NAEP Scores Fall, Arne Duncan Says Nothing To See Here

Heckuva job education reformers:

For the first time since 1990, the mathematical skills of American students have dropped, according to results of a nationwide test released by the Education Department on Wednesday.

The decline appeared in both Grades 4 and 8 in an exam administered every two years as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and sometimes called “the nation’s report card.” 

The dip in scores comes as the country’s employers demand workers with ever-stronger skills in mathematics to compete in a global economy. It also comes as states grapple with the new Common Core academic standards and a rebellion against them.

Progress in reading, which has been generally more muted than in math for decades, also stalled this year as scores among fourth graders flat-lined and eighth-grade scores decreased. The exams assess a representative sampling of students on math and reading skills in public and private schools.

 And of course reformers have all sorts of excuses for why the scores dropped:

“It’s obviously bad news,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education policy group in Washington. “We don’t want to see scores going in this direction.”

“That doesn’t mean we should completely freak out,” he added. “This could be a one-time variation, and maybe we’ll see things come back next time. But if it were the beginning of a new trend, it would be quite disappointing and disturbing.”

And:

“It’s not unusual when you see lots of different things happening in classrooms to first see a slight decline before you see improvement,” said William J. Bushaw, the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies and achievement levels for the tests.

Arne Duncan claims there's nothing to worry about here, that the scores indicate nothing about the efficacy of his reform agenda, that his education reform policies will eventually show big dividends on the NAEP in the "long term," but Carol Burris says he's wrong:

It is difficult to see any real growth across the board since 2011, with math scores backsliding to 2009 levels, eighth-grade reading flat for four years, and a small uptick in fourth-grade reading that is not a significant increase from 2013, which, in turn, was not significantly different from 2011.

Considering that the rationale for the Common Core State Standards initiative was low NAEP proficiency rates, it would appear that the solution of tough standards and tough tests is not the great path forward after all. For those who say it is too early to use NAEP to judge the Common Core, I would remind them that in 2013, Education Secretary Arne Duncan used NAEP increases to do a victory dance about the states that had already implemented the Core at that time—and I never heard any reformer complain.

Two years ago, Duncan attributed  Tennessee’s, Hawaii’s and the District of Columbia’s NAEP score increases to their enthusiastic adoption of Race to the Top. Likewise, he attributed increases in Kentucky, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and North Carolina to their early embrace of the Common Core.

This year, the District of Columbia and Mississippi had fourth-grade score gains in mathematics, but the rest of Duncan’s superstars had mathematics scores that dropped or were flat. All of Arne’s superstar states had eighth-grade scores that dropped or did not budge.

The District of Columbia, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina had score gains in fourth-grade reading this year, but so did states like Oklahoma and Vermont that have resisted Race to the Top reforms. And in Grade 8 reading, all of Duncan’s superstars had scores that were flat or took a dive.

Colorado, a state that recently received high praise from Bill and Melinda Gates for its implementation of corporate reforms, had reading scores that were flat and math scores that significantly dropped.

NAEP scores were not the only disappointment this year. A few months ago, we saw a significant drop in SAT scores—7 points in one year alone.

Although NAEP and the SAT were not designed to align to the Common Core, they measure what the Common Core Standards were supposed to improve—the literacy and numeracy of our nation’s students. Considering the billions of dollars spent on these reforms, one would expect at least some payoff by now.

As usual with education reformers, there is no accountability for the mess.

Falling SAT and NAEP scores - but hey, it's all good.

Just wait - you'll see improvement in another ten years or so.

Sure we will.

PDK/Gallup Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Test-Based School Accountability

Lyndsey Layton in the Washington Post:

Americans overwhelmingly think there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in public schools and that test scores are not the best way to judge schools, teachers or students, according to a national poll.

The results released Sunday come from the 47th annual PDK/Gallup poll of attitudes toward public schools, the longest-running survey of Americans’ views on public education.

 The survey showed that the public rejects school accountability built on standardized tests, which has been federal policy through No Child Left Behind, the signature education initiative of President George W. Bush.

64% say there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in schools.

That's nearly two-thirds of respondents.

Here's an interesting finding on teacher evaluations and test scores:

A majority of respondents — regardless of political affiliation — opposed the notion of evaluating teachers based in part on test scores, an idea heavily promoted by the Obama administration and fought by teachers unions.

As Americans move away from the idea that tying teacher ratings to test scores is a practical way to evaluate teachers, Andrew Cuomo is moving toward it.

Until he is made to pay a political price for pushing what is clearly an unpopular education policy, he'll continue to do it, of course. 

As for Regents Chancellor Tisch and NYSED Commissioner Elia, they say they're going to get the opt out numbers down next year by convincing parents that standardized testing is swell and a civil right and schools just cannot function without them.

The PDK/Gallup poll shows they're going to have an uphill climb.

Same goes for Common Core - 54% oppose it according to the PDK/Gallup poll.

Also there's this interesting tidbit that goes right to the core of the testing issue:

In a rebuttal to those who say states should use common tests so that the public can compare how students perform across state boundaries, fewer than one in five public school parents said it was important to know how children in their communities performed on standardized tests compared with students in other districts, states or countries.

The rationale for the PARCC and SBAC tests was just that - to give the public the ability to compare how students perform in different states.

At less than 20% support, not so much on this tenet of the education reform agenda either.

So let's see, the public doesn't like standardized testing, doesn't think teachers should be evaluated using test scores, doesn't care about the PARCC/SBAC comparisons, and opposes Common Core.

Quite a victory for education reform, eh?

