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?

Only 8% Of School Districts Have Vaunted New Cuomo APPR Evaluation Plan In Place

Keshia Clukey at Politico NY:

ALBANY — The vast majority of school districts and teachers' unions seem to be having difficulty coming to an agreement on a new teacher evaluation system supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

As of the end of last week, only 12 plans had been approved, with another 47 submitted for review, according to the state education department. There are 674 districts statewide.

The new evaluation system was put into place last session. It puts more emphasis on students' state test scores, and has been met with criticism, including from the state Board of Regents, which put in place a waiver system to delay the implementation.

The districts have until Nov. 15 to have their plans in and approved by the state or risk losing state aid. Those that believe they can't meet the deadline can instead apply for a waiver, which can extend the deadline up to September 2016.

Little over a month to go, more than 90% of districts do not have plans approved and in place yet.

There are still some that are in with the state awaiting approval, but even if all 47 of those are approved, that leaves over 600 districts without plans in place.

Can't wait to hear Cuomo's statement when the deadline comes and hundreds of districts are looking for waivers.

Looks Like Many Districts Will Be Seeking APPR Teacher Evaluation Waivers

From Rich Karlin in the Times-Union:

As the start of classes nears, school districts across the state are weighing whether to seek a waiver that could postpone for up to a year the implementation of stringent new teacher evaluation plans.

And while several Capital Region districts say they are in the process of shaping their individual plans, there's a good chance that a majority of school systems statewide will seek the delay.

"We do think that most of them will apply for a waiver," said Dave Albert, spokesman for the state School Boards Association.

"Most of what I hear is districts are anticipating that they are not going to be able to make the Nov. 15 deadline," added Robert Lowry, deputy director of the state Council of School Superintendents.

This will set up a battle with Governor Cuomo, who said the following about waivers in late April:

ALBANY – Rather than a blanket policy, the state Education Department plans to develop a system to allow schools to delay new teacher evaluations if they can show that meeting a Nov. 15 deadline would create a hardship and be impossible to meet.

Districts will be able to apply to have their evaluation policies delayed until Sept. 1, 2016, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said in an interview Friday with Gannett's Albany Bureau.

The new policy comes after Tisch said in a statement Wednesday that she has directed the Education Department to drop a Nov. 15 deadline for the state's nearly 700 school districts to approve new teacher and principal evaluations. The deadline was included in the state budget approved April 1, and districts face having their state aid frozen if they don't comply.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office was initially critical of Tisch's announcement on Wednesday, saying the law prescribes a Nov. 15 deadline or districts face a loss of state aid. Cuomo's counsel, Alphonso David, said using the hardship exemption should be "the exception, not the rule."

Cuomo offered a similar response Friday, but recognized that the hardship clause would be allowable.

"They have the power to have a waiver process for hardship, but that is a waiver for hardship," Cuomo said. "So in their regulations, they'll have to define what hardship is and if a school district has a hardship, then they're right to issue a waiver."

Sounds like the number of districts that will have Cuomo's vaunted new APPR plan in place by the deadline will be "the exception, not the rule."

How will Cuomo react when 80%+ of the state's districts seek a waiver for hardship?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Time To Sue Arne Duncan And The USDOE

From Politico:

An unprecedented set of recent Education Department decisions about No Child Left Behind waivers is at the least an overreach and at the very worst illegal, a chorus of critics say.

Last week, the department declared NCLB waivers for Kansas, Oregon and Washington state “high-risk” because each state has more work to do in tying student growth to teacher evaluations – a major requirement for states that want out of the more arduous provisions of the law. And in early August, the department granted waivers to eight districts in California, the first time the department bypassed states on No Child Left Behind flexibility.

Observers and analysts say the department’s high-risk waiver decision simply isn’t allowed under federal law. And they say Education Secretary Arne Duncan broke with what he told Congress in February about a preference not to grant district waivers, which these critics think are just plain bad policy. NCLB is long overdue for reauthorization. With that renewal nowhere in sight, Duncan has granted more than 40 waivers of the law to states, D.C. and the group of California districts, freeing states from requirements such as having all students reading and doing math at grade level by the 2013-14 school year.

“Why deal with pesky Congress when you get to make all the rules?” said Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The department doesn’t have the authority to declare waivers high-risk, he said, and one of the states should call Duncan’s bluff.

“One of these states should sue,” Petrilli said. “It’s absolutely nuts.”

Kansas, Oregon and Washington state received one-year, conditional waivers in 2012 that could be extended for another year if they complete the necessary work on their evaluation systems, but the department feels they haven’t hit the mark. If the states don’t get their teacher evaluation systems in order, they could lose their waivers.

“Many conservatives would say he’s rewriting the law,” Petrilli added. “Some of this really is uncharted territory, and while the administration has the authority to issue waivers, they do not have the authority to issue mandates on the waivers.”

Indeed - the Secretary of Education does not have the power to force states to tie teacher evaluation systems to test scores through the NCLB waiver process.

For that matter, the Secretary of Education cannot do anything to states once the RttT money runs out if they get rid of their teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores and the rest of the RttT mandates they agreed to in order to win the RttT money.

And when did Duncan get the power to offer waivers to districts on their own?

Oh, right - he doesn't have that power.

The state of California should sue as well.

As Petrilli says in the Politico article, somebody should call Duncan's bluff.

Frederick Hess agrees:

Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the high-risk waivers set a troubling precedent that stretches the federal role in “novel and problematic ways.”

“It seems to me to be inconsistent with the law, especially given there’s no language enabling the secretary to impose new conditions in exchange for a waiver,” he said. “So, while there’s always a little murkiness on this stuff, if push comes to shove, I regard them as illegal.”

States need to test the USDOE on their mandates in court.

It's time to sue Duncan and the USDOE.

 

He doesn't have the powers he is exerting.

 

It is crucial that some entity push back on this or he and every Secretary of Education after him will claim these powers through precedent.

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.