or reacting or engaging and gripping the material with your own brain. What do you think? Why do you think that? Can you convince me to agree with you? I feel like my students have only recently encountered these kinds of questions, and they aren't sure what to do with them, because they've learned that there's only one right way to do each reading and writing task, and that one right way is known by someone else, and it's up to them to figure that out.
Of course, this issue didn't start with Common Core and Big Standardized Testing, but those conjoined twins have made things so much worse. When you try to make a complicated idea something you can assess "at scale," you do enormous damage. When you write a standard specifically so that you CAN test it "at scale," you break it entirely.
But let's set all of that aside for a moment and talk about how the very attempt to assess standards-based outcomes ruins those standards.
For my example, I'm going to pick the oft-noted CCSS standards about evidence.
I pick it because it's a part of the Common Core that doesn't particularly bother me. Like most English teachers, I've been encouraging (in many cases, quite vigorously) my students to provide support for whatever idea they are trying to assert. ("No, Chris-- saying Huck Finn is a dynamic character because he does dynamic stuff in a dynamic way does not really make your case"). When I assign a paper, two of the main questions I consider when assigning a grade are 1) did you actually have a point and 2) did you support it with actual evidence.
So in this area, the Core and I can co-exist peacefully.
But this kind of evidence use is a tool, a technique, and so it can't be assessed in a vacuum, just as you cannot judge somebody's hammering skills by just watching them hold a hammer or judge their free-throw shooting skills without handing them a ball. And that's where we get into trouble.
Assessing this skill is easiest when tying it to an act of critical thinking. But critical thinking has to be an open-ended activity. (Here's a quick tip-- if your question only has a single possible correct answer, it is not assessing critical thinking skills.) In my classroom, the most obvious avenue is a response to literature, though it will also work to deal with social issues, human behavior puzzles, historical research, or evaluating somebody else's essay work. Just to name a few.
To make this assessment work, I have to really know my stuff. I have to know Huck Finn frontwards and backwards, and perhaps augment my own expertise with lots of reading of scholarly critiques of the work. I have to know the work well enough that I can give the student freedom to go where his ideas lead him without me having to say, "Sorry, but I don't know anything about that, so I can't grade it, so you can't do it."
Every area of study is like a big patch of real estate, and I need to be a well-informed native guide who knows the territory so well that no matter where the student wanders off to, I'll know the terrain. When I don't know the territory, I end up fencing students in. "Just stay on the path-- don't stray." At the very worst, I will lay rails and make everyone ride through the territory on a train that only goes where it is meant to. The train tour is by far the least interesting, the least useful, the least rewarding, the least educational, and the least authentic way to explore the territory. It rules out all discovery and invention, and it is certainly hard on any prospect for joy or excitement.
But again-- we can only scrap the train and the pathway if we have a knowledgeable native guide. That's how my juniors can do a unit built on research of local history-- because I've made myself a little bit of an expert on the subject. That's how my colleague can do a massive end-of-year project with her AP seniors about Paradise Lost-- because she knows and loves that work. If we had to trade projects, we would both be lost.
But within our areas, we are qualified to tell the difference between evidence that is really evidence, and evidence that is just a piece of camouflaged baloney.
So here's why a standardized test can't test this standard.
First, a standardized tests starts with the assumption that any person (or computer program) should be able to evaluate the student's work without possessing any actual expertise at all.
Second, the answers have to be evaluatable in a very short time span.
And that means we will travel through the territory strapped into a seat on a tightly run train.
Look through the PARCC samples. These are slightly spiffed up multiple-choice single answer questions. The new SAT essay is just a wordier version of the same thing-- look at a piece of writing, determine what point the test manufacturers think you should see, and support it with the evidence that the test manufacturers believe are the correct pieces of evidence. These folks keep coming up with more complicated ways to ask closed-ended questions. This is partly, I suspect, because it's simply faster and more efficient to have a test of closed-ended questions that can be scored by any non-expert (or non-human). But also partly because some of these folks just have a narrow, cramped, stilted view of life and the world. "I handed you a brush, a small flat surface, and a jar of blue paint. What else would any normal person do except paint the flat surface solid blue?"
But that's not critical thinking, and it's not supporting your ideas with evidence.
Now, what is often shortened to "support with evidence" in discussion of the CCSS is actually mangled pretty badly in the actual wording of the standards, but even if it weren't, the Big Standardized Tests would mangle this idea to death anyway.
What this should properly mean is, "Come up with an idea that makes sense to you, and support it with evidence that you believe backs up your idea." But the only person who can evaluate that is a classroom teacher who possesses 1) enough expertise to evaluate the student's process 2) fewer than 1,000 students so that said evaluation can occur within the next week or so.
So what the standard means in a standardized test situations is, "Figure out what idea the test manufacturer wants you to find, and then locate the details that the test manufacturer wants you to pick out."
When we talk about test prep in the ELA world, we're talking about getting students into that second mindset, about training them to figure out the One Correct Answer associated with each piece of reading and the Only Correct Evidence located as well. And then repeat it, year after year after year.
And what really sucks is that we are getting good at it, and our students are paying the price. This whole blog piece is the result of a conversation I had with a colleague, both of us concerned because, despite our best efforts, we find our students over the past few years have become progressively worse at really engaging with reading and writing. They have learned that it's not about thinking or reacting or engaging and gripping the material with your own brain. What do you think? Why do you think that? Can you convince me to agree with you? I feel like my students have only recently encountered these kinds of questions, and they aren't sure what to do with them, because they've learned that there's only one right way to do each reading and writing task, and that one right way is known by someone else, and it's up to them to figure that out.
Of course, this issue didn't start with Common Core and Big Standardized Testing, but those conjoined twins have made things so much worse. When you try to make a complicated idea something you can assess "at scale," you do enormous damage. When you write a standard specifically so that you CAN test it "at scale," you break it entirely.
Friday, November 6, 2015
CAP & Common Core Whack-a-mole
I have decided that the Center for American Promise has based its relentless (and senseless) Common Core promotional campaign on a game of whack-a-mole in which they play the part of the mole.
Here comes Carmel Martin, executive vice-president of policy at CAP (previously employed by the US Department of Education-- you can view her revolving door history here), writing a piece for Inside Sources, a website that seems to be a sort of clearing house for news from "policy and industry experts" aka "people who have a news story they want to have placed." But it totally worked, because the piece was picked up by Newsday.
Martin announces her intent with her lede:
The irony of the controversy over the Common Core is that proponents and opponents actually agree on much more than we disagree on.
I'm not sure what the "irony" of the controversy is, really. That Common Core backers never thought anyone would argue with them or resist? That they are being sold as higher standards that will prepare students for college and career when there's no actual evidence they do either? But hey-- let's hold hands, start strumming our ukelele, and see what it is that we all agree on.
First, "we all agree" that America's students must be prepared to thrive in today's competitive global economy. Do we all agree? Because I bet some of us think that some folks think there's something wrong with an economic vision that chews people up and spits them out. So maybe some of us agree that rather than preparing students to resist being poisoned, we might strive for a world less steeped in poisonous atmosphere. Just saying. So are you wondering yet if Martin is a parent?
As a parent and a policy leader, I want every American child held to the same high expectations as students in the highest-performing nations.
That is an interesting goal to cheer for, and it would be more convincing if Martin named just one successful nation that can credit its success to "rigorous" national standards. Heck, go ahead and name a country that has such standards. But Martin doesn't back up her assertion for the same reason that she doesn't include a pull-quote from a Yeti that she interviewed on the back of a unicorn.
