Regents Vote To Continue Using Test Scores To Rate Teachers

The Regents voted for a four year moratorium from using state test scores in teacher evaluations - but there's a catch:

A four-year moratorium on use of state standardized test scores to rate — or penalize — the job performance of schoolteachers and principals gained overwhelming preliminary approval Monday from the state Board of Regents.

The policymaking board passed the “emergency regulation” in a 15-1 vote, with the only “no” cast by Chancellor Merryl Tisch.

The catch?

They're still using test scores to rate you, just not "state" test scores:

Under a complex four-year transition, teachers would receive new “transition scores” calculated by the state, based on information provided by local school districts. Such ratings would come from results of classroom observations and tests selected locally by school districts.

So don't believe the hype - Regents vote for moratorium on state test scores in teacher evaluations blah blah blah.

Means nothing so long as "local" tests will be used on you because in the end, whether the voodoo VAM is based on local test scores or state test scores, it's still voodoo.

So call the Regents on their manipulation here and spread the word - the Endless Testing regime and voodoo VAM is alive and well in APPR.

Many Students Return To School Without Their Common Core Test Results

You know how educrats, education reformers and civil rights activists living off the Gates/Broad Foundation dole like to say we must have standardized testing or otherwise we'll never know how the kids are doing in school?

This past spring saw the rollout of new tests based on the Common Core standards. The reading and math tests replace traditional spring standardized tests. About 12 million students in 29 states and the District of Columbia took the tests developed by two groups — the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

According to Smarter Balanced, only a few states have released scores from the spring — Connecticut, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Missouri, West Virginia, and Vermont. Most states have not been able to put out test scores before the start of classes. The delay was expected in the exam's first year, but it's still frustrating for some teachers and parents.

Scores for the almost 5 million students who took the PARCC tests still have yet to be released. PAARC is still setting benchmarks for each performance level. The partnership says they're due for release this fall, and that the goal in future years of the tests is to release the results as close to the end of the school year as possible.

Just as with the New York Common Core tests, the benchmarks aren't set until long after the students  take their tests.

With the old New York State Regents exams, the benchmark scores were set before students took their tests and were posted right after the test ended.

That seems like a fair and honest way to do things - set the passing mark before students take the test.

But in the Era of Common Core, when educrats and reformers wanted to rig the tests for 70% failure rates, all of these Common Core tests, including the high school tests, are benchmarked long after students take their tests and the results are in.

Rigged?

You betcha!

If not, why not set the benchmarks before, the way they used to with the Regents exams?

Simple - they're playing with the numbers, manipulating them for their own political ends.

But as we've seen with the opposition to testing growing over the past few years, the more games the educrats and reformers play with the Endless Testing regime, the more the opposition to testing grows.

So keep playing games, folks.

You are fooling fewer and fewer with the manipulation and lies.

Common Core Test Question Release Stipulation Allows NYSED To Hide True Quality Of Tests

Buried in Jessica Bakeman's Capital NY piece about how swell new state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan is on education issues is this:

ALBANY—The first major piece of legislation approved under new Senate majority leader John Flanagan included funding for an obscure state Education Department priority and nuanced changes to policy regarding state-administered standardized testing.

...

For example, while the bill requires the education department to release more questions from state exams, the language doesn’t specify a certain percentage of questions that must be made public. Rather, addressing officials’ arguments that releasing too many questions would threaten the validity of future tests, the bill requires the department to release “a significant amount of questions.” The bill says, “The commissioner may limit the number of questions and answers released only to the extent necessary to avoid hindering or impairing the validity and/or reliability of future examinations.”

“It strikes me as careful, and that suggests an attention to not creating problems,” Lowry said, referring to the language. “He has been very engaged with these issues, and the broad benefit is just having a grasp of how schools work and how state education policies affect schools and potential problems that arise with changing state policies.”

So instead of requiring a specific number of percentage of questions be released, Flanagan gave NYSED the leeway to release “a significant amount of questions."

NYSED is given the power to release as many - or more likely, as few - test questions as they want.

The way to show the quality (or rather, lack thereof) is to release the whole tests so that the public can see exactly what timed duress children are up against with these tests.

But Flanagan and the Legislature didn't come through with enough money to do that and they've given NYSED enough cover to release just enough to make the tests look good without releasing enough to give the public a true understanding of how badly designed and unfair these tests are.

In short, the part of the omnibus bill that requires NYSED to release more questions from state exams is bullshit, devised to make it look like the state education apparatus is open about the Endless Testing regime when they are anything but.

You can bet the hacks at SED do not want enough money to be able to release the Common Core tests in their entirety but rather want to be able to release just eough of the tests to make themselves and the tests look good.