Oh, and one last thing - 57% of the respondents gave the public schools in their own communities (you know, the one's they're familiar with) either an A or B for performance.

So much for the "failing schools" crisis.

How Andrew Cuomo's "Reformy" Teacher Evaluation System Keeps "Great Teachers" Away From Schools That Serve The Most Vulnerable

Back in 2013, education reform organization StudentsFirstNY called for a strengthened teacher evaluation system to help ensure that every child has access to the best teachers in the school system.

They claimed to have done an analysis that showed "that New York City’s most vulnerable students have a disproportionate share of the city’s unsatisfactory-rated teachers" (this was under the old rating system when teachers were still given either "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" ratings.)

Their solution to this so-called inequitable distribution of excellent teachers across the system?

Why, a data-driven teacher evaluation system that incorporated student performance measures into the ratings, along with some other reforms like the following:

• Require parental consent for a student to be taught by an ineffective teacher
  
• Provide significant salary increases to highly effective teachers who stay in the classrooms of high-needs schools
  
• Prohibit schools from assigning to the class of an ineffective teacher any student taught by an ineffective teacher in the previous year
  
• Make it easier for top college graduates to enter teaching, and provide financial incentives for them to do so
  
• Impose a cap on how many ineffective teachers may be allowed to remain at any one school year after year
  
• Require annual reporting by the New York City Department of Education on the distribution of teacher quality across schools and student populations
  

Sounds swell, right?

They're going wash those "ineffective teachers" right out of schools with the most vulnerable student populations through a combination of a more rigorous teacher evaluation system that relies upon students' test scores to prove teacher effectiveness and reporting and capping measures for how many "ineffective" teachers can be at individual schools or teach individual students.

Ah, except that the new APPR teacher evaluation system hawked by education reform groups like StudentsFirstNY and imposed upon the state by Governor Andrew Cuomo (a recipient of much StudentsFirstNY/education reform group largesse) actually keeps "excellent teachers" from going to schools that serve the most vulnerable student populations because it ties 50% of a teacher's rating to student test score performance and few teachers want to teach at schools that have low test scores.

Here is a comment left at a Perdido Street School blog post from yesterday on the irrationality of the value-added measurement system that NYSED uses on teachers to prove so-called "effective teaching":

I am an assistant principal in the Bronx on the HS level. Unfortunately, we cannot attract teachers to our school due to our graduation rate, deriving from low scores (international school). I wanted to recruit an Earth Science teacher. She told me she'd never work at my school because 50% of her overall rating would basically give her a Developing as the HIGHEST rating. You see, the schools are taking a hit too with recruitment. Great teachers go to specific schools. You want to talk about segregation? Here it is at its finest. There are other HS in the campus that are premium. We are in the same campus but can't offer our kids a vibrant Science education, but the other school are. This is terrible and should additionally be reported from an administrators viewpoint. 

How ironic, that the very system StudentsFirstNY called for, paid for and had imposed on the state that they said would ensure that "all students, regardless of zip code, race or socioeconomic status, are afforded a quality education" by having access to quality teachers actually does the opposite.

Education people knew that this would happen, that the more "rigorous" teacher evaluation ratings would harm any teachers who teach in schools with the most vulnerable populations because the VAM rating based upon test scores would be brutal.

This is why NYCDOE Chancellor Carmen Farina said that she wanted to put an asterisk next to the names of "highly effective" teachers who go to teach at Recovery Schools, the pool of schools that the state has labeled "struggling" or "persistently struggling" and will take over in a year or two if performance doesn't improve.

The cynic in me thinks the education reformers at StudentsFirstNY and elsewhere knew that the teacher evaluation system they got Cuomo to impose on the state would do the opposite of what they claimed, that it would harm vulnerable student populations they claim to care about by keeping any teacher who wants to remain in the system for more than two years away from schools where they are likely to get mauled on the APPR test score VAM.

I dunno exactly what the game is, perhaps just making things worse at the most vulnerable schools so that they can claim the public school system sucks and needs to be blown up, perhaps ensuring that many of the schools that serve the most vulnerable populations end up in receivership and get handed over to charter operators, perhaps a combination of the two.

In any case, the rationale behind the APPR teacher evaluation system tied to test scores was always to harm public schools, harm the teaching profession and push as many teachers out of the system as possible by a) increasing the ineffective ratings (two consecutive "ineffectives" in a row can get a teacher fired these days) and b) making the workday so onerous and odious for teachers that they quit in droves and new ones don't come to replace them (both of which are happening all across the country now.)

Keep in mind, education reformers have made sure that charter schools don't have to abide by any of these evaluation reforms, just public schools.

StudentsFirstNY claims to care about students and children, claims to speak for and stand up for the most vulnerable, but the net effective of their reform efforts has been to harm those very students and the schools that serve them.

Opt Out Poses Serious Threat To Elites

You can hear how threatened the elites are by the Opt Out movement in the shrillness of this NY Times editorial attacking opt out as "an alarming...ill-conceived boycott."

The shriller the elites get in their pushback against ordinary citizens stepping up to protect themselves against the abuses of the state, the more you know how threatening that movement really is

The elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They have paid lip service to parent and teacher concerns over the Endless Testing regime but in the end have gone full steam ahead with it anyway.

Numerous complaints have been made about the badly designed Common Core tests based upon the fundamentally flawed Common Core "State" (Sic) Standards tied to the irrationality of the APPR teacher evaluation system, but the response from the elites has been "Shut up and take your tests - we know what is best for you!"

