Don't Believe The Obama Administration Jive On Capping Testing Time (UPDATED - 3:35 PM)

From the "We caused it - now we're trying to walk it back without really walking it back" file:

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

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“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has said he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

So long as teachers and schools are rated based upon test scores, the "cap" on testing time the Obama administration educrats talk about is meaningless.

In New York State, teachers currently have 20% of their ratings based upon state test scores (even if they don't teach classes that end with state tests) and 20% based upon so-called "local assessment" measures that may be state test data crunched a different way.

Last spring Governor "I want to break the public school monopoly" Cuomo shoved through a reiteration of the evaluation system tied to school funding that increases the weight of state test scores to 50% because not enough teachers were being rated ineffective and fired under the old system.

In addition, he shoved through a school receivership plan that forces "persistently struggling schools" to increase their test scores in one year and "struggling schools" to increase their test scores in two years or be taken over by the state.

With such a test-centric environment (one that was absolutely encouraged by the Obama administration's Race to the Top program and their NCLB waiver system), the Obama educrats can call for a cap on testing time all they want - nothing about the system will change so long as the scores are used to fire teachers and close schools.

In any case, the administration isn't going to put out "guidelines" until January on the testing changes, so for now all we have is some meaningless rhetoric that may excite Randi Weingarten but will have little practical effect on what happens to all the overtesting that is currently going on in schools.

In short, the Endless Testing regime continues no matter the Obama administration public relations statements.

UPDATED - 3:35 PM: Peter Greene points out in comments that the Obama administration has hawked this testing cap gambit before. 

He's got a new post analyzing today's announcement and finds they're

offering pointless PR nuggets and avoiding the real discussion, which is why, exactly, we need the BS Tests at all, and what possible justification there is for using the BS Tests to measure, rank and rate students, teachers or schools.

But the tests are a "civil right," don'tcha know?

UFT President Michael Mulgrew Discovers Nixon's Silent Testing Majority

Mike Mulgrew and his Unity caucus speak for all parents:

Mike Schirtzer rises, raises motion for next month on behalf of MORE, to support I Refuse Movement. Circulates it. Mulgrew says it needs a simple majority to be placed on agenda. 

Mike says has been passed by several locals, that testing regime is out of hand, and that we should oppose high stakes testing. Says test prep saps joy from teaching, helps neither us nor our students. Kills creativity, critical thinking so we can do non stop test prep. Says we must starve the beast, that MOSL is junk science. Says if we’re gonna go to war against Cuomo, let’s take high stakes testing away from him.

...

Sterling Robeson rises to speak against resolution, says we are against overtesting, but that we need tools to help drive instruction. Says parents need tests to ensure that they’re getting the “education they deserve.” Says we’ve supported this issue “from teachers of Chicago,” and in early grades. Says we’ve enforced it and reemphasized it over and over. States there is difference between opting out and refusing. Says it tells folks to tell their kids to refuse. Although there are pieces that are appealing to us, it goes to far. Urges this motion be defeated.

Mulgrew holds vote, I did not hear him declare outcome (it was clearly voted down, I would say 2-1) takes point of personal privilege, says he understands passion around this issue. Says resolution is out of order because it asks us to make decision about NYSUT. Speaks of how parents want tests. Says we’re in a fight and have to be smart about it, that we ought not to take a boilerplate resolution that was put together in other places. Says we should be against high stake.

No surprise on this, of course - it's the same rationale the AFT used for pushing for testing to remain in the NCLB Jr. bill being cobbled together in Washington.

Thing is, I'm sure there are some parents who think standardized tests are useful and important.

And then there are a whole bunch of them who think they're harmful, especially when attached to high stakes.

That second group is much louder than the first - and, if protests and social media activity are any gauge, it's growing by the day

Perhaps Mulgrew knows something I don't know and he sees Nixon's "Silent Testing Majority" out there supporting high stakes tests.

But more than likely the UFT President has his marching orders from the AFT President who takes her marching orders from the moneyed interests she so respects (a la Bill Gates and the like) that testing must be defended no matter what.

Thing is, they're on the wrong side of history on this, as are many of the civil rights groups that defend high stakes testing as the only way to assure quality education for all (some of those groups are also on the Gates payroll, btw, so they have other interests besides looking out for civil rights.)

The opt out movement and the anti-testing movement will continue to grow, and if Cuomo gets his way on his reform agenda and gets to tie 50% of a teacher's rating to tests, he's just throwing wood on the bonfire.

The testing obsession has reached a tipping point with large numbers of parents (as has Common Core) and Mike Mulgrew's defense of it won't save the Endless Testing regime any more than his promise to punch anybody who takes away his Common Core will save CCSS.

So Long As Tests Are Used For High Stakes, Endless Test Prep In Schools Will Continue

Secretary of Education Privatization Arne Duncan plans to "draw a line in the sand" in a speech calling for a NCLB revision, demanding that students still be tested every year in math and reading (3rd-8th grade) and he's going to add three tests in science during those years.

But it is said Duncan will call for an end to "unnecessary tests" in his speech:

Duncan won't back away from policies the Obama administration has embraced from the get-go. Those include investing in teacher quality—and teacher evaluations; a state-federal partnership on accountability akin to the NCLB waivers the administration granted; and, yes, maintaining NCLB's annual summative tests. As he's said before, Duncan sees annual statewide assessments as an important part of the picture when it comes to ensuring that all students, especially disadvantaged kids, are making academic progress.

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The secretary is open to changes in how standardized tests are used. The administration also wants to allow states to incorporate measures other than test scores into their accountability systems—flexibility that's largely already offered to states through the NCLB waivers (even though many haven't taken advantage of it).

And the secretary wants to ensure that states and districts aren't going overboard with a lot of unnecessary or redundant tests, something he's signaled before by applauding efforts by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools to help their members take a hard look at their assessment systems and weed out unnecessary or low-quality tests.