Next we get a recap of the history. Let's cruise past all the landmarks. Look-- there's "A Nation at Risk," announcing that America was on the verge of collapse because of our terrible education system. That was 1983-- you all remember how the last thirty years have been marked by America's collapse and fall, right? Just how long does "A Nation at Risk" have to keep being wrong before we stop citing it as an authority.
Also, Martin adds, remediation rates. She says that only one third of students are proficient at math and reading and while she neither indicates which students or where that figure came from, she doesn't really need to because does anybody, looking around at live humans in the world, believe that only a third of Americans can handle math and reading? Also, achievement gaps, supported by more-- oh, no, wait. Still no sources or citations for any of this.
Are we getting to the parts of Common Core on which we all agree, yet? No, now it's time for the paragraph about PISA, chicken littling our international test scores because those test scores have been linked to... well, the scores on the tests.
Anyway, back before the Common Core, each state had its own standards. And that was bad, because reasons. Still nothing that we all agree on.
Now Martin shares some fictionalized history about the origins of Common Core; states recognized the problem and "banded together to create the Common Core." I always wonder what audience CAP imagines when they spin their SF PR yarns; apparently Newsday is read primarily by folks who live under rocks.
The new standards made it possible to compare results from one state to the next and enabled parents, teachers and school system leaders to know whether their students were really on track to graduate ready for college or a career for the first time in history.
No, you don't get a lick of proof for any of the absurd notion that A) such foreknowledge is possible, no matter what path a student chooses or B) that anyone has a clue how to know it. This would be a good place, now that we are so many years into Common Core deployment, for Martin to report how much better core-ified graduates are doing at colleges and in their careers. But she doesn't do that.
We do get a whole paragraph about how math is now wider and deeper and more conceptual. Then it's on to implementation excuses and noting that teachers are still "internalizing" the standards.
But the bottom line is that the Common Core addressed a vital and longstanding need to better prepare all students to graduate from high school ready for college and careers.
Yes, the premise that we all agree about Common Core stuff, the actual lede of this piece-- it didn't survive past the first sentence, and Martin does not even pretend to circle back to it for her finish. Instead she sticks with the classic reformsters formula-- there is a problem, so this is a good solution. Your spleen has exploded, so you should hold this frog over your nose under a full moon. Your house is on fire, so you should let me run a bulldozer through your living room. A bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves.
If you want to sell me a solution to a problem, don't just yammer about the problem. Show me how the solution will fix it. That's what the best salesman needs to do, and Martin, like the rest of the CAP infinite PR flackery department, fails to do that. Maybe the idea is that if they just keep peeking up their plastic heads, we'll eventually get tired of whacking away. Doesn't matter. Whether anybody hits it or not, it's still just a plastic mole head, with no heart, no guts, and no real substance hiding behind its tired plastic surface.
Here comes Carmel Martin, executive vice-president of policy at CAP (previously employed by the US Department of Education-- you can view her revolving door history here), writing a piece for Inside Sources, a website that seems to be a sort of clearing house for news from "policy and industry experts" aka "people who have a news story they want to have placed." But it totally worked, because the piece was picked up by Newsday.
Martin announces her intent with her lede:
The irony of the controversy over the Common Core is that proponents and opponents actually agree on much more than we disagree on.
I'm not sure what the "irony" of the controversy is, really. That Common Core backers never thought anyone would argue with them or resist? That they are being sold as higher standards that will prepare students for college and career when there's no actual evidence they do either? But hey-- let's hold hands, start strumming our ukelele, and see what it is that we all agree on.
First, "we all agree" that America's students must be prepared to thrive in today's competitive global economy. Do we all agree? Because I bet some of us think that some folks think there's something wrong with an economic vision that chews people up and spits them out. So maybe some of us agree that rather than preparing students to resist being poisoned, we might strive for a world less steeped in poisonous atmosphere. Just saying. So are you wondering yet if Martin is a parent?
As a parent and a policy leader, I want every American child held to the same high expectations as students in the highest-performing nations.
That is an interesting goal to cheer for, and it would be more convincing if Martin named just one successful nation that can credit its success to "rigorous" national standards. Heck, go ahead and name a country that has such standards. But Martin doesn't back up her assertion for the same reason that she doesn't include a pull-quote from a Yeti that she interviewed on the back of a unicorn.
Next we get a recap of the history. Let's cruise past all the landmarks. Look-- there's "A Nation at Risk," announcing that America was on the verge of collapse because of our terrible education system. That was 1983-- you all remember how the last thirty years have been marked by America's collapse and fall, right? Just how long does "A Nation at Risk" have to keep being wrong before we stop citing it as an authority.
Also, Martin adds, remediation rates. She says that only one third of students are proficient at math and reading and while she neither indicates which students or where that figure came from, she doesn't really need to because does anybody, looking around at live humans in the world, believe that only a third of Americans can handle math and reading? Also, achievement gaps, supported by more-- oh, no, wait. Still no sources or citations for any of this.
Are we getting to the parts of Common Core on which we all agree, yet? No, now it's time for the paragraph about PISA, chicken littling our international test scores because those test scores have been linked to... well, the scores on the tests.
Anyway, back before the Common Core, each state had its own standards. And that was bad, because reasons. Still nothing that we all agree on.
Now Martin shares some fictionalized history about the origins of Common Core; states recognized the problem and "banded together to create the Common Core." I always wonder what audience CAP imagines when they spin their SF PR yarns; apparently Newsday is read primarily by folks who live under rocks.
The new standards made it possible to compare results from one state to the next and enabled parents, teachers and school system leaders to know whether their students were really on track to graduate ready for college or a career for the first time in history.
No, you don't get a lick of proof for any of the absurd notion that A) such foreknowledge is possible, no matter what path a student chooses or B) that anyone has a clue how to know it. This would be a good place, now that we are so many years into Common Core deployment, for Martin to report how much better core-ified graduates are doing at colleges and in their careers. But she doesn't do that.
We do get a whole paragraph about how math is now wider and deeper and more conceptual. Then it's on to implementation excuses and noting that teachers are still "internalizing" the standards.
But the bottom line is that the Common Core addressed a vital and longstanding need to better prepare all students to graduate from high school ready for college and careers.
Yes, the premise that we all agree about Common Core stuff, the actual lede of this piece-- it didn't survive past the first sentence, and Martin does not even pretend to circle back to it for her finish. Instead she sticks with the classic reformsters formula-- there is a problem, so this is a good solution. Your spleen has exploded, so you should hold this frog over your nose under a full moon. Your house is on fire, so you should let me run a bulldozer through your living room. A bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves.
If you want to sell me a solution to a problem, don't just yammer about the problem. Show me how the solution will fix it. That's what the best salesman needs to do, and Martin, like the rest of the CAP infinite PR flackery department, fails to do that. Maybe the idea is that if they just keep peeking up their plastic heads, we'll eventually get tired of whacking away. Doesn't matter. Whether anybody hits it or not, it's still just a plastic mole head, with no heart, no guts, and no real substance hiding behind its tired plastic surface.
Cheating the NAEP
We've had our giant round of reaction to the NAEP test results, and their woeful failure to show American school children being propelled forward into a wonderland of learning by over a decade of reformster policies. I'm not sure there's any reason to get excited about NAEP results at all, but test-loving folks do, and there's really no denying that this round of NAEP results were Just Not Good.
Oh, but what if it turned out that they were actually even worse?
RaShawn Biddle may not be familiar to you; Biddle runs a one-man media empire parked firmly in reformsterland. But his blog Dropout Nation ran some interesting analysis of some NAEP numbers.