With the opt out numbers hitting the 20% benchmark (reformers love benchmarks) from 5% the year before, the elites know this "Shut up and take your test!" response isn't playing anymore, so they trot out the race card (the Opt Out movement is racist because it deprives children of color their civil right to a standardized test), they trot out the class card (they attack the movement as mostly white and affluent, though the opt out numbers from this year show that many of the districts where opt out was greatest were middle class) - anything to attack the movement and put an end to it.

Again, the elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They used to ignore the movement, then mock it, as small and marginal, but that's hard to do now that the opt out rate has hit 20% and threatens to go higher next year.

They can try and hit districts with high opt out rates with sanctions, taking resources away from schools and children, but that doesn't seem like a politically palatable thing to do.

One thing they are loathe to do - actually listen to the criticism of parents and teachers and come to some real and legitimate compromise on education policy (not one of those phony Arne Duncan compromises that work like this - agree with Arne and now we have compromise!)

It will be interesting to see where the elites go now.

The threat is real, the threat is growing and shrillness in response isn't going to put an end to it, that's for sure.

MaryEllen Elia And Her "Conversations With Parents"

From Politics on the Hudson:

“I’m a teacher, I’m an educator and I’m not a politician,” Elia told reporters Thursday. (Video was provided by WGRZ.) “I understand the difference in those roles. I want to work very productively with the legislators and with the governor to improve what’s happening every day for the kids in the classrooms in New York state.”

She continued: “That’s going to be my goal and I anticipate that children will win out and it will be certainly my intent to have children win in the whole process of education in New York.”

...

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Elia said she intends to involve parents and teachers in the conversations over education policy. Thousands of parents opted their children out of state standardized tests the past two years as a form of protest over the Common Core and what they see as the state’s over-reliance on testing.

“My plan would be to No. 1 go out and get feedback through various ways to find out exactly what parents are concerned about so we can address those issues and get understanding to them,” Elia said. “But also to have an ongoing kind of opportunity to have parents to be part of the conversations. I think that’s a really critical part.”

Let's say Elia has that conversation with parents and what she hears conflicts with what she thinks it will take, as an "educator," to "have children win in the whole process of education in New York."

What does she do then?

Her track record in Florida shows her to be a big fan of high stakes standardized tests and Common Core standards
.
If she has honest conversations with parents around the state, she is going to hear many say they want an end to high stakes standardized testing and Common Core-driven classroom instruction.

Want to bet she ignores those parent conversations and goes with her own policies?

Contradictory Findings On Testing, Teacher Evaluations In New Quinnipiac Poll, But Not On Charter Schools

The Quinnipiac poll out this afternoon finds New York City voters are opposed to evaluating teachers via test scores 57%-37%.

It also finds 59% of New York City voters saying that standardized tests do not accurately measure student learning while 34% say they do.

Seems New York City voters are squarely skeptical on the value and use of standardized testing.

Yet when asked "How much should these tests count in a teacher's evaluation: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, or not at all?", they respond:

100% - 7%
75%   - 13%
50%   - 26%
25%   - 27%
Not     - 22%

Wait - I thought NYers were opposed to evaluating teachers via test scores 57%-37%...how is it that 74% of the respondents also say that teachers should be evaluated via test scores somewhere between 25% and 100%?

A contradiction for sure. 

Similarly, when asked if students should be allowed to refuse to take the "standardized tests to measure how well they're learning", the poll finds 47% say they should be allowed to refuse, 49% say they shouldn't be allowed to refuse.

Odd, that - 59% say the tests do not accurately measure student learning, but 49% want to force students to take them anyway.

Perhaps the issue with the refusal question comes in how it's asked - the tests are described as measuring "how well students learn," though many critics of the state testing regime dispute that.

It would be interesting to see what the responses would be if the tests were either not described or if there were something along the lines of "Proponents say these tests measure how well students learn while critics say they are badly designed and show no such thing."

In any case, in many ways polling is reductionist, taking complex issues and sticking them into a few round peg responses.

The biggest value to me in polling is the trends you see with a particular politician or issue over the course of a few polls.

The testing and evaluation questions are new, so we don't have trend lines, but we do with charter schools.

On the issue of paying rent if they're co-located, here are the trend lines:

March 2014: Yes - 44%   No - 47%
Nov    2014   Yes - 50%   No - 41%
May    2015   Yes - 52%  No  - 40%

There's a clear trend here - support for making charters pay rent is up 8 points to a majority 52%, opposition to making charters pay rent is down 7 percent.  A 12 margin yes/no is pretty significant.

On raising the charter cap, here are the trend lines:

March 2014: Increase - 40% Decrease - 14% Keep the same - 39%
Nov     2014: Increase - 43% Decrease - 17% Keep the same - 31%
May     2015: Increase - 39% Decrease - 17% Keep the same - 35%

Here the trend is not so pronounced, but it is constant - there is no growing clamor for more charter schools. 

The support for increasing the number of charters is at the lowest level in the last three polls, the support for decreasing the number of charters remains where it was last time and the support for keeping things as they are is halfway between the last two poll findings.

Charter entrepreneurs and operators like to say there is a huge demand for more charters, but the last three Q polls don't show that at all.

In March 2014, 53% of NYers said they either wanted to keep the number of charters the same or decrease them while 40% said they wanted more.

In November 2014, 49% of NYers said they either wanted to keep the number of charters the same or decrease them while 43% said they wanted more.

In May 2015, 52% of NYers say they want to keep the number of charters the same or decrease them while 39% say they want more.

I hope Quinnipiac continues to ask the testing and evaluation questions over the next few years so we can see trends with those issues the way we can with charters.

What I see in the charter trend lines is growing support for making co-located charters pay their own way and no growing clamor to increase the number of charters.