Okay, here's the deal.

So long as state tests are used for high stakes decisions to close schools, evaluate teachers, etc., an unhealthy emphasis on testing and test prep will remain in operation.

That's the deal.

Duncan and other ed deformers can say "Oh, we want to lessen testing by getting rid of unnecessary tests or "low-quality tests" (whatever the hell that means - as far as I an tell, they're all "low-quality"), but the truth is, so long as state tests are used to bludgeon teachers, close schools, etc., there will be an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources spent on making sure as many students as possible pass the state tests.

That means the Era of Endless Test Prep will continue unabated in most schools despite Duncan's call for an end to "unnecessary tests."

And btw, the Education Privatization Secretary knows this, as do all the other reformers calling for an end to "unnecessary tests."

Duncan is trying to respond to the growing anti-testing movement, but he's simply paying lip service to it and not really listening.

Deformers need the testing to continue as high stakes because this is the weapon they use to destroy schools, teachers and public education.

You can see that in New York, where Cuomo complained about the Common Core roll-out and hammered NYSED and the Board of Regents over it, but still used the CCSS test scores as proof positive for why teachers suck and need to be fired.

Deformers need the tests to remain and they need the high stakes to remain to carry out their destructive plans to "break" the public school "monopoly."

It's a cynical ploy by Duncan and other deformers here to call for an end to "unnecessary tests" when they know that really won't change the obsessive testing culture in the system at all.

They need to be called on that cynical ploy.

Obama Looks To Keep His Education Policies In Place Long After He's Out Of Office

Obama looks to lock in Common Core, high stakes testing and teacher evaluations tied to test scores long past the sunset on the Obama administration:

The Obama administration is inviting states to apply to renew their waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act. And according to guidance issued Thursday, these renewed waivers could last all the way through the 2018-2019 school year -- locking down some of President Barack Obama's education policy changes well into the next presidency.

The new guidelines don't radically change the criteria for escaping the law's strictures. According to an Education Department document, states will have to ensure that schools cannot receive top ratings for accountability if they are not closing "significant achievement or graduation rate gaps" between different groups of students. Some states have struggled to keep promises they made under the 2011 waiver guidelines to improve low-performing schools. Under the new guidance, states must update their lists of such schools "to ensure that interventions are being implemented in the lowest-performing schools."

Beyond that, a state must continue to show "how it will continue to ensure all students graduate from high school ready for college and a career, through implementation of college- and career-ready standards and high-quality aligned assessments," the new guidelines say. Many states have satisfied this waiver requirement by adopting the Common Core State Standards, a controversial set of learning standards that formally define what students need to know in English language arts and math by the end of each academic year. Oklahoma dropped Common Core earlier this year, and lost its waiver in August as a result.

States must also continue to show that they are implementing teacher evaluations that take student performance into account, as they promised when they initially joined the program. Washington state lost its waiver for failing to comply with this directive.

Peter Greene took on the news at Curmudgucation:

The new guidelines are essentially like the old guidelines, with a hard line emphasis on basing evaluation of teachers, schools, students, principals, bus drivers, landscaping artists and the guy who delivers paper supplies to the school on standardized tests. It was just a month ago that Duncan was shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Dang. I don't know why the heck everyone got so obsessed with testy stuff. I guess it was all of us, huh?" Now he's back to "You will all eat, breathe, live and die by the tests. Or else."

For Obama-watchers, there is no surprise in this news.

There was no way the Obama administration was going to back away from CCSS, high stakes testing, teacher evaluations tied to test scores and all the other ed reforms they brought to fruition.

Sure, Arne Duncan paid lip service to over-testing concerns.

But he was jiving - this is the Ed Sec who never saw a test he didn't like or a test score that wasn't the responsibility of a teacher.

So now they're looking to impose the Obama ed policies long after Obama and Duncan will be gone from the scene.

Obama is looking to do the same with his immigration policies.

There's been a huge outcry over Obama using executive orders to bypass Congress.

It will be interesting to see if the NCLB waiver renewals Obama and Duncan want in place through 2018 or 2019 cause the same furor.

They surely ought to, as Neal McCluskey at Cato points out:

If the outcry over unilateral executive moves we’ve seen over the last few years remains consistent, Obamacare and immigration are likely to keep sucking up most of Republicans’ attention and the media’s coverage. But just as sweeping have been executive waivers issued from the hated No Child Left Behind Act – really the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – that have been instrumental in connecting numerous states to, among other things, the Common Core national curriculum standards. And yesterday, the Education Department issued guidance offering states the chance to obtain waivers – if they do the administration’s bidding, of course – lasting well into the term of the next president: the 2018-19 school year.

These waivers are almost certainly illegal – even a Congressional Research Service report often cited to suggest the opposite says they are unprecedented in scope and, hence, an untested case – and even if they are not deemed technically illegal, the reality is they still amount to the executive department unilaterally making law. NCLB does grant the Secretary of Education the authority to issue waivers from many parts of the Act, but it grants no authority to condition those waivers on states adopting administration-preferred policies. Indeed, as University of South Carolina law professor Derek W. Black writes in a recent analysis of waivers, not only does NCLB not authorize conditional waivers, even if a court were to read any waiver authorization as implicitly authorizing conditions, the actual conditions attached – “college- and career-ready standards,” new teacher evaluations, etc. – fundamentally change the law. In fact the changes, Black notes, are essentially what the administration proposed in its 2010 “blueprint” to reauthorize NCLB. And quite simply, the executive fundamentally changing a law is not constitutional.

