40,000 Educators Will Have APPR Scores Recalculated BY NYSED After Errors Are Discovered

From the NY Times:

More than 200 teachers and principals received erroneous scores from New York State on a contentious measurement that ties their performance to how well their students do on tests, according to state documents obtained by The New York Times.

The error, which affected a small percentage of scores for the 2014-15 academic year, could be another blow to the practice of linking educator performance to student exams, a system that has come under fire in recent years.

A letter sent to district superintendents on Friday said that certain test results had been excluded from state-provided growth scores — which track student performance on state exams — for less than 1 percent of the more than 40,000 educators who received such feedback.

These are the erroneous scores they're admitting to - you can be sure there are others.

And of course it's not the fault of the incompetents at NYSED or the incompetent governor:

The state Education Department attributed the error to a contractor, American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research group based in Washington, and said the blunder affected principals and certain teachers whose growth scores included schoolwide measurements of student performance. (Teachers whose scores incorporated only their own students’ tests were not affected.) The letter said the problems occurred “almost exclusively” in grades nine through 12.

The end result is this:

Scores for the more than 40,000 educators would be recalculated at the contractor’s expense; the higher score would be the one that counts.

The system is so complex, so inexplicable, that when a teacher sued over her test score component, NYSED twice refused to show cause for her ineffective rating on the component (here and here.)

NYSED is owning up to the erroneous scores, but you can bet if there were an independent accounting of the evaluations from an entity outside of the state without something riding on the outcome (i.e., some ed reform-linked group or some entity on the state payroll), they'd find more.

And yet, we STILL have this system in place, with teachers having 50% of their ratings linked to so-called student performance as measured by state tests and/or local tests - despite the claims that there is a "moratorium" on using test scores in the evaluations.

The system is rotten to the core, yet it seems as if it will live forever.

NYSED Threatens To Close School That's Already Being Phased Out (UPDATED)

Classic NYSED:

SED puts Bronx's PS 64 on its list of "persistently struggling" schools. But DOE says the school is already being phased out. #coordination

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

Ben Chapman nails it with this response:

not the kinda thing that inspires confidence in the state's plans for troubled NYC schools https://t.co/AVk1LbiIqz

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) July 16, 2015

Indeed it doesn't.

And yet, NYSED has been given an awful lot of power for a state entity that doesn't seem to know which way is up:

The state Education Department has just put out its list of failing, or what they call struggling and persistently struggling schools under a new program, thanks to legislation passed with the budget in the spring.

The program creates carrots and sticks and sets out the possibility that the poorest performers could in a year’s time end up under outside receivership, that is, they could be taken over by an independent entity, such as a college or even a charter school operator.

There are 144 struggling schools statewide including 20 that are ”persistently struggling.”

...

The stick includes some potentially harsh measures, although it’s unclear how they will play out. In persistently struggling schools, for example, a superintendent acting as the local or in district receiver could conceivably fire teachers and administrators regardless of tenure. The superintendent also can change curriculum and institute a longer school day and school year.

As for the carrot, a superintendent can increase pay for teachers and administrators. The law includes a $75 million pot of money to be divided up over the next two years to help with the improvement programs.

Most of these schools will get sticks, of course, that goes without saying.

The goal of education reform is to slowly but surely privatize the school system, fire the unionized teachers, and replace schools with non-union charters.

That's what Cuomo devised here with the budget legislation that allows for state receivership of so-called "failing" schools, but as is usual with the incompetents at NYSED, they screw stuff up and threaten to close a school that's already closing.

Nice work, MaryEllen.

Just a couple of days under your tenure at NYSED and you've already picked up from the previous incompetent in Albany.

UPDATE - 5:25 PM: Looks like the stick use is starting:

D.O.E. confirms they will NOT be able to re-hire staffs at all 62 struggling schools designated by state.

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) July 16, 2015

SECOND UPDATE - JULY 17: 10:55 AM :

From the Capital NY Morning Education Email:

The announcement—some version of which was expected after a deal in the state budget to create a receivership program—means that the de Blasio administration has an extra layer of pressure to turn around the city's struggling schools quickly. Of the 55 schools identified by the state as ‘struggling,’ 44 are Renewal Schools, part of de Blasio's initiative to improve low-performing schools. All the ‘persistently struggling schools’ are Renewal Schools, except for one, P.S. 64 in the Bronx, which is already being phased out and will close by next year.” A spokesperson for the D.O.E. said Thursday that the department has the option of re-hiring staff at all 62 schools, but is still in talks about how that would work. Capital’s Eliza Shapiro [PRO]: http://capi.tl/1gE8sSm

Lots of uncertainty with this receivership plan - which is of course the point.

As I've written over and over, reformers want to destroy public education for fun and profit and the easiest way to get to that goal is to destabilize as much as possible.

Incompetents At NYSED Fail To Issue Cut Scores For Nearly Half Of Teacher Certification Tests

More evidence of NYSED incompetence:

The union representing State University of New York professors on Thursday said the state Education Department has failed to issue the passing or "cut" scores required for nearly half of their new tests, which aspiring K-12 teachers must take before they can become certified.

Even though students had to begin taking the certification tests last September, pass grades for 17 of the 40 Content Specialty Test have yet to be established, according to United University Professions.

"This is creating an extreme hardship for recent graduates from teacher education programs seeking employment as teachers, as well as certified teachers seeking additional certificates," UUP President Frederick Kowal said in a prepared statement.

"Certification applications are being held up and SED has not provided a date as to when the passing scores will actually be available."

NYSED's response?

Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said the department has followed standard protocols to review test questions and to make recommendations for appropriate passing scores. "A review of these findings will be completed shortly, and passing scores will be released as soon as possible," he said in a statement.

"As soon as possible"?

Oh, well - I'm glad SED cleared that up.

Can't wait to see how they handle Governor Cuomo's vaunted new evaluation system wherein test scores are worth 50% of a teacher's rating and outside observers will account for another 35%.

That means 85% of a rating will be calculated by the incompetents at NYSED.

That should go swimmingly.

Obama's ACA Mess Foreshadowed By Race To The Top

The NY Times compares Barack Obama to George W. Bush on its front page and wonders which president was more incompetent:

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama won the presidency by exploiting a political environment that devoured George W. Bush in a second term plagued by sinking credibility, failed legislative battles, fractured world relations and revolts inside his own party. 

President Obama is now threatened by a similar toxic mix. The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency. 

...

A contrite-sounding Mr. Obama repeatedly blamed himself on Thursday for the failed health care rollout, which he acknowledged had thrust difficult burdens on his political allies and hurt Americans’ trust in him.

“It’s legitimate for them to expect me to have to win back some credibility on this health care law in particular and on a whole range of these issues in general,” Mr. Obama said. The president did not admit to misleading people about whether they could keep their insurance, but again expressed regret that his assurances turned out to be wrong. 

“To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear,” Mr. Obama said as he announced changes intended to allow some people to keep their insurance.

But earning back the confidence of Americans, as he pledged to do, will require Mr. Obama to right more than just the health care law. At home, his immigration overhaul is headed for indefinite delay, and new budget and debt fights loom. Overseas, revelations of spying by the National Security Agency have infuriated American allies, and negotiations over Iran’s nuclear arsenal have set off bipartisan criticism.

For the first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency, surveys suggest that his reserve of good will among the public is running dry. Two polls in recent weeks have reported that a majority of Americans no longer trust the president or believe that he is being honest with them.

Back in 2009, Obama shoved education reform down the throats of many Americans via Race to the Top, forcing states to tie teacher evaluations to test scores, teach the Common Core (yeah, I know, they didn't mandate it to win RttT grants, but in the end most states signed on in order to be eligible for RttT grants), and give national tests as members of one of two testing consortia. 

Last year, Obama doubled down on those policies through Arne Duncan's No Child Left Behind waiver process - states that wanted to be relieved of the NCLB mandates had to agree to tie teacher evaluations to test scores and make sure all schools taught a rigorous career and college readiness curricula (i.e., the Common Core.)

Now here we are, in 2013, and the first states that rolled out the Obama education reforms are experiencing ACA-esque disasters in schools.

Kentucky moved to Common Core tests first and saw students' scores plummet.

Here in NY State, the Regents rolled out Common Core tests next, before any Common Core curricula was developed and distributed to teachers to teach students so that they would be ready for those Common Core tests, and scores plummeted here as well.

The Common Core rollout in NY State has been widely acknowledged as a disaster, with even the Gates Foundation-funded state PTA, a backer of the Common Core and the state education department, calling the implementation "poor."

Politicians in both parties are saying publicly that the Core rollout in NY State has been incompetent and there is talk of rolling back some of the testing mandates in January when the new legislative session starts.

Now I know that the incompetence of SED Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Tisch in rolling out their reform agenda is not directly related to Obama and ACA, but the unworkability of both Obamacare and Obamacore is.

These are both needlessly complex reforms pushed by an arrogant politician who has refused to listen to critics of either plan and refused to acknowledge the problems these plans are causing for Americans of all parties.

People are losing their health insurance and can't sign on to the new Obamacare insurance because the website doesn't work and doesn't look like it will work any time soon.

Children hate going to school, they hide under the bed in the morning or feign illness, because Obamacore has made school absolute drudgery for students and teachers as it emphasizes nothing but test prep and test taking.

Obama apologized to the American people for his ACA mess this week, but so far there has been no apology for Race to the Top or his NCLB waiver mandates.

He needs to apologize for those as well and roll back his education policies as soon as possible.

The damage done to children, to teachers, to schools and to the public education system has been enormous, perhaps worse than any damage that Obamacare has yet done (though it remains to be seen how large the ACA mess gets.)

It's time for Obama and his Democratic allies to admit that Obamacore is a failure, Race to the Top was harmful and we need a new direction in education policy in this country that shifts the emphasis from testing and data collecting to learning and sharing.

Pearson Screws Up Again - This Time In Virginia

The incompetents at Pearson do it again:

Pearson, the world’s largest education and testing company, provided incorrect scorecards for more than 4,000 students in Virginia who took an alternative assessment last school year.

That mistake led to many parents receiving news this summer that their children had passed the test when they had failed it.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has created for students, parents, schools and school divisions as well as to our colleagues at the Virginia Department of Education,” Susan Aspey, a spokesman for Pearson, said in a written statement. “We understand the importance of accurate reporting and know that the school divisions are now working very hard to make internal adjustments to their scores before reporting them to parents and the state.”

Pearson issued a similar apology last spring for making mistakes in the scoring of admissions tests for gifted and talented programs in New York City public schools. Other scoring problems by Pearson in recent years caused delays in final test results in Florida and Minnesota.

Pearson and state education officials said the problem in Virginia was not in the scoring but in how the scores were converted into proficiency levels: fail, pass/proficient or pass/advanced.

The testing company provided miscalculated scorecards to school divisions this summer. Some school districts, including Alexandria’s, Arlington County’s and Prince William County’s, had already given parents the results before the error was flagged in late July.