National Urban League, On The Gates Payroll, Pushes Testing

From a Daily News piece touting low opt out numbers in the state's urban areas:

“We need annual assessments to ensure that every child is advancing together and that no student is allowed to fall through the cracks of our education system,” said New York Urban League CEO Arva Rice, a member of the High Achievement New York coalition.

Guess who grants income to the New York Urban League and the National Urban League?

Yup.

Maybe Arva Rice and the New York Urban League would love standardized testing and standardized education without the $5,341,259 in grants from the Gates Foundation to either the New York Urban League affiliate or the National Urban League itself, but you can bet the Gates payola helps.

Jeb Bush: Baltimore Riots Are Call For Florida-Style Education Reform In Baltimore

Following in the footsteps of ed deformer Jeanne Allen, who tweeted that the Baltimore riots were a call for more charter schools, Jeb Bush said the riots were a sign Baltimore needs more education reform:

Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush on Thursday urged Americans to not lose perspective in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, and offered his own policy prescription for simmering tensions in poor communities.

...


He addressed the underlying roots of anger in some dominantly black communities by pivoting to a conservative platform – welfare and education reform, mainly – that might start to change “the pathologies being built around people who are poor, that they’re going to stay poor.”

...

Bush on Thursday touted the education reforms he oversaw as Florida’s governor, arguing that expanding school choice is one way to improve opportunities for at-risk children.

“Baltimore is not a model for public education,” Bush said. “You want to see that, go to Florida."

Oh, yeah - Florida's a model for public education:

One of the regulations is that every kid has to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in order for the school to receive state support. That creates a problem, the school administrator tells Stewart. The problem: Michael. He has a disability.

Contacted, state officials cite state statutes. Michael has no options. He has to take the test.

Michael is nine years old. Born prematurely, he weighed four pounds. He has a brain stem but, according to doctors, most of his brain is missing.

No problem, says the state. An alternative version will be sent—pictures that Michael can describe.

Unfortunately, Michael is blind.

No problem, says the State. There’s a Braille version.

Michael doesn’t know Braille, and is unlikely to ever be able to learn it.

Amanda, Michael’s teacher, is frustrated. She really cares about the kids she teaches, and resists deliberately setting them up to fail. She also knows that Florida’s legislature, ignoring the research, has jumped on the merit pay bandwagon,  which requires that teachers evaluated in large part by the standardized test scores of their students. So Michael’s test score—a zero—and the scores of other disabled kids for whom she’s responsible, can set her up for a poor review or even get her fired.

Come on, Baltimore - don't you see how excessive standardized testing and other Florida-style education reforms can improve circumstances in your city?

LoHud Editorial: What Really Needs To Be Done To Fix New York's Teacher Evaluation System

The LoHud editorial board nailed the APPR teacher evaluation sham Cuomo's pushing in this editorial that just went up.

Here's the crux:

If Cuomo really wants to improve teacher evaluations, he should stop talking about the results. That's the easy part.

Instead, Cuomo needs to address the complex questions raised by school districts about the inner workings of the state-imposed system. Are ratings tied to test scores accurate? Have school districts been able to accurately measure the progress of students who don't take standardized tests? Do classroom observations provide useful feedback for teachers and districts? Does the system really help districts fire bad teachers? Is anyone reviewing the effectiveness of the overall system?

Fixing the system matters. Its rushed implementation alienated teachers and school districts, which hurt school morale and got the "reform" era off to an awful start.

If Cuomo really wants to repair a flawed evaluation system, he and legislative leaders need to listen to the myriad of complaints from New Rochelle to Rochester, involve educators in a thorough review, and produce an evaluation system that is tough, fair and informative. That's one way to help kids. In the meantime, he should give teachers the safety net he promised.

Cuomo's not interested in a fair evaluation system, he's not interested in listening to teachers or administrators for input, and he's certainly not interested in making the public education system work better.

He's interested in scapegoating teachers and public schools, using the Common Core tests as a bludgeon to prove why teachers and public schools suck, and do the work his hedge fundie donors want - privatize the school system so that they can cash in.

That's what this whole evaluation fight is about.

Kudos to the LoHud editorial board for telling Cuomo (and the public) what Cuomo ought to be doing to fix things.

NYSED Commissioner John King Vows To Bring The Chaos, Confusion & Anxiety Of New York's Common Core Roll-Out To A National Audience

From Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—Outgoing state education commissioner John King hopes to help school leaders in other states navigate the difficult transition to the Common Core standards and related standardized testing in his new position as the second-highest ranking official in the U.S. Department of Education.

Two years ago, under King’s leadership, New York became the second state to begin testing students on material aligned to the more difficult math and English language arts standards. New York launched the new assessments years ahead of most other states, which will begin administering the tougher exams this spring.

...

“In some ways, the hardest part of the transition is when you’ve given that first set of assessments that reflect higher standards and the state has to confront lower scores and the reality that there’s such a large gap between where we are and where we need to be,” King said during an exclusive interview with Capital. “I’ve encouraged my colleagues to do the best they can to prepare parents, communities, the public for those lower scores. We certainly tried to do that in New York and most importantly pointed to what it means: It isn’t to say that students learned less during that school year but rather to say that this is a realistic picture of where we are relative to college and career readiness.

 “It is a place where I hope that I can be helpful, certainly to my colleagues around the country,” he said.

Oh, yeah, John, you'll be extremely helpful to your colleagues around the country as they see what NOT to do as they rollout out Common Core and the attendant tests that come with the standards.

