Fred LeBrun: Cuomo May Cave On Common Core/Testing Because His Poll Numbers Suck

Governor Cuomo's poll numbers are not only underwater, they're deep underwater.

In the last Siena poll, Cuomo stands with 40% job approval, 58% disapproval.

 On individual issues, the numbers are even worse.

On public education, 68% disapprove of the job he is doing, 27% approve.

On corruption, 69% disapprove of the job he is doing, 23% approve.

On the economy, 63% disapprove of the job he is doing, 35% approve.

On improving the state's infrastructure, 65% disapprove of the job he is doing, 29% approve.

These are not good poll numbers.

And the numbers have been this way for a while - last December, Cuomo was at 42% job approval in the Siena poll and the numbers have languished all year.

So what's a governor to do but try and juice those numbers, starting with education

Cue Fred LeBrun: 

Things are at long last looking up for beleaguered public education in this state, probably.

I'd like to say the likelihood of significant corrections coming to Common Core, excessive and inappropriate standardized testing, and a hard-wired connection between those tests and teachers' jobs, is because the politician most responsible for the total mess we're in, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has finally seen the light.

His infatuation with data driven education ''reform,'' fueled by millionaire political donors, has been a disaster, for him and for our children. It's his law that's codified the problem. It's his law that needs amending.

But I have a hunch closer to the truth would be the sobering recognition by the governor that what desperately needs fixing and quick are persistently in-the-toilet poll numbers over his intrusive handling of education issues.

Voters get it.

Especially with Judgment Day a mere five months away, when the next round of standardized tests are mandated in English and math for grades 4 to 8. That's also about the time we are apt to see a parental opt-out uprising across the state of a scary magnitude if big changes aren't already made or in the works.

So Cuomo needs to distance himself from his own mess pronto and be part of the solution rather than the problem for a change.

LeBrun sees cause for optimism that Cuomo's Common Core task force - completely controlled by the governor (as all things are in this state) - has allowed dissenting voices this time around while previous Cuomo-controlled education commissions did not (see here.)

LeBrun is also encouraged by the appointment of a critic of the state's education policies, Jere Hochman, to work as Cuomo's top education adviser and by the news that more than 3/4s of school districts in the state are going to get waivers from Cuomo's latest iteration of APPR.

And LeBrun sees Testing Doyenne Merryl Tisch's departure as cause for smiling, since so much of the damage done to the system was wrought by Tisch herself.

But like all savvy Cuomo-watchers, LeBrun remains skeptical:

Now, the devil remains in the details, and forgive the state's teachers, educators — and parents — for being skeptical. The last five years has been a horror show. At the very least sole reliance on the flawed ''growth score'' from standardized tests in evaluating teacher performance has to change. It's written in the law. Student performance, and an appropriate level of teacher accountability, can be measured in a number of different ways, and alternatives need to be part of the dialogue. Common Core standards need new flexibilities, and a total rethink down in the lower grades where serious issues of developmentally inappropriate testing, questions, and frequency are recurring criticisms.

It won't be all that hard to torque the law back to reasonable. Now let's see it happen before we break out the confetti.

To be frank, I'm not ready to buy the confetti, let alone get it out and begin celebrating just yet.

NYSED Commissioner Elia told us she wants to repaint the Common Core standards so that people will like them better.

I'm not so sure all of what we're seeing out of Cuomo and NYSED is anything other than a repainting job meant to fool parents and educators into thinking state pols and educrats are listening to their concerns while really not listening to their concerns.

Tisch herself said one of her biggest regrets as Regents Chancellor was not communicating with parents the wonders of Common Core and testing well enough so that there wouldn't have been the rebellion the state has seen over both.

Call me cynical, call me jaded, but I haven't yet seen any tangible policy change that says to me the Endless Testing regime and the damaging Common Core State (sic) Standards are going anywhere.

What I see so far is a change in messaging, not a change in policy or agenda.

Calls for limiting testing from either President Obama or Governor Cuomo are jive when teachers and schools are rated (and fired or closed) based upon test scores.

So long as the tests carry so much weight, the system will be rife with test prep and test anxiety.

As for the Common Core, until these standards are revisited and the insane focus on "rigor" all the time is changed, schools will continue to be misery factories for both children and teachers.

In many schools, students do the same thing in every class, day after day - close reading informational texts that are several grade levels above in difficulty, responding to text-based questions and writing evidence-based argumentative essays on these texts.

This is happening not just in English class but in social studies, science, health - even art, music and vocational classes.

Teachers who deviate from what is considered "rigorous" are punished -  administrators enforce total compliance through the APPR teacher evaluation system and the Danielson rubric.

Until some teacher autonomy is returned, some creativity and allowance to deviate from the "One Way To Teach Them All" approach that we have now, many children are going to continue to hate school and learning.

And if you doubt this, ask some who go to schools where it's "All Rigor All The Time" - ask them how they like close reading day after day, writing argumentative essays day after day, spending three weeks on one short story and close reading it over and over until they don't care anything about it.

Cuomo said change is coming to the system - but given this is the same guy who said he wants to "break" the public school monopoly, I'm not ready to declare whatever "change" he plans to bring good change.

So far, all I see is a change to the messaging.

The Cuomo/Tisch/King Plan To "Strengthen" The APPR Teacher Evaluation System By Putting Even More Emphasis On Test Scores

Some details emerge on how Governor Cuomo, Regents Chancellor Tisch and NYSED Commissioner King will look to "strengthen" their APPR teacher evaluation system:

ALBANY—New York’s education leaders say they would support amending the state-mandated teacher evaluation system in order to address anomalies and inconsistencies that have emerged during the first two years of its implementation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he intends to strengthen the rating system, which he has touted as a signature accomplishment of his first term. Accordingly, education leaders say they expect the governor and lawmakers to make changes during the upcoming legislative session.

...

In September, Cuomo told the Buffalo News the system needs “refinement.”

“I’m excited that we started,” he told the newspaper. “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.”

He suggested that changes might need to be made on the local level in some districts where most teachers were rated “highly effective.”

“The way [districts] negotiated it may be too loose because everyone’s doing well, and I think that’s a valid question,” he told the Buffalo newspaper.

Later, right before his re-election, Cuomo told the Daily News editorial board that he wants to “make it a more rigorous evaluation system.” The paper reported he said he wanted to tie incentives and sanctions to the ratings.

In the book he released in late October outlining his second-term priorities, Cuomo wrote: “New York now has the opportunity to … [continue] to strengthen teacher and principal evaluations.”

Like Cuomo, King is concerned too many teachers and principals were rated “highly effective,” particularly on the component of the evaluations based on observations. He said he’d like to see “a higher level of differentiation” in that area.

... 

King also said he’d like to see educators’ overall ratings be more consistent with student performance on standardized tests. The evaluation system does not rate teachers based on students’ absolute performance—only about a third of students in grades three through eight passed Common Core-aligned state exams in each of the last two years—but rather on how much students improve from year to year.

“You’d worry if a district has very poor student growth, or their students are losing ground, but their evaluation ratings are very high,” King said.

So even as Cuomo says he's concerned about "over-testing," he and his corporate reform cronies at SED and the Regents look like they will put even more emphasis on test scores in whatever revision of APPR they try and ram through.

Because those vaunted New York State tests are so "objective" that if teacher evaluations don't track how students do on the state tests, then something must be wrong with the evaluation system.

So much for Cuomo's being concerned with "over-testing."

If he gets to revise APPR so that the test components weigh more (and gets to add "sanctions" for teachers who don't "measure up"), you can bet the already test prep-heavy New York State school system is going to go into overdrive on doing nothing but test prep.

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.

Science Teacher Complains Common Core Turns Him Into Literacy Teacher, But He Still Supports The CCSS

A common complain with the Common Core - no matter what subject a teacher teaches, he/she must become an ELA teacher and teach informational texts:

At the beginning of the school year, I start off my class with a quote. In my best orator voice, I exclaim, “We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair. We need to teach them that success is not a function of fame or PR but of hard work and discipline.” President Obama said that in his 2011 State of the Union address.

