“The opposition to high-stakes testing in Florida is the strongest it’s ever been. There is a considerable resistance throughout the state, and it’s growing.”
In this interview, find out how Gloria Pipkin and her colleagues in Florida have organized teachers, parents, and concerned citizens into the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform (FCAR), a potent advocacy group that promotes the well-being of children and opposes high-stakes testing.
Florida has the lowest graduation rate of any state in the country, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute (certainly no friend to those of us who oppose high-stakes testing). According to Gloria, “We have thousands and thousands and thousands of third graders across the state who are retained each year.” She continued, “The state is acknowledging that what we’re doing is not working . . . There are over a thousand students throughout the state who are in the third grade for the third time.”
Other highlights from the interview:
“We have to find a way out of this nightmare of mandatory FCAT-based retention. We already have 11-year-olds in third grade; we already have 16-year-olds in eighth grade.”
“In a study going back to the days before high-stakes testing, what children feared the most after losing a parent and going blind was being left behind, being retained in their grade. . . Being retained once greatly increases the chances that they’ll never graduate. Being retained twice almost seals their fate.”
“We’ve heard anecdotal stories from therapists and psychologists that the number of kids that they’re seeing in response to FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) pressure has increased tremendously.”
Note - the FCAR web site is http://www.fcarweb.org/. Please contact Gloria at gpipkin@knology.net for more information.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Supreme Court narrows free speech for public employees
Right now, all across the country, there are teachers, principals, and public school administrators who are wrestling with their consciences. Do they stick their necks out, risk being fired or demoted or placed in some dingy backwater, and talk about what is going on in public schools under No Child Left Behind? Or do they bite their tongues and hope that things will get better?
The Supreme Court yesterday added its chilly voice to the mix: the First Amendment does not apply to speech for public employees when they speak as employees about job-related matters of public concern. In its defense, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, “Justice Souter suggests today’s decision may have important ramifications for academic freedom, at least as a constitutional value. There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.”
Some relief. “Once you have drawn this kind of distinction, which ostensibly runs across the whole gamut of a public employee’s speech, and having merely hinted that academic speakers and therefore academic freedom may somehow be different, creates only a slim reed on which to hang a public university professor’s desire to speak out,” said Robert M. O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center and a professor of law at the University of Virginia.
O’Neil suggested that by seeming to grant First Amendment protection to speech that is not directly related to an employee’s work but not to speech that is job-related, the court has created a situation in which “the degree in protection varies inversely with the speaker’s expertise and with the potential value to society and the government of having the benefit of such speech.” According to Inside Higher Education, "Under this scenario, a chemist or philosopher who testified at a state legislative hearing by criticizing a plan to restructure the state’s community college system would be protected by the First Amendment, but a political scientist who is an expert on community college governance might not."
Under this ruling, a public school teacher -- an expert on teaching and learning -- might not have his/her comments about No Child Left Behind protected under the First Amendment, either.
“Up to this point, it has (been) assumed that academic speech, particularly within a professor’s field of expertise, would be First Amendment protected,” O’Neil said. “But I’m going to have to say now that you’d better not count on it.”
Story at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/31/supreme
The Supreme Court yesterday added its chilly voice to the mix: the First Amendment does not apply to speech for public employees when they speak as employees about job-related matters of public concern. In its defense, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, “Justice Souter suggests today’s decision may have important ramifications for academic freedom, at least as a constitutional value. There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.”
Some relief. “Once you have drawn this kind of distinction, which ostensibly runs across the whole gamut of a public employee’s speech, and having merely hinted that academic speakers and therefore academic freedom may somehow be different, creates only a slim reed on which to hang a public university professor’s desire to speak out,” said Robert M. O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center and a professor of law at the University of Virginia.
O’Neil suggested that by seeming to grant First Amendment protection to speech that is not directly related to an employee’s work but not to speech that is job-related, the court has created a situation in which “the degree in protection varies inversely with the speaker’s expertise and with the potential value to society and the government of having the benefit of such speech.” According to Inside Higher Education, "Under this scenario, a chemist or philosopher who testified at a state legislative hearing by criticizing a plan to restructure the state’s community college system would be protected by the First Amendment, but a political scientist who is an expert on community college governance might not."
Under this ruling, a public school teacher -- an expert on teaching and learning -- might not have his/her comments about No Child Left Behind protected under the First Amendment, either.
“Up to this point, it has (been) assumed that academic speech, particularly within a professor’s field of expertise, would be First Amendment protected,” O’Neil said. “But I’m going to have to say now that you’d better not count on it.”
Story at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/31/supreme
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
More Evidence of Tutoring Fraud
In a report in the Fresno Bee from 5/28/06, reporter Christina Vance writes that the tutoring service provided for under NCLB "has become a monitoring nightmare for school districts trying to weed out tutoring companies with questionable business and academic standards."
For example, Vance writes, "Fresno Unified caught a company last year that submitted more than $200,000 in invalid fees to the district hidden among boxes and boxes of invoices, said Barbara Bengel, the district's director of state and federal programs. She hired extra clerical staff to scrutinize the bills.
"We had quite a few instances of overbilling or double-billing," Bengel said.
Here's the key: the company didn't suffer any consequences for the billing issues. It remains on a state-approved list of tutors, meaning any eligible family can request its services.
"It's technically the duty of state officials to monitor the quality of tutoring companies, but that's not happening," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.
"This has been a source of frustration to local school districts," he said.