It was Governor Cuomo who characterized the implementation of Common Core by John King's NYSED as "massive confusion, massive anxiety and massive chaos all across the state."

Parents and teachers across the state criticized King and his NYSED, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and her Board of Regents, over the mess that is Common Core and the Common Core tests in New York.

King refused to accept any of the criticism and responded with his own passive aggressive hostility, first canceling future town halls with parents, then sitting stone-faced through rescheduled ones after Regents Chancellor Tisch forced him to attend them.

The LoHud editorial board described King's engagement with parents and teachers at these forums:

For many in the Lower Hudson Valley, a lasting image of outgoing Education Commissioner John King will be of him sitting impassively at Port Chester Middle School in late 2013. The school auditorium was packed with hundreds of parents, teachers and others. Speaker after speaker stood up to decry the rapid rollout of the Common Core standards and new state tests. King appeared to listen, but said little and gave no ground. Most importantly, he didn't show a pinch of interest in connecting with parents, acknowledging their concerns or even making them feel as if they had been heard.

...

The Port Chester forum came shortly after King had canceled another series of statewide forums, claiming they had been co-opted by "special interests." To John King, anyone who questions or criticizes the state's top-down education "reform" agenda is an outsider who is not committed to seeing kids learn. Parents and educators who find flaws in sweeping curriculum and teacher evaluation changes are portrayed as lazy, excuse-making haters.

 This isn't the case, of course. Many parents and educators in this region have offered reasonable, passionate and often convincing arguments against the growing state focus on testing, data-crunching, and evaluating teachers with a formula that is easily picked apart. But King has not been willing to engage his critics. This position has enraged many and created a bizarre stare-down between the state Education Department and many school districts that are supposed to be part of the same team.

Given his track record of failure here in New York State as education commissioner, the only "help" King can provide other education leaders around the state is as a symbol of hubris, overreach and incompetence.

That is, unless the rest of the country wants the "massive confusion, massive anxiety and massive chaos all across the state" that King brought here to New York.

And that's pro-Common Core, pro-testing Andrew Cuomo characterizing King's CCSS implementation that way, not some member of the opt-out movement or other critic of education reform policy.

Vote NO On Cuomo's Smart Schools Bond Act

Gary Stern at LoHud does a great job of giving both sides of the Smart Schools Bond Act story.

Here's why critics are opposed to Cuomo's technology bond for schools:

Opponents of the bond act say that borrowing $2 billion to pay for computers and other items with limited life spans would be an unprecedented move that has not been supported by analysis.

Nicholas Tampio of Mamaroneck, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University who has tried to incite opposition to the bond act, said money from the bond act will ultimately tie districts to the state's agenda. The state Education Department's goal, he said, is for districts to prepare for online tests aligned to the Common Core.

"School districts face a choice: Submit investment plans that (state Education Commissioner) John King wants or relinquish any chance of having the plan approved," Tampio said. "And what John King wants is the technological infrastructure to support online Common Core testing."

If the bond act is approved, each district would be eligible to receive a set amount based on the state's aid formula. But districts would need to have spending plans approved by a high-powered review board consisting of King, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher and state Budget Director Robert Megna.

And:

E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, a conservative think tank in Albany, has been the most prominent critic of the bond act. He said Cuomo has no research that proves New York needs to borrow $2 billion for school tech.

"There was no assessment of need and no one asked for this," he said. "This is the most ill-conceived and wasteful bond act to be put in front of New York voters in 30 or 40 years."

He noted that the state Board of Regents, which sets educational policy, has not endorsed the bond act.

"The governor treats the need for this as self-evident: Tech is good," McMahon said.

Why in the world would anybody want to vote for a $2 billion dollar boondoggle bond act that gives John King and Nancy Zimpher the right to approve or reject what districts do with the money?

You can be sure King and Zimpher, staunch Common Core proponents and testing advocates, will want every district to use the money for infrastructure for the PARCC (or some other online tests) to grade students, rate teachers and evaluate schools.

We ought to call this the Infrastructure For Online Computerized Testing Bond Act, because that's exactly what it is.

Don't be fooled, thinking much (or any, for that matter) of this money will go to building schools or getting rid of trailers in the city schools.

This is tech bond, pure and simple, meant to get the state up and running for the coming online PARCC tests.

Vote NO on the Proposition 3 on Tuesday.

Cuomo Plans To "Strengthen Teacher And Principal Evaluations" In His Next Term

After taking some criticism for not giving much of an inkling of what his second term plans are, Governor Cuomo released a 240+ page plan for the next four years.

I'm still poring through the plan, but the first thing that leaps out at me is this:

He brags how his APPR teacher evaluation system is one of the best in the nation but says New York has "the opportunity to strengthen teacher and principal evaluations" in the next term anyway.

This threat comes after he complained a few weeks ago that not enough teachers were being rated "ineffective" or "developing" under his APPR teacher evaluation system:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday the state’s new teacher evaluation system will need to be refined, but he said he would like to see more data before pushing for any changes to the state law.

Cuomo said he sees value in the teacher rankings, but said critics who question how 94 percent of the state’s teachers can be “highly effective” or “effective” have a valid point.

“I’m excited that we started,” Cuomo said of the teacher evaluation system put into effect during the 2012-13 school year. “And I think once we start to study it and learn it and refine it – because there’s no doubt it needs refinement, not everybody can get an ‘A,’ it can’t be – I think it’s going to be a very valuable tool.”

But he conceded the system might need more scrutiny.

Critics of the teacher evaluations have pointed out the wide gap between the 94 percent of teachers who were rated “effective” or “highly effective” and the number of students failing to do well on state tests and in other measures of student success.