I use this quote not only to inspire my students but also to remind myself of how necessary it is to promote science in our country.

 ...

Recently, however, this quote from just two years ago began feeling as if it had been dredged up from the history books. Instead of creating Super Bowl scientists, the Common Core State Standards Initiative seems to be asking me to put away my beakers, hang up my lab coat and crack open more nonfiction texts.

Conversations with peers who also teach science reveal that our courses are rapidly being converted into classes in which informational texts are read to support a nationwide shift in standards. Science educators are constantly asked: What can you do to support our students in highly tested subjects?

Personal experience reinforces this trend: My class periods have been chopped this year while reading, and math classes have been elongated significantly.

For anecdotal evidence, Google the words “science” and “Common Core.” Many of the search results are resources on how to teach nonfiction reading.

To allow for content, I wonder: Should I cut out that blood-typing lab or get rid of the week of hands-on gardening? Maybe this year my students don’t need to experience the bed of nails at the Maryland Science Center to teach them about forces. I could save a lot of time if I cut out their camping trip. Surely an informational text could show my students the same things they would take in while crabbing on a boat in the Chesapeake Bay.

Of course I won’t eliminate these incredible experiences from my plans this year.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am a proponent of Common Core standards, which have many benefits for students. I am also aware of excellent resources such as Project 2061 and Next Generation Science Standards, both of which promote hands-on learning. Today, however, many schools are systematically deprioritizing science, and it makes me uneasy about our nation’s future. 

This teacher is a fool if he continues to support the Common Core standards and truly believes they have benefits for students.

He can't be much of a scientist either.

The evidence is all there for him to see -  Common Core and the ancillary testing reforms that go with it force teachers of all subjects to focus only on what is tested, they turn every teacher into a literacy teacher and every class into an ELA class, they compel teachers to have to make choices between hands-on learning and real life skill lessons and the Endless Test prep that must be done in order to keep the school out of the turnaround specialists' hands - and yet he's still a supporter and proponent of Common Core.

Keep supporting Common Core and the education reform agenda that brought this to us, my friend, and you'll be consigned to teaching informational texts and literacy pods approved by the Gates Foundation in what's left of your science class.

And those class trips you dig taking your students on?

Yeah, no more time for that amid all the Endless Test Prep you have to do.

The point of the Common Core State (Sic) Standards is to cut all that stuff you love to teach out - the hands-on learning, the experimentation, the class trips, that "a-ha!" moment we teachers love to see kids have - and replace it with rote learning, test prep drills and endless tests.

Alas, this science teacher doesn't see the evidence right in front of his nose.

Sometimes I read things some teachers write and I think, this person is too stupid to teach anything.

Bronx Success Academy 2 Ranks 3rd In State On Test Scores

In the middle of this Michael Goodwin propaganda piece on Eva Moskowitz in today's NY Post, we get this:

The numbers tell the tale. Success Academy Bronx 2 was the top-performing nonselective school in the city and ranked third out of more than 3,500 schools across the state. Some 97 percent of its students passed math and 77 percent passed English, despite a poverty rate of 85 percent. The school did not have a single white or Asian student on exam day.

Overall, her Success network beat the kids in Scarsdale on the math tests by 14 percentage points.

Quite a statistical achievement for Success Academy.

I know somebody who has her son in one of Eva's charters (not Bronx 2.)

She tells me that the staff at the school are completely obsessed with test prep and test scores and they spend an inordinate amount of time on prepping for the state tests so that the students know they are the most important thing in their lives.

But is that kind of obsessive prepping around the tests enough to get Success Academy Bronx 2 to rank 3rd in the state out of 3,500 schools, to have the network beat Scarsdale by 14 percentage points on the math tests?

Goodwin says ordinarily these kinds of results would raise red flags but because Moskowitz's schools get them all the time, it's obvious they are not the results of cheating.

Okay, I'll take Goodwin at his word, and Moskowitz's scores at face value - she is the finest educator in the country and we need to study exactly what it is she does with her staff and students to get these test scores.

Let's start the study with Bronx 2 and see how they got scores so high that they ranked 3rd in the state, beating selective schools and g&t programs and the like.

Then that auditor can take a look at the network as a whole and see how they achieved such high scores for all their schools.

They did something extraordinary there to get those scores - it behooves us all to have an independent auditor study just what they did by taking a very close look at them.

We must learn how they have achieved these miracles at their miracle schools

Unfortunately, Moskowitz is suing to keep the state controller from auditing her books.

It is doubtful she will allow anybody to study her schools closely to see how they achieved these miraculous test scores without a court order.

Moskowitz loves to garner propaganda pieces in the Post and elsewhere, especially when she can control the message, but she isn't so big on actual scrutiny from somebody with power over her.

So I don't think we'll ever learn how Success Academy got these numbers, especially how Bronx Success Academy 2 got to be the 3rd ranked school in the state.

Which is a shame - it's important to learn how these miracle schools got their miracle scores.

The Anger Over State Standardized Tests Is Growing

It's one of those days when most news takes a backseat to the events happening in Boston, but I did want to post about the NY Times article about the 3rd-8th grade ELA exams.

According to the NY Times story, state officials and Common Core shills are on the defensive over the tests:

Students at the Hostos-Lincoln Academy in the Bronx blamed the English exams for making them anxious and sick. Teachers at Public School 152 in Manhattan said they had never seen so many blank stares. Parents at the Earth School in the East Village were so displeased that they organized a boycott. 

As New York this week became one of the first states to unveil a set of exams grounded in new curricular standards, education leaders are finding that rallying the public behind tougher tests may be more difficult than they expected. 

Complaints were plentiful: the tests were too long; students were demoralized to the point of tears; teachers were not adequately prepared. Some parents, long skeptical of the emphasis on standardized testing, forbade their children from participating. 

Maya Velasquez, 14, an eighth grader at the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Upper Manhattan said she had done well on tests in the past.

But when a teacher on Wednesday informed her class that only 15 minutes remained in the exam, she knew she was in trouble. She had only written an introduction to her essay. 

“All the kids were, like, open-mouthed, crazy-shocked and very upset,” she said. 

...

 

English exams were given this week for students in the third through eighth grades; math tests begin next week. 

Some parents, particularly at elite schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn, have withdrawn their children from testing this year, joining a broader nationwide opt-out movement. 

At the Earth School, about one-third of students slated to take the tests decided to sit out, parents said.

“The current boycott is against the one song the mayor and the rest of the country have been increasingly singing, which is: test scores, test scores, test scores,” said Casey Fuetsch, a member of the Earth School’s parent advocacy group. 

Even outside of New York City, there was an unusual amount of protest. 

At South Side Middle School in Rockville Centre, on Long Island, more than half of the eighth-grade class, 134 out of 260 students, opted out of the exams, according to the principal, Shelagh McGinn. 

Katie Zahedi, the principal at Linden Avenue Middle School in the Hudson Valley town of Red Hook, where 55 out of 480 students opted out, said education officials too often assumed that more testing would improve results. 

“The amount of disruption this is creating is actually a threat to the quality of education,” Dr. Zahedi said.

Indeed it is. 

And as Fred Smith points out, once these "state assessments" are done in April, there will STILL be Pearson field tests given in some schools this June.

Next year, there will also be "local assessments' added to the testing battery, along with the state exams, so that teachers can be evaluated with both the state tests (20%) and the "local assessments" (20%).

If you've got children in high school, they may also be taking the PSAT and the SAT.

The Era of Endless Assessments is here.

And who does this benefit?

Certainly Pearson.

Certainly News Corporation and other companies looking to sell test prep materials, technology and other things to the state and/or districts.

Certainly Common Core co-architect David Coleman and the other education corporatists who are pushing both the Common Core Federal Standards and the new tests and making money off this.

But the children who are trying to race through the unpiloted Pearson/NYSED tests, made even longer by the field test section added, certainly aren't.

The children who are losing more and more days to testing and test prep certainly aren't.