The latest waiver guidance goes beyond even the toxic status quo. Not only is the President using his vaunted pen and phone to unilaterally make education law, but law that would continue well into his successor’s term. It is a very dangerous move that, quite frankly, deserves at least as much alarmed coverage as Obamacare waivers and immigration actions. If for no other reason, because the action is moving us swiftly toward a de facto federal curriculum. In other words, direct control over what the vast majority of the nation’s children learn.

Federal power can’t get much more invasive than that.

Nope, it really can't.

The Obama administration has picked up where the Bush administration left off with their authoritarianism.  

Imposing policies, laws and the will of Congress (or the people) be damned.

Some Good News Out Of The Election - Race To The Top Is Probably Not Long For This World

A Republican-controlled House and Senate is almost certain to try and dump the Obama education agenda, including Race to the Top and the school turnaround program:

Conservatives will almost certainly use the budget process to try to eliminate the Obama administration's favorite competitive-grant programs, such as Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and the School Improvement Grant program. GOP lawmakers in the House have tried for the past few years to scrap those programs, but Senate Democrats have always championed them in budget negotiations.

Conservatives will undoubtedly push school choice and vouchers.

But we may also see a NCLB Jr. bill come to the president's desk that gets rid of some of the more controlling features of NCLB Sr:

 Alexander, a former U.S. Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, has already laid out his education priorities, which include overhauling the NCLB law and tackling higher education legislation.

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The starting point for Alexander would be a bill he introduced last year to renew the NCLB law. The plan garnered support from every GOP member of the committee, but didn't get a single Democratic cosponsor.

The measure would significantly scale back the federal role in K-12 policy, allowing states to devise their own accountability plans, among other things. As under the current law, schools would be required to test students in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and report the results, including for subgroups of students, such as English-language learners and those in special education.

Obama won't want to sign anything like this into law even if it comes to his desk, so what we may end up with over the next two years is gridlock on these issues.

But if Lamar Alexander is going to push for more local control of schools, put a leash on Arne Duncan and his USDOE goons, scale back the accountability measures set by the feds and let states do some of their own setting, well, I'm all for that.

And if Alexander and his fellow Republicans kill RttT and the turnaround program, well, I'm all for that too.

The way politics works these says, especially around education issues, there's no red vs. blue dichotomy that works for me any more.

I may not support choice and vouchers as the GOP will push in this next session.

But I surely can support some of the other items on Alexander's list.

And if he goes after Common Core, well, I'm all for that too.

We'll see if these GOPers put their money where their mouths are on these issues.

After all, there are some corporations that stand to lose millions if education policy changes.

But if they do follow through on some of that stuff like getting rid of RttT and the turnaround program, I can get on board with that.

Howie Hawkins: Get Rid Of Common Core - And Standardized Testing

Here's why I am supporting Howie Hawkins for governor in next month's election:

ALBANY—Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins has entered the fight among liberals and conservatives over which side is more opposed to the Common Core standards.

Hawkins, during a conference call with reporters on Monday morning, said he wants New York to ditch the curriculum standards that New York adopted with the majority of U.S. states. But he also wants to get rid of statewide standards—and standardized testing—altogether, a position that he says sets him apart from his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, who is running on a third-party line entitled “Stop Common Core.”

“My position is we need to opt out of Common Core because it’s dumbing down education,” Hawkins said. “It’s forcing our teachers to teach to the test. That whole high-stakes testing regime, which is part of Common Core, is a big drain on time and money in schools.

“We should let the local teachers and parents and school boards make the decisions about standards, curriculum and assessment,” he continued.

When asked about Astorino, Hawkins said: “He’s talking about setting up our own standardized assessments in New York. I think we’ve got to get away from that and let the teachers teach.”

During that conference call, a reporter noted that many of the state tests are part of a federal mandate:

“If the law says you gotta do it, you gotta do it,” Hawkins said, responding to a question about the federal requirements. “But we are adding to the tests by opting into the Race to the Top money.”

Hawkins' reference was to the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, a grant competition through which New York won $700 million in 2010. The funds required the state to adopt curriculum standards that aimed to boost college- and career-readiness, such as the Common Core.

The grant program also required New York to develop a statewide teacher-evaluation system that rates educators partly based on students' test scores. The evaluation system has resulted in more local testing in some districts, although some confuse that testing as being tied to the adoption of the Common Core.

Indeed, the mandates were made much worse by Race to the Top.

APPR?

Tied to Race to the Top.

inBloom?

Tied to Race to the Top.

Common Core?
 
Tied to Race to the Top.

All that testing added to every subject in nearly every grade in New York schools?

Consequence of APPR which is tied to Race to the Top.

It's true, the Obama administration has now tied some of the worst reforms to No Child Left Behind waivers, so even sending the RttT money back to the feds won't make some of the worst stuff go away overnight.

But the sun is getting ready to set on the Obama administration in a couple of years, so Arne Duncan and the rest of his merry men and women in reform aren't going to be in power forever.

There can be some post-RttT/post-NCLB waiver sanity.

Vote Howie Hawkins on Election Day.

Will A Hillary Clinton Administration Limit Federal Madates On Testing?

Buried at the bottom of an Alyson Klein piece on the movement to cut back federal madates on testing in schools is this:

Recently, former President Bill Clinton said he would be in favor of fewer tests—perhaps once in elementary school, once in middle school, and once in high school. That testing regime is "quite enough if you do it right," Mr. Clinton said, according to the Huffington Post.

Mr. Clinton's remarks pack a political punch: His wife, Hillary Clinton, is considered a likely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

I'm skeptical that any Dem or Repub is going to reduce the number of testing mandates from Washington.

My sense is, they'll say they're going to do that while not actually doing it.

Kinda the way Barack Obama talks about the dangers of teachers teaching to the test while pushing through ever more insane mandates like teacher evaluations tied to test scores that force teachers to teach to tests.