They do not want the curtain drawn back on the Endless Testing regime any more than the test companies who develop these garbage tests do.

John Flanagan, through political manipulation, enabled NYSED to continue to avoid scrutiny and accountability for these tests.

When Did Campbell Brown Get Elected Governor Of New York State?

Cuomo yesterday, doubling down on his threats against teachers the past few weeks:

"The teachers’ union represents the teachers. I understand that. … I represent the students and I want to do the best we can for the students and for their education," he said. "One of the issues we have to work through where the teachers’ union doesn’t agree with me is, I want to evaluate teachers, and I want to be able to get bad teachers out of the classroom.

“I understand the union’s issue; they don’t want anyone fired,” Cuomo said. “But we have teachers that have been found guilty of sexually abusing students who we can’t get out of the classroom. We have a process where literally it takes years and years to get a bad teacher out of the classroom. And I understand the teachers’ rights, but I also understand the students’ rights. And the Albany government, the Albany media, is very responsive to the teachers’ union and their groups. I get it. But the students have rights, too. And this whole education system is about the students.”

Sounds just like Campbell Brown, doesn't it?

Interestingly, he talks about understanding students' rights, but fails to mention how so many parents and students hate the Common Core and Endless Testing regime the education establishment continues to pursue in this state.

See, opposing CCSS or the Endless Testing regime doesn't make his campaign donors happy, so he's not going to push that kind of "reform" ever.

He's instead going to play the manipulation card and make like there are thousands of "bad teachers" in classrooms raping and pillaging on their lunch breaks and prep periods and try and rile the public up to support his so-called reform agenda.

Don't be surprised if we don't see some Daily News or Post pieces detailing a couple of incidents to set the stage for the govenor's anti-teacher/anti-union agenda next week.

Hell, they may even show up in the Post or Daily News courtesy of the real Campbell Brown and not her doppelganger, the guy in the governor's office.

Chiara de Blasio, Bill de Blasio And The Politics Of Manipulation

I thought the video the de Blasio transition team released of Chiara de Blasio talking about her struggles with drugs, alcohol and depression was on one level an important one.

We live in a high stress society in which many people are suffering from depression or other emotional problems, in which many people are trying to numb out with drugs, alcohol or other harmful behaviors.

I hope that Chiara de Blasio's struggles give the next mayor, her father, the understanding that schools are trying to help many students suffering from similar problems and need much more support in this area than was provided by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his test-centric NYCDOE.

That said, the carefully crafted and edited video itself left me feeling emotionally manipulated, like this was one of those Bill Clinton damage control specials, and makes me wonder what exactly the de Blasio transition team was trying to accomplish with it.

New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez felt the same way:

There was Chiara de Blasio, the 19-year-old daughter of New York’s next mayor, gently baring her battles with depression, alcohol and drugs in a day-before-Christmas YouTube video.

The sincerity and eloquence she showed were guaranteed to touch the hearts of many New Yorkers.

And her message could well inspire countless young people in similar situations to seek help, as she urged them to do at the end.

But Chiara’s startling video, coming eight days before the official start of the Bill de Blasio era, also left you with an eerie sense of being manipulated emotionally.

Those feeling began with the melancholy piano-and-string music that accompanied her every word. It continued with graphics that marked off each section with dramatic headlines like: “Chiara de Blasio tells her story.”

Then there were the statistics sprinkled throughout, such as: “About 28% of Americans drink at levels that put them at risk for alcohol dependence.”

Finally, there was the meticulous editing of her interview to evoke a sense of intimate conversation.
It amounted to a skillfully scripted Madison Avenue commercial that must have been in the planning for weeks — not some young woman’s spontaneous confession the day before Christmas.

It had all the earmarks of the damage-control tactics favored by Harold Ickes, the former Bill Clinton aide who is now a trusted adviser to de Blasio.

Gonzalez goes on to note how Christmas Eve is the perfect time for a politician to dump some information or story he/she would rather not divulge, so the Chiara de Blaiso video coming out yesterday also had that feel of a document dump kind of thing.

Then Gonzalez notes how Chiara reveals something very telling about Bill de Blasio himself:

It’s “the time of the year when these challenges are probably at their sharpest,” the mayor-elect added a short time later, in a brief appearance outside his home.

But Christmas Eve also happens to be the optimal moment for politicians to release potentially embarrassing information, because most people aren’t paying attention.

Even in this carefully choreographed video, however, hints of deeper strains in the de Blasio family surface.

“My mom was trying really hard to help me,” Chiara says at one point, “and my dad was doing the same, but obviously he was really busy.”

Bill, in other words, was spending so much time being a politician that Chiara’s mother was left to shoulder the burden of helping her.