Charles Pyle, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, called the mistake “truly regrettable.” Virginia has a three-year, $110 million contract, which began July 2011, with Pearson to administer and score the state tests. Virginia education officials plan to meet with Pearson representatives later in the week to discuss the technical problems and whether the state might receive any financial compensation.

The botched scorecards were for the Virginia Alternative Assessment Program, given to students with serious cognitive disabilities who are unable to take regular Standards of Learning tests.

The portfolio-style tests review student work that is compiled throughout the school year. Usually, the portfolios are evaluated on the local level, Pyle said. But this year, because the state is moving to new standards, Pearson was given the job of judging and scoring them.

Screw-ups in Florida, Minnesota, New York, and now Virginia.

Isn't it clear this company cannot handle the contracts it is given?

Isn't it time states stop giving this company money to do the job that teachers can do and used to do?

Teachers used to review these portfolios in Virginia, but because of "new standards," Pearson was "given the job" of reviewing the student work and scoring it.

More than likely Pearson greased the way to being "given that job" with lots and lots of campaign donations to state officials and politicians.

Now they have a $110 million dollar contract and already one major screw-up in the state.

Given their track record, more will undoubtedly follow.

The name "Pearson" is synonymous with "screw-up."

It is time to end their reign of error.

Can you imagine if a government entity had this kind of track record?

What would the free marketeers be saying about that?

And yet, private company Pearson keeps getting these contracts in state after state, and keeps making mistakes in state after state, with total impunity and no accountability.

McGraw Hill Loses Regents Exams, NYCDOE Makes Students Retake The Tests

Just outrageous:

Students from a Chelsea high school have to retake their English Regents exams today after their original tests fell off the back of a truck on their way to be graded, the teachers union said last night.

The United Federation of Teachers said about 75 11th-grade students from Chelsea Career and Technical Education HS have to retake the test after education company McGraw Hill lost the booklets.

“We were told that the test booklets were on a truck, somehow the boxes of tests fell out,” said English teacher Jan Scott. “Some they recovered, but not ours.”

The city Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

“All my students know is that no one ever found their test,” Scott said.

McGraw-Hill and the NYCDOE make the mistakes, the students at Chelsea Career and Technical High School are forced to pay for those mistakes.

How come the people in charge of this system, the ones who talk so often and so passionately about holding others accountable, are never held accountable themselves?

And there's a class and race angle to this story.

The student body at Chelsea Career and Technical High School is 91% black and Latino.

70% of the students receive free lunch.

That's why the NYCDOE is making these kids take the ELA Regents exam again.

You can bet had this happened to white and Asian kids at Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech, the NYCDOE would have sent emissaries out into the community to assuage outraged parents over the mess.

But a majority black and Latino school with 70% of the student body receiving free school lunch?

Screw 'em, Walcott and Bloomberg say.

The next time you hear Walcott or Bloomberg or Polakow-Suransky or any of the functionaries at Tweed say how much they care about the kids while teachers are only in it for themselves, remember the kids from Chelsea Career and Technical High School.

"Bloomberg's Baby Sucks!" -- 911 Operators On Bloomberg's New 911 System

 A disturbing piece in the NY Post on just how bad the 911 system that Bloomberg spent $2 billion on is.

Here is that piece in full:

The city’s new $88 million 911 computer system, part of a $2 billion overhaul of the emergency- response system, crashed at least nine times last week and has been plagued with problems since it launched in May. Operators had to record 911 calls with pen and paper, causing delays in getting crucial information to NYPD, FDNY and EMS dispatchers — and getting urgent help to citizens. One experienced 911 call-taker coping with the crisis and other on-the-job problems told her story to The Post’s Susan Edelman.

I’ve been a 911 operator for years. It’s never been as frustrating and stressful as now. If the public only knew what we’re going through.

Getty Images/PhotoAlto

CALL WAITING: Mayor Bloomberg’s $88 million 911 computer system is beset by catastrophic flaws that have operators at wits’ end. 

We’re your lifeline. We’re supposed to send help quickly if you’re having chest pains or getting mugged. With a billion dollars spent on this system, you would expect the top-notch, the best, the state-of-the-art.

It’s not.

“System down!” That’s what they yell when it crashes.

It’s chaos in the call center. Everybody comes running onto the floor, the bigwigs, the commanders, the people from Verizon and Intergraph [the Alabama company that designed the new system].

We stop typing caller information on our computer screens.

They throw slips of paper at you. You have to make sure the information goes in the right spot on the forms. It’s so time-consuming. You have to jot down what the caller tells you, the address verification, the cross streets, the nature of the call, the codes — cardiac, crime in progress, bomb threat.

It’s a lot of writing. There are more calls. People are waiting to get through to 911, but I’m stuck on this call.

Somebody’s dying, and I’m writing on paper.

“We’re holding!” a supervisor shouts. He’s breathing down my neck. “You still on the same call?” They pressure you to move on, but I need more time.

Once I finish, I raise my hand. “I’m ready! Here’s the card!” A runner, an operator on lunch break, picks it up and takes it across the room to the NYPD dispatchers, who send patrol cars over the radio

I take another call.

Each time the system crashes, the operators say, “Bloomberg’s baby sucks! This s--t went down again!”

Our call volume is too high for this system. It’s a very slow system, even when it’s working right. The old computer system was much faster. I wish we could go back.

Crazy things happen with this system. I’ve taken calls where the information disappears — everything you’ve typed is gone. You’re ready to send the call to the dispatcher, and the screen goes blank — everything is gone.