But we'll see - the anti-testing movement is certainly gaining momentum and is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Still, the pro-reform "non-profits," the testing companies, and the edu-entrepreneurs and Wall Streeters who want the Endless Testing regime to continue are a force to be reckoned with too and they have a lot more money to throw around.

And let's be honest - is there anything in this world Bill and Hillary Clinton hold above the almighty dollar?

Cuomo: Not Every Teacher Can Get An A Rating - But Every Student Had Better Get One

A commenter points out a core contradiction in Governor Cuomo's assertion that his APPR teacher evaluation system needs to be redone to rate more teachers "ineffective":

Cuomo's OWN WORDS:

"...not everybody can get an ‘A,’ it can’t be – I think it’s going to be a very valuable tool..."

Now, of course, he is speaking about teachers--but can't this argument be used to undermine the entire premise behind evaluating teachers?! If not everybody can get an A, then why are teachers expected to have all of their students get As? Why are we being evaluated on this very illogical expectation? Can someone point this out to Cuomo and other reformers?

This is is the same contradiction we have in No Child Left Behind wherein 100% of every student in every demographic in every school must be proficient in ELA and math scores or schools are declared "failing".

Illogical expectation?

Of course.

But that's what's at the core of education reform and the "Blame Teachers/Blame Schools" movement.

Expect to hear a lot more about this stuff in Cuomo's second term - a second term that he will win in part because the UFT and NYSUT helped him win the Working Families Party ballot line (keeping a daunting third party candidate challenge from the left off the November ballot) and because AFT President Randi Weingarten lent her support to him via robocalls for his right-wing running mate, Kathy Hochul.

Jeb Bush Gets Preview Of What Run For President In 2016 Will Be Like

Yesterday I posted that I was hoping that Jeb Bush would run for president in 2016 because I thought he would get hammered over Common Core and be put on the defensive over his education reform record in Florida and his business interests related to education reform.

Today the NY Times reports Bush got a preview of the opposition he's going to get in the GOP presidential primaries over Common Core:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — In one of his first public appearances of the 2014 campaign, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida had a vivid preview Wednesday of the challenges he would face with his party’s conservative base should he seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016.

Standing alongside Thom Tillis, the North Carolina House speaker and Republican Senate candidate, Mr. Bush outlined his views on two of the issues he cares most passionately about: immigration policy and education standards. But as Mr. Bush made the case for an immigration overhaul and the Common Core standards, Mr. Tillis gently put distance between himself and his guest of honor, who had flown here from Florida on a dreary day to offer his endorsement in a race that could decide which party controls the Senate.

...

On the Common Core, the educational standards first devised by a bipartisan group of governors, which have become deeply unpopular among conservative activists, Mr. Tillis also sounded far more conservative than Mr. Bush. The North Carolina House approved the standards in 2011, but, facing primary challengers from the right earlier this year, Mr. Tillis backed away from them.

“I’m not willing to settle just for a national standard if we think we can find things to set a new standard and a best practice,” Mr. Tillis said, pivoting to an attack on the federal Education Department as “a bureaucracy of 5,000 people in Washington” who make an average salary of a little more than $100,000.

While criticizing the Education Department is common among Republicans, Mr. Tillis was standing next to the younger brother of President George W. Bush, whose signature accomplishments include No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law run by the department.

Mr. Bush sensed the need to play down any differences and returned to the microphone. “We can argue about what to call these things,” he said, but maintained that the focus ought to be on ensuring high standards.

Good luck pulling off the "We don't have to call it Common Core, let's call them higher standards" pivot in the GOP primaries, Jeb.

I guarantee you the reaction you're going to get is going to be a lot harsher than that Tillis gave you yesterday.

Run, Jeb, run!

Politico: Obama's Teacher Evaluation Reform Agenda In "Disarray"

It's a mess out there:

The idea seems simple enough: Identify the best teachers and reward them. Pinpoint the worst and fire them.

That’s been a linchpin of the Obama administration’s education agenda from the start.
But now the administration’s initiative is in disarray, with states scaling back, slowing down and, in some cases, putting off tough decisions until Obama is out of office.

Teachers union pressure, error-riddled evaluations and a wave of more difficult tests for students have won many teachers a reprieve from the newfangled evaluations during the school year now getting underway.

Teachers have filed suit in a half-dozen states to block complicated new evaluation formulas that in some cases have rated them based on the test scores of students they never taught. Parents have protested that their children have been required to take tests created for the sole purpose of evaluating teachers. One county in Florida is developing 724 new final exams — in classes like welding and P.E.

And after spending millions to develop modern evaluation systems, many states find they’re not identifying all that many bad teachers. In Rhode Island, 95 percent of teachers were rated effective or highly effective last year. In Florida and Indiana, it was 97 percent. In Tennessee and Michigan, 98 percent.

“It would be nice if we could have some kind of objective external measure to say, ‘This is what constitutes good teaching — or good enough teaching.’ But the fact is, there’s no way the statistical measures can do that,” said Brian Gill, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research who works on so-called value-added calculations.

How much longer until it all falls apart?

Hard to say in New York, where Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is a staunch education reformer who claims teacher evaluation reform as one of his big accomplishments in his first term.

But the more these systems are revealed as error-riddled, the more the public learns that teachers are being rated on test scores for students they didn't teach or for subjects they aren't licensed in, the more teachers sue over the error-riddled ratings, the more teachers remind parents angry over testing that many of the tests their children are taking are for the sole purpose of rating teachers, the faster this evaluation reform agenda falls apart.

With NYSED and the Board of Regents in New York State now looking to make the test score component of the APPR teacher evaluation system 40% of a teacher's rating, you're going to see a lot of teachers getting rated using test scores for students they never taught or for subjects they aren't licensed in.

It behooves teachers rated "ineffective" or "developing" on that test score component to sue SED, the Regents and the governor over that system.