He gives no concrete details in the plan he released today, but if I am reading the tea leaves right, he will remedy what he considers too few "ineffective" and "developing" ratings for teachers with a revision of APPR in the next term.

And that revision will be a "strengthening" of the system to ensure that teacher ratings more closely parallel passing rates for students on the state tests.

This comes even as superintendents in the Lower Hudson Valley have trashed Cuomo's APPR evaluation system and called for a complete overhaul of it:

School superintendents from the Lower Hudson Valley say it's time for the state to shut down it's failed teacher-evaluation system and to pilot new models with the involvement of administrators and teachers.

"There is no simple fix," Valhalla Superintendent Brenda Myers said. "We want this to stop. You can't just mandate and roll out this system and publish scores that are invalid. We warned that this would happen and now we need a moratorium."

The state Board of Regents, which sets education policy, began pursuing a new evaluation system in 2009 as part of its agenda to "reform" schooling in New York. With the strong support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state Legislature adopted a system into law in 2010 that has been widely criticized by school districts and teachers.

...

A new study commissioned by the superintendents group identified problems with the complex scoring system. Superintendents also say they gleaned little useful information from the first full year of results.

"If the goals of this reform agenda were to improve teacher accountability, improve a district's ability to remove incompetent teachers, to provide data to inform teacher practice, and improve student achievement — it has been a costly and wholly avoidable failure," said Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool, who co-chairs the committee with Myers.

...

State Education Department officials have said that they want to review more data before considering changes. But local superintendents do not want to wait. They say the current system falsely implies that teachers can be compared based on their ratings.

"The system creates an illusion of accountability," Byram Hills Superintendent William Donohue said.

The study commissioned by the superintendents group looked at 2012-13 results for 1,400 teachers in 32 districts in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess counties. It found that, because of the state's uneven scoring scales, districts must give teachers high scores for classroom observations — an average of 58.1 out of 60 — to ensure they don't get "unjustly" low overall ratings.

Cuomo is saying publicly that APPR is a great success, but to make it more successful, it will need to be "strengthened " (i.e., made to more closely mirror student test score results.)

Meanwhile superintendents in the Lower Hudson Valley are saying the test components of the system are so broken that administrators have to rate teachers as high as they can on subjective measures to ensure they don't get low ratings they don't deserve because SED's algorithms suck.

We've got a fight coming in the next term over this awful evaluation system.

As bad as it is now, Cuomo wants to make it worse.

That's clear from the statements he made publicly last month as well as the plan he released today.

De Blasio, Farina Full of Shit On Test Scores

The lede of this Eliza Shapiro piece at Capital NY:

Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Fariña on Thursday praised the slight improvement in citywide test scores while reiterating their shared ambivalence toward testing in general.

At a press conference at the Brooklyn Brownstone School to announce the scores, de Blasio said, "This is a good day for the whole New York City school system," before adding, "a school is not the sum of its test scores."

Then this:

De Blasio said his administration's ultimate goal is to have "100 percent proficiency for our children."

Added Fariña, "I won't be happy until at the end of this year I can stand before you and say we've doubled or tripled the amount of proficiency. It could be a lot better and will be and I promise you that."

Asked for specific goals for test score performance next year, de Blasio declined to give a precise figure, saying only that he expects performance to increase steadily.

Okay, let me get this straight - de Blasio doesn't think a school is the sum of its test scores but has the ultimate goal of 100% proficiency on the state tests and Farina is ambivalent about testing but won't be happy unless she sees double or triple the proficiency on state tests next year.

Which is is, folks - are you ambivalent about testing and convinced that a school (and thus a school district) is not the sum of its test scores or are you going to push for 100% proficiency on a measure you say you don't care about?

Dunno about you, but my bullshit meter went up here.

De Blasio and Farina don't get to have it both ways - either they have ambivalence about testing and emphasize multiple measures to evaluate schools, students and teachers or they get consumed by the scores and look to double and triple proficiency with the ultimate (and ridiculous) goal of 100% proficiency.

And of course the truth is, de Blasio and Farina care about the test scores a lot, even though they won't tell you they do, because all the really important people in this city, state and country do and if they don't get these test scores up those really important people are going to say mean and nasty things about them and declare them failures and so forth.

I wish they were more honest about this and tell us straight up rather than jive us with their "ambivalence" over the testing and the scores, but as George Carlin said, language gives you away always and you can see that in the language that de Blasio and Farina use that they care very much about the scores.

You're A Winner If You Predicted A Slight Increase In NY Test Scores

As many of us predicted, NYSED and the Board of Regents rigged the state testr scores this year to go up slightly so they could point to "progress":

One year after scores plummeted following the state’s adoption of Common Core-aligned tests, city students collectively outpaced the rest of New York on both the math and English exams. In math, 34.5 percent of city students met or exceeded the state’s proficiency bar, up 4.4 points from last year. In English, 29.4 percent of students met or exceeded proficiency, a two-point gain.

The city’s gains meant it shrank the test-score gap between its scores and the state’s to the slimmest margin since 2006. Statewide, 35.8 percent of students were considered proficient in math this year, and 31.4 percent of students considered proficient in English.

“It’s a story of modest but real progress,” Board of Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch said.

Uh, huh.

Or it shows this:

Increase of scores within the students will demonstrate to the public and "special interests" that common core is working and common core is the way for college and career. Deception at its best! Parents and teachers need to continue this fight to stop high stakes testing and common core.

And this:

Rigged. Totally Rigged. The scores will be a little bit better. A rigged salve to those who want to dismantle the garbage CCSS. A sickening manipulation, totally scripted with the purpose of ramming the Core down the throats of the public.