“Where’s the job number? I’m still waiting on the job number,” an EMS dispatcher asks me. All my information on a medical call will pop up once he gets the job number.

“You have the job number on the screen,” I tell him.

“I don’t see it; check your queue.”

“I don’t have it. If I had it, I’d give it to you.”

Then the job number pops up on my screen two to three minutes later. It just appears out of nowhere.

Intergraph keeps telling us, “Shut your computer down and reboot. It’ll just take a minute.”

How many lives can you lose in a minute?

Sometimes we get it wrong, too. Once the address an operator thought she heard was for the wrong borough. A baby wasn’t breathing. The baby died.

Every day I worry about making a terrible mistake like this.

The calls keep coming in. “My husband’s dying of a heart attack.” “My child can’t breathe.” “Someone got shot.”

My job is to get the address first, then verify the cross streets and the nature of the call: “What is your emergency?” I immediately send it over to the NYPD or FDNY. If medical attention is needed, I notify EMS. I have to stay on the line until the dispatcher verifies the address.

“Help is on the way.” That’s what we must tell all callers for priority jobs, like a rescue, cardiac, shooting or robbery in progress. “Help is on the way.” If we don’t use that slogan, we get reprimanded or lose vacation time.

They give rookie operators two months training, and after that just throw ’em in. They’re not ready. It’s a revolving door. The new ones come in, and some say it’s too much and leave.

Starting pay for a 911 operator is about $26,000. There is money to be made on overtime. I know a lady, known as “the queen of OT,” who made up to $80,000. She put her daughter through college.

Now we’re forced to do overtime because we don’t have enough people. Since Mother’s Day, we have to work mandatory double shifts three or four times a week. Some operators call in sick after two tours. We get two 15-minute breaks and an hour meal each shift.

The only way out of a second shift is to bring in a doctor’s note. After a regular shift, I’d have to find an emergency room to say I’m not well.

After 16 hours, it’s unsanitary. No family time. We need back-up babysitters for our babysitters. We’re too exhausted to do anything after work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I’m here to serve people and do my best. But the conditions are inhumane. We’re burned out.

We had better hope there's not another Sandy or Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard or, God forbid, terrorist attack in this city before somebody comes in and fixes this 911 system mess.

And since Bloomberg says it's working swimmingly, he's not going to be the guy who fixes this mess.

Bloomberg's Vaunted New 911 System Crashed Twice More Yesterday

The 911 system crashed twice yesterday after crashing six times on Monday:

Another day, another failure.

The city’s beleaguered ambulance-response system crashed twice yesterday while computer geeks tried to diagnose the glitch that continues to snarl the system.

Dispatchers were forced to go back to using pen and paper to take down calls and using radios to dispatch ambulances.

The EMS CAD system first went down at about 3:30 a.m. yesterday, Fire Department sources said. EMS dispatchers received 23 calls during the five-minute outage.

Then, around 8 a.m., the system went on the fritz yet again, prompting computer techs to stop the diagnostic procedure.

During that period, dispatchers took down jobs from 55 callers.

“This EMS CAD System is 30 years old and has intermittently experienced interruptions,” the FDNY said in a statement. “A backup protocol for manual dispatch is in place to ensure all EMS calls are responded to, and the replacement of the old system is currently under way as part of the 911 overhaul.”

Israel Miranda, the president of FDNY Local 2507, thinks the issue is related to the new ICAD system that rolled out two months ago.

“The system continues to collapse. They continue to blame it on the EMS CAD because it’s old. We never had these problems before until they put in this new ICAD system,” he said.

Emblematic of Bloomberg - replace an older system that works with a very expensive, high tech replacement that doesn't work as billed (or work at all), then blame the old system and/or the city workers using that system.

If Bill Keller and the rest of the suck up press would get their heads out of Bloomberg's ass for long enough to look around them, they might add these failures to their Bloomberg "legacy pieces" they've been writing lately - along with CityTime, the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard, the FDNY GPS fiasco, the NYCHA computer system disaster, etc.

But it's hard for these "journalists" to tell the truth about our oligarch's "legacy" when he's rumored to be in the market for the NY Times to add to his stable of media properties and they just might have to work for him in the near future.

NYC 911 System Crashes Four Times Today

Another nightmare day for emergency workers in NYC:

The city’s problem-plagued emergency 911 system failed four times today, forcing FDNY dispatchers to resort to pen and paper to scribble down calls and then radio the information out to ambulances.

Fire officials said the first glitch — caused by old computer software that froze the EMS system — lasted nearly a half-hour, from 7:42 to 8:10 a.m.

The second shut-down in the computers — which, when operating properly, are designed to save precious time in life-and-death situations — lasted about 5 minutes.

An FDNY official couldn’t immediately say when the second incident occurred, nor the time or duration of the third and fourth snafus. They only said the total time down was around 45 minutes.

The department spokeswoman Elisheva Zakheim, said 100 calls came in during the first shut-down.

...

Sources said the problem software is old and set to be replaced in 2015. They said it is not part of the $88 million system put into place in May at the city's general 911 call-intake center. That system is known as CAD, for Computer Assisted Dispatch.

Instead, it involves the older ambulance-dispatch system used by FDNY EMS workers, who receive calls from the intake center.

The Police Department's system was not affected by the glitches, sources said.

CAD itself has had its own share of problems right from the start, experiencing several shutdowns since it went online May 29. It is part of an overall $2 billion project pushed by Mayor Bloomberg to revamp the city’s entire emergency-response system.

I love to read suck up "legacy" columns from corporate whore journalists like Bill Keller wondering how the next mayor will be able to follow in the footsteps of the uber-competent Mayor Bloomberg.