And of course continued pressure on the politicians who back this crap is important - helping Tim Wu beat Kathy Hochul for lieutenant governor is a way to send a message to the Common Core-supporting, education-reform shills in Albany that they may pay a price for pursuing that agenda.

A few years ago, the Endless Testing regime, the Common Core implementation and evaluation reform seemed like a done-deal in New York State, baked into the system, with little parents or teachers could do to fight them.

But as it becomes more and more apparent that much of this reform agenda is half-baked, error-riddled, indeed, even harmful to students and teachers, the more likely it is we can get this stuff pulled.

When Joe Nocera starts writing columns about the toxicity of the Endless Testing regime and test-based accountability for teachers on the Times opinion page, we're starting to get there.

Much work to be done yet.

But as we start a new school year here in New York City, you've got to smile to see a front page story in Politico about the Obama administration's evaluation reform agenda being in "disarray" and on life support that looks like it will be pulled when Obama leaves office.

Arne Duncan Says New York Is One Of Two States NOT Eligible For Testing "Flexibility"

Yesterday I posted that it seemed ironic Arne Duncan was now giving states flexibility around testing and teacher evaluations since his DOE had just threatened New York State in June that de-linking teacher evaluations from student test scores would result in New York losing nearly $300 million in Race to the Top money.

Well, tonight we learn that Duncan is saying New York is one of two states that is not eligible for that "flexibility."

This is a report from Capital NY and it's behind the paywall so I have no more details than this from State of Politics:

New York is one of two states not eligible for new “flexibility” policies announced by the federal government to help states transitioning to the Common Core standards.

How about that?

Duncan says testing is sucking the oxygen out of the classroom, taking the joy out of education, and therefore waiver states get another year before they have to link teacher evaluations to test scores.

Except for New York and one other state - they have to use test scores in teacher evaluations or have their No Child Left Behind waivers taken from them. 

More on this as details come in.

Duncan Threatened NY Over Test-Based Teacher Evals, Now Says "Fine For Another Year"

Back in June:

New York might lose out on $300 million if last-minute negotiations on teacher and principal evaluations untie Common Core test scores from final ratings, federal education officials warned Tuesday.

That’s how much New York is due to receive to implement a new evaluation system as part of its participation in Race to the Top, a competitive grant program launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009. New York won a total of $700 million after legislators allowed more charter schools to open, moved toward adopting the Common Core standards, and approved new teacher evaluation requirements.

...


But students’ poor performance on the first years of Common Core state tests, and a rocky rollout of the new teacher evaluations, have increased pressure on lawmakers to discount those scores. Ann Whalen, who oversees implementation of Race to the Top at the U.S. Department of Education, said that would “undermine four years of hard work by the state’s educators, school leaders and stakeholders.”

“Breaking promises made to students, educators and parents and moving backward on these commitments—including stopping the progress the state has made to improve student achievement—puts at risk up to $292 million of New York’s Race to the Top grant for improving schools and supporting their educators and students,” Whalen said in a statement.

Today:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Thursday that states could delay the use of test results in teacher-performance ratings by another year, an acknowledgment, in effect, of the enormous pressures mounting on the nation’s teachers because of new academic standards and more rigorous standardized testing.

Sounding like some of his fiercest critics, Mr. Duncan wrote in a blog post, “I believe testing issues are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools,” and said that teachers needed time to adapt to new standards and tests that emphasize more than simply filling in bubbled answers to multiple-choice questions.

Over the past four years, close to 40 states have adopted laws that tie teacher evaluations in part to the performance of their students on standardized tests. Many districts have said they will use these performance reviews to decide how teachers are granted tenure, promoted or fired. These laws were adopted in response to conditions set by the Department of Education in the waivers it granted from the No Child Left Behind law that governs what states must do to receive federal education dollars. The test-based teacher evaluations were also included as conditions of Race to the Top grants that have been given by the Obama administration.

...  

In his blog post, Mr. Duncan wrote that “too much testing can rob school buildings of joy, and cause unnecessary stress.” He also accepted responsibility for the federal department’s role in pushing states and districts too quickly toward new standards and tests.

The nearly 40 states that changed evaluations did so because of the pressure Duncan and the Obama USDOE put on them to do so.

The reason there is so much testing is because Arne Duncan and his boss, Barack Obama, wanted all this testing.

The reason my evaluation will be based on test scores - 20% state tests, 20% local "assessments" (which were even more horseshit than you think) - is because Arne Duncan's DOE pushed New York to institute these changes and threatened New York if any changes were made to them.

Now Arne Duncan is concerned that testing is taking the joy out of school?

Is he fucking kidding me?

In large measure, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama, along with the business people who pushed them into power and sustain them now, are at fault for all the testing, all the stress on kids and teachers, and all the joy being squeezed out of education.

You can tell reformers are feeling the pressure when even Duncan kinda acknowledges this.

Doesn't help me any if I come up "developing" or "ineffective" on my Regents-based evaluation component or local assessment (MOSL) component, however.

And God forbid I come up "ineffective" on both, I'm "ineffective" overall.

That's the law in New York State, thanks to Arne, Barack, Andy, the legislature and the Regents.

Even though Arne Duncan now says there's too much testing and too much stress related to the testing and the evaluations and the new standards and schools need time to implement them better.

Thanks, Arne.

I'd say this is better late than never - but it's really not.

The Tide Turns On The Common Core

Imagine a story on Common Core a year ago and ask yourself, would the tone have been this skeptical?

Common Core was created in 2009 and is meant to even the playing field by giving every state a universal set of standards to measure learning. The program is incentivized with federal grant money that is given to states that implement the standards.

Massachusetts is typically held up as an example of how the Common Core is supposed to work. The state is considered a success story, with education officials noting improving test scores and reading skills.

But Michael Benezra, a legislative director for the Massachusetts Senate, told Business Insider that the tide is turning in the Bay State on both sides of the aisle.