"The states are just evolving their roles in this area. They don't have the staff to oversee these providers."
---Here's the rest of the article:---
There's no system of oversight for tutoring companies in California once they earn a spot on the state-approved list, said Jerry Cummings, the California Department of Education program consultant for No Child Left Behind.
State officials are creating a system to gauge whether tutoring programs improve student test scores.
Cummings said the state must collect two years of data before the monitoring system can go into place.
But state education officials have no plans to monitor business practices of the companies. Cummings said that's not their role.
So, whose job is it?
Fresno Unified doesn't get extra money to conduct fiscal oversight of the tutoring companies' invoices, but Bengel said ignoring the duty wasn't an option. The district keeps track of 18 tutoring companies providing services to Fresno Unified students. It spot-checks tutoring sites and calls samplings of parents for feedback.
The law requires districts to pay for tutoring out of federal Title 1 money. If parents don't request the tutoring, the money goes back to individual school sites.
During the 2004-2005 school year, Fresno Unified paid $769,086 in tutoring fees for 809 students.
There were 1,900 students signed up for tutoring this year, Bengel said.
Because schools gain financially when students and their parents decline outside tutoring, Jennings said, the Bush administration and tutoring companies have accused school districts of failing to publicize the availability of the services.
"The companies say districts are not vigorous enough," he said.
Rick Carder of the Grant Joint Union High School District in Sacramento said schools want what's best for students, even if it takes some money out of their budgets.
However, he criticized tutoring companies that offer "excessive incentives" such as free computers to entice students to sign up.
Parents have called his office, saying they wanted whatever tutoring program offered the free technology.
"You do have some providers who go door to door soliciting parents," he said.
There's nothing illegal about such solicitation. Carder said he's heard some online tutoring companies subcontract their services to tutors in other countries, and that's also legal.
He questioned whether that's in the best interest of students.
Similar questions about a tutoring company, Read and Succeed LLC, surfaced during a May 10 Fresno Unified board meeting.
The trustees voted to pay up to $737,760 to the company to tutor 540 students.
But several board members expressed concern over the company's door-to-door soliciting of parent signatures, its offers of free Palm Pilots and its offsite tutoring program that operates through the Palm Pilots or through telephones.
Read and Succeed program director Edrian Walker said in an e-mail that offering tutoring through telephone calls and Palm Pilots keeps students interested and is "research-based and innovative."
It doesn't matter what tutoring businesses and schools consider to be a good program, it's parental opinion that matters right now, Cummings said.
"The providers are able to market themselves," he said. "The bottom line is, it's a parent choice."
For example, Vance writes, "Fresno Unified caught a company last year that submitted more than $200,000 in invalid fees to the district hidden among boxes and boxes of invoices, said Barbara Bengel, the district's director of state and federal programs. She hired extra clerical staff to scrutinize the bills.
"We had quite a few instances of overbilling or double-billing," Bengel said.
Here's the key: the company didn't suffer any consequences for the billing issues. It remains on a state-approved list of tutors, meaning any eligible family can request its services.
"It's technically the duty of state officials to monitor the quality of tutoring companies, but that's not happening," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.
"This has been a source of frustration to local school districts," he said.
"The states are just evolving their roles in this area. They don't have the staff to oversee these providers."
---Here's the rest of the article:---
There's no system of oversight for tutoring companies in California once they earn a spot on the state-approved list, said Jerry Cummings, the California Department of Education program consultant for No Child Left Behind.
State officials are creating a system to gauge whether tutoring programs improve student test scores.
Cummings said the state must collect two years of data before the monitoring system can go into place.
But state education officials have no plans to monitor business practices of the companies. Cummings said that's not their role.
So, whose job is it?
Fresno Unified doesn't get extra money to conduct fiscal oversight of the tutoring companies' invoices, but Bengel said ignoring the duty wasn't an option. The district keeps track of 18 tutoring companies providing services to Fresno Unified students. It spot-checks tutoring sites and calls samplings of parents for feedback.
The law requires districts to pay for tutoring out of federal Title 1 money. If parents don't request the tutoring, the money goes back to individual school sites.
During the 2004-2005 school year, Fresno Unified paid $769,086 in tutoring fees for 809 students.
There were 1,900 students signed up for tutoring this year, Bengel said.
Because schools gain financially when students and their parents decline outside tutoring, Jennings said, the Bush administration and tutoring companies have accused school districts of failing to publicize the availability of the services.
"The companies say districts are not vigorous enough," he said.
Rick Carder of the Grant Joint Union High School District in Sacramento said schools want what's best for students, even if it takes some money out of their budgets.
However, he criticized tutoring companies that offer "excessive incentives" such as free computers to entice students to sign up.
Parents have called his office, saying they wanted whatever tutoring program offered the free technology.
"You do have some providers who go door to door soliciting parents," he said.
There's nothing illegal about such solicitation. Carder said he's heard some online tutoring companies subcontract their services to tutors in other countries, and that's also legal.
He questioned whether that's in the best interest of students.
Similar questions about a tutoring company, Read and Succeed LLC, surfaced during a May 10 Fresno Unified board meeting.
The trustees voted to pay up to $737,760 to the company to tutor 540 students.
But several board members expressed concern over the company's door-to-door soliciting of parent signatures, its offers of free Palm Pilots and its offsite tutoring program that operates through the Palm Pilots or through telephones.
Read and Succeed program director Edrian Walker said in an e-mail that offering tutoring through telephone calls and Palm Pilots keeps students interested and is "research-based and innovative."