I'm going to go with Number 2 and Number 3.

They fool nobody with their jive anymore.

Common Core Proponents Change Bar For Success

Remember when Common Core proponents used to brag about having 45 states and D.C. on the Common Core bandwagon?

Now they say they'd be happy with far fewer states using CCSS and the CCSS tests:

“The politics have reached the point where they’re getting in the way of actually implementing” the standards, says Andrew Rotherham, cofounder of Bellwether Education Partners, an education research and policy group based in Sudbury, Mass.

“The perception is one of momentum [for the anti-Common Core people], and politics is a game of perception,” he says. “If you end up with 25 states doing [Common Core] in a meaningful way, that’s an enormous victory, but it won’t be perceived that way.”

From 45 states + D.C. to 25 states.

How the might have fallen.

In the end, if 20 states stop using Common Core, the CCSS testing consortia are sure to die (especially now that the federal money is drying up) and once the CCSS tests die, there is little for reformers to use to ensure that the standards are being taught even in the 25 states that nominally will still be on the CCSS bandwagon.

There was a reason why reformers pushed Common Core, tests based on Common Core and teacher evaluations tied to tests scores all at the same time all across the nation.

It was to ensure that the standards were taught in every school and they were going to force this through the tests and the evaluations.

But the more states that drop CCSS and the ancillary CCSS tests, the less powerful the sticks to enforce CCSS in other states become, especially if the PARCC and Smarter Balanced testing consortia go the way of the dinosaurs.

Nice try by Eduwonk trying to put a winning face on a loss, but if 20 states drop off the CCSS bandwagon, that's disastrous for CCSS proponents and supporters.

The Hubris, Arrogance And Authoritarianism Of Common Core Proponents

Some of the comments on Jay Greene's Common Core Political Naivete and the Enemies List post get at this:

"The main problem has not been intention, I think, but strategy. I have no doubt many Core supporters really think national standards are educationally important. The problem is, to get what they thought was good, they adopted a strategy that was — and is — highly destructive: Drive adoption through stealth and federal coercion, likely to avoid the ignominious fate of open national standards efforts in the 1990s. Demean opponents, as Jay so rightly points out, as kooks and extremists worthy only of derision, not engagement. Perhaps worst of all, refuse to forthrightly acknowledge crucial facts once the public was fully confronted with the Core, including that Core-ites wanted federal coercion, got federal coercion, and that the Core intentionally has a major influence on curricula. 

People may think I am obsessed with the federal role in Core adoption because I constantly repeat the facts about it. And, of course, by itself the federal role is a crucial issue, invoking major constitutional questions, legal questions, and federalism concerns. But what is especially disturbing about the federal role is that Washington’s coercion essentially ensured that we would never get to have a substantive debate — a debate I, I think among many people, would like to have — about the merits of national standards, national tests, etc. Instead, the goal seemed to be to stick the public with nationalization without any public debate. In other words, we never got to have the more substantive national standards discussion because the federal government, at the urging of Core supporters, made having it irrelevant." -- Neal McCluskey

 ...

"I don’t agree with the notion that the Common Core advocates were ever naive. They were simply never honest about what they were trying to do–and didn’t think honesty would get them most of the K-12 system, public and private (remember, they went after Catholic parish schools right away–and Christian Day schools). They wanted control–the power to push buttons as they saw fit–because they thought so highly of themselves–with nothing to show for it in education (which is a good part of the problem.) Duncan didn’t accomplish anything in Chicago, Fordham has never accomplished anything in education that’s been academically effective. And Gates couldn’t discern the difference between third-rate minds in education and first-rate minds in technology, which is why he ended up with hiring third-rate minds for his Foundation. I doubt he ever read a book by Jacques Barzun, for example or reflected on the questions raised by Great Books writers to develop some insight into human behavior.

The first draft of the “anchor” reading standards that came out (sneaked out in July 2009 but changed before its official September debut), the membership of the standards development work group in sprint 2009 (mostly in test development), and the first draft Jim Milgram ever saw of the math standards with Algebra I as the “college readiness level” revealed designer intentions to anyone spending time pondering what was going on. The intentions behind CC were never academic–to upgrade the public schools in K-12 for all kids–even though that was what was needed, and still is. It’s not a “trahison des clercs” for most of them because that would credit Gate, Duncan, Finn, Petrilli, et al with more intelligence than they have. It’s a kind of hubris, but not of the Greek tragic mode." -- Sandra Stotsky

Both McCluskey and Stotsky make important points here.

The people behind Common Core believe they're geniuses and everybody else are morons - you can see that in the arrogance of David Coleman and Arne Duncan, the certitude of Bill Gates.

They decided that only their genius could save the country from the rest of us morons and decided to "save us" without actually asking us if we wanted to be, you know, saved.

They devised their strategies in secret and decided that their plans would be need to be implemented as quickly and as quietly as possible for maximum impact.

Previous incarnations of national standards died when there was pushback from states and localities - so this time, the geniuses decided the whole thing would happen so fast, there would be no time for pushback.

The '08 financial collapse became a convenient cover and excuse to push through what they wanted to push through - national standards connected to national tests that would be used to evaluate teachers, thus ensuring the standards were taught (and driving curriculum as well, since what gets tested is ultimately what gets taught.)

Race to the Top was the carrot, No Child Left Behind waivers were the stick and the USDOE was the driver of it all.

It's all falling apart for a number of reasons, not least of which are, the CCSS standards themselves are half-baked (because they were rushed and not tested anywhere), the ancillary testing that goes with CCSS is facing a mounting opposition from all political sides and the data programs that were supposed to track all the stats are under assault from parents and privacy advocacy groups.