"Inside the [legislature], the general attitude is that Common Core ... is institutionalized and it's not going anywhere," Benezra said. "I'm starting to see the teachers unions and the charter school people kind of agreeing on the issue that Common Core needs to go."

Common Core emphasizes critical thinking, and the tests are designed to test students' comprehension about what they read and how they come to solutions for math problems. The tests are so intense, taking the average student eight to 10 hours to complete. And teachers are under so much pressure to prepare their students to do well that instruction becomes less individualized and critical thinking in students can be hampered.

"The reliance on testing pigeonholes the teachers to teach only to the test," Benezra said. "So the kids are coming out and what they're learning might not be conventional. So they might know some obscure facts about American history, but they might miss why the revolution started."

Common Core tests could end up defeating the purpose of the standards themselves.

"I think it's kind of counterintuitive to students getting the big picture because they're required to test so much," Benezra said. "In order to perform well on the test, you have to memorize things. ... You can say we're trying to get them to think more critically and read closely … but at the end, the students take a test, they don't write a long essay where they're forced to think deeply about the issue."

Proponents of the Core thought they had won total victory when the Obama administration had forced Common Core, the Common Core tests and teacher evaluations tied to those tests to both the Race to the Top carrot and the No Child Left Behind waiver stick, forcing states to adopt the Obama corporate education deform agenda whole.

But as the opposition against the Core has mounted, so too has the opposition to the ancillary reforms that go with the reform, like the testing.

As Jay Greene noted:

As the Common Core effort crumbles, its supporters are not just failing, but losing ground on previous accomplishments.   If you liked accountability testing, Common Core has done more to set back your efforts than Randi Weingarten ever could have done on her own.

...

 Several states will soon have no high stakes testing while they adopt a moratorium on stakes in their supposed transition to new tests.  The Gates Foundation has backed a two year delay in the hopes of rescuing their effort from collapse.  Like a retreating army suggesting a cease fire, they will find their opponents have little reason to keep the delay temporary.

We've got a long way to go before there is a stake through the heart of the Common Core and it's buried in four different crossroads and I'm under no illusions that the attacks against teachers and public schools will cease because the corporate deformers lost the Common Core War.

But you can see how much ground the CCSS proponents have lost in the last year even in how CCSS stories are framed in the media, let alone how people are talking about the Core at PTA meetings.

Core supporters and proponents once had the upper hand in this fight.

But no more.

The tide has turned and it's not turning back.

Should Bring Them To A Public School Too

From the DN weekend news round-up:

With his two daughters in tow, President Obama visited popular D.C. bookstore “Politics and Prose” Saturday to encourage holiday shoppers to support local businesses. (NYDN)

Great, Barry, now bring them to a public school and show them what a mess you've made of the public education system with your Racing to the Top and No Child Left Behind waivers that have brought us high stakes standardized tests in every grade in every subject, teacher evaluations tied to those tests, badly designed national standards that are boring students to tears in English class and confusing them in math class, and a data collection program that encourages states to hand over sensitive student information to Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

I mean, so long as you're using your daughters as political props.

Arne Duncan, As Usual, Totally Incoherent On Education

This is from the Morning Education email from Politico:

Although Education Secretary Arne Duncan couldn't attend MSNBC's Education Nation event in person due to the shutdown, he was on hand via satellite to deliver tried-and-true talking points about the flaws of No Child Left Behind and the merits of college- and career-ready standards.

NCLB's "laser-like focus on a single test score led to all kinds of perverse incentives," Duncan said, but the law overlooked other measures such as school dropout rates and whether students are going to college and persevering.

He also said that he loves the commitment across the country to higher academic standards.

"Raising standards is the easy part. Implementing them is the hard part," Duncan said.

He noted his offer of flexibility to states that have committed to new standards and committed to tying teacher evaluations to test scores from tests based on the new standards.

Duncan said his decision on the flexibility option was based on talking to teachers who, he said, are hugely excited about raising the bar but also fearful about being judged so soon on how their students perform.

OK, so let me get this straight - NCLB was a problem because it focused on just a single test score that then led to all kinds of perverse incentives.

But now things are better that they've added all kinds of other tests and added even more peverse incentives like, you know, firing teachers if those scores don't show "added value"?

And this flexibility thing - why doesn't some media shill call him on this?

It is the opposite of flxibility when you force states to add all kinds of new tests tied to the Common Core standards and force them to evaluate teachers using test scores from these tests.

Duncan has threatened California for putting a moratorium on testing for high stakes until the new Common Core tests are ready.

He has threatened three states with NCLB sanctions if they do not add teacher evaluation systems based upon test scores.

Tell me exactly what is "flexible" about any of this?

This is federal overreach, this is Arne Duncan saying you will run your school systems the way I (or actually my owners, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg et al.) want them run or I will destroy you.

How do the "journalists" at NBC and MSNBC not see these contradictions and call him on them?

Are they ignorant, willfully blind or simply on the take?

Duncan's talking points are completely incoherent and even a middle school journalist could take these apart like Edward R. Murrow taking down McCarthy.

And yet, the journalists at MSNBC and NBC let him drone on like what he's saying makes sense...

Arne Duncan Is, As Usual, Full Of Crap

Lisa Fleischer at the Wall Street Journal:

The next New York City mayor will take control of the nation’s largest school system. But don’t look to the U.S. Secretary of Education for guidance on which candidate would be best for the city’s 1.1 million public schoolchildren.

“I haven’t followed it that closely,” Secretary Arne Duncan said of the mayor’s race in an interview Tuesday.

Duncan famously said that his tenure at the USDOE will have been a failure if there aren't more cities and districts under mayoral control after he leaves his seat of power than before he took it.

You see, Duncan is not a big believer in democracy.