To understand what he's about, you need to know that NAEP allows states to opt out up to 15% of their student special population-- typically students with special needs and English Language Learners. But Biddle is a good reformster, and so he believes in the simple two-step proposition:
1) Public schools are failing. We just need to prove it so we can get support for dismantling them.
2) Making students take Big Standardized Tests who can't possible pass them-- that will help with #1.
Biddle likes to talk about "special ed ghettos" and he's a huge supporter of having all the students there fail BS Tests so we can prove that their school districts suck. But he's not wrong when he points out that some states and cities are gaming their NAEP stats by controlling who actually takes the test. Biddle has assembled two Dishonor Rolls.
On the state level, the big loser is Georgia.
The Peach State was the worst in the nation in excluding fourth- and eighth-grade kids in special ed, keeping 25 percent of each group of students from taking NAEP this year. Although the levels of exclusion declined by, respectively, six and seven percentage points from levels two years ago, Georgia has done far less than either Maryland or Department of Defense to reduce its test-cheating.
Different states use different exclusion approaches to special needs and ELL. Here are the exclusion leaders when it comes to 4th grade special ed
When we look at ELL; Kentucky leaps into the lead:
Meanwhile, the NAEP is working on trial assessments of big urban districts, so Biddle needs a whole other Dishonor Roll for those Big Cheaters on the City Scale (by his count, fourteen of the twenty-three cities cheated).
Washington DC's heralded NAEP improvement? They excluded almost half of their ELL students from the test. Dallas opted out 44% of their fourth grade students with special needs, and 29% of the eighth grade. Philly and Miami-Dade managed to exclude students all across the board-- both groups, both grades. Baltimore, Houston, and Detroit also excluded huge numbers of students, making their NAEP results somewhere between "suspicious" and "invalid."
It's interesting to see so many states and cities doing their best to support the Opt Out movement. Michigan is not really a fan of Opt Out, but I guess Detroit wants to run its own Opt Out program.
And it's also worth noting that we've got one more example here of how putting stakes on BS Tests leads to people looking for ways to game the system-- even people who are the supposed official guardians of correctness and fair play.
But there's another issue here-- what exactly qualifies as "fair" or "not cheating" in this situation? Following the rules is only fair if the rules are fair to begin with, and I can't find anything to suggest that the 15% opt-out allowance is anything but an arbitrary number arrived at as a political compromise between hard-nosed test love (we must test everyone) and inconvenient reality (given students a test far above their abilities is a pointless, punishing exercise).
I'm also going to invoke my made-up Law of Bad Assessment-- the more inauthentic the assessment and the more removed from what is actually being assessed, the easier it is to cheat. And its corollary-- when an assessment is so inauthentic that its demands can't be met by authentic skills, cheating is not only probable, but necessary.
That law is only amplified when the inauthentic assessment is used for no legitimate purpose. Did we need to have all the ELL and SWSN tested so that we could identify the ones who would fail? The states and cities already identified them in order to exempt them, and Biddle's critique of the states and cities assumes they are correct (he's not saying, "Boy, they would have had better results if only they'd let everyone be tested."). We all already know which students can't make this particular grade. Biddle claims to want the benefits of testing for all students. That's silly. There are no benefits to making a student take a test that she, her teachers and her parents all know is beyond her current level of ability and knowledge.
Did we need to be able to identify failing states or cities, or at least stack rank them? Why? What policy goal is aided by that information? We know where the challenged students are, we know where their schools are, and we know what they need (time, resources, and teachers). What else do you think we need to know, and how will making more students fail the NAEP help gather that information?
So what's the beef? The beef is that by cheating, the states and cities avoid being publicly caught failing and suffering the beatdown that reformsters want them to get. The beef is also that by cheating, the states and cities hid the full extent to which reformsters have failed to achieve the gains they promised us we'd see after years of their policies. And the fact that we are all unhappy is a sign of just how large a clusterfarfigneugen the whole business is.
Can we really talking about gaming the system when the system is just a big game?
Oh, but what if it turned out that they were actually even worse?
RaShawn Biddle may not be familiar to you; Biddle runs a one-man media empire parked firmly in reformsterland. But his blog Dropout Nation ran some interesting analysis of some NAEP numbers.
To understand what he's about, you need to know that NAEP allows states to opt out up to 15% of their student special population-- typically students with special needs and English Language Learners. But Biddle is a good reformster, and so he believes in the simple two-step proposition:
1) Public schools are failing. We just need to prove it so we can get support for dismantling them.
2) Making students take Big Standardized Tests who can't possible pass them-- that will help with #1.
Biddle likes to talk about "special ed ghettos" and he's a huge supporter of having all the students there fail BS Tests so we can prove that their school districts suck. But he's not wrong when he points out that some states and cities are gaming their NAEP stats by controlling who actually takes the test. Biddle has assembled two Dishonor Rolls.
On the state level, the big loser is Georgia.
The Peach State was the worst in the nation in excluding fourth- and eighth-grade kids in special ed, keeping 25 percent of each group of students from taking NAEP this year. Although the levels of exclusion declined by, respectively, six and seven percentage points from levels two years ago, Georgia has done far less than either Maryland or Department of Defense to reduce its test-cheating.
Different states use different exclusion approaches to special needs and ELL. Here are the exclusion leaders when it comes to 4th grade special ed
When we look at ELL; Kentucky leaps into the lead:
Meanwhile, the NAEP is working on trial assessments of big urban districts, so Biddle needs a whole other Dishonor Roll for those Big Cheaters on the City Scale (by his count, fourteen of the twenty-three cities cheated).
Washington DC's heralded NAEP improvement? They excluded almost half of their ELL students from the test. Dallas opted out 44% of their fourth grade students with special needs, and 29% of the eighth grade. Philly and Miami-Dade managed to exclude students all across the board-- both groups, both grades. Baltimore, Houston, and Detroit also excluded huge numbers of students, making their NAEP results somewhere between "suspicious" and "invalid."
It's interesting to see so many states and cities doing their best to support the Opt Out movement. Michigan is not really a fan of Opt Out, but I guess Detroit wants to run its own Opt Out program.
And it's also worth noting that we've got one more example here of how putting stakes on BS Tests leads to people looking for ways to game the system-- even people who are the supposed official guardians of correctness and fair play.
But there's another issue here-- what exactly qualifies as "fair" or "not cheating" in this situation? Following the rules is only fair if the rules are fair to begin with, and I can't find anything to suggest that the 15% opt-out allowance is anything but an arbitrary number arrived at as a political compromise between hard-nosed test love (we must test everyone) and inconvenient reality (given students a test far above their abilities is a pointless, punishing exercise).
I'm also going to invoke my made-up Law of Bad Assessment-- the more inauthentic the assessment and the more removed from what is actually being assessed, the easier it is to cheat. And its corollary-- when an assessment is so inauthentic that its demands can't be met by authentic skills, cheating is not only probable, but necessary.
That law is only amplified when the inauthentic assessment is used for no legitimate purpose. Did we need to have all the ELL and SWSN tested so that we could identify the ones who would fail? The states and cities already identified them in order to exempt them, and Biddle's critique of the states and cities assumes they are correct (he's not saying, "Boy, they would have had better results if only they'd let everyone be tested."). We all already know which students can't make this particular grade. Biddle claims to want the benefits of testing for all students. That's silly. There are no benefits to making a student take a test that she, her teachers and her parents all know is beyond her current level of ability and knowledge.