And yet, the education corporatists in charge of policy in this state tell us that all this testing is "for the children."

Sure it is.

Ignore all the money the education corporatists and the corporations they shill for are making off this high stakes standardized test reform and then maybe you can believe it is so.

Are John King's Own Kids Sweating The New Common Core Tests?

Nope - according to the NY Times article that introduced Dr. King as NYSED Commissioner, they attend a Montessori school.

So while your kids experience test anxiety, get sick with worry over how they're going to do and wonder whether they'll get their teacher fired or school closed if they don't score well, Dr. King's kids are enjoying a standardized test-free existence.

Like many education corporatists, Dr. King has decided other people's children do not deserve what his children deserve.

But this is not a surprise from this man.

Two of his largest claims to fame before he was hired at the NYSED to privatize the public school system in New York State was starting the Uncommon Schools charter chain (known for a highly conditioned disciplinary environment and high student attrition rates - see here and here for two examples) and designing the structure and curriculum at Roxbury Prep where students also were subjected to military-style rules like marching silently through the halls to change classes.

You know, I wouldn't mind so much if this man subjected his own children to the same abuse he subjects other people's children in the state to, first as a charter operator, now as NYSED Commissioner.

But he doesn't do this.

Say what you will about Eva Moskowitz, but she sent one of her kids to her Success Sweat Shop Academy.

Dr. John King, on the other hand, has no problem being a hypocrite and giving his own kids a genteel liberal education while your kids get Endless Testing and Endless Test Prep or worse.

Maybe Gotham Schools can do a piece on this disconnect?

Nahhh...

"Slam The Exam!" Rallies

There is something I want to say about these "Slam The Exam!" and "Rock That Test!" rallies.

It is stupid to put children into uniforms and have them chant slogans about "slamming" and "rocking" the test.

Yes, I know people have pep rallies for all kinds of things, from sports to politics, but there are few things more demoralizing and dehumanizing than having kids physically act out how they are going to "rock that test!"

Seriously, do you think Obama's kids are chanting this kind of crap at Sidwell Friends School?

Or John King's kids at their Montessiori school?

The fetishization of high stakes testing, from the way the politicians and the "education leaders" talk about it to the way outfits like Gotham Schools cover it, really needs to stop.

Data-Driven Reform That Has Lost Sight Of Realities

The Village Voice reports that small class sizes, individualized instruction via a real teacher and not a Joel Klein computer program and mastery design courses rather than endless standardized test prep actually helps students learn:

CUNY began experimenting in 2007 with a different approach to remediation. Jahleah Santiago and Ashley Baret are in the START program, an intensive 12-week immersion designed for students with remedial needs in one, two, or all three areas.

Nathan Stevens, Baret and Santiago's START teacher, has a luxury few of his CUNY colleagues enjoy: time, a total of 15 hours a week with these students. On a recent afternoon, he stands at the whiteboard, going over eight homework problems, encouraging all 14 students (average class size is 20) to verbalize their thought processes. A scruffy figure with a beard and tattoos, Stevens is relentlessly Socratic—"How do you know that you're finished with the factors now?"—and patiently draws out each student, who range in age from teens to fifties, as the class simplifies polynomials and multiplied exponents: "Put it into words, Manny. Tell me how you got that answer."

Seventeen hundred students are in the START program this spring. They are technically deferring admission to CUNY, paying the $75 fee out of pocket so they don't start the Pell Grant clock. Their curriculum was written especially for the program, and all instructors spent a full semester training with another teacher in the classroom. "In this program we seek to show what's really happening in the math," Stevens says. "Rather than teaching my students to memorize the formulas, tricks, rules, I try to reinforce the underlying ideas of what they're looking at, with the hope that they could solve any problem they see."

"In my high school, math was kind of under a veil," says Santiago. "You didn't know what was going on—you just do that and that and get the answer. Nathan will break it down and do different examples until we get it."

That process sounds an awful lot like what we used to think of as "teaching." And 60 to 70 percent of START students, most of whom set out with multiple remedial needs, gain proficiency in a given subject after just one semester, compared with 20 percent who take regular remedial courses. The program began in 2009, building on the model of ASAP, a full-year intensive program. CUNY also opened an entire school called New Community College near Bryant Park last fall; all three programs feature intensive, accelerated study, small classes, and individual attention. START and ASAP will both double in size this fall to a total of 8,000 students. "It's amazing, the progress I see in such a short time," says Stevens, putting his hand over his heart with unabashed sincerity. "The students leave me, they pass the test, I see them later in the hallways, and they tell me how well they're doing. They hold on to their notes from my class. It just gives you that wonderful teacher feeling."

Doing things this way isn't just warm and fuzzy—it also seems surprisingly cost-effective. While it's initially more expensive to have small classes with extra advisors and tutors, of the original cohort who entered ASAP in 2007, 55 percent earned their associates' degree in three years, compared with 24.7 percent of similar students in the broader CUNY campus and just 16 percent of urban community college students nationally. According to an independent study by the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Columbia, the graduation rates were so much higher that ASAP cost about 10 percent less per graduate.

At its heart, this story is about a complex set of math problems. CUNY is beginning to make headway with this reinvented approach to remediation, but the underlying paradox persists: It is still spending considerable money and time, its own and its students', to teach people what they should have already learned.

The contradiction is stark. If the city's Department of Education were to adopt the practices of START and ASAP—small class sizes, mastery-based course design, one additional counselor or adviser for every 25 students—it seems likely that more students would progress on grade level, and the system as a whole would actually save money. The trend, however, is in the opposite direction: 13 percent cumulative budget cuts since 2007, and larger classes at 60 percent of middle and high schools as of last fall. It's no wonder the remediation numbers keep rising.

In the Bloomberg Era, we have also gotten data-driven accountability based upon test scores and graduation rates which means if the students do not pass the test and do not graduate on time, it is the fault of the teachers, the administrators and the schools and all will be held accountable.

Under the new APPR state evaluation system, that means teachers may be fired.

Under Bloomberg's Reign of Error over the NYCDOE, that means hundreds of schools may be closed, reopened as new schools and then closed again.

You always here this jive statement from corporate ed deformers and charter school cheerleaders when they're talking about schools: "We know what works."

Most of them mean busting the teachers union and firing "bad teachers."

But we really do know what works in education and what has worked for a long, long time:

Small class sizes, individualized instruction via a real teacher and not a Joel Klein computer program and mastery design courses rather than endless standardized test prep actually helps students learn.

Too bad in the era of data-driven accountability, in the era of the Bushes and the Obamas and the Rhees and Kleins and Spellings and Paiges and Duncans, there is no time or money to experiment with methods that actually work to improve education.

These people are too busy branding teachers "bad" and schools "failing" and looking for ways to shut the whole system down and privatize it.


Because the agenda in education reform is not improve schools or help students.

It is to privatize the last great public institution that hasn't been privatized yet and profit from it.

NYSED Commissioner King: An Education Reform Hypocrite

NYSED Commissioner John King is forcing students to take more Pearson field tests this October in addition to the usual round of Pearson field tests students are slated to take in the spring.

A parent wrote a letter to the Albany Times Union to say that he had called NYSED to see if there was an opt-out clause from the field testing.

He was told by a deputy education commissioner that there was not.

He goes on to write:

This bothers me as an educator and as a parent of four children.

Perhaps I will take the lead of Dr. John King, state education commissioner, whose children won't be in a school where this field testing will occur because they go to private school. Maybe I'll keep my children home.

In a recent commentary by Dr. King ("Give students their moment," Sept. 5), he writes of the so-called "education reform agenda" including teacher evaluations and the Common Core Standards: "These changes will be felt in every classroom in the state." This statement is not true, as private schools are not subject to these mandates and are therefore exempt. Besides the obvious hypocrisy, it seems patently unethical to not allow an "opt out" clause for the field tests being foisted upon students attending public schools.

Commissioner John King is the perfect man to lead the NYSED through its reform agenda.