In this, the de Blasios differed little from most American families. The fathers always have less time to deal with their children’s problems.

The average dad, though, doesn’t draft his children into television commercials aimed at winning votes, which is what de Blasio did with Chiara and her younger brother, Dante.

Mayor Bloomberg accused de Blasio of using his kids as political props during the campaign, and while at the time I thought that was an unfair charge, now that Chiara's video has been released, I am starting to walk that defense of the de Blasio campaign back.

They did use the kids in their ads, but only the parts of the story they wanted out there.

Go back and watch the de Blasio campaign videos after watching the Chiara's Story video and see if they resonate the same way with you that they did during the campaign.

Don't they start to feel a little more manipulative?

I come from a family rife with depression and substance abuse.

I wish I did not know the damage and heartbreak that depression and substance abuse bring, the suffering they cause, the strains they heap on the family.

Alas, I know all too well.

As someone with this family experience, I've gotten pretty good with sensing when one of my students is suffering similarly and have tried to be of service in the way I can to point them to places where they can get some help.

I hope that the de Blaiso family experience will give Mayor-Elect de Blasio the understanding that many other families suffer similarly and schools can be a place where they can find help and healing.

So in that way, I am glad the Chiara de Blasio video was released.

But the slickly-crafted Chiara de Blasio still makes me feel manipulated emotionally and gives me just another reason to feel there is something slimy and untrustworthy about her father, Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio made his bones in the Clinton administration and ran Hillary's senate campaign in 2000, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that de Blasio has learned the damage control public relations tactics of his old bosses quite well.

Hard to know if Chiara wanted to tell her story publicly or was forced to tell it by someone close to her, hard to know if they had this video in the pipeline a long time and were ready to go with it at a moment's notice or it just got made recently, but the use of this video in a very political way leaves me feeling like Bill de Blasio is one very manipulative politician willing to use his children in whatever way he needs to in order to advance his own career.

That doesn't take away from the power of Chiara's telling her story publicly or the empathy and identification I have with her, but it does make me wonder why the de Blasio transition team felt the need to get it out there right now and just what they're trying to do with it.

Finally it makes wonder about Bill de Blasio himself - just how much Bill Clinton does he have in him?

Regent Betty Rosa Says NYSED Rigs Data To Make NY State Schools Look Like Failures

A very important article from the Times Union about discord on the Regents Board as well as accusations that NYSED rigs the data to push its agenda:

Regent Betty A. Rosa wants people to know that her board of 17 members aren't all in agreement about the public education reform agenda that's currently upsetting many parents, teachers and school administrators statewide.

In fact, she thinks the Common Core program is based on incomplete, manipulated data.
"They are using false information to create a crisis, to take the state test and turn it on its head to make sure the suburbs experience what the urban centers experience: failure," said Rosa, a former teacher, principal and superintendent from the Bronx.

The state Board of Regents is scheduled to meet in Albany on Monday and vote on a budget request for next year. Members are expected to ask Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a substantial increase in aid for local schools, on top of this year's level of spending, $56 billion. The extra money is to help achieve the Regents' reform agenda — a series of higher standards, tests and other assessments to track and boost performance of pupils and their teachers. The program has caused a firestorm, with the Regents and Commissioner John King at the center.

Rosa said the program is built on data from incoming freshman at public two-year and four-year colleges in New York, which suggests only 24 percent are ready for work or higher education. But it doesn't consider data from private colleges, which are getting college-ready students — particularly from the suburbs, Rosa said.

"The conversation is (that) kids are not ready; it's really the black and brown children in urban centers," said Rosa, who spent her first 10 years growing up in Puerto Rico before attending public schools and colleges in New York. She earned a doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1995.

Rosa said SED disregards data from successful schools to bolster its message that public education isn't working.

"I'm not saying it's a fraud, but there's a lack of understanding ... of what's behind the Common Core," she said. "Do I believe that the purpose, the agenda is to create a sense of urgency around failure? Yes."

Regents Chancellor Tisch argues in the Times-Union piece that Rosa is wrong, it's a statewide problem with community colleges in the suburbs and rural areas experiencing the same alarming remediation rates that schools in the urban areas are experienxing.

But Tisch doesn't address the most important point Rosa makes - that SED ignores the statistics from the private colleges, which would lower the rates of students needing remediation greatly, in order to bolster their case that NY State schools and teachers are failures and disruptive reform is needed to fix the problems.

The article goes on to say that change is coming to the Regents/SED reform agenda, though how much change remains to be seen:

The state Legislature has become increasingly uncomfortable with the Regents' plan, and several lawmakers have proposed amending or putting the brakes on aspects of the program.