It doesn't matter what tutoring businesses and schools consider to be a good program, it's parental opinion that matters right now, Cummings said.
"The providers are able to market themselves," he said. "The bottom line is, it's a parent choice."
Monday, May 29, 2006
Got Principal Shortage? Call Best, Paige, and Lyon
The NY Times Editorial page reported on 5/27 that over the last five years, more than half have of the city's principals have left their jobs. According to the Times, "A city system that once viewed educators with even 10 years' experience as too green to lead a school has grown increasingly dependent on young people — some still in their 20's — who have spent relatively little time in the school system." I imagine similar situations exist in most urban school districts. In desperate times, people do desperate things.
According to a story from today's Dallas Morning News, entrepreneur Randy "I Don't Know Anything About Education, But I Try to Hire People Who Are Respected" Best and former Secretary of Education Rod "The NEA Is a Terrorist Organization and Let Me Tell You About My Latest Educational Miracle" Paige and Reid "I've Never Met a College of Education I Didn't Want to Blow Up" Lyon have joined forces to form ACE, The American College of Education. Looks like our prayers for more qualified principals have been answered. ACE is starting off in Chicago. But you can bet your boots they're licking their chops to penetrate the nation's largest educational market in NYC. In desperate times, people do desperate things.
A big bear hug to Best, Paige, and Lyon for working a deal in Chicago that allows them to use public school classrooms for their for-profit venture. I love the smell of tax-payer financed public space going to private corporations. It smells like . . . profit margins. ACE expects to be generating $4.6 million in revenues annually by 2009. And it expects a profit margin of around 21 percent.
A big shout out to Lyon for upbraiding professors in colleges of education who teach things that do not synch with his . . . I mean the NRP's insistence that phonics-heavy instruction is the way to go. You can bet that none of the ACE employees will be so brazen as to question Lyon's roar.
Dr. Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University, which is a part-owner of ACE, said ACE's standardization is an interesting alternative to traditional academic freedom.
"Standardization is an interesting alternative to freedom." Orwell could not have said it better himself.
Yes, Reid. There is a knowable truth out there. And, gosh darn it, we're gonna teach it . . . whether they like it or not.
According to a story from today's Dallas Morning News, entrepreneur Randy "I Don't Know Anything About Education, But I Try to Hire People Who Are Respected" Best and former Secretary of Education Rod "The NEA Is a Terrorist Organization and Let Me Tell You About My Latest Educational Miracle" Paige and Reid "I've Never Met a College of Education I Didn't Want to Blow Up" Lyon have joined forces to form ACE, The American College of Education. Looks like our prayers for more qualified principals have been answered. ACE is starting off in Chicago. But you can bet your boots they're licking their chops to penetrate the nation's largest educational market in NYC. In desperate times, people do desperate things.
A big bear hug to Best, Paige, and Lyon for working a deal in Chicago that allows them to use public school classrooms for their for-profit venture. I love the smell of tax-payer financed public space going to private corporations. It smells like . . . profit margins. ACE expects to be generating $4.6 million in revenues annually by 2009. And it expects a profit margin of around 21 percent.
A big shout out to Lyon for upbraiding professors in colleges of education who teach things that do not synch with his . . . I mean the NRP's insistence that phonics-heavy instruction is the way to go. You can bet that none of the ACE employees will be so brazen as to question Lyon's roar.
Dr. Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University, which is a part-owner of ACE, said ACE's standardization is an interesting alternative to traditional academic freedom.
"Standardization is an interesting alternative to freedom." Orwell could not have said it better himself.
Yes, Reid. There is a knowable truth out there. And, gosh darn it, we're gonna teach it . . . whether they like it or not.
How do we prepare our young?
We're not prepping the kiddies well enough. What, then, do our Manufacturing Brethren and Business Roundtable Colleagues suggest we do?
According to the 2005 "Skills Gap Report," sponsored by The National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute, and Deloitte Consulting, nearly half of current employees had inadequate basic employability skills, such as attendance, timeliness, and work ethic. Forty-six percent reported inadequate problem-solving skills, and 36 percent pointed to insufficient reading, writing, and communication skills.
Judging from the The National Association of Manufacturers' 2006 "Pro-Growth, Pro-Manufacturing Agenda," it seems that our Manufacturing Cousins have interests other than deriding public schools. For example, they understandably crow that "total manufacturing output and productivity are at record levels, capital investment is rising, and product quality has never been higher." Yet they also express concern that "U.S. manufacturers face rising production costs and intense foreign competition" and warn that without policies to help bring costs under control, "manufacturers will be stuck in a cost-price squeeze that slows growth and job creation and impedes our ability to prevail against unprecedented global competition."
This is indeed cause for concern. So what, then, do our Manufacturing Brethren urge us to do? Aside from training students how to show up for work, show up for work on time, and work really hard and really well and enjoy working really hard and really well, our cousins urge us to do the following:
Another poll last year sponsored by the Business Roundtable found that 62 percent of the public thought public high schools were not doing a good job “adequately preparing graduates to meet the demands they will face in college and the world of work.” Last time I checked, the demands of college are as follows:
Here's a list of members of the Business Roundtable. And who is there? Why it's my friend E. Neville Isdell from the child-friendly Coca-Cola Company. What magic sweet liquid candy syrup they make for those precious little ones! No wonder they are so concerned with children!