Did we need to be able to identify failing states or cities, or at least stack rank them? Why? What policy goal is aided by that information? We know where the challenged students are, we know where their schools are, and we know what they need (time, resources, and teachers). What else do you think we need to know, and how will making more students fail the NAEP help gather that information?
So what's the beef? The beef is that by cheating, the states and cities avoid being publicly caught failing and suffering the beatdown that reformsters want them to get. The beef is also that by cheating, the states and cities hid the full extent to which reformsters have failed to achieve the gains they promised us we'd see after years of their policies. And the fact that we are all unhappy is a sign of just how large a clusterfarfigneugen the whole business is.
Can we really talking about gaming the system when the system is just a big game?
Thursday, November 5, 2015
WSJ Runs Cyberschool PR
If you were feeling badly about the poor beleaguered cyber schools that took a drubbing earlier this week (from both a report suggesting they are no more effective than a long nap and the many charter fans who piled on to excoriate them), take heart. Someone did run to their defense. And an alleged journalist paved the road so that the run would be easy.
The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal posted a five minute infomercial for the cybers, featuring Center for Education Reform Senior Fellow and President Emeritus Jeanne Allen. The Center for Education Reform is a full-on advocacy group for the charter school industry, used to float every imaginable argument in support of sweet, chartery goodness. Allen was there to blunt the impact of the study, and the WSJ host was there to help her do it.
"A small study on online charter schools is creating a big controversy," our hostess leads, suggesting that the study was neither large nor important, and suggesting that there is actually some sort of debate over the uselessness of cybers, and not just a whole lot folks from all across the ideological spectrum declaring that cyberschools are a big expensive waste of time.
Then we introduce Allen and lead with a question that is a softball in much the same way that Donald Trump is somewhat self-assured. Referring to the CREDO study, the host asks "Was this study conducted at Stanford or near Stanford--" with a chuckling delivery which suggests that somebody cribbed the study off the back of a cereal box and is just trying to make it sound important by attaching Stanford's name. "What exactly did the researchers study," she asks, in a tone that suggests she's pretty sure they studied newts under a full moon.
And so we are twenty seconds in, Allen hasn't even spoken yet, and we have already clearly conveyed to the audience that the study is some kind of over-inflated joke. That's some pretty awesome journalism, there!
Here comes Allen. She's stern, like she found out that somebody is stealing her kid's lunch money on the bus. She does a five-second history of CREDO and charters "who are helping, oh, about 2.5 million kids today" and that "oh about" is not searching for the answer but using the kind of sarcastic flourish with which readers of this blog are familiar.
But Allen says the report is important because every time somebody does "research" and or a "study" publishes "findings" that are negative (and kudos to Allen who manages to create the oral Airquotes of Mockery as well as anyone I've ever seen) it just scares policymakers and it makes folks confused. But how can we trust CREDO reports on charters to be valid, Allen asks, if they use these "experimental" techniques and data from states that (here Allen makes a pained face, like she hates to tell you, but you husband is kind of dumb and ugly) aren't very reliable.
The host steps in to feed another question about cyber clientele? Rural students? Homeschooled? "Who's taking advantage of" the cybers. I suppose she could mean "taking advantage" as in tricking the cyber schools into going to third base without so much as a promise of a class ring, but it seems clear she means it as in "who is getting the great benefits of these swell schools?" She is smirking and Allen is nodding as if to say, "Yes, just like we did it in practice."
Now Allen strings together a nonsense sentence about how that's a great question because the heart of whether the study is valid is who is using these schools. And, well, no. That's not what "valid" means here. But Allen plows on. Most cyber charter students "have had issues." They wouldn't be there unless they had a problem (and I can hear cyberschool folks saying, "Yeah, thanks, you can stop helping us now"). Some might have been bullied. "Many of them" (and I'm going to be careful to transcribe this because, well) "might be on the road because perhaps their involvement with a different effort." They might have been unsuccessful at academics, or they might have been too successful and turned to cybers for Big Challenges. Anyway, the heart of this, "personalization for our kids." We must kill the one size fits all world of public schools also zoning kids by zip codes and it's like the talking points are so jammed up in her mouth there's no room for the rest of the parts needed to build a sentence. Some of the cyberstudents might only be there a year while they're "getting over some kind of challenge or hump" and the study (she may have found her way back to the point, finally) did not take into account how long they were there, where they come from, how much progress they made over time, which, wait, no-- the CREDO study, which expressed everything in the admittedly bogus measure of "days of learning" was totally focused on how much growth the students showed over time, so she's kind of exactly, oh, you know, wrong.
But this big mean study damns the cybers and suggests they shouldn't be open, and in this we agree. That's certainly what the study suggests. Is she going to suggest some data that would prove the study wrong? Nope.
The host cuts off Allen's impotent sputtering to ask if there are better studies of online schools. You know, studies that prove what you want them to prove. Allen replies "Homina homina homina no." Allen does suggest that parents considering schools of choice look at the data, including the local data and the data the state supplies (she has already forgotten that state data gave her a bad attack of frowny face just two minutes ago). Also, interview teachers and administrators and other parents. Please, oh please, can I watch the process by which a parent tries to get access to a cybercharter teacher.
Allen gets in that of course states and authorizers have a responsibility to make sure charters don't suck, but "all the data out there is confusing" (she is very conflicted about the data, apparently). Education data is very difficult.
And the host cuts her off again to sum up-- "The answer seems to be don't look at this study, but the other studies may not be much better."
As damage control for the CREDO study, it was pretty weak. As an example of how journalists can avoid doing their jobs by letting PR flacks do their jobs unimpeded, it was aces.
The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal posted a five minute infomercial for the cybers, featuring Center for Education Reform Senior Fellow and President Emeritus Jeanne Allen. The Center for Education Reform is a full-on advocacy group for the charter school industry, used to float every imaginable argument in support of sweet, chartery goodness. Allen was there to blunt the impact of the study, and the WSJ host was there to help her do it.
"A small study on online charter schools is creating a big controversy," our hostess leads, suggesting that the study was neither large nor important, and suggesting that there is actually some sort of debate over the uselessness of cybers, and not just a whole lot folks from all across the ideological spectrum declaring that cyberschools are a big expensive waste of time.
Then we introduce Allen and lead with a question that is a softball in much the same way that Donald Trump is somewhat self-assured. Referring to the CREDO study, the host asks "Was this study conducted at Stanford or near Stanford--" with a chuckling delivery which suggests that somebody cribbed the study off the back of a cereal box and is just trying to make it sound important by attaching Stanford's name. "What exactly did the researchers study," she asks, in a tone that suggests she's pretty sure they studied newts under a full moon.
And so we are twenty seconds in, Allen hasn't even spoken yet, and we have already clearly conveyed to the audience that the study is some kind of over-inflated joke. That's some pretty awesome journalism, there!
Here comes Allen. She's stern, like she found out that somebody is stealing her kid's lunch money on the bus. She does a five-second history of CREDO and charters "who are helping, oh, about 2.5 million kids today" and that "oh about" is not searching for the answer but using the kind of sarcastic flourish with which readers of this blog are familiar.
But Allen says the report is important because every time somebody does "research" and or a "study" publishes "findings" that are negative (and kudos to Allen who manages to create the oral Airquotes of Mockery as well as anyone I've ever seen) it just scares policymakers and it makes folks confused. But how can we trust CREDO reports on charters to be valid, Allen asks, if they use these "experimental" techniques and data from states that (here Allen makes a pained face, like she hates to tell you, but you husband is kind of dumb and ugly) aren't very reliable.