12 years, over $2 billion dollars and the 911 system still does not work.

Yeah, that kind of "competence" is going to be so hard to follow.

Bloomberg Administration Knows 1/4 To 1/3 Of All 911 Calls Are Getting Lost In The System, But Continues To Deny The Problem Exists

In case you missed this very important Juan Gonzalez investigation on Bloomberg's faulty 911 system upgrade, here it is in full:

Less than 24 hours after the death of little Ariel Russo in a car accident on the upper West Side, EMS supervisors began an exchange of bombshell emails about repeated “lost calls” from the city’s new 911 system.

The emails obtained by the Daily News show for the first time that high-ranking officials knew the extent of the problems with the $88 million system very early on — just days after the system was launched and before 4-year-old Ariel died.

Lt. Carl Nunziata, an overnight shift boss, sent the first email on June 5. It was at 5:51 a.m. and addressed to Carla Murphy, the head of computer programming for EMS.

“Last night we had a couple of jobs I would like for you to look at,” the email began.

Nunziata said a call came from the NYPD to EMS as a “lost call.” Another call came in for an emotionally disturbed person and inexplicably had no address attached to it.

“Why are these jobs coming in this way?” a perplexed Nunziata asked. “And what are we suppose(sic) to do with these type jobs?”

The startling reply from Murphy came just after 10 a.m. on June 6. Some of the brass already knew.

“[Deputy Fire] Chief Napoli reported the problem to me several days ago and I provided a list of incidents where this had occurred over 3 days for Intergraph to resolve,” Murphy wrote.

A flurry of “lost calls” were “happening to about 1/4 [to] 1/3 of incidents transmitted from NYPD ICAD,” she said.

ICAD is the acronym for the new computer system built by Intergraph Corp. It is used by 911 operators to assign police and to transmit details of emergency calls to EMS and FDNY dispatch centers in downtown Brooklyn.

Given that 911 operators process an average of 3,000 ambulance calls a day, the Murphy email raises the possibility that the number of lost calls may have been in the hundreds or thousands.

A “lost” message, according to fire officials and Intergraph’s own manual, occurs when transmissions from NYPD to EMS fail to reach the intended recipient, usually because of a break in a computer link, or because of a garbled transmission.

  

“We get several of these a day . . . which may not have sufficient information for responding units to find the incident,” Murphy wrote, copying several top brass.

Whatever the number, it certainly points to a bigger problem with the new system than the minor “bugs” Mayor Bloomberg conceded on May 31.
 

Ariel was struck on June 4 at W. 97th St. and Amsterdam Ave., as she walked to school with her grandmother around 8:15 a.m. She was clinging to life, as police on the scene repeatedly asked for an ambulance.

The News revealed a few days later that there was a delay of more than four minutes in dispatching an ambulance. She later died, but it’s not clear if the delay contributed to her death. The girl’s family has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the city.

Fire officials, who blamed that delay on human error, said Monday that everything was fine with the new system.

“There has not been a single lost call with the new system,” Deputy Fire Commissioner Frank Gribbon insisted Monday.
 

They say an EMS worker failed to see the 911 ambulance request on her screen before going on a break, and admitted so afterward. Since then, she has contradicted that account. She denied seeing any new call on her screen before her replacement took over.

And the union for EMS paramedics has claimed the call for help was somehow lost in the system.
The EMS log of that incident lists several “PD-LOST” messages in the first few seconds of the transmission from 911.

Fire officials say no calls have been missed and the new system is faster and more reliable than its predecessor.

“The new ICAD system is so fast that the moment the NYPD call taker starts keying in information, the transmission starts to EMS,” Gribbon said. “There are instances when we receive partial data from ICAD. But we always get the full data within seconds.”

So a “lost” call is not really lost, according to Gribbon, just temporarily garbled or unavailable.

“It may not be the perfect term to use,” he conceded.

“That’s nonsense,” a veteran EMS dispatcher said. “He’s obviously never worked a dispatch terminal.”

“Since this new system started, our people get on the phone to 911 every day and ask, ‘where’s the information on that ambulance job you were supposed to send me?’ ” the dispatcher said. “The operator may tells us, ‘I sent it to you 20 minutes or an hour ago,’ but it’s still not our screen. If that isn’t lost, what is?”

Fire officials later acknowledged that dozens of paramedics and supervisors working at the EMS dispatch center the day of the accident should have been able to see the ambulance request on their individual computer monitors. Officials say the request would also have been visible on a huge screen in the EMS center that highlights in white any calls that have been delayed more than three minutes.

A public outcry ensued and officials have promised a full investigation. As of last week, at least 15 people had been interviewed under oath, including an EMS captain and a lieutenant. None has reported seeing the Ariel Russo ambulance request on EMS computer screens, say union leaders with knowledge of the interviews.

“Nobody saw the call for the little girl because it wasn’t there,” said Israel Miranda, president of the paramedics and emergency technicians union. “It was a lost call, and city doesn’t want to admit there’s a big problem with this new system.”

This is horrific but not a surprise.

The Bloomberg people never take responsibility for mistakes or problems, they always look to balme it on others - especially city workers.

We had better hope there is not some major disaster, either weather-related or otherwise, that brings in a ton of 911 calls before Bloomberg finally flies off to Bermuda and the next mayor comes in and (I hope) fixes this system.

Michael Fiorillo Explains Why The Regents Grading Fiasco Was A Success From The DOE Perspective

From a comment Michael Fiorillo left at Ed Notes Online on the Regents grading mess:

The purported lack of trust is really an attempt at greater control and oversight over teachers. The system is called the McGraw CTB Evaluation (for the kids) and Monitoring (for the teachers) System.