Rather he is a big believer in autocratic mayoral control in which one man or woman (but mostly a man) gets to push through whatever the hell they want no matter how people in the community feel about these actions and policies and without any recourse for anybody to do anything about it.

Duncan very much likes the way autocrat Mike Bloomberg has run his school system, shoving through as many disruptive changes and administering as much shock and awe as possible to the system in his 12 years in power.

De Blasio's win in the Democratic primary is seen as a rejection of that Bloomberg education reform platform:

Some have said that the election of Mr. de Blasio was a repudiation of Mr. Bloomberg’s education-reform policies, which include using test scores to measure students, teachers and schools, and embracing competition among schools.

You can bet that Duncan was watching this election closely and hoping for a Christine Quinn win.

You can also bet that if de Blasio follows through on a charter school moratorium, a relaxation of the Bloomberg fixation on testing, and the other progressive education policies he ran on during the primary, Duncan will be very sad and will work to undercut de Blasio from Washington.

Arne Duncan is that kinda guy.

He likes his corporate ed deform policies - charter school expansion, school closures, teacher firings, Endless Testing, and teacher evaluations tied to test scores - and anybody who tries to put a stop to even one of those tenets of the education reform doctrine will get pushback from Arne and his USDOE.

Witness how Duncan is taking on California for putting a stop to their state testing program while they implement the Common Core tests.

In the end, no matter what de Blasio wants to implement here in NYC, much ed deform pressure is going to come from Andy Cuomo, John King, Barack Obama and Arne Duncan to make sure that the nation's largest school system does not turn from the education deform policies that have been instituted by the powers that be during the Bloomberg years.

De Blasio will have his work cut out for him if he truly intends to turn the clock back on the destructive Bloomberg/Klein/Bush/Obama/Duncan/Cuomo/King/Tisch education deform policies.

Republican Education Bill Vs. Democratic Education Bill

From the Times:

Signaling a preference for a much smaller role for the federal government in public schooling, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, is introducing legislation on Thursday to revise No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era education law. 

Coming two days after Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate education committee, released a 1,150-page education bill, the bill by Mr. Alexander, who is the ranking Republican on the committee, will compete with it. 

The Alexander bill is described in its introduction as restoring “freedom to parents, teachers, principals, governors and local communities so that they can improve their local public schools.”

At less than one-fifth the length of Mr. Harkin’s bill, Mr. Alexander’s legislation would allow states to devise curriculum standards, tests, school rating systems and consequences for schools that fail to meet state goals with far fewer guidelines than are included in the Harkin bill. 

Both bills would amend the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act that governs public schools receiving federal money to support the most vulnerable students.

“What they are really saying is they don’t trust parents and they don’t trust classroom teachers and states to care about and help educate their children, and they want someone in Washington do it for them,” Mr. Alexander said of Democrats in a telephone interview. “I just completely reject that.” 

...

Mr. Alexander’s bill continues the current law’s requirement of testing students in reading and math in third through eighth grades and once in high school. All schools must report the scores and show how different racial groups, students with disabilities, those learning the English language and poor students perform on the tests. 

The bill would require states to set standards that would allow students to be ready for college or a job “without the need for remediation.” 

Neither Mr. Harkin’s nor Mr. Alexander’s bill mandates the content of academic standards. Mr. Alexander’s bill also does not prescribe what should be included in a state’s annual goals for student performance on tests; Mr. Harkin’s bill sets more guidelines. 

The Alexander bill encourages, but would not require, states to set up teacher evaluation systems. It also does not mandate any turnaround measures for schools that fail to meet state goals, although it does list options including closing a school, replacing the principal or offering higher pay to recruit new teachers. 

The details on the Dem bill introduced by Harkin are here.

It is quite clear that the Democrats have decided everything in education policy will be micromanaged from Arne Duncan's office in Washington.

Republicans are still looking to kill off the system with vouchers (Alexander is adding that as an amendment to his bill), but there is less and less micromanaging from them these days.

The influence of the Tea Party and the libertarian wing has some positive effects

Obama Administration Doubles Down On Federal Overreach In Education

If Race to the Top was NCLB Jr., the latest proposal put forth by Tom Harkin in the Senate at the behest of the Obama administration is NCLB III: Revenge of the Data Trackers:

No Child, which is the most recent version of the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has been up for reauthorization since 2007. Mr. Harkin’s 1,150-page bill, which was described in a statement issued by the education committee as an effort to get “the federal government out of the business of ‘micromanaging’ schools,” received moderate praise from some quarters and drew criticism from the left, the right and overlapping groups in between.

The bill faces an uphill climb. Although it is co-sponsored by fellow Democrats on the education committee, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the committee, will introduce a competing version this week. The bill would also have to pass a fractured House. 

Jim Jeffries, a spokesman for Mr. Alexander, said that Mr. Harkin’s bill was “congested” with federal mandates and that Mr. Alexander’s bill “will get Washington out of the business of deciding whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing.” 

At its core, Mr. Harkin’s bill retains the most controversial plank of the current law: the requirement that states test all students in reading and math every year from third through eighth grades and once in high school. Schools must report test scores, and how different groups, including racial minorities, students with disabilities and those learning the English language, perform against annual goals.

Educators and parents have complained that No Child Left Behind focuses too narrowly on standardized tests and then prescribes stringent consequences for schools that failed to hit benchmarks. 

Mr. Harkin’s bill would allow states to use portfolios or projects as well as standardized tests to assess students. And in contrast to current law, which requires states to choose from a short menu of turnaround measures like closing schools or firing staff members at schools labeled failing, Mr. Harkin’s bill gives states and districts more flexibility to devise their own supports for all but the most struggling schools. 

The bill would require states to base student assessments on “college and career ready” academic standards for reading, math and science. Already, 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core, a set of standards that outline what each student should learn from kindergarten through high school.