Just like so many others in the corporate education reform movement - from Barack Obama to Rahm Emanuel to Bill Gates to Arnie Duncan - King loves to pontificate about how he is making the public schools that Other People's Children (OPC's) attend better.

How is he doing this?

By forcing standardized testing in every grade in every subject, K-12, by narrowing the curricula and spending enormous amounts of time, money and effort on standardized tests, by tying teacher evaluations and school closures to the test scores and by stealing money from the classroom in order to hand it to the tech, test and education consultants.

Meanwhile, the school that King sends his kids to - a private Montessori school - doesn't do any of these things.

Oh, no - what's good for Other People's Children is NOT good enough for John King's little darlings.

They deserve small class sizes, a rich, diverse curriculum, excellent facilities and a school not run on test-based FEAR.

King doesn't have to worry about an opt-out clause for his own kids and the Pearson field tests because his kids aren't taking them.

If the so-called reforms that King is pushing on the rest of the state are so good, why doesn't he subject his OWN children to them?

Oh, right - it's because

a) He's full of shit that the NYSED/Regents reform agenda is going to "give students their moment" and he knows it and

b) Because he's a hypocrite.

No High Stakes Decisions Should Be Made Based On These Pearson Tests

UPDATE: Gotham Schools reports that NYSED Commissioner John King defended the "Pineapple and the Hare" passage, although because of media scrutiny, the questions from that section the 8th grade ELA test have been thrown out.

Here's what King said about the test:

King also defended the passage, saying it wasn’t as confusing as it has been presented publicly so far. King, who appeared in Brooklyn this afternoon at Clara Barton High School to hear from students enrolled in a medical pathways program that partners with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, offered another reason the tests weren’t counting.

“The questions make much more sense in the context of the full passage than the excerpts that folks have seen,” King said. ”But given the press coverage we won’t be able to use those particular questions.”

Here is what the author of the original passage (which Pearson adapted) said about this:

Eighth-graders who thought a passage about a pineapple and a hare on New York state tests this week made no sense, take heart: The author thinks it’s absurd too.

“It’s hilarious on the face of it that anybody creating a test would use a passage of mine, because I’m an advocate of nonsense,” Daniel Pinkwater, the renowned children’s author and accidental exam writer, said in an interview. “I believe that things mean things, but they don’t have assigned meanings.”

...

I’m on this earth to put up a feeble fight against the horrible tendency people have to think that there’s a formula. “If I do the following things, I’ll get elected president.” No you won’t. “If I do the following things, my work of art will be good.” Not necessarily. “If I follow this recipe, the dish will come out very delicious.” Maybe.

Trust me, there is no formula for most things that are not math.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It's high stakes standardized testing week here in New York State and the reviews are in - Pearson's tests suck.

NYC Public School Parents blog covered the tests here, NY 1 here, the NY Daily News here.

NYC Rubber Room Reporter posts a letter from a NYC school principal to NYSED Commissioner John King complaining about the absurdity of the tests here.

The Washington Post covered the absurdity of the eighth grade ELA exam here.

The NYSED Commissioner, usually not shy about taking about how "cool" and "sophisticated" the state tests the Regents and the NYSED are developing for the new teacher evaluation system are, did not comment on complaints about this year's Pearson exams.

NYCDOE Chancellor Dennis Walcott did, saying

"We expect to see much more rigor and complex reading passages on next year’s tests."

Pearson has apparently recycled some of the test content it's given in at least half a dozen states over the past few years, so the idea that they have a storehouse of quality testing material waiting to be rolled out is absurd on the face of it.

It is quite clear Pearson is squeezing as much profit out of these state testing contracts while putting as little effort into these state tests as they can.

Students will be held back because of the scores on these tests. Teachers will be declared "ineffective" because of the scores on these tests. Schools will be closed because of the scores on these tests.

The tests are kept secret by the state, the NYSED Commissioner is refusing to speak about them, Pearson is refusing to speak about them, the NYCDOE is issuing some boilerplate statement about next years exams - BUT HIGH STAKES DECISIONS ARE GOING TO BE MADE THIS YEAR USING THESE EXAMS.

This cannot be allowed.

The tests cannot remain secret - not with the stakes that are on the line here.

If teacher evaluations and Teacher Data Reports are FOILable, then Pearson's tests that give us the "data" for teacher evaluations and Teacher Data Reports are FOILable too.

Also, NYSED Commissioner King cannot be allowed to duck accountability for these tests.

He MUST answer to the quality of the tests and explain why they are so secretive about the contents.

If Pearson and the NYSED are so confident in the sophistication and content of their tests, let's see that out in the open.

They say they can't do this because of security reasons.

The reality of course is, they know the tests will not be able to take the scrutiny they'll receive if they were to show up in the newspapers.

In the near future we're going to get 35+ tests a year for every child in subjects ranging from math to ELA to science to social studies to music to art to physical education.

The way the state has set up the new teacher evaluation system, many districts will have to give both state AND local assessments for every subject.

You can bet the mortgage most of these tests will be as badly designed as the one with the pineapple and the hare on it.

And high stakes decisions for students, teachers and schools will be made using these test scores.

That fact is as absurd as the "Pineapple and Hare" story.

Link Teacher Evals To Tests, You Get All Test Prep All The Time

Doesn't take a whole lot of research to figure that out - just look around at what's happening already BEFORE they add the 35 new Common Core tests to every grade, 3-11.

The Newark Star Ledger takes a look at the consequences of basing so much on high stakes tests:

As New Jersey’s public schools put students through the annual spring round of standardized tests, a growing number of districts are devoting time to helping kids prepare.

Standardized tests — the NJ Assessment of Skills and Knowledge, or NJ ASK, for grades 3-8, and the HSPA, for high schoolers — have long been serious business for schools. But with New Jersey moving toward using student test scores in teacher evaluations, experts say the stakes are rising.

Some worry that time spent taking the tests — and preparing for them — will increase at the expense of other learning.

...

In some districts, teachers have been asked to "stop teaching more — go back, review and get kids ready" for the test, said Rosemary Knab, associate director of research for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

This isn’t just happening in New Jersey, said Drew Gitomer, a professor at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and an expert on standardized tests. Reports from other states have "suggested a very substantial amount of school time is spent preparing for tests in ways that are hard to justify educationally," he said.

If test scores are linked to teacher evaluations, that practice will only increase.

"If they think the way to improve test scores is to practice a lot on the test, I think they will do that," Gitomer said. "Some test preparation, in its place, is okay. It’s when it becomes the dominant form of the curriculum, that it has pernicious effects on education."

President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address that he wants less teaching to the test in public schools, and yet he has put in place policies that promote national standardized tests based upon the Common Core, teacher evaluations based upon how well students score on those tests and (if his Secretary of Education gets his way) teacher pay based upon those same scores.

Does he REALLY think these policies are going to lead to less teaching to the test?

Does he REALLY think these policies are going to improve education for children?

Does he REALLY think a narrowing of the curriculum to only what is tested and school environments where FEAR over test scores rules everything else is the way to educate children for the future?

If you put into place policies that promote 35+ tests a year and base teachers' jobs and pay on those scores (not to mention the existence of the schools themselves), you are going to get a very damaged and damaging education system.

President Obama is a lot of things, but he is not a stupid man.

I have to assume that he has put into place education policies that promote these consequences because he wants things that way.

Bloomberg Lies About Closing Achievement Gap

Today Mayor Bloomberg joined two other corporate education reform mayors and the Secretary of Education Privatization Arne Duncan to talk about the wonders of firing teachers, closing schools, adding hundreds of tests a year to the curriculum and using scores from those tests in an error-riddled value-added measurement to publicly humiliate teachers.

A good time was had by all - Mayor Bloomberg even sang a Pete Seeger song!

More on that later.

But first this Bloombergian doozy as he was defending his record on education issues:

Bloomberg said the city’s school reform efforts had more than paid off. ”We have closed the gap between black and Latino kids and white and Asian kids,” he said. “We have cut it in half.”

This is of course not true as Gotham Gazette pointed out last August:

Bloomberg has long patted himself on the back for narrowing the gap in academic achievement between the city’s white and Asian students on one hand and blacks and Latinos on the other.