The host steps in to feed another question about cyber clientele? Rural students? Homeschooled? "Who's taking advantage of" the cybers. I suppose she could mean "taking advantage" as in tricking the cyber schools into going to third base without so much as a promise of a class ring, but it seems clear she means it as in "who is getting the great benefits of these swell schools?" She is smirking and Allen is nodding as if to say, "Yes, just like we did it in practice."
Now Allen strings together a nonsense sentence about how that's a great question because the heart of whether the study is valid is who is using these schools. And, well, no. That's not what "valid" means here. But Allen plows on. Most cyber charter students "have had issues." They wouldn't be there unless they had a problem (and I can hear cyberschool folks saying, "Yeah, thanks, you can stop helping us now"). Some might have been bullied. "Many of them" (and I'm going to be careful to transcribe this because, well) "might be on the road because perhaps their involvement with a different effort." They might have been unsuccessful at academics, or they might have been too successful and turned to cybers for Big Challenges. Anyway, the heart of this, "personalization for our kids." We must kill the one size fits all world of public schools also zoning kids by zip codes and it's like the talking points are so jammed up in her mouth there's no room for the rest of the parts needed to build a sentence. Some of the cyberstudents might only be there a year while they're "getting over some kind of challenge or hump" and the study (she may have found her way back to the point, finally) did not take into account how long they were there, where they come from, how much progress they made over time, which, wait, no-- the CREDO study, which expressed everything in the admittedly bogus measure of "days of learning" was totally focused on how much growth the students showed over time, so she's kind of exactly, oh, you know, wrong.
But this big mean study damns the cybers and suggests they shouldn't be open, and in this we agree. That's certainly what the study suggests. Is she going to suggest some data that would prove the study wrong? Nope.
The host cuts off Allen's impotent sputtering to ask if there are better studies of online schools. You know, studies that prove what you want them to prove. Allen replies "Homina homina homina no." Allen does suggest that parents considering schools of choice look at the data, including the local data and the data the state supplies (she has already forgotten that state data gave her a bad attack of frowny face just two minutes ago). Also, interview teachers and administrators and other parents. Please, oh please, can I watch the process by which a parent tries to get access to a cybercharter teacher.
Allen gets in that of course states and authorizers have a responsibility to make sure charters don't suck, but "all the data out there is confusing" (she is very conflicted about the data, apparently). Education data is very difficult.
And the host cuts her off again to sum up-- "The answer seems to be don't look at this study, but the other studies may not be much better."
As damage control for the CREDO study, it was pretty weak. As an example of how journalists can avoid doing their jobs by letting PR flacks do their jobs unimpeded, it was aces.
Race from the Top
Joanne Weiss has been about lately trying to rehabilitate the memory of Race to the Top, trying to blunt the early judgments of history which can be paraphrased as "Race to the Top was a big failure that made a huge mess."
This has prompted some conservative writers to gently suggest that there are some problems with that rearward view of RTTT, well summed up by Andy Smarick (Bellwether) who basically points out that while they feds may have done a swell job, technically speaking, of selling and launching their program, the skipped over the most important question of all-- should they have done it in the first place?
This is a problem that corporatized technocrats ported over from private industry, where management programs like ISO 9001 can focus on how well you've done something, but never look at whether it should be done at all. I've heard management consultants admit that you could get ISO 9001 certification for companies that efficiently accomplished terrible things. You could get certified awesomeness for a company that manufactured and marketed poison breakfast food, or which efficiently abused busloads of elderly folks.
In one article, and then another, Weiss makes her case for how it should have gone, with a fully-formed model for educational excellence flowing down from DC and being properly implemented. Writes Smarick:
In admitting mistakes, Weiss doesn’t cite the program’s size, ambitions, or federal direction. The problem, in her mind, was “sequencing.” New standards should have come first, then improved teacher feedback, then new educator evaluations. The issue wasn’t that RTTT went too far; it just “didn’t do enough to guide states in how to think it all through.”
In this, Weiss echoes two familiar refrains. The golden oldie is "The program would have been super if not for those darn implementation problems." The new hit most recently appeared as part of the administration's fake course correction, where they took some of the blame-- not for being too intrusive, but for not being intrusive enough. But Smarick continues
In all of the above, the underlying assumption is that the federal government’s experts had the right answers. There’s no acknowledgement that our centuries-long tradition of local and state control over schools might be better equipped to produce solutions, or that “expert” federal direction on K–12 policy comes with serious, inevitable downsides.
In an odd piece of serendipity, as I was reading Smarick's piece, I was also reading this piece from Jay Greene (with whom I apparently share no ancestry and only some beliefs about education), which looks at how the same top-down technocratic baloney doesn;t work in the private sector either. Then Greene (not me-- the other Greene) had turned up this old piece of mine on twitter. It is the fourth post I ever put on this blog, and it says, in part
I get the appeal of standardization, of lining up all the ducks in one big efficient row. But there's one thing you must have for Central Planning For Everyone to work-- you have to have somebody at the center of things who knows what to do. If you're going to get everyone in line behind One Right Answer, then somebody has to be able to reliable provide One Right Answer every time.
That person does not exist. Central Planning fails. It always fails. And it always fails because it creates a brittle, non-robust system that wastes energy making people line up behind an answer that is often wrong, because nobody can be right all the time.
Race to the Top (and No Child Left Behind) rested on two bananas assumptions-- 1) that the feds would always know exactly what should be done across the entire US public ed system and 2) that such plans, policies and ideas could successfully and faithfully be transmitted down through the many levels below that fabled Top.
Central Planning always fails, and Top Down Management always fails (particularly when the people who create your top down system don't even stick around to keep an eye on it). Even if you do those two things very well, wit great technical skill, you will not end up with anything worth having, and you will very likely leave a great deal of human damage in your wake.
I have no illusions that Greene and Smarick and I are entirely on the same side. Many conservatives like the idea of decentralized non-federated education because it ploughs the field for a charter school harvest. But today's adventures in reading were a reminder to me of why it's important to read outside your tribe, and how some aspects of ed reformsterdom are opposed by a truly broad spectrum of reasonable people. (Also, Smarick has me about convinced to get a copy of Seeing Like a State.)
It's unfortunate that Weiss and other neo-libs are trying so hard to push their vision that they can't open their eyes and ears to see where they've messed up big time. Things that come from the Top, whether they are races or policies, are going to be bad news.
This has prompted some conservative writers to gently suggest that there are some problems with that rearward view of RTTT, well summed up by Andy Smarick (Bellwether) who basically points out that while they feds may have done a swell job, technically speaking, of selling and launching their program, the skipped over the most important question of all-- should they have done it in the first place?
This is a problem that corporatized technocrats ported over from private industry, where management programs like ISO 9001 can focus on how well you've done something, but never look at whether it should be done at all. I've heard management consultants admit that you could get ISO 9001 certification for companies that efficiently accomplished terrible things. You could get certified awesomeness for a company that manufactured and marketed poison breakfast food, or which efficiently abused busloads of elderly folks.
In one article, and then another, Weiss makes her case for how it should have gone, with a fully-formed model for educational excellence flowing down from DC and being properly implemented. Writes Smarick:
In admitting mistakes, Weiss doesn’t cite the program’s size, ambitions, or federal direction. The problem, in her mind, was “sequencing.” New standards should have come first, then improved teacher feedback, then new educator evaluations. The issue wasn’t that RTTT went too far; it just “didn’t do enough to guide states in how to think it all through.”