In other words, every state must use the Common Core, the testing madness continues, the data tracking madness continues, and states must use "student performance measures" in teacher evaluations.

Meet the new NCLB III, same as NCLB Jr. and the ESEA waivers.

Critics of the new proposal abound:

But some critics said the bill remained too tough. “To say that this bill provides flexibility is laughable,” said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy group, who said states should be allowed to decide how to rate schools. “Let states do it differently, and let’s find out how it works.” 

Groups that have pushed to roll back high-stakes testing were also deeply disappointed. “The Senate bill fails to undo the damage caused by No Child Left Behind to teachers and students and schools,” said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

The bill has no shot of being passed into law.

I Guess They Won't Have Time To Get NCLB Re-Authorized Now

From Politico:

No contemporary American politician has benefited more from the power of good storytelling than Barack Obama. He vaulted from obscurity to the presidency on the power of narrative — invoking his biography and personal values to make a larger point about how he would lead the nation.
So presumably no one understands more vividly than Obama and his close aides just how toxic and potentially paralyzing his situation has become this spring, as four distinct ethical and policy controversies have simultaneously converged.

Obama’s critics now have a narrative — a way of connecting four discrete episodes to a larger point about this president’s leadership style and values. In other words, they didn’t merely happen on his watch but were in important ways caused by his watch.

And for the first time, this anti-Obama storyline is being presented in a way that might seem reasonable to people who are not already rabid anti-Obama partisans.

The narrative is personal. The uproars over alleged politicization of the IRS and far-reaching attempts to monitor journalists and their sources have not been linked directly to Obama. But it does not strain credulity to suggest that Obama’s well-known intolerance for leaks, and his regular condemnations of conservative dark-money groups, could have filtered down to subordinates.

The narrative is ideological. For five years, this president has been making the case that a growing and activist government has good intentions and can carry these intentions out with competence. Conservatives have warned that government is dangerous, and even good intentions get bungled in the execution. In different ways, the IRS uproar, the Justice Department leak investigations, the Benghazi tragedy and the misleading attempts to explain it, and the growing problems with implementation of health care reform all bolster the conservative worldview.

To stain reputations, presidential controversies usually need some kind of powerful connection to the style and values of the person occupying the Oval Office. Watergate was not a random scandal — it flowed directly from President Richard M. Nixon’s paranoia and contempt for law. No one who knew Bill Clinton in the decades before he became president would have been surprised that his second-term scandal involved weaknesses of the flesh. Under George W. Bush, the misjudgments at the outset of the Iraq War reflected an instinct for certitude and a disdain for dissenting views that started at the top.

In Obama’s case, the narrative emerging from this tumultuous week goes something like this: None of these messes would have happened under a president less obsessed with politics, less insulated within his own White House and less trusting of government as an institution.

Yeah - not going to be a lot of time to get RttT 3.0/Higher Education edition or NCLB Jr. through.

Not with all these scandals.

Senate Democrats Push For Federal Guidelines On "Student Achievement," Teacher Evals Tied To Test Scores

Tom Harkin doing the bidding of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan:

Until recently, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate education committee, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the panel's top Republican, were in talks to see if there was any chance of getting a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the long-stalled No Child Left Behind Act together in this Congress. But now it's looking like the two lawmakers were unable to resolve fundamental disagreements, making an already very tough reauthorization process that much harder.

The reason: philosophical differences on a couple of key areas that scuttled the chance at bipartisanship between the chairman and ranking member, advocates and congressional aides say. Perhaps the biggest area of disagreement? Harkin would like to see states set goals for student achievement as they now must under the NCLB waivers granted by the U.S. Department of Education. (That's a big change from legislation he supported in the previous Congress.) Meanwhile, Alexander sees that as too much federal intrusion, advocates say.

In including a requirement that states set student-achievement goals in the bill, Harkin is hoping that he can help build on the momentum of the waivers, which are now in place in 34 states and the District of Columbia, a Senate Democratic aide said. The administration had outlined the criteria for the waivers when the committee considered the bill back in 2011, but states hadn't yet applied.

...

Back in 2011, the Senate education committee approved a bill, which Alexander reluctantly supported, that essentially didn't include achievement targets—and got absolutely clobbered by business groups and the civil rights community, including groups representing students in special education, who have long seen Harkin as a champion.

Goals were a sensitive issue even during committee consideration of the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., introduced an amendment that would have called for states to set goals for student achievement that are similar to the parameters spelled out in the administration's ESEA waivers. But he then withdrew it so the bill could move forward without dealing with the super-sticky issue.

What's more, the still-under-discussion measure will likely call for states to create teacher evaluation systems based in part on student achievement, as they must now under the waivers. The goal will be to bolster teacher professional development, the Democratic aide said. The focus will be on supporting professionals in the classroom with the meaningful feedback and targeted professional development they need, the aide added.

Teacher evaluation was another major sticking point last time. When the Harkin bill was first introduced as a draft in 2011, it included a provision that would have required states and districts to craft teacher-evaluation systems based in part on student achievement. But Republicans (including Alexander) saw that provision as too much of a federal intrusion and worked to get the language out of the bill. Needless to say, the National Education Association was pretty happy about that development, and Democrats on the committee were spared from having to choose between supporting the NEA and voting with Harkin and the administration. This is an issue to watch again this time around. 

Obama and Duncan are trying to keep their test-based teacher evaluations/RttT/Common Core juggernaut going.

But this bill, even if it gets out of the Senate (which is unlikely), isn't going anywhere in the House.

I voted for Obama the first time around and still regret that vote.

Every time I see his latest education proposal, I regret that vote more and more.

It is clear that Obama and Duncan are never going to walk away from their test-based teacher evaluations/RttT/Comon Core policies.

These are their signature policies and they are going to remain with them until the bitter end.