And who is this? Why it's my good buddy Peter R. Dolan from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. What a wonderful drug they make -- ABILIFY -- a prescription medicine indicated for
According to the 2005 "Skills Gap Report," sponsored by The National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute, and Deloitte Consulting, nearly half of current employees had inadequate basic employability skills, such as attendance, timeliness, and work ethic. Forty-six percent reported inadequate problem-solving skills, and 36 percent pointed to insufficient reading, writing, and communication skills.
Judging from the The National Association of Manufacturers' 2006 "Pro-Growth, Pro-Manufacturing Agenda," it seems that our Manufacturing Cousins have interests other than deriding public schools. For example, they understandably crow that "total manufacturing output and productivity are at record levels, capital investment is rising, and product quality has never been higher." Yet they also express concern that "U.S. manufacturers face rising production costs and intense foreign competition" and warn that without policies to help bring costs under control, "manufacturers will be stuck in a cost-price squeeze that slows growth and job creation and impedes our ability to prevail against unprecedented global competition."
This is indeed cause for concern. So what, then, do our Manufacturing Brethren urge us to do? Aside from training students how to show up for work, show up for work on time, and work really hard and really well and enjoy working really hard and really well, our cousins urge us to do the following:
- drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to be rid of those pesky moose
- take away the rights of indivduals to bring lawsuits involving asbestos and medical litigation because these lawsuits are, by definition, frivolous
- encourage the growth of business-oriented options for health care such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) so that healthcare is for the privileged, not the sick
- support the President's Clear Skies initiative so that we will have more pollutants to inhale
Another poll last year sponsored by the Business Roundtable found that 62 percent of the public thought public high schools were not doing a good job “adequately preparing graduates to meet the demands they will face in college and the world of work.” Last time I checked, the demands of college are as follows:
- willingness to amass colossal debt
- willingness to attend lecture-driven courses with 400 or more other students
- capacity to sit passively and take notes for hours
- ability to accurately guess what will be on the test or quiz and then study the night before to engorge the short-term memory on those items which are most likely to be on the test or quiz
- ability to fully purge short-term memory during the test or quiz
- capacity to forget what was studied for the test or quiz
- capacity to manage time and assignments in order to do the least amount of work possible
- ability to binge drink on the weekends (a new study, which will be published in the June 2006 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, indicates that almost 30 percent of all freshmen regularly drink two times the amount of alcohol that defines traditional binge drinking)
- tendency to view college as a means to acquire a high-paying job
- cultivated interest in material acquisition and consumption, with a special emphasis on 42" plasma screen TV's and Hummers
Here's a list of members of the Business Roundtable. And who is there? Why it's my friend E. Neville Isdell from the child-friendly Coca-Cola Company. What magic sweet liquid candy syrup they make for those precious little ones! No wonder they are so concerned with children!
And who is this? Why it's my good buddy Peter R. Dolan from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. What a wonderful drug they make -- ABILIFY -- a prescription medicine indicated for
- the treatment of acute manic and mixed episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder,
- maintaining efficacy in patients with bipolar disorder with a recent manic or mixed episode who had been stabilized and then maintained for at least 6 weeks.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
More test-cheating proof found (but nobody cares)
Roddy Stinson
San Antonio Express-News
2006-05-28
More test-cheating proof found (but nobody cares)
Cynicism is the predominant reaction to the news that Texas schools cheat on high stakes tests.
by Roddy Stinson
An analysis of student answer sheets from the spring 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills found evidence of "irregularities" (commonly known as "cheating") in 702 of the state's public school classrooms.
Not that anybody cares.
The months-long analysis was conducted by Caveon, a first-class, Utah-based firm that specializes in test security.
Not that anyone is impressed.
The expert analysts found testing irregularities in 609 of the state's 7,112 public schools.
Not that this caused any concern in Austin.
The yawning response to the findings was pretty well summed up by the low-key headline on the Associated Press report of the Caveon analysis buried on Page 5B of last Wednesday's Express-News: "Unusual results on TAKS raise suspicions; State officials dispute that the findings are evidence of cheating."
In an official "Response to the Caveon Report" released by the Texas Education Agency last week, the state's highest education muck-a-mucks advised:
"Caution is warranted about how much action should be considered based on this single report."
Translation for readers who aren't familiar with the education establishment's eternal, see-no-evil response to reports of standardized-test cheating:
"We will read it, file it and hope everybody soon forgets it."
Get used to it, ladies and gents. Cheating will forever be tolerated in Texas public schools. And any official response will be accompanied by winks and nods that cheaters will easily understand as permission to continue their "irregular" ways.
(If you're curious about what falls under the heading of "irregular," the analysts made their judgments on the basis of (a) similar student test responses, (b) unusually high increases in scores, (c) multiple marks or erasures and (d) aberrant response patterns.)
The establishment's current wink-and-nod leader, Commissioner of Education Shirley J. Neeley, downplayed the latest cheating numbers and, quite incredibly, used the release of the Caveon report to pooh-pooh previous similar findings by a Dallas Morning News investigation.
Neeley: "Last year, one newspaper accused 400 schools of having suspicious scores and essentially placing (sic) a scarlet 'C' for cheating on the schools. Ultimately, wrongdoing was found at only a handful of those schools, but the damage to their reputation was done."
What Commissioner Neeley conveniently failed to mention: The schools with "suspicious scores" were not cleared of wrongdoing by any outside, independent and objective investigators, but by officials within the "suspicious" districts who faced negative consequences if they confirmed the cheating!