...

The mayor noted the city had narrowed the gap in high school graduation rates between the races. And the evidence backs that up. But in myriad other areas — test scores, admission to elite high schools, admission to gifted and talented elementary programs, suspensions — the gap has remained essentially the same or widened under the Bloomberg regime.

...

For years -– most notably in 2009 when the mayor ran for re-election — Bloomberg and his then schools chancellor, Joel Klein, trumpeted the narrowing gap — and increase scores overall – on the state standardized reading and math tests for third through eighth graders. But then last year, everything changed.

The state, in response to rising concerns about alleged dumbing down of tests, recalibrated the scoring system. That reopened the gap, sending it back to its levels in 2003 –- before the Bloomberg/Klein reforms had taken place.

“Almost all of the progress that has supposedly been made since 2003 in the achievement gap has been wiped out by this new re-scaling of the tests,” Megan Hester of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform told NY1.

As the administration released test scores last year, we found that in 2003, 73.3 percent of white fourth graders and 46.3 percent of black fourth graders met state standards according to the tests, for a gap of 26.9 point. Last year, the gap rose to 31.7 percent. (The 2011 test scores have not been released.) The gap for Hispanics increased, too, though only slightly.

Gotham Gazette also noted the gap for acceptance to elite city high schools, kindergarten admissions, and suspensions and found Bloomberg's education record wanting.

They even questioned the one area where Bloomberg really did close the gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students:

High school graduation rates: The figures compiled by the state and released by the city show an increase in graduation rates among all groups during the Bloomberg years. While 46.5 percent of all students graduated in four years in 2005, in 2010 almost two thirds – 65.1 percent – did. Black and Latino students remain less likely to graduate than their white and Asian counterparts, but the gap between groups has narrowed over the past five years: from a 23.89 percentage point difference between blacks and white in 2005 to a 17.6 point gap in 2010.

Certainly some dispute how meaningful this figure — and a New York City high school diploma — is. They note, for example, that about three quarters of students entering City University of New York community colleges last fall needed remedial work in at least one key area. Slicing and dicing various numbers, education expert Aaron Pallas, a frequent Bloomberg critic, has calculated that of black and Latin students who entered ninth grade in 2006 and graduated, only 12 percent were considered ready for college, according to state measurement.

An investigation, reported yesterday in Gotham Schools, into possible abuse of the so-called credit recovery system, which allows students to make up credits, could cast doubt on some of the graduation gains in doubt. The school in question – A. Phillip Randolph High School – reported an increase in its graduation rate of nearly 30 points.

The state is set to release data on the use of credit recovery as early as next month. “The data, which will show how widespread the use of credit recovery is, could challenge the credibility of the higher graduation rates that have taken place during the Bloomberg administration,” Gotham Schools wrote.

And yet, Bloomberg got to declare victory over the achievement gap - or at least half of it - today without anybody from the press calling "Bullshit!" on him.

As for the Pete Seeger song, well, Gotham Schools reported that Bloomberg said the following to defend his increased use of standardized testing:

… Pete Seeger had a song, “knee deep in the big muddy and the big fool said to push on.” Without testing that’s exactly what you do. And we are taking away the birthright of our children … Every time that we say oh we’ll test next year or two years from now or three years from now, you’re taking some kids and you're sending them out into the real world with lack of skills and they will never catch up.

Now this is a Vietnam-era song written with that conflict in mind, but Pete Seeger has said the following about the power of songs to exceed any narrow context

Of course, a song is not a speech, you know. It reflects new meanings as one's life's experiences shine new light upon it. (This song does not mention Vietnam or President Johnson by name.) Often a song will reappear several different times in history or in one's life as there seems to be an appropriate time for it. Who knows.

So perhaps Bloomberg is right to breathe new life into the song by giving it a corporate education reform gloss.

it makes perfect sense to me.

Here we are, knee deep in the big muddy of soulless corporate education reform, tens year into No Child Left Behind and high stakes standardized testing, and boy are we up to our necks in mud.

The achievement gap, as noted above, is as big as ever.

We have closed over a hundred schools, opened hundreds more, charterized a good part of the school system, and yet the stats are even worse now then before we started.

But press on, says Captain Bloomberg, press on.

Of course, here is how that ended in the song:

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment,
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nelly,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination.
Men, follow me. I'll lead on."
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once the moon clouded over.
We heard a gurglin' cry.
A few seconds later the Captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around, men.
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the Captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Then the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
About a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Now I'm not going to point any moral —
I'll leave that for yourself.
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking,
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers, that old feeling comes on,
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep, neck deep,
Soon even a tall man will be over his head.
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.

Let me know when the captain's helmet is floatin' on by, will ya?

Cuomo Will Cut Aid To Districts That Do Not Tie Teacher Evaluations To Test Scores

And he's calling Shelly Silver a teachers union shill in a broadside attack against the Assembly Speaker via Cuomo's favorite venue for political attacks - the Murdoch-owned NY Post:

In one of his most dramatic moves since taking office, Gov. Cuomo will use the budget he makes public tomorrow to impose union-hated teacher evaluation systems on 700 school districts throughout the state, The Post has learned.

The popular governor will do so by including language in the budget that ties receipt of 4 percent state aid increases promised to the districts in last year’s budget — some $800 million — to adoption of the teacher-evaluation system developed by the state Education Department, which has been blocked from city schools by a teachers-union lawsuit, a source close to the situation said.

All the systems, including the New York City schools, will have until Dec. 31 of this year to adopt the teacher-evaluation systems or lose the money, the source said.

...

Cuomo’s tactic will be based on a controversial set of Court of Appeals rulings that date from 1998 to 2004, finding that governors could change state laws and, in effect, adopt new ones by including language to do so within the budget.

“Shelly and the teachers union will likely go ballistic,’’ was how one source close to the Cuomo administration put it about the governor’s plan, referring to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), a teachers-union ally.

Notice three things here.

First, Cuomo is back in Rupert Murdoch's good graces now that's he returned to union-busting and teacher bashing.

Last week Murdoch nicknamed Governor 1% "Chicken Cuomo" for failing to impose a test score-based teacher evaluation system on teachers like Bloomberg wants.

But now that Cuomo's doing Murdoch's bidding on education reform once again, Post reporter Fred Dicker is back to slobbering all over Cuomo in the newspaper, writing about how "popular" the governor is and helping the governor by attacking Cuomo's enemies in the paper.

Also notice the preliminary strikes Cuomo lobs against both Assembly Speaker Silver and Senate Majority Leader Skelos as teachers unions shills through Dicker.

Cuomo is serving notice that he's going to smear anybody who stands in his way of his corporate education reform agenda as "harming the kids" or shilling for the unions - even though common sense says pushing through a massive new evaluation system that imposes new city and state standardized tests in every subject at every grade level might just be, you know, an idea that should be slow-walked.

But not in Governor 1%'s mind - state and city tests in every subject in every grade and teacher evals tied to those scores - that's just the ticket to improve public education in the state.

Last point - notice how Dicker changes the phrasing of Cuomo's "I'm going to be the chief lobbyist for students" from last week's State of the State speech to "Cuomo is the chief advocate for students."

A Siena poll released today showed people didn't like that term or idea - too close to the phrase "corporate lobbyist," I guess.

So leave it to Fred Dicker and the Murdoch Post to rebrand Cuomo "Chief Advocate."

Cuomo's a chief advocate all right - for the interests of the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Pearson Education, and News Corporation.

When this new evaluation system goes into place, it will be interesting to see how parents in places like Scarsdale and Great Neck react to it.

Remember, this is a value-added system - teachers MUST add value to every student's test scores, even the high-scoring ones in Scarsdale and Great Neck.

The chaos that we have in New York City with school closures and firings and the like - that's going to come to Great Neck, Scarsdale and other wealthy suburbs too.

Not to mention all those new standardized tests they're going to add into all the subject in all the grades.