It's there to time us, to rate us as "easy" or "hard" graders, and to see if our grades are within the range given by other teachers, or if a disproportionate number of the exams we grade require a third reader.

As always with the DOE, where does the incompetence end and the malice begin?

From the perspective of the DOE, they got what they wanted out of the Regents grading.

First, they took the test grading out of the hands of teachers, quite literally, by putting them online.

Second, they got to take teachers out of their schools and put into detention center cubicles, isolated from their colleagus and chained to their computers.

Third, they got to rate the graders, both for range but also for productivity, and call out those not working fast enough or grading the way they wanted.

Fourth, they got to hand close to $10 million dollars to an outside company, always a plus for the Tweedies when they can hand money out to the testing industrial complex.

I'm sure the Tweedies wish that the scanning issues and computer glitches hadn't happened, but I bet they're willing to give both themselves and McGraw-Hill a pass for those.

As Michael noted in his comment, this was all about greater control and oversight of teachers.

Since that was the goal of the system, they can consider this a "heckuva job, mission accomplished!"

94% Of Regents Exams Graded As Of 1 PM Monday

According to Gotham Schools, 6% of the city's Regents exams still need to be graded.

Tests are still being scanned by McGraw-Hill and teachers sat around the grading centers today with nothing to grade.

Wednesday is the last day of school.

I cannot remember a Regents exam grading season as chaotic as this one.

Will there be some accountability for the Tweedies who put this system into place and signed off on the contract with McGraw-Hill?

The NY Times Got The Regents Test Grading System They Wanted

Back in August 2011, the editorial board of the NY Times decried the Regents grading system that had teachers grading tests in their own schools and called for a vaunted new system.

Here is that editorial in full:

There Has to Be a Better Way to Grade Tests

A task force appointed by the New York State education commissioner, John King Jr., is to report next month on ways to improve the integrity of the state’s educational testing system. New York has thus far escaped cheating scandals like the one that exploded in Atlanta. But troubling new developments have shown weaknesses in New York’s testing system that need to be fixed.

The annual standardized tests given in the lower grades and the Regents examination that high school students must pass to graduate now play a crucial role in decisions about how schools are rated and how principals are evaluated. In the future, teachers will also be judged, in part, on how students perform on state tests.

With the tests counting for more, attempts to tamper with them will most likely grow. The state recognized that problem this year when it ended the practice of having schools rescore the Regents exams of students who fell just below the passing level. The intent was to make sure that students weren’t failed by mistake. But an analysis by The Times showed that lots of students were getting the minimum score needed to pass, which suggested cheating. The state has ended rescoring by schools, but it permits superintendents to correct errors.

That change does not cure the far bigger problem. The Regents exams are typically scored in the same school where they are given, often by a student’s own teacher. The state Education Department has allowed this practice to go on because the exams are given very late in the academic year — often just days before graduation — so that it is convenient to have the schools grade the tests. The threat to the integrity of the results is obvious.

For the Regents to be taken seriously, this practice must end. The state needs to find a way to have the exams scored by a neutral party.

This could be accomplished by administering tests online or scanning them into computers and having them graded elsewhere.

Scoring of tests for the lower grades varies from district to district. In New York City, they are administered at the schools and sent to regulated, neutral sites for grading. But this is an expensive procedure that costs the city between $20 million and $25 million a year.

If all districts are going to take this approach, the state should assume the costs. Similarly, if the state wants school systems to use inexpensive test validation procedures — like computerized erasure analysis to check for fraud — it must not foist the costs onto the already underfinanced schools. Even in the difficult fiscal climate, the state has to ensure that student test results are reliable. 

This year, the NY Times editorial board got that vaunted new grading system, with teachers no longer able to grade tests in their own schools, with tests now scanned into computers and teachers sent to central locations for grading.

Here's how the NY Times described that process today:

Carlton Swindell Jr., a senior at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School, dreamed about his graduation day for months: white limousines and fancy bouquets, a line of teachers cheering his name as if he were a basketball star. 

But when the moment finally came on Friday, Carlton was subdued. As his friends held their diplomas high, he looked down at a Post-it note with his name scrawled in Sharpie. 

“Everyone else has a diploma,” he said. “It’s a bit of a disappointment.” 

Hundreds of seniors graduating this week across New York City have yet to receive their high school diplomas because of problems in the city’s new high-tech system of grading state Regents exams.

In the past, teachers graded their own students’ tests, spending days poring over questions about “King Lear” and the French Revolution. 

But the state, concerned that some teachers might be grading too easily, recently ended that practice, and city officials turned to a modern solution: scanning the finished exams and sending them randomly to teachers throughout the city to grade. 

The computer system, created by McGraw-Hill Education as part of a $9.6 million contract over three years, broke down this week, leaving students and teachers anxiously awaiting results. Passing grades on Regents exams in English, science, math and history are required for graduation in most public high schools. Students can retake an exam even after the school year ends in order to get a diploma; the next round of tests is given in August. 

Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the city’s Education Department, said the city would hire extra teachers for the weekend so that exams could be graded before the school year ends on Wednesday. She said that the problem affected fewer than 3 percent of the roughly 57,000 seniors and that each year there was a relatively small number of students who received their scores, and their diplomas, after graduation ceremonies. 

“We anticipated there to be bumps,” Ms. Hughes said, noting that the city had originally set a deadline of this coming Monday to have all tests graded. “Things are moving more slowly than we had hoped.” 