But perhaps the biggest reason it's all falling apart is the hubris, arrogance and authoritarianism of the people behind the movement itself - this coterie of oligarchs and their functionaries thought they could get what they wanted quickly and quietly, with no muss and no fuss, by developing it in secret, pushing it through while everyone else was paying attention to the financial crisis of 2008/2009 and attacking anybody who criticized their genius as crooks or kooks.

They've created the pushback themselves through the strategies they developed to push through their agenda.

Greene calls that "naivete," though Stotsky disagrees and calls it "dishonesty."

I think it's a little of both.

At the core, the Core proponents are dishonest people - Gates, Duncan, Coleman, et al will lie and cheat to get what they want, the last few years shows that quite clearly.

But they were also naive to believe that there wouldn't be a significant counterattack to their agenda and they've been amateurish (as Greene notes in his post) in their own pushback.

Witness Duncan's ill-advised "Soccer moms are pissed to find out their kids are stupid" comments or Gates whining in the Washington Post about how he's just trying to save the world if only people would let him.

Instead of engaging critics and opponents on point, CCSS proponents attacks and dismiss.

They've sowed the seeds of the demise of their agenda themselves, first through through the authoritarian way they pushed it through, then through the amateurish way they've tried to deal with critics and opponents.

As Stotsky notes, this isn't hubris on a grand, Greek tragedy scale, but it is hubris.

And in the end, it's what's going to do the Common Core and the ancillary other reforms that came with them in.

But Isn't The College/Career Readiness Metric All About Test Prep, Chancellor?

Eliza Shapiro at Capital NY got an interview with Carmen Farina in which the NYCDOE chancellor gives more details on her plans to improve the school system.

Farina says she plans to focus on the 2nd, 7th and 10th grades as benchmarks for how children are progressing academically, socially and emotionally - how she plans to evaluate social and emotional development is beyond me, though I suspect it will have something to do with that all-purpose word these days that reformers throw around when they talk social and emotional learning - "grit".

In any case, Farina says for 10th graders she plans to use college and career readiness benchmarks to ensure that students are progressing:

Once students get to tenth grade, Fariña said, “they are most likely going to graduate.”

“Are they going to graduate in two years, three years, or four years, and are they going to be on the right path to going on to college? The college readiness rate in high school is crucial, it’s not about graduating per say, it’s about if you go to college, will you stay here,” Fariña said.

Fariña attributed part of the bleak college and career readiness figure to the emphasis on rote memorization and standardized testing, saying, “if all you’re going to do is test prep, and you’re learning for a robotic system, when you get to college that’s not really going to help you.”

So the college and career readiness figure is bleak because the rote memorization and standardized mechanization that goes into test prep harms children and makes them into robots - okay, I get that and I agree with that.

But is the chancellor familiar with how the system currently measures so-called college and career readiness?

Because unless I missed something over the last few months, I'm pretty sure it's by test scores - as in 75 on the ELA Regents and 80 on the Math Regents or 520 on the ELA and math sections of the SAT respectively.

Now the way many students hit those benchmarks - 75 on the ELA Regents/80 on the Math Regents or 520 on the math and ELA sections of the SAT - is through a shitload of rote memorization and test prep.

I know, because I've taught both (SAT prep was my first teaching job back in 2000; I teach ELA Regents classes every year.)

It's great to talk about helping students socially, emotionally and academically to be prepared for college and career, but to make believe like the metrics that measure these things are based upon anything but testing data is absurd.

Carmen Farina is a smart woman, I'm sure she knows this.

And yet, she continues to pay homage to the all-mighty test data while claiming testing data is no longer all-mighty in the NYCDOE.

No Wonder The Parcc Consortium Has Lost So Many States

A comment left at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette:

Why it may not be a great idea to take PARCC this year:

41% of students who took the pilot reported it was hard to type their answers.
46% of students reported technology problems when taking the math test

teachers reported that 72% of students needed more time than the test recommended (suggesting a gross misjudgment of the time requirement)

72% of schools need more devices to administer the PARCC, so paper and pencil tests an option (but they cost 9 dollars more per test)
(source: Massachusetts DESE, except info in parentheses)

Also:

Paper/pencil test cost estimates(not including technology and maintenance! Billions of our tax money will take care of that.) increased from costing $3-$4 more than computer test to $9 per test more.

Essays written by students who took the pilot will be used to train an automated essay scoring (AES) tool. No humans will be needed to read your child's writing.

MCAS data is owned by the state, but ownership of PARCC data is unclear. (Who will have access to your child's test scores?)

Now is the time to stand up for what little remains of local control before we give away the rest of our children's futures.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter writes that with Tennessee's withdrawal from PARCC, there are now 15 states left in the consortium.

Unless something changes soon, PARCCis going to go the way of inBloom.

Regents Grading

Bleary-eyed teachers in different places around the city are grading Regents exams this weekend - including this bleary-eyed teacher at Perdido Street School.

That so much is riding for students, teachers and schools on a grading process that has exhausted teachers working through the day, then grading at night and on weekends, really ought to trouble any fair observer of education policy.

That's all I got today - sorry, the brain has turned to liquid from all the grading.

Maybe you have some good Regents grading or state test grading stories to tell?

Open Thread: Regents Exams

I'm proctoring Regents exams during the day and grading the ELA exam at night and this weekend.

It's a hectic week.

How's your Regents week going?

What have you noticed about the tests, the grading materials or the scoring charts?

Any differences from January?