What will Cuomo's poll numbers look like after a year where parents see new city and state standardized tests added to every subject in every grade and teachers doing nothing but test prep for all these tests because if they don't "add value" to the scores, they're going to be rated "ineffective," humiliated in the local papers when they publish the individual teacher scores, and eventually fired?

More Pearson Corruption Allegations - Is It Time To Cancel NY's Testing Contract With Pearson?

Michael Winerip reports that Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit wing of Pearson, the nation's largest textbook and curriculum publisher, paid for "education conferences" to Singapore, London, Helsinki, Finland, China and Rio de Janeiro for education officials from two dozen states.

Most of these states have multimillion dollar contracts with Pearson.

Pearson Foundation did not disclose any of the money they paid for these trips for public officials on its tax forms as it is supposed to do by law.

Here is how one of those trips went and what the outcome was for Pearson:

In the summer of 2010, Lu Young, the superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, a Lexington, Ky., suburb, took a trip to Australia paid for by the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Pearson, the nation’s largest educational publisher.

Ten school superintendents went on the trip, which cost Pearson $60,000. While the foundation described the visit as a way “to exchange ideas on creating schools for the 21st century,” there was ample time for play. “Everybody’s highlight of Canberra was to get to see the kangaroos,” Ms. Young said on a video produced by the foundation.

Six months later, in Frankfort, Ky., Ms. Young sat on a committee interviewing executives from three companies bidding to run the state’s testing program. While CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid, by $2.5 million, Ms. Young and the other committee members recommended Pearson.

In April, Kentucky’s Education Department approved a $57 million contract with Pearson. And then, over the next six months, the commissioner who oversees that department, Terry Holliday, traveled to both China and Brazil on trips underwritten by — that’s right — the Pearson Foundation.

Were the trips an effort by the foundation to influence government officials so the company would obtain a lucrative state contract?

A spokeswoman for Dr. Holliday said that the selection “was based on best value and not simply a low bid,” and Ms. Young said that the trips and the contract selection were “completely unrelated.”

“I never had any conversation or discussion with anyone from Pearson about the awarding of the testing contract during this trip or later,” Ms. Young wrote in an e-mail.

Of course she never had any overt discussions with anyone from Pearson about the awarding of the testing contract during the trip or even after - she didn't have to.

The message had already gotten across - you take care of Pearson, Pearson will take care of you.

Here's an example of Pearson taking care of one education official in Maryland AFTER a contract had been awarded to Pearson:

In Montgomery County, Md., the now-retired superintendent, Jerry Weast, approved an unusual contract in June 2010, in which Pearson paid the district $2.5 million to produce curriculum materials that the company would then sell worldwide.

Two months later he was on the plane to Australia.

And here's the tale of an education official from Illinois who really got his money's worth out of Pearson:

Christopher Koch, state superintendent of education in Illinois — which has $138 million in contracts with Pearson — went to China, Brazil and Finland with the foundation. The only Pearson compensation he listed on state ethics forms was the cost of the flight to China, $4,271 for business class. Asked why hotels, meals and the other flights were not documented, a spokesman for Dr. Koch, Matt Vanover, said, “What we’re looking at is a litmus test; they just want to make sure he’s not traveling first class.”

To be fair to Pearson, they got their money's worth out of Illinois too.

Here in New York, former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner took a trip on Pearson's dime to London and disclosed the value of the entire trip as $2000.

A trip to London, airfare, hotel, and food - all for $2,000 dollars.

Wow - that sure was a good deal!

Or Steiner is full of it.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is looking into all of this to see if Pearson Foundation has engaged in undisclosed lobbying to benefit its corporate parent, Pearson.

Winerip writes that there are parallels between the Pearson story and a case involving an official from the non-profit organization that runs the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona who was indicted for undisclosed lobbying of public officials and undisclosed donations to political campaigns.

The case also has similarities to the “the influence-buying junkets that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff arranged for members of Congress.”

Both Abramoff and some of the public officials he bribed, including members of Congress, members of the Bush administration, went to jail in the case.

So I would hope that the public officials who were on the other end of Pearson's largesse are also being investigated.

David Steiner and other officials in New York need particular scrutiny since the state JUST signed a 5 year, $32 million dollar contract with Pearson to revamp its standardized tests.

If Steiner lied on his disclosure form about the value of the London trip, he needs to be indicted for fraud.

In addition, we are at the point where the Pearson contract in New York needs to be scrutinized very closely.

If Pearson garnered this contract through bribery of state officials, including former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner, the Pearson contract with New York State needs to be negated.

Pearson should NOT benefit from the bribing of state officials anymore than state officials should benefit from Pearson's undisclosed lobbying.

Why The UFT Must Not Give In On The Evaluation Fight

Once again, the tabloids shriek about the federal funds that will be lost if the NYCDOE and the UFT do not come to an agreement on test score-based teacher evaluations for 44 so-called "failing" schools.

Here is the Daily News on the impasse between the city and the union (and of course they lead with how both the city and NYSED Commissioner and unofficial Pearson Education employee John King both blamed the teachers for hurting the kids):

The city could lose nearly $60 million in federal aid for its failing schools after officials were unable to reach a deal with the teachers union on instructor evaluations.

State Education Commissioner John King had given schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott until Sunday to hammer out an accord with the United Federation of Teachers in order to keep the money for 44 failing schools.

On Friday, Walcott walked away from the tense negotiations and sent King a letter saying the city and union would “not be able to come to an agreement” because “the teachers’ union is not committed to real accountability.”

King responded to the collapse of the talks by announcing that he would immediately “suspend” the promised federal funding.

“Sadly, the adults in charge of the city’s schools have let the students down,” he said. “This is beyond disappointing.”

The impasse is not disappointing at all - frankly, given the way the DOE has already tried to use the new evaluation formula under the Danielson framework in these schools to tar veteran teachers as "ineffective," it is clear that if the UFT caves in this evaluation fight, the DOE will ram through a rigged evaluation system that will be used to fire most (if not all) of the veteran teachers in these schools.

This evaluation system will then be scaled up for the whole New York City public school system and the process will be repeated - the DOE will use the Danielson framework and the value-added formula based upon student test scores to declare tens of thousands of veteran teachers "ineffective" and get them off the payroll.

As I have posted many times, this value-added formula they use for the test scores has a margin of error between 12% and 35%, depending upon how many years of test scores are used.

In addition, since the tests do not yet exist that can be used to evaluate teachers in all subjects, the city and the state BOTH have to come up with new batteries of tests for all subjects in all grade levels.

Once the new evaluation system is implemented, students will take city tests twice a year and state tests twice a year in every subject.

Basically all they will do in school is either take tests or prepare to take tests.

Then, using a complex value-added formula, those numbers will be used to rank teachers as "ineffective," "developing," "effective," and "highly effective."

The city wants the right to fire "ineffective" teachers immediately without a hearing before a third party arbiter.

In addition, there is some concern that teachers who are ranked "developing" for a few consecutive years could also be on the chopping block.

The proponents of this system - from President Obama to Governor Cuomo to Mayor Bloomberg to computer mogul/education reformer Bill Gates to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch to NYSED Commissioner and unofficial Pearson Education employee John King all say this system is "objective" and therefore fair.

But as has been shown already by the arbitrary nature of the value-added evaluations the DOE uses for 4th-8th grade math and ELA teachers, there is nothing "objective" or "fair" about the system at all.

Teachers who are respected by their administrators, peers, students and parents, teachers who work hard and know how to teach, can come up "ineffective" in this system as Michael Winerip so ably showed in this NY Times article from last year:

No one at the Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies works harder than Stacey Isaacson, a seventh-grade English and social studies teacher. She is out the door of her Queens home by 6:15 a.m., takes the E train into Manhattan and is standing out front when the school doors are unlocked, at 7. Nights, she leaves her classroom at 5:30.

“She’s very dedicated,” said Tejal Bahtt, a fellow teacher. “She works way harder than I work. Yesterday I punched in at 7:10 and her time card was already there.”