The "Reform of the Reforms" plan announced by John Flanagan, head of the Education Committee in the State Senate, is a lame attempt to make it look like the legislature is making changes to the SED/Regents reform agenda.

Critics of the plan point out that it actually gives more power to SED to impose their own agenda on districts and doesn't give any opt-out options to parents over the controversial inBloom data project.

Frankly, the longer the merry reformers at the Regents and SED continue to go full speed ahead with their reforms and the longer the state legislature or governor refuses to take meaningful action to stem the damage these reforms are doing, the more likely it is the whole reform ship will sink.

Tinkering at the edges of the reform agenda while telling people they're doing meaningful reform of the reforms is not going to fool too many people around the state, though it may throw even more fuel onto the anti-CCSS, anti-testing, anti-inBloom fire.

Bloomberg Like Nixon, Only He's His Own Bebe

Norm at Education Notes was over this story earlier in the week, the News has done a couple of articles on it, and Gotham Schools had a story as well, but between work stuff and parent-teacher conferences, I haven't been able to give the story that the DOE used parent coordinators to promote Bloomberg's political causes the attention it deserves.

First, here is the latest on the story from the Daily News:

The city Education Department has drafted school workers into political fights even before this week's controversial petition drive, union officials said Thursday.

In January and February, department officials asked parent coordinators to get parents who supported Mayor Bloomberg's policies to attend public meetings on closing low-performing schools.

"That is definitely, totally illegal," said DC 37 Local 372 acting President Santos Crespo, noting parent coordinators from all over the city were asked to participate in the turnout efforts.

A Manhattan parent coordinator said she was "dumbfounded" by the instructions for turning people out to public meetings.

"The model was 'We don't want to hear anything negative,'" she recalled.

Education Department spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said officials were within their rights.

"There is nothing wrong with encouraging parents to come out and participate in meetings that determine what happens to their children's schools," she said.

Ravitz again acknowledged that "DOE staff acted inappropriately in asking parent coordinators to circulate a petition" earlier this week that called for ending seniority protections for teachers.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew on Thursday asked the special schools investigator to determine who was responsible for the petition drive and how much the city spent on it.

The DOE violated the law by pushing this policy.

Who was behind the idea?

How far up the Bloomberg chain did it go?

What other political manipulations are the ypulling on the public dime?

Were any parent coordinators paid extra to aid in the cause?

Were any parent coordinators given Gates Foundation or hedge fundie largesse to aid in the cause?

Let's be honest here, the coordination of the education deform movement is pretty intricate.

Let's take the Asshats4Educators group.

They were supposed to be a "grassroots" movement of young teachers who were opposed to seniority protections, tenure and lots of other things that Bloomberg and Klein hate.

This group got lots of press at hedge fundie-funded Gotham Schools, got lots of press in the Murdoch papers, got lots of attention on the Murdoch-owned TV stations.

They DIDN'T get lots of scrutiny, however.

Mr. Talk at Accountable Talk was the first to notice that the Asshat4Educator website looked an awful lot like the DFER website.

A little scrutiny into the matter exposed the connection between the hedge fundie DFER's and the Asshats - they were funding the website and subsidizing the group.

Since then, the Asshats - who are still introduced as "educators" even though they no longer work as teachers - are enjoying not only Whitney Tilson-inspired hedge fund largesse but also lots of yummy, yummy Gates Foundation money.

No wonder Chancellor Klein met with the Asshats and hailed the group as "heroes" of the education world.

They're a manufactured grassroots movement, completely funded by corporate interests, who promote education policies those corporate interests want promoted in media outlets owned by those same corporate interests.

If you don't believe me, just read this NY Times story from back in February on the connection between the Asshats, the anti-seniority forces, the DFER's, the DOE, Bloomberg and the hedge fund managers.

They do a heckuva job on the coordination, don't they?

Now we get the story that the DOE was using parent coordinators to promote some of the same corporate-friendly policies that the Asshats are promoting.

I have no inside knowledge of any of this, but how much do you want to bet that some of the same money that has found its way to the Asshats4Educators found its way to any of the parent coordinators who have done the bidding of the Bloomberg administration and DOE on these political matters.

It's all very Nixonian, and while I am sure there are no tapes with John Dean saying there is a cancer on the presidency, I would say there is a cancer in the city that destroys the healthy body politic with bribes and corporate largesse and greed.

That cancer is located right down at City Hall Park in the two buildings off Broadway - City Hall and Tweed.

And what we need is a little scrutiny on the political operatives in those two buildings to see just how far the political manipulations have gone.

You can be sure that this use of parent coordinators to promote Bloomberg's political policies on the public dime is just the tip of the iceberg.