Now a year later, an outside, independent and objective study by a highly qualified test-security firm has found ... not 400 schools ... not 500 schools ... but 609 schools in which cheating likely occurred. And what is Neeley's response?
She throws an evil-newspaper red herring into the analytical mix, knowing that the more confusion she creates the quicker the Caveon report will be forgotten.
And if that isn't enough to ruin your Memorial Day weekend, lambkins, put this in your taxpayer pipe and smoke it ...
From Page 19 of the Caveon report:
"Because the tests of hypotheses in the analysis of schools and classrooms are very conservative, it is possible that testing irregularities in a few schools and classrooms have not been identified in this report."
Translation: 609 schools and 702 classrooms are MINIMUM numbers.
Caveon nailed only the classrooms where flagrant cheating occurred. Subtle cheating flew under the analytical radar.
Not that any of this matters.
I saved my favorite wink-and-nod dodge for last:
In their response to the Caveon report, Texas Education Agency officials said that if a school is identified as having statistical test "anomalies" and is also named in an "irregularity report" from some other source, the double black eye "might warrant further investigation."
Boy, that should scare the bejabbers out of the state's sneering, snickering cheats.
San Antonio Express-News
2006-05-28
More test-cheating proof found (but nobody cares)
Cynicism is the predominant reaction to the news that Texas schools cheat on high stakes tests.
by Roddy Stinson
An analysis of student answer sheets from the spring 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills found evidence of "irregularities" (commonly known as "cheating") in 702 of the state's public school classrooms.
Not that anybody cares.
The months-long analysis was conducted by Caveon, a first-class, Utah-based firm that specializes in test security.
Not that anyone is impressed.
The expert analysts found testing irregularities in 609 of the state's 7,112 public schools.
Not that this caused any concern in Austin.
The yawning response to the findings was pretty well summed up by the low-key headline on the Associated Press report of the Caveon analysis buried on Page 5B of last Wednesday's Express-News: "Unusual results on TAKS raise suspicions; State officials dispute that the findings are evidence of cheating."
In an official "Response to the Caveon Report" released by the Texas Education Agency last week, the state's highest education muck-a-mucks advised:
"Caution is warranted about how much action should be considered based on this single report."
Translation for readers who aren't familiar with the education establishment's eternal, see-no-evil response to reports of standardized-test cheating:
"We will read it, file it and hope everybody soon forgets it."
Get used to it, ladies and gents. Cheating will forever be tolerated in Texas public schools. And any official response will be accompanied by winks and nods that cheaters will easily understand as permission to continue their "irregular" ways.
(If you're curious about what falls under the heading of "irregular," the analysts made their judgments on the basis of (a) similar student test responses, (b) unusually high increases in scores, (c) multiple marks or erasures and (d) aberrant response patterns.)
The establishment's current wink-and-nod leader, Commissioner of Education Shirley J. Neeley, downplayed the latest cheating numbers and, quite incredibly, used the release of the Caveon report to pooh-pooh previous similar findings by a Dallas Morning News investigation.
Neeley: "Last year, one newspaper accused 400 schools of having suspicious scores and essentially placing (sic) a scarlet 'C' for cheating on the schools. Ultimately, wrongdoing was found at only a handful of those schools, but the damage to their reputation was done."
What Commissioner Neeley conveniently failed to mention: The schools with "suspicious scores" were not cleared of wrongdoing by any outside, independent and objective investigators, but by officials within the "suspicious" districts who faced negative consequences if they confirmed the cheating!
Now a year later, an outside, independent and objective study by a highly qualified test-security firm has found ... not 400 schools ... not 500 schools ... but 609 schools in which cheating likely occurred. And what is Neeley's response?
She throws an evil-newspaper red herring into the analytical mix, knowing that the more confusion she creates the quicker the Caveon report will be forgotten.
And if that isn't enough to ruin your Memorial Day weekend, lambkins, put this in your taxpayer pipe and smoke it ...
From Page 19 of the Caveon report:
"Because the tests of hypotheses in the analysis of schools and classrooms are very conservative, it is possible that testing irregularities in a few schools and classrooms have not been identified in this report."
Translation: 609 schools and 702 classrooms are MINIMUM numbers.
Caveon nailed only the classrooms where flagrant cheating occurred. Subtle cheating flew under the analytical radar.
Not that any of this matters.
I saved my favorite wink-and-nod dodge for last:
In their response to the Caveon report, Texas Education Agency officials said that if a school is identified as having statistical test "anomalies" and is also named in an "irregularity report" from some other source, the double black eye "might warrant further investigation."
Boy, that should scare the bejabbers out of the state's sneering, snickering cheats.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Principals Leaving New York City in Droves
NY Times Editorial, 5/27/06
The NY Times's Elissa Gootman reported recently that New York's most experienced principals have been fleeing the system in alarming numbers. Over the last five years, more than half have left their jobs. Most retired, but union statistics — which don't include detailed reasons for leaving — show that more than 200 left for reasons "other than retirement." As a result, a city system that once viewed educators with even 10 years' experience as too green to lead a school has grown increasingly dependent on young people — some still in their 20's — who have spent relatively little time in the school system.
Joel Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, invokes corporate metaphors about fresh blood when asked about the turnover. He admits losing some principals whom he would rather have kept. But he attributes the exodus to the normal process of retirement and the fear among some principals of being held more closely accountable for how their schools are run. The principals' union, for its part, says that some people have left the job because they have not been given enough administrative help to meet their new responsibilities.