The problem occurred as teachers began grading essay questions for a science exam known as Living Environment and two social studies tests, Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government. (Not every Regents exam is required for graduation.) 

The exams were shipped to Connecticut to be scanned, where a computer system experienced “intermittent slowdowns,” a spokesman for McGraw-Hill, Brian Belardi, said. He said the company had been working “around the clock” to remedy the issues. 

The city comptroller, John C. Liu, said he was considering an audit. Mr. Liu, who is running for mayor, said that the city should recoup the $3.5 million it had already paid McGraw-Hill this year and that the exams should be invalidated. 

“It is unconscionable that students, families and schools should suffer through fake graduations because their Regents grades are unknown,” Mr. Liu said in a statement. 

Ernest A. Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the city’s principals’ union, said the city needed to improve its oversight of outside contracts.“Once again, they’ve messed up, and now we’re left to clean it up,” Mr. Logan said. “This should be a time of celebration for our students.” 

The NY Times editorial board was very worried about the "integrity" of the tests back in August 2011.

Are they happier with the "integrity"of the results now, with Regents exams having been graded by teachers out of license, with the McGraw-Hill computer system having crashed more often than Bloomberg's 911 call system, with tests having been scanned incorrectly or not scanned at all, with tests having been lost on the drive to Connecticut to be scanned?

It's interesting to me how quickly the editorial boards around the city are to point fingers at individual teachers for problems with testing or grading or the education system as a whole, but when it comes to a widespread systemic failure like the NYCDOE and the NYSED are currently experiencing with this Regents grading fiasco, they're willing to give the powers that be the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, it took the NY Times quite a few days to even do  a story on this mess.

Kudos to Gotham Schools, a site which I usually ridicule for being a corporate education reform public relations firm, for actually covering the Regents fiasco from the beginning and getting at the severity of the situation, something which the Times article doesn't actually do.

The Regents grading mess has been a lot worse than the Times article lets on.

I look forward to the Times editorial board writing up a new editorial entitled

There Has to Be a Better Way to Grade Tests: Part II

that gets at just what a mess this centralized, computerized grading has been and how incompetent the Tweedies and McGraw-Hill have been in trying to pull it off.

Who Is Polakow-Suransky Kidding?

Michael Mulgrew outside of Stuyvesant High School, one of the Regents grading sites, today:

“Who was the genius who decided that it was a good idea to take all the tests that the children take and put them in trucks and send them to Connecticut to get scanned into systems so they can send them back here?” Mulgrew asked.

That's a very good question.

Why, it was the geniuses at the NYCDOE, that's who.

But they don't think there's any real problems with the grading and think the UFT is using the mess to score political points.

In fact, Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky said the UFT was politicizing the problems:

 “It’s ugly to be using this for political gain,” he added.

Shael is so right - the DOE would never ever politicize something like test scores or graduation rates or teacher evaluations or whatever.

What a joke.

Polakow-Suransky lies every time he opens his mouth.

This time is no different.

The Regents grading has been a disaster.

They have lost tests.

They can't get the test scanned.

They can't get them graded.

They can't get the computer system to run right.

Even when they can scan the tests, sometimes they can't scan the tests correctly.

Can you imagine if this were teachers tasked with this job and these kinds of foul-ups and instances of incompetency were occurring?

Polakow-Suransky, along with Bloomberg's other paid shills and liars, would be screaming to high heaven about the "failing teachers."

But since Shael is to blame for this mess, along with the rest of the geniuses at Tweed, there's nothing to see here, just move on, all is well, have a nice weekend.

All of these changes were wrought so that the NYCDOE could hold teachers accountable via "objective" and "scientific" scores based on the state tests.

As I wrote earlier this week, the screw ups have ensured that there is NOTHING "objective" and "scientific" about the Regents results this year - NOTHING.

Meanwhile no one holds Bloomberg accountable for this mess, no one holds Walcott accountable, no one holds Shael and the rest of the shillsters at the Tweed p.r. firm accountable for this mess.

Once again, there are two sets of standards here - one for elites like Bloomberg and their functionaries like Shael Polakow-Suransky and Dennis Walcott and one for the rest of us.

There is no accountability for the elites in this country or this city.

NYCDOE Loses State Tests, Punishes Students With Summer School

This is outrageous:

A Brooklyn intermediate school flunked an entire eighth-grade class and told the kids they’d have to attend summer school — because bungling education officials lost their state English exams, The Post has learned.

Panicked 13- and 14-year-olds at IS 227 in Bensonhurst said their dreams of a fun summer were dashed yesterday when they were handed letters that barred them from attending their graduation this Friday.

The letters, written on school stationery, said students wouldn’t be promoted unless they attend summer school and pass a city-issued English exam in August.

“The Board of Education should take responsibility for losing our tests. It’s not fair that we have to give up our summer because of something that wasn’t our fault,” said 13-year-old Mindy Tong.

“My family has summer-vacation plans, and it isn’t right that we might have to change them,” she added.

“I was sure that I did well and that I was going to graduate. Now I’m unsure of everything.”

To make matters worse, the letters home make no mention of misplaced exams — even though a half-dozen students told The Post their guidance counselor said they couldn’t graduate because the city had lost their results.

Instead, the letters pin the blame squarely on the students’ allegedly poor results.

“Your child’s performance on assessments . . . indicates that your child has not met the New York City Promotion Standard for English Language Arts,” reads the letter from Principal Brenda Champion.

After inquiries from The Post, Department of Education officials insisted that 25 students had been mistakenly handed the notices of failure.