Last year, when Ms. Isaacson was on maternity leave, she came in one full day a week for the entire school year for no pay and taught a peer leadership class.

Her principal, Megan Adams, has given her terrific reviews during the two and a half years Ms. Isaacson has been a teacher. “I know that this year had its moments of challenge — you always handled it with grace and presence,” the principal wrote on May 4, 2009. “You are a wonderful teacher.”

On the first day of this school year, the principal wrote, “I look forward to being in your classroom and seeing all the great work you do with your students,” and signed it with a smiley face.

The Lab School has selective admissions, and Ms. Isaacson’s students have excelled. Her first year teaching, 65 of 66 scored proficient on the state language arts test, meaning they got 3’s or 4’s; only one scored below grade level with a 2. More than two dozen students from her first two years teaching have gone on to Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science, the city’s most competitive high schools.

“Definitely one of a kind,” said Isabelle St. Clair, now a sophomore at Bard, another selective high school. “I’ve had lots of good teachers, but she stood out — I learned so much from her.”

You would think the Department of Education would want to replicate Ms. Isaacson — who has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia — and sprinkle Ms. Isaacsons all over town. Instead, the department’s accountability experts have developed a complex formula to calculate how much academic progress a teacher’s students make in a year — the teacher’s value-added score — and that formula indicates that Ms. Isaacson is one of the city’s worst teachers.

According to the formula, Ms. Isaacson ranks in the 7th percentile among her teaching peers — meaning 93 per cent are better.

This may seem disconnected from reality, but it has real ramifications. Because of her 7th percentile, Ms. Isaacson was told in February that it was virtually certain that she would not be getting tenure this year. “My principal said that given the opportunity, she would advocate for me,” Ms. Isaacson said. “But she said don’t get your hopes up, with a 7th percentile, there wasn’t much she could do.”

That’s not the only problem Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile has caused. If the mayor and governor have their way, and layoffs are no longer based on seniority but instead are based on the city’s formulas that scientifically identify good teachers, Ms. Isaacson is pretty sure she’d be cooked.

How did this happen? How did a good teacher respected by all with numbers and data to back up her teaching skill get rated 7th percentile?

Easy - the value-added numbers are ginned up in a formula so complex that not even the DOE experts can explain it and they MAKE NO FREAKING SENSE:

Everyone who teaches math or English has received a teacher data report. On the surface the report seems straightforward. Ms. Isaacson’s students had a prior proficiency score of 3.57. Her students were predicted to get a 3.69 — based on the scores of comparable students around the city. Her students actually scored 3.63. So Ms. Isaacson’s value added is 3.63-3.69.

What you would think this means is that Ms. Isaacson’s students averaged 3.57 on the test the year before; they were predicted to average 3.69 this year; they actually averaged 3.63, giving her a value added of 0.06 below zero.

Wrong.

These are not averages. For example, the department defines Ms. Isaacson’s 3.57 prior proficiency as “the average prior year proficiency rating of the students who contribute to a teacher’s value added score.”

Right.

The calculation for Ms. Isaacson’s 3.69 predicted score is even more daunting. It is based on 32 variables — including whether a student was “retained in grade before pretest year” and whether a student is “new to city in pretest or post-test year.”

Those 32 variables are plugged into a statistical model that looks like one of those equations that in “Good Will Hunting” only Matt Damon was capable of solving.

The process appears transparent, but it is clear as mud, even for smart lay people like teachers, principals and — I hesitate to say this — journalists.

Ms. Isaacson may have two Ivy League degrees, but she is lost. “I find this impossible to understand,” she said.

In plain English, Ms. Isaacson’s best guess about what the department is trying to tell her is: Even though 65 of her 66 students scored proficient on the state test, more of her 3s should have been 4s.

But that is only a guess.

Moreover, as the city indicates on the data reports, there is a large margin of error. So Ms. Isaacson’s 7th percentile could actually be as low as zero or as high as the 52nd percentile — a score that could have earned her tenure.

Now when Winerip wrote that article, the value-added system was only being used to evaluate 4th-8th grade math and ELA teachers for tenure decisions.

If the DOE, the NYSED and the Regents get their way, that system will be used to "objectively" decide who gets to remain a teacher and who gets fired.

Michael Winerip has since shown how a similar system has played out in Tennessee, an early winner of the Obama administration's Race to the Top program that put all these new teacher evaluation systems in place by dangling out federal funds to cash-starved states.

In that article, Winerip shows how insane the new test score-based evaluation system is:

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Last year, when Tennessee was named one of the first two states to win a federal Race to The Top grant, worth $501 million, there was great joy all around.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has the job of implementing President Obama’s signature education program, praised Tennessee officials for having “the courage, capacity and commitment to turn their ideas into practices that can improve outcomes for students.”

Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, called his state “the focal point of education reform in the nation.” Tennessee’s new motto is “First to the Top.”

So you would think that educators like Will Shelton, principal of Blackman Middle School here, would be delighted. The state requires that teachers be evaluated by their students’ test scores, and that principals get into classrooms regularly to observe teachers.

Mr. Shelton is a big believer in both.

But not this. “I’ve never seen such nonsense,” he said. “In the five years I’ve been principal here, I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” Mr. Shelton has to spend so much time filling out paperwork that he’s stuck in his office for long stretches.

The new rules, enacted at the start of the school year, require Mr. Shelton to do as many observations for his strongest teachers — four a year — as for his weakest. “It’s an insult to my best teachers,” he said, “but it’s also a terrible waste of time.”

Because there are no student test scores with which to evaluate over half of Tennessee’s teachers — kindergarten to third-grade teachers; art, music and vocational teachers — the state has created a bewildering set of assessment rules. Math specialists can be evaluated by their school’s English scores, music teachers by the school’s writing scores.

...

The state is micromanaging principals to a degree never seen before here, and perhaps anywhere. For example, Mr. Shelton is required to have a pre-observation conference with each teacher (which takes 20 minutes), observe the teacher for a period (50 minutes), conduct a post-observation conference (20 minutes), and fill out a rubric with 19 variables and give teachers a score from 1 to 5 (40 minutes).

He must have copies of his evaluations ready for any visit by a county evaluator, who evaluates whether Mr. Shelton has properly evaluated the teachers.

He is required to do at least four observations a year for the 65 teachers at his school, although the changes suggested last week would save paperwork by allowing two of the observations to be done back to back.

Teachers have it worse. Half of their assessment is based on their students’ results on state test scores, a serious problem for those who teach subjects with no state test.

To solve that, the state is requiring teachers without test results to be evaluated based on the scores of teachers at their school with test results. So Emily Mitchell, a first-grade teacher at David Youree Elementary, will be evaluated using the school’s fifth-grade writing scores.

“How stupid is that?” said Michelle Pheneger, who teaches ACT math prep at Blackman High and is also being evaluated in part based on writing scores. “My job can be at risk, and I’m not even being evaluated by my own work.”

For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores are permitted to choose which subject test they want to be judged on. Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring.

Several teachers without scores at Oakland Middle School conferred. “The P. E. teacher got information that the writing score was the best to pick,” said Jeff Jennings, the art teacher. “He informed the home ec teacher, who passed it on to me, and I told the career development teacher.”

It’s a bit like Vegas, and if you pick the wrong academic subject, you lose and get a bad evaluation. While this may have nothing to do with academic performance, it does measure a teacher’s ability to play the odds. There’s also the question of how a principal can do a classroom observation of someone who doesn’t teach a classroom subject.

The answer is, the principal still has to observe them teaching something. Erin Alvarado, a librarian at Central Magnet, a combined middle and high school, picked eighth-grade descriptive writing. One of the rubric variables is how well the teacher knows her students. There are 938 students at Central, and she knew few in that class by name. “Fortunately, the teacher put all the names on index cards for me,” Ms. Alvarado said. “I’d take a quick peek down at the card, pick a name, look around and hope the student was there.”

This would all be hilarious, except these evaluations can cost people their jobs.

Indeed, people can lose their jobs in all of this insanity over "objective" teacher evaluations that are ANYTHING BUT OBJECTIVE.