The NY Times's Elissa Gootman reported recently that New York's most experienced principals have been fleeing the system in alarming numbers. Over the last five years, more than half have left their jobs. Most retired, but union statistics — which don't include detailed reasons for leaving — show that more than 200 left for reasons "other than retirement." As a result, a city system that once viewed educators with even 10 years' experience as too green to lead a school has grown increasingly dependent on young people — some still in their 20's — who have spent relatively little time in the school system.
Joel Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, invokes corporate metaphors about fresh blood when asked about the turnover. He admits losing some principals whom he would rather have kept. But he attributes the exodus to the normal process of retirement and the fear among some principals of being held more closely accountable for how their schools are run. The principals' union, for its part, says that some people have left the job because they have not been given enough administrative help to meet their new responsibilities.
Charter Schools in Chicago and St. Louis
George Schmidt, the editor of the educational watchdog newspaper Substance, contributed this to the Assessment Reform Network listserv today.
----------
In Chicago, zero percent of charter schools are unionized. The number of charter schools here is now over 40 -- despite a cap in Illinois law that says there should be no more than 30! -- expanding almost every month under Mayor Daley's "Renaissance 2010" plan. Since Daley announced "Renaissance 2010" in July 2004, there has been an unprecedented attack on public schools with "low" test scores, scores of school closings, and dozens of "conversions" to charter schools. In effect, the city is engaged in a massive attack on "low performing" public schools using the charter schools as the alternative. Thousands of children in Chicago have already been ruined by the process, but because almost all Chicago researchers (and community organizations) are now either employees or contractors of the Board of Education, there is little or no organized critique of this.
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Teachers at the Edison-run Confluence Academy in inner-city St. Louis are employees of Edison, not the school district. Further, the teachers are not union members. The board member who led me on the tour said that one of the unions could come in and try to organize, "But there would be no reason for anyone to join because all the teachers, at least the ones I talk to, are all really happy here." Clearly the only thing that unions are good for is serving unhappy people. And, since there are no unhappy people at Confluence, there is no need for a union. The Board member’s confident assertion that there were no unhappy people at the school left me wondering about the fate of a teacher who actually does become unhappy with the working conditions at the school. Without a union, there is no grievance process, no bargaining process, and no job security. Absent these basic processes and protections, it would appear that job satisfaction is not so much an option as a requirement.
----------
In Chicago, zero percent of charter schools are unionized. The number of charter schools here is now over 40 -- despite a cap in Illinois law that says there should be no more than 30! -- expanding almost every month under Mayor Daley's "Renaissance 2010" plan. Since Daley announced "Renaissance 2010" in July 2004, there has been an unprecedented attack on public schools with "low" test scores, scores of school closings, and dozens of "conversions" to charter schools. In effect, the city is engaged in a massive attack on "low performing" public schools using the charter schools as the alternative. Thousands of children in Chicago have already been ruined by the process, but because almost all Chicago researchers (and community organizations) are now either employees or contractors of the Board of Education, there is little or no organized critique of this.
----------
Teachers at the Edison-run Confluence Academy in inner-city St. Louis are employees of Edison, not the school district. Further, the teachers are not union members. The board member who led me on the tour said that one of the unions could come in and try to organize, "But there would be no reason for anyone to join because all the teachers, at least the ones I talk to, are all really happy here." Clearly the only thing that unions are good for is serving unhappy people. And, since there are no unhappy people at Confluence, there is no need for a union. The Board member’s confident assertion that there were no unhappy people at the school left me wondering about the fate of a teacher who actually does become unhappy with the working conditions at the school. Without a union, there is no grievance process, no bargaining process, and no job security. Absent these basic processes and protections, it would appear that job satisfaction is not so much an option as a requirement.
Friday, May 26, 2006
NRP, Bush, and Lyon
Is there a connection between George W. Bush and the NRP?
While it's true that the NRP submitted its final report in April 2000 (prior to Bush's election in November 2000), a 4/23/01 report from The Wall Street Journal documents the "long and fruitful, if little-noticed, relationship" between Bush and Lyon. According to the article, while Bush was governor of Texas, Lyon helped design and sell Bush's plan to revamp how public-school students were taught to read. "As president, Mr. Bush is turning to his phonics mentor to expand the program nationally." Mr. Lyon is "the reading guru," Mr. Bush told a meeting of business leaders in January 2001. According to the same aricle, then Governor Bush's aides discovered that an NIH-funded researcher (Lyon) was studying Houston school children and concluding that phonics instruction was effective. In 1995, the Texas governor invited Mr. Lyon to Austin to explain his findings. Bush aides picked his brain for ideas they could use in the governor's reading initiative, including early and regular testing, teacher retraining and stiff state standards.
And this little tid-bit from The NIH Record:
"Bush, a booming speaker with a light and convivial touch in such an informal setting, recounted his relationship with Lyon, whom he affectionately called "Reid-o." "I've known Reid for a long time," Bush began. He had been worried, back in 1996 as governor of Texas, about how public schools were failing in their mission to teach children how to read. He learned about Lyon's work in a field NIH has funded since the mid-1960's and told his staff, "Get him down here. We've had a great relationship ever since."
It's a no-brainer that Reid Lyon, a guy that worked for the NICHD (the agency that sponsored the NRP), a guy that served as Bush's "reading guru" while Bush was governor of Texas, and a guy that preaches "explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, guided repeated reading to improve reading fluency, and direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies" may have had something to do with the fact that the NRP's recommendations were largely copied and pasted into NCLB's Reading First program.