In this, Weiss echoes two familiar refrains. The golden oldie is "The program would have been super if not for those darn implementation problems." The new hit most recently appeared as part of the administration's fake course correction, where they took some of the blame-- not for being too intrusive, but for not being intrusive enough. But Smarick continues
In all of the above, the underlying assumption is that the federal government’s experts had the right answers. There’s no acknowledgement that our centuries-long tradition of local and state control over schools might be better equipped to produce solutions, or that “expert” federal direction on K–12 policy comes with serious, inevitable downsides.
In an odd piece of serendipity, as I was reading Smarick's piece, I was also reading this piece from Jay Greene (with whom I apparently share no ancestry and only some beliefs about education), which looks at how the same top-down technocratic baloney doesn;t work in the private sector either. Then Greene (not me-- the other Greene) had turned up this old piece of mine on twitter. It is the fourth post I ever put on this blog, and it says, in part
I get the appeal of standardization, of lining up all the ducks in one big efficient row. But there's one thing you must have for Central Planning For Everyone to work-- you have to have somebody at the center of things who knows what to do. If you're going to get everyone in line behind One Right Answer, then somebody has to be able to reliable provide One Right Answer every time.
That person does not exist. Central Planning fails. It always fails. And it always fails because it creates a brittle, non-robust system that wastes energy making people line up behind an answer that is often wrong, because nobody can be right all the time.
Race to the Top (and No Child Left Behind) rested on two bananas assumptions-- 1) that the feds would always know exactly what should be done across the entire US public ed system and 2) that such plans, policies and ideas could successfully and faithfully be transmitted down through the many levels below that fabled Top.
Central Planning always fails, and Top Down Management always fails (particularly when the people who create your top down system don't even stick around to keep an eye on it). Even if you do those two things very well, wit great technical skill, you will not end up with anything worth having, and you will very likely leave a great deal of human damage in your wake.
I have no illusions that Greene and Smarick and I are entirely on the same side. Many conservatives like the idea of decentralized non-federated education because it ploughs the field for a charter school harvest. But today's adventures in reading were a reminder to me of why it's important to read outside your tribe, and how some aspects of ed reformsterdom are opposed by a truly broad spectrum of reasonable people. (Also, Smarick has me about convinced to get a copy of Seeing Like a State.)
It's unfortunate that Weiss and other neo-libs are trying so hard to push their vision that they can't open their eyes and ears to see where they've messed up big time. Things that come from the Top, whether they are races or policies, are going to be bad news.
NY: The Anti-Opt Out Propaganda Kit
New York, you may recall, was Ground Zero for the hugest impact of the Opt Out movement, with around one in five New York students choosing not to take last year's Big Standardized Test. But New York's ed department is ready to fight back, because reasons. And to do that, they have created a handy "toolkit," much like the handy toolkits that the American Tobacco Institute used to provide for informing the public about the benefits of smoking.
It's just an awesome piece of work, and I will hit the highlights now for those of you lacking the time or stomach to see for yourselves. It has many cool features, so this may take a while.
Video Welcome from Your Fearless Leader
NY Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is here-- well, she's somewhere, in front of a curtain, sitting next to a small table holding a magazine and a potted plant. It is quite possibly the laziest staging of anything ever, and I shouldn't care because presentation isn't that big a deal here, except that this is Intro To Test Propaganda, which means that we ought to be aware of what we're doing. Simply shooting it in her office would have been fine. Shooting it while standing in any random setting would have been fine. But this-- somebody clearly thought that it needed some kind of staging, but then all they could come up with was a table and a potted plant, oh, and hey, hand me that catalog over there.
I mean, this whole site is a presentation about making a presentation to win hearts and minds. So either this "set" demonstrates a lack of commitment or a lack of competence, and that is not a good way to set the tone for this enterprise.
So what does she actually say? Last years 20% of students didn't take that awesome BS Tests; her response is to explain to parents and teachers "about the benefits" of high standards and ditto tests. Also, the annual test doesn't tell the entire story, but they do provide a roadmap for teachers and school leaders to focus on so they can improve.
But if students don't take the BS Test, everyone from students up through state policy makers "miss out" on crucial information, because everyone is an idiot incapable of evaluating education without the BS Test. So if you were imagining that this site was going to advocate for a frank, honest and open discussion of testing, so sorry-- we're going to stick with falsehoods and classic talking points. Good to know that going in.
The propaganda kit is broken up into four sections, each customizable and each more awesome than the last.
FOR EDUCATORS
The state of New York can't help noticing that some of you professional educators aren't entirely on board with Testapalooza. So here are some tools.
First, a letter for Superintendents to send their teachers.
Like all materials, this is customizable, kind of in the same way that Mad Libs are customizable. Speaks well of the reformster personalization movement.
The superintendent's letter includes unsupported assertions like this:
As educators, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the greatest possible number of eligible students take the state assessments.
And odd non sequitors like this:
While this has been a period of transition for [DISTRICT], tests have always served an important role in educating our students.
The letter also notes that the BS Tests "provide an objective measure of progress" (no), and "Without widespread participation in tests, we can’t accurately identify achievement gaps or make sure that all students receive the support they need to be successful" (because we don't know how to do our jobs?)
The letter, in short, has no arguments to make that have not been made, repeatedly, before. Perhaps Elia thinks that hearing them for the sixty-gazzillionth time will make the difference, but I have to say that I'm completely unimpressed.
Now Superintendents Tell Teachers What To Tell Parents
This is a handy guide to the lies that educators should tell parents. Tell them that without the test, we have no way of identifying student strengths and weaknesses. Tell them that the new Questar test will be better without admitting that the old one sucked. Say that double the number of NY teachers will be "involved" in developing the new test, but do not let them ask how you can know anything about the new test if it isn't developed yet. Tell them that student rating of 1, 2 or 3 is really loaded with rich nuanced data. If they ask why their child's grades don't match test results, or why student scores went down this year, say "Argle bargle bargle."
FOR PARENTS
Since our primary goal is informing parents enough that they will knock off the opt out stuff. So here are some mad libs aimed directly at them.
Superintendent Letter To Parents
Surprisingly weak. We have this test we give. It's important and tests big deal stuff. No single test blah blah blah. Helps us compare your kid. The test is real fair and made just for New York and actual teachers worked on it (this is a recurring theme-- the department is determined to make this look as teachery as possible without actually letting teacher have any real power). We'll make sure your kid has time to get ready for this. And visit our mind-numbing website to give feedback on every single standard.
Parent FAQ List
There are ten questions, and zero real answers. Why should my kid take the test? Because the feds require it, NY students have always done so, oneofseveralmeasures, and it will measure college and career readiness and thereby guide instruction. So baloney, baloney, partial truth but so what, and baldfaced untruth.
Scores will tell you soooo many things. Like the ELA score can be broken into reading and writing! So granular! You can use the score to have discussions with your child's teacher! The tests are IMPORTANT! Because reasons. And only 1% of school year to take them! Scores will be used to measure school performance, but not to affect your child's promotion (or not). Teachers gave feedback on test questions! Questar is new and improved!
Parent's Guide to Higher Learning Standards
Can you guess which phrase does not appear in this section, or any other section? If you guessed "Core" and also "Common," you win! This portion does however discuss the college and career ready standards adopted in 2010, and puts the same old baloney in a pretty new chart without any evidence that any of these standards are a good idea. Also not included? Evidence that the BS Tests measure any of this stuff.
MEETING MATERIALS
The department suggests that you have a meeting with your parents in which they can be led to see the error of their ways. Start with some discussion, throw in some power point, and end with an altar call.