And that's the point.

This system has been put into place, pure and simple, to give districts the ability to fire veteran (and therefore expensive) teachers at will.

All the districts have to do is put pressure onto administrators to declare a certain percentage of teachers "ineffective" every year and the value-added formula with the MOE between 12%-35% will back those labels up.

Actually, the bell curve that is used to evaluate teachers in the four designations - "ineffective," "developing," "effective," and "highly effective" - will ensure that some teachers are declared "ineffective" every year no matter what.

You can pretty much bet most of those teachers will be the expensive veteran ones.

Districts will save millions of dollars in wages, benefits and pension costs by firing hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of teachers every year, depending upon the size of a district.

And as Alexander Russo showed in this post here, there are plenty of newbies without jobs waiting to replace the vets who get fired, so finding newer, cheaper replacements will NOT be a problem.

If worse comes to worse, Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein stand waiting to step in with their for-profit, online education programs that can replace teachers completely.

But what will be a problem, ultimately, is the education experiences for students and the consequences these policies will have on the nation as a whole.

You can be sure that education will be narrowed to only include items that will be tested.

You can be sure teachers in the same school will no longer collaborate or work together in any way since they are now in "competition" on the great bell curve that is the value-added evaluation system.

You can be sure that students who need extra time, help, or care will not receive any of that from teachers scared for the jobs who know that taking time away from the endless test prep they have to do could jeopardize their jobs.

You can be sure that students will learn less and less in this Brave New World education system based upon test scores, value-added systems and Darwinian competition for teacher rankings that has been brought to us by Obama, Cuomo, and Bloomberg.

Finally, you can be sure that no one in their right mind will go into teaching in the future once they come to understand how badly the system is rigged against teachers and how easy it is for districts to scapegoat them (and ultimately fire them as well.)

The writer of the Daily News article, Ben Chapman, exposes his bias by quoting a member of the Educators4Excellence education reform group that is funded by the Gates Foundation who makes a living carrying water for the corporate education reformers:

Former teacher and Educators 4 Excellence school activist Sydney Morris called the breakdown in negotiations a “shame.”

“Teachers want and need a system that gives them meaningful feedback to improve their craft,” Morris said.

We sure do, Sydney.

But this system isn't it.

And you aren't a teacher looking for feedback to improve your craft.

You're a paid lobbyist looking for an even bigger corporate payday for carrying corporate education reform water.

Which is exactly the problem with the teacher evaluation system pushed by the state - it's been created and promoted by corporate education reform philanthropists, lobbyists and bureaucrats who either are "former teachers" who worked just year or two in a school system and then quit (like Sydney Morris, Joel Klein, Dennis Walcott or Michelle Rhee) or have never worked in a school system at all (like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, etc.)

The real world consequences this system is going to have on students, teachers and schools is stark.

But what do these people care?

They're not teachers, they're not working in schools day-to-day and they don't have to worry about having a value-added formula with a 12%-35% MOE and a bell curve evaluation system that declares a certain percentage of teachers failing every year come between them and their jobs.

This is why the UFT MUST stand fast in this fight against the new evaluation system.

It is a rigged system put together by people looking to scapegoat teachers, close traditional public schools with a unionized workforce, reopen them as privatized charters with nonunionized (and instantly fireable) rookie teachers, and make a profit either form themselves or their corporate cronies.

As James Eterno wrote in a post over at ICEBLOG, the best tact in this fight is to push for legislation to overturn this system rather than try to find common ground in one that is so rigged against teachers.

Over 1,100 principals statewide have already begun that fight.

The UFT and the NYSUT must join it.

Teacher Evaluation Deal Brings Massive Change For Federal Funds That Amount To 0.2% Of The Budget

The Daily News and the Times and Gotham Schools make it sound like the world will end if the UFT doesn't cave to pressure from NYSED Commissioner and unofficial Pearson Education booster John King's threat to agree to a teacher evaluation system that requires 40% of teacher evaluations to come from state and city tests (20% for each) for teachers in 33 schools deemed "failing."

NYC Educator covered a bit of that media hysteria in this post here.

But the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal puts that hysteria into some perspective:

New York state warned city officials Tuesday that they are just days away from losing nearly $60 million in federal funds that hinge on an agreement with the teachers union to use test scores in evaluations.

State officials said they would enforce a Dec. 31 deadline for school districts to strike deals with teachers unions over new evaluation plans that count student improvement on state tests for at least 20% of a teacher's score. Ten districts are eligible for about $105 million in federal education funds, but only two—Rochester and Syracuse—have submitted evidence that they've made the required changes.

...

New York City stands to lose about $58.6 million in federal funds slated for 44 low-performing schools if the deadline passes with no deal. The city and the United Federation of Teachers union agreed in theory last summer to implement a new evaluation system at those schools, but the details are still being negotiated.

...

The federal funds amount to only about 0.2% of the roughly $20 billion annual schools operating budget.

That's right - all of this fuss over 0.2% of the annual operating budget.

Hell, that's just a little bit more money than former NYCDOE official Judith Hederman helped some consulting firm steal from the DOE ($34 million.)

It's only a couple of months operating budget for the CityTime project that Bloomberg allowed to balloon from $63 million to over $700 million - much of which was stolen by crooks in what the US Attorney called one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated against NYC taxpayers, a project that was "corrupt to the core."

And it's a little over 10% of what Bloomberg is spending this year alone to upgrade the computer systems in the schools so that computerized tests can be used to grade teachers starting in 2014.

That allocation stands at $550 million. How much is being stolen from that fund by the outside consultants? We don't know because Bloomberg has labeled this as part of capital improvements and doesn't have to give any details on how the money is being spent.

But you can be sure that if former DOE computer consultant Willard Lanham stole $3.4 million from the city, former DOE official Judith Hederman helped steal $34 million from the city, and the CityTime crooks stole $700 million, much of the $550 million Bloomberg is spending on computer consultants and upgrades is being stolen.

And let's not forget the $36 million dollars Bloomberg spent on the NYCHA computer system that doesn't work, or the $15 million he spent on GPS systems for the FDNY and the Sanitation Department that also don't work, or the $55 million he spent on the SESIS computer prgoram that also doesn't work, or the millions they fail to recoup to city taxpayers in Medicaid costs for special education services, or...

Well, you get the point.

This money for the turnaround schools is peanuts to Bloomberg and the DOE.

Compared to the money they already waste, it's a drop in the bucket that will barely be noticed.

Except by the test prep companies and online education providers, of course, who stand to make millions from the testing and test prep this money will fund.

And that's the last point I want to hit on here - just what the money CAN and CANNOT be used for.

It CAN be used for tests, data tracking systems, test prep, curriculum consultants, and online education materials related to testing.

Ed Notes points out today what it CANNOT be used for:

We should remember what this money CANNOT be used to do. It CANNOT be used to increase the number of teachers in order to reduce class size. It CANNOT be used to hire more Guidance Counselors, Social Workers, Psychologists and other support workers that our students so desperately need. It CANNOT be used to buy new, badly needed textbooks. It CANNOT be used to buy classroom supplies, such as paper or ink, toner or stencil rolls for duplicating machines.

The best thing that could happen is the city LOSES this money, LOSES the harmful education policies like ENDLESS TEST PREP and new city tests added to every subject in every grade in order to evaluate teachers that this money will fund.

Education officials and politicians are using the Shock Doctrine here to gin up a phony crisis that absolutely has to be solved by December 31, 2011 or the world will end.

I hope the UFT sticks to its guns and refuses to agree to a new evaluation system in these 44 schools that will eventually be implemented in every school that will do more harm than good.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in its evaluation article:

Unions and statisticians have argued that evaluations have large margins of error—especially for new teachers with only a few years of test scores to analyze. Others worry that some teachers will cheat on behalf of students if pay or layoffs are tied to scores, while other critics say it will encourage teachers to spend more time on test preparations and less on creative thinking.

Indeed, that is EXACTLY some of the problems that will be ushered in with this new system.