Here's the scoop.
On April 13, 2000, the NRP concluded its work and submitted its final report, "The Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read," at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. (http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/NRPAbout/about_nrp.htm)
While the NRP was busy cooking data from 1998 to 2000, a guy named George W. Bush was the governor of Texas. Meanwhile, a guy named Reid Lyon had been serving since 1994 as Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institute of Health (NIH). In this position, he was responsible for the direction, development, and management of research programs in reading development, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, behavioral pediatrics, language and attention disorders, and human learning and learning disorders.
In 1997, Congress asked the NICHD to convene a national panel to assess the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read. This became the NRP, the National Reading Panel.
According to a 4/23/01 report from The Wall Street Journal, Bush and Lyon had a "long and fruitful, if little-noticed, relationship." According to the article, while Bush was governor of Texas, Lyon helped design and sell Bush's plan to revamp how public-school students were taught to read. "As president, Mr. Bush is turning to his phonics mentor to expand the program nationally." Mr. Lyon is "the reading guru," Mr. Bush told a meeting of business leaders in January 2001. According to the article, "At the White House's request, Mr. Lyon is recruiting allies for top positions at the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. He is working with Republican congressional aides to craft Mr. Bush's reading initiative, priced at $5 billion over five years, so there are ample funds for phonics instruction. He is also setting up a preschool-research program to figure out the best way to add phonics skills to Head Start instruction."
Lyon testified on March 8, 2001 to the Subcommittee on Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives:
"On the basis of a thorough evidence-based review of the reading research literature that met rigorous scientific standards, the National Reading Panel (NRP), convened by the NICHD and the Department of Education, found that intervention programs that provided systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, guided repeated reading to improve reading fluency, and direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies were significantly more effective than approaches that were less explicit and less focused on the reading skills to be taught (e.g., approaches that emphasize incidental learning of basic reading skills). The NRP found that children as young as four years of age benefited from instruction in phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle when the instruction was presented in an interesting and entertaining, albeit systematic manner."
As President, Bush asked Lyon to serve as one of his education advisers. Lyon was directly involved in the development of Bush's Reading First program and is considered to be one of its primary architects.
As Jerry Coles argues in Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation, and Lies (2003, Heinemann), the NRP Report was basically copied and pasted into the reading section of the NCLB legislation in 2001.
The same year that Bush was elected governor (1994), a guy named Rod Paige became superintendent of the Houston school district. Bush was elected President and sworn in on January 20, 2001. The next day, Rod Paige was sworn in as the 7th U.S. Secretary of Education. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/paige-bio.html)
Rod Paige was largely credited with what has become known as "the Houston miracle." In 2001, he was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators. Paige made the Houston school district the first school district in the state to institute performance contracts modeled on those in the private sector, whereby senior staff members' continued employment with the district was based on their performance. Houston became the model for NCLB.
It was later revealed that the "miracle" in Houston was less on the order of water into wine and more on the order of good old fashioned book cooking.
While in charge of the Houston schools, Paige relied exclusively on McGraw-Hill's Open Court, a heavily scripted phonics program, to effect the Houston miracle. According to Paige, "Reading First says that teaching reading is a science, and we've been acting like it's an art." (interview with John Merrow)
From the interview with Merrow:
JOHN MERROW: Are you telling states what methods they must use?
ROD PAIGE: Absolutely not.
JOHN MERROW: Aren't there approved methods?
ROD PAIGE: There are approved principles. There are scientific principles.
JOHN MERROW: Are there approved programs?
ROD PAIGE: There are not approved programs. There are approved principles.
JOHN MERROW: But only a handful of programs fulfill the new federal requirements, and so states are making sure to mention those programs in their applications. To qualify for Reading First money in Michigan, schools must use one of these five programs. Houghton-Mifflin, Harcourt, Open Court SRA, Macmillan McGraw Hill, or Scott Foresman.
Who is the biggest phonics publisher? McGraw-Hill, the publisher of Open Court. It was McGraw-Hill representatives and authors who dominated Gov. George W. Bush's Texas reading advisory board. No surprise that Open Court was the program of choice in Texas. McGraw-Hill's connections to the National Reading Panel's report is no less transparent: Widemeyer Communications, the Washington PR firm that handled the promotion of Open Court in Texas, was also the firm hired to promote the NRP's report, including the writing of its Introduction, Summary, and video, the three parts that have taken the most flack from critics. (http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/whatsnu_bush-mcgraw.html)
Open Court's crown jewel? Its "success" in the Houston Independent School District.
While it's true that the NRP submitted its final report in April 2000 (prior to Bush's election in November 2000), a 4/23/01 report from The Wall Street Journal documents the "long and fruitful, if little-noticed, relationship" between Bush and Lyon. According to the article, while Bush was governor of Texas, Lyon helped design and sell Bush's plan to revamp how public-school students were taught to read. "As president, Mr. Bush is turning to his phonics mentor to expand the program nationally." Mr. Lyon is "the reading guru," Mr. Bush told a meeting of business leaders in January 2001. According to the same aricle, then Governor Bush's aides discovered that an NIH-funded researcher (Lyon) was studying Houston school children and concluding that phonics instruction was effective. In 1995, the Texas governor invited Mr. Lyon to Austin to explain his findings. Bush aides picked his brain for ideas they could use in the governor's reading initiative, including early and regular testing, teacher retraining and stiff state standards.