Sample Flyer
Whether they want to go to college or straight into the workplace, our students need to be able to think critically and solve complex problems.
That is roughly one third of the copy on the entire page. If you actually needed the state's help to design this invitation to "An Evening with Superintendent [NAME]" you should not be responsible for children.
Meeting Format
There's a handy outline for a meeting. Figure an hour, with 45 minutes to present and 15 for questions. The Superintendent should "address key issues" (it's the same stuff we've been hammering) and then a teacher or principal should speak about "his/her experience with the assessments." There's a handy list of questions to be prepared for in the Q&A, which basically match the FAQ list, though you should expect to be asked about how these figure in teacher evals, too.
Again-- the superintendent who needs this level of assistance to plan a meeting with the public should not be employed as a superintendent.
The Power Point
Here's a handy thirty-slide presentation about standards and testing. Well, actually, five of the slides are about testing. The rest are the same tired unsupported arguments for the standards. These include the same bogus claims (they will measure critical thinking!) and the same curiously repeated talking points (twice as many NY teachers will help develop them-- why is this not presented as a number? unless, of course, the number is really small, but hey, two is twice as many as one).
But you will be happy to know that the new testing whizz-bangery is "moving toward" the following;
Shorter, more effective tests
Reducing the need for stand-alone field tests
Releasing more test questions
Releasing results before the end of the school year
So they are definitely planning to move in the direction of almost doing what they actually should do. This month, try telling your landlord that you are moving toward writing a check for a portion of your rent money.
Talking Points for District
Here's a handy list of sales points for the BS Testing! And what fine points they are. "All students must be prepared for success in college and careers." Which is a true thing! And nobody in the world disagrees with it. So I am trying to imagine the moment when a superintendent tells a parent, "You know, Mr. Wallflanger, all students need to be ready to succeed in college and/or careers," and Mr. Wallflanger says, "Why, you know, I never thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. My son does need to succeed in college or a career. I guess I want him to take that big test after all! Thanks for setting me straight."
I mean, what movie is playing in the heads of the people who write this stuff? Have they told themselves these talking point so many times that they have come to believe they're compelling or convincing?
But here are all the usuals. Rigorous standards. Oneofseveralindicators. Objective coparison of students across state (because parents really want that). Very little time spent on testing (don't believe your eyes-- believe what we tell you). [INSERT BRIGHT SPOT IN STUDENT DATA THAT IS SPECIFIC TO DISTRICT]. Commissioner Elia is committed to making tests better and shorter.
Also-- and I am not making this up-- in the midst of all this test cheerleading, we find "Teachers are the experts about what is happening in their classrooms and are an invaluable resource for parents. Parents are encouraged to reach out to their child's teacher with any questions they have about their child's test results or academic progress." Mind you, we at the state department will not be reaching out to them because we're pretty sure they don't know what the hell they're doing-- that's why we've created a system to root out the many, many terrible ones that we're certain exist. Also, you can ask them about test results, but since they aren't allowed to see the questions your child answered or the answers your child gave, don't expect them to have any idea what might have caused your child to earn her vague and non-granular "2."
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
Yup. The NY Ed Department heard that people are out there a-twittering away and posting stuff on that Book of Face, so they have included some handy materials that you can use to whip up the interwebs with your social mediums.
They offer some handy tips (most adults are more likely to engage via Facebook; twitter is more effective before 8:15 AM or between 5-10 at night). And a whole list of sample tweets that sound exactly like the kind of tweets that a state department of anything would write (Learn how assessment results provide important info for educators: https://vimeo.com/141088948). There are even some sample Facebook posts that also manage to replicate the writing style of a low-grade marketing bot.
It's just silly. Peter Cunningham, a seasoned PR professional, took $12 milion to establish Education Post and hasn't made a dent. Campbell Brown's $4 million site sits languishing in irrelevance. Jeb Bush once launched four real teachers on a twit-quest to gin up Common Core support, and it ended with neither a bang nor a whimper.
The evidence is strong that a handful of generic social media posts will not stem the tide of Opt Out.
In Fact
If I were among the parents of the New York Opt Out movement, I'd be insulted that this was all the effort the state was going to make to win me over.
This is just a bland casserole of reheated rhetoric that every opt out parent has already heard a hundred times, with a thin crushed topping of weirdly repeated talking points (New York really really REALLY wants you to know that double the teachers are going to be developing the new tests).
This package of propaganda indicates that either the New York ed department still doesn't understand what the big fuss is about, or they just don't care whether opt out picks up steam or not. I suppose there's an alternative view in which Elia is an evil genius who is seeking to soothe the federal test-meisters while subtly goading the opt out movement to beat the previous years record of refusals. But that seems unlikely. I'm leaning towards the clueless option, that the state really doesn't get that parents really do understand what's going on, and that their rejection of the test is an informed, deliberate, angry decision.
In her video intro, Elia says that in her 45-year history in education, she's found that the more parents understand about the test, the more they comply. I'd respectfully suggest that her 45 years of experience don't offer insights into what's been going on in New York since the new BS Tests landed in 2013. She needs to re-examine her assumption that parents just don't understand. I think New York opt out parents understand pretty well; it's the state education department that just doesn't get it.
It's just an awesome piece of work, and I will hit the highlights now for those of you lacking the time or stomach to see for yourselves. It has many cool features, so this may take a while.
Video Welcome from Your Fearless Leader
NY Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is here-- well, she's somewhere, in front of a curtain, sitting next to a small table holding a magazine and a potted plant. It is quite possibly the laziest staging of anything ever, and I shouldn't care because presentation isn't that big a deal here, except that this is Intro To Test Propaganda, which means that we ought to be aware of what we're doing. Simply shooting it in her office would have been fine. Shooting it while standing in any random setting would have been fine. But this-- somebody clearly thought that it needed some kind of staging, but then all they could come up with was a table and a potted plant, oh, and hey, hand me that catalog over there.
I mean, this whole site is a presentation about making a presentation to win hearts and minds. So either this "set" demonstrates a lack of commitment or a lack of competence, and that is not a good way to set the tone for this enterprise.
So what does she actually say? Last years 20% of students didn't take that awesome BS Tests; her response is to explain to parents and teachers "about the benefits" of high standards and ditto tests. Also, the annual test doesn't tell the entire story, but they do provide a roadmap for teachers and school leaders to focus on so they can improve.
But if students don't take the BS Test, everyone from students up through state policy makers "miss out" on crucial information, because everyone is an idiot incapable of evaluating education without the BS Test. So if you were imagining that this site was going to advocate for a frank, honest and open discussion of testing, so sorry-- we're going to stick with falsehoods and classic talking points. Good to know that going in.
The propaganda kit is broken up into four sections, each customizable and each more awesome than the last.
FOR EDUCATORS
The state of New York can't help noticing that some of you professional educators aren't entirely on board with Testapalooza. So here are some tools.
First, a letter for Superintendents to send their teachers.
Like all materials, this is customizable, kind of in the same way that Mad Libs are customizable. Speaks well of the reformster personalization movement.
The superintendent's letter includes unsupported assertions like this:
As educators, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the greatest possible number of eligible students take the state assessments.
And odd non sequitors like this:
While this has been a period of transition for [DISTRICT], tests have always served an important role in educating our students.
The letter also notes that the BS Tests "provide an objective measure of progress" (no), and "Without widespread participation in tests, we can’t accurately identify achievement gaps or make sure that all students receive the support they need to be successful" (because we don't know how to do our jobs?)