They said the tests weren’t lost, but that the answer documents were accidentally packed into the wrong box — so that they hadn’t reached the scoring site yet.

Students took the exams back in the middle of April.

“We are communicating with these families that this letter should not have been sent due to the delay in scoring for this class’ [English] exams,” said DOE spokeswoman Erin Hughes.

“The exams will be scored by [today], and families should receive the appropriate promotion communication before the moving-up ceremony on Friday.”

Again, classic Bloomberg administration M.O. - screw something up, blame someone else, only try and right the wrong when caught in public.

This travesty happened to eighth graders, but just wait until all the NYCDOE and McGraw-Hill incompetence with the Regents exams scanning and scoring process plays out next week.

There will  be thousands of students in high schools facing this same travesty.

How Many Mistakes Does Pearson Get To Make?

Another round of Pearson errors on the grading on the G&T tests were revealed yesterday.

This time 146 more students were found to qualify for G&T programs after Pearson said they weren't.  Another 159 saw their raw scores on the test rise.

Last month, an additional 3,000 students were also told they qualify for one of the G&T programs after they had been told they weren't.

These errors come on the heels of the product placements in the 3rd-8th grade ELA tests and last year's Hare and the Pineapple debacle.

As usual, Pearson was sorry:

A spokeswoman for the testing company said the unforgivable blooper won’t happen again.

“There’s no excuse for the scoring errors made on the assessments,” Scott Smith, president of learning assessment, said. “Pearson is taking all necessary measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

That's what they said after the first round of G&T test errors were revealed. 

 

They even said they conducted quality assurance tests on the testing procedures to make sure no more mistakes had been made.

 

But more mistakes were found.

 

Clearly Pearson cannot be trusted to police itself.

 

The NYCDOE is threatening to break the G&T test contract with Pearson if they don't shape up, but they say they will keep their other contracts with Pearson no matter what.

And of course Merryl Tisch is oh so happy with the Pearson tests at the state level that she positively gushed over them a couple of weeks ago, though since the test contents have been kept secret, we can't know just how many mistakes Pearson has made with these tests.

Given Pearson's track record and the anecdotes that have gone around about these tests so far, we can be pretty sure they have made mistakes.

 

Two things must happen now.

 

First, Merryl Tisch and John King must be forced to reveal the full contents of the 3rd-8th grade math and ELA tests before these tests are used to make any high stakes decisions on children, teachers and schools.

Second, Pearson must be held accountable for their repeated mistakes and incompetency.  

 

At the city level, they must lose the G&T test contract immediately, their other contracts ought to be terminated or, at the very least, not renewed.

At the state level, every test Pearson develops or handles can no longer be embargoed by the NYSED.  The contents MUST be open for parents, teachers and administrators to view once the test is administered.

If Tisch and King will not comply with this very reasonable request, then they must be forced to do so through the courts.

 

Then the rest of the contract with the state must be voided and the NYSED and Regents must look elsewhere for a testing vendor.

Pearson has no credibility as a testing company and cannot be trusted.

As Christine Quinn said yesterday:

“Students know that there are consequences when you make repeated mistakes and it’s time Pearson learns that same lesson,” the Democratic candidate said.

“The fact that Pearson has again failed to properly score the city’s gifted and talented tests and even more egregiously, lied about conducting quality assurance checks when correcting their first error, is totally unacceptable,” Quinn added. “Any confidence city families had in Pearson has been irreparably damaged, and I urge the New York State Department of Education to learn from DOE’s experience, vet every stage of Pearson’s scoring of the state exams and carefully reconsider whether Pearson should be trusted with future state testing.”

 

Indeed.

Pearson Makes Even More Errors With G&T Tests

Can there be a company more incompetent than Pearson?

Once again, a parent inquiry led to the detection of an error in Pearson’s scoring of the gifted and talented admissions test, the fourth in a string of embarrassments for both the testing company and the city’s Department of Education.

The D.O.E. announced Friday afternoon that an additional 82 students who did not previously qualify for G&T are now eligible for district programs, while 64 students now qualify for the more competitive citywide programs.

This latest scoring mistake comes after the announcement of errors last month, which affected the eligibility of thousands of children.

Walcott said if they don't get better, the city is going to terminate their contract.

Not good enough.

Their contract needs to be terminated.

Period.

And since Pearson developed the state tests that so many high stakes decisions are going to be based upon for next year - including student advancement, teacher employment and school closures - those tests need to be released to the public so that we can see just what is on them and how they were scored.

Even Christine Quinn knows there's a problem with Pearson:

At least one candidate for mayor jumped into the fray. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent out a statement calling for the termination of the city’s contract with Pearson.

“Students know that there are consequences when you make repeated mistakes and it’s time Pearson learns that same lesson,” the Democratic candidate said.

“The fact that Pearson has again failed to properly score the city’s gifted and talented tests and even more egregiously, lied about conducting quality assurance checks when correcting their first error, is totally unacceptable,” Quinn added. “Any confidence city families had in Pearson has been irreparably damaged, and I urge the New York State Department of Education to learn from DOE’s experience, vet every stage of Pearson’s scoring of the state exams and carefully reconsider whether Pearson should be trusted with future state testing.”

 I can't believe I am writing these words, but here goes:

Christine Quinn is absolutely right about this.

There can be no confidence in any exam developed by Pearson.

None.

Not after the Pineapple and the Hare and all the other mistakes last year, the first round of egregious errors on the G&T tests this year and now a second round after they assured the public and officials that they had conducted quality control after the first round of errors, assurances that turned out to be lies.