The letter, in short, has no arguments to make that have not been made, repeatedly, before. Perhaps Elia thinks that hearing them for the sixty-gazzillionth time will make the difference, but I have to say that I'm completely unimpressed.
Now Superintendents Tell Teachers What To Tell Parents
This is a handy guide to the lies that educators should tell parents. Tell them that without the test, we have no way of identifying student strengths and weaknesses. Tell them that the new Questar test will be better without admitting that the old one sucked. Say that double the number of NY teachers will be "involved" in developing the new test, but do not let them ask how you can know anything about the new test if it isn't developed yet. Tell them that student rating of 1, 2 or 3 is really loaded with rich nuanced data. If they ask why their child's grades don't match test results, or why student scores went down this year, say "Argle bargle bargle."
FOR PARENTS
Since our primary goal is informing parents enough that they will knock off the opt out stuff. So here are some mad libs aimed directly at them.
Superintendent Letter To Parents
Surprisingly weak. We have this test we give. It's important and tests big deal stuff. No single test blah blah blah. Helps us compare your kid. The test is real fair and made just for New York and actual teachers worked on it (this is a recurring theme-- the department is determined to make this look as teachery as possible without actually letting teacher have any real power). We'll make sure your kid has time to get ready for this. And visit our mind-numbing website to give feedback on every single standard.
Parent FAQ List
There are ten questions, and zero real answers. Why should my kid take the test? Because the feds require it, NY students have always done so, oneofseveralmeasures, and it will measure college and career readiness and thereby guide instruction. So baloney, baloney, partial truth but so what, and baldfaced untruth.
Scores will tell you soooo many things. Like the ELA score can be broken into reading and writing! So granular! You can use the score to have discussions with your child's teacher! The tests are IMPORTANT! Because reasons. And only 1% of school year to take them! Scores will be used to measure school performance, but not to affect your child's promotion (or not). Teachers gave feedback on test questions! Questar is new and improved!
Parent's Guide to Higher Learning Standards
Can you guess which phrase does not appear in this section, or any other section? If you guessed "Core" and also "Common," you win! This portion does however discuss the college and career ready standards adopted in 2010, and puts the same old baloney in a pretty new chart without any evidence that any of these standards are a good idea. Also not included? Evidence that the BS Tests measure any of this stuff.
MEETING MATERIALS
The department suggests that you have a meeting with your parents in which they can be led to see the error of their ways. Start with some discussion, throw in some power point, and end with an altar call.
Sample Flyer
Whether they want to go to college or straight into the workplace, our students need to be able to think critically and solve complex problems.
That is roughly one third of the copy on the entire page. If you actually needed the state's help to design this invitation to "An Evening with Superintendent [NAME]" you should not be responsible for children.
Meeting Format
There's a handy outline for a meeting. Figure an hour, with 45 minutes to present and 15 for questions. The Superintendent should "address key issues" (it's the same stuff we've been hammering) and then a teacher or principal should speak about "his/her experience with the assessments." There's a handy list of questions to be prepared for in the Q&A, which basically match the FAQ list, though you should expect to be asked about how these figure in teacher evals, too.
Again-- the superintendent who needs this level of assistance to plan a meeting with the public should not be employed as a superintendent.
The Power Point
Here's a handy thirty-slide presentation about standards and testing. Well, actually, five of the slides are about testing. The rest are the same tired unsupported arguments for the standards. These include the same bogus claims (they will measure critical thinking!) and the same curiously repeated talking points (twice as many NY teachers will help develop them-- why is this not presented as a number? unless, of course, the number is really small, but hey, two is twice as many as one).
But you will be happy to know that the new testing whizz-bangery is "moving toward" the following;
Shorter, more effective tests
Reducing the need for stand-alone field tests
Releasing more test questions
Releasing results before the end of the school year
So they are definitely planning to move in the direction of almost doing what they actually should do. This month, try telling your landlord that you are moving toward writing a check for a portion of your rent money.
Talking Points for District
Here's a handy list of sales points for the BS Testing! And what fine points they are. "All students must be prepared for success in college and careers." Which is a true thing! And nobody in the world disagrees with it. So I am trying to imagine the moment when a superintendent tells a parent, "You know, Mr. Wallflanger, all students need to be ready to succeed in college and/or careers," and Mr. Wallflanger says, "Why, you know, I never thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. My son does need to succeed in college or a career. I guess I want him to take that big test after all! Thanks for setting me straight."
I mean, what movie is playing in the heads of the people who write this stuff? Have they told themselves these talking point so many times that they have come to believe they're compelling or convincing?
But here are all the usuals. Rigorous standards. Oneofseveralindicators. Objective coparison of students across state (because parents really want that). Very little time spent on testing (don't believe your eyes-- believe what we tell you). [INSERT BRIGHT SPOT IN STUDENT DATA THAT IS SPECIFIC TO DISTRICT]. Commissioner Elia is committed to making tests better and shorter.
Also-- and I am not making this up-- in the midst of all this test cheerleading, we find "Teachers are the experts about what is happening in their classrooms and are an invaluable resource for parents. Parents are encouraged to reach out to their child's teacher with any questions they have about their child's test results or academic progress." Mind you, we at the state department will not be reaching out to them because we're pretty sure they don't know what the hell they're doing-- that's why we've created a system to root out the many, many terrible ones that we're certain exist. Also, you can ask them about test results, but since they aren't allowed to see the questions your child answered or the answers your child gave, don't expect them to have any idea what might have caused your child to earn her vague and non-granular "2."
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
Yup. The NY Ed Department heard that people are out there a-twittering away and posting stuff on that Book of Face, so they have included some handy materials that you can use to whip up the interwebs with your social mediums.
They offer some handy tips (most adults are more likely to engage via Facebook; twitter is more effective before 8:15 AM or between 5-10 at night). And a whole list of sample tweets that sound exactly like the kind of tweets that a state department of anything would write (Learn how assessment results provide important info for educators: https://vimeo.com/141088948). There are even some sample Facebook posts that also manage to replicate the writing style of a low-grade marketing bot.
It's just silly. Peter Cunningham, a seasoned PR professional, took $12 milion to establish Education Post and hasn't made a dent. Campbell Brown's $4 million site sits languishing in irrelevance. Jeb Bush once launched four real teachers on a twit-quest to gin up Common Core support, and it ended with neither a bang nor a whimper.
The evidence is strong that a handful of generic social media posts will not stem the tide of Opt Out.
In Fact
If I were among the parents of the New York Opt Out movement, I'd be insulted that this was all the effort the state was going to make to win me over.
This is just a bland casserole of reheated rhetoric that every opt out parent has already heard a hundred times, with a thin crushed topping of weirdly repeated talking points (New York really really REALLY wants you to know that double the teachers are going to be developing the new tests).
This package of propaganda indicates that either the New York ed department still doesn't understand what the big fuss is about, or they just don't care whether opt out picks up steam or not. I suppose there's an alternative view in which Elia is an evil genius who is seeking to soothe the federal test-meisters while subtly goading the opt out movement to beat the previous years record of refusals. But that seems unlikely. I'm leaning towards the clueless option, that the state really doesn't get that parents really do understand what's going on, and that their rejection of the test is an informed, deliberate, angry decision.
In her video intro, Elia says that in her 45-year history in education, she's found that the more parents understand about the test, the more they comply. I'd respectfully suggest that her 45 years of experience don't offer insights into what's been going on in New York since the new BS Tests landed in 2013. She needs to re-examine her assumption that parents just don't understand. I think New York opt out parents understand pretty well; it's the state education department that just doesn't get it.
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