And this little tid-bit from The NIH Record:
"Bush, a booming speaker with a light and convivial touch in such an informal setting, recounted his relationship with Lyon, whom he affectionately called "Reid-o." "I've known Reid for a long time," Bush began. He had been worried, back in 1996 as governor of Texas, about how public schools were failing in their mission to teach children how to read. He learned about Lyon's work in a field NIH has funded since the mid-1960's and told his staff, "Get him down here. We've had a great relationship ever since."
It's a no-brainer that Reid Lyon, a guy that worked for the NICHD (the agency that sponsored the NRP), a guy that served as Bush's "reading guru" while Bush was governor of Texas, and a guy that preaches "explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, guided repeated reading to improve reading fluency, and direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies" may have had something to do with the fact that the NRP's recommendations were largely copied and pasted into NCLB's Reading First program.
Here's the scoop.
On April 13, 2000, the NRP concluded its work and submitted its final report, "The Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read," at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. (http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/NRPAbout/about_nrp.htm)
While the NRP was busy cooking data from 1998 to 2000, a guy named George W. Bush was the governor of Texas. Meanwhile, a guy named Reid Lyon had been serving since 1994 as Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institute of Health (NIH). In this position, he was responsible for the direction, development, and management of research programs in reading development, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, behavioral pediatrics, language and attention disorders, and human learning and learning disorders.
In 1997, Congress asked the NICHD to convene a national panel to assess the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read. This became the NRP, the National Reading Panel.
According to a 4/23/01 report from The Wall Street Journal, Bush and Lyon had a "long and fruitful, if little-noticed, relationship." According to the article, while Bush was governor of Texas, Lyon helped design and sell Bush's plan to revamp how public-school students were taught to read. "As president, Mr. Bush is turning to his phonics mentor to expand the program nationally." Mr. Lyon is "the reading guru," Mr. Bush told a meeting of business leaders in January 2001. According to the article, "At the White House's request, Mr. Lyon is recruiting allies for top positions at the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. He is working with Republican congressional aides to craft Mr. Bush's reading initiative, priced at $5 billion over five years, so there are ample funds for phonics instruction. He is also setting up a preschool-research program to figure out the best way to add phonics skills to Head Start instruction."
Lyon testified on March 8, 2001 to the Subcommittee on Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives:
"On the basis of a thorough evidence-based review of the reading research literature that met rigorous scientific standards, the National Reading Panel (NRP), convened by the NICHD and the Department of Education, found that intervention programs that provided systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, guided repeated reading to improve reading fluency, and direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies were significantly more effective than approaches that were less explicit and less focused on the reading skills to be taught (e.g., approaches that emphasize incidental learning of basic reading skills). The NRP found that children as young as four years of age benefited from instruction in phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle when the instruction was presented in an interesting and entertaining, albeit systematic manner."
As President, Bush asked Lyon to serve as one of his education advisers. Lyon was directly involved in the development of Bush's Reading First program and is considered to be one of its primary architects.
As Jerry Coles argues in Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation, and Lies (2003, Heinemann), the NRP Report was basically copied and pasted into the reading section of the NCLB legislation in 2001.
The same year that Bush was elected governor (1994), a guy named Rod Paige became superintendent of the Houston school district. Bush was elected President and sworn in on January 20, 2001. The next day, Rod Paige was sworn in as the 7th U.S. Secretary of Education. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/paige-bio.html)
Rod Paige was largely credited with what has become known as "the Houston miracle." In 2001, he was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators. Paige made the Houston school district the first school district in the state to institute performance contracts modeled on those in the private sector, whereby senior staff members' continued employment with the district was based on their performance. Houston became the model for NCLB.
It was later revealed that the "miracle" in Houston was less on the order of water into wine and more on the order of good old fashioned book cooking.
While in charge of the Houston schools, Paige relied exclusively on McGraw-Hill's Open Court, a heavily scripted phonics program, to effect the Houston miracle. According to Paige, "Reading First says that teaching reading is a science, and we've been acting like it's an art." (interview with John Merrow)
From the interview with Merrow:
JOHN MERROW: Are you telling states what methods they must use?
ROD PAIGE: Absolutely not.
JOHN MERROW: Aren't there approved methods?
ROD PAIGE: There are approved principles. There are scientific principles.
JOHN MERROW: Are there approved programs?
ROD PAIGE: There are not approved programs. There are approved principles.
JOHN MERROW: But only a handful of programs fulfill the new federal requirements, and so states are making sure to mention those programs in their applications. To qualify for Reading First money in Michigan, schools must use one of these five programs. Houghton-Mifflin, Harcourt, Open Court SRA, Macmillan McGraw Hill, or Scott Foresman.
Who is the biggest phonics publisher? McGraw-Hill, the publisher of Open Court. It was McGraw-Hill representatives and authors who dominated Gov. George W. Bush's Texas reading advisory board. No surprise that Open Court was the program of choice in Texas. McGraw-Hill's connections to the National Reading Panel's report is no less transparent: Widemeyer Communications, the Washington PR firm that handled the promotion of Open Court in Texas, was also the firm hired to promote the NRP's report, including the writing of its Introduction, Summary, and video, the three parts that have taken the most flack from critics. (http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/whatsnu_bush-mcgraw.html)
Open Court's crown jewel? Its "success" in the Houston Independent School District.
Teach for America's popularity grows
A record 19,000 people – roughly a 10 percent jump from the previous year – applied this academic year to Teach for America, the program that places students from top colleges in classrooms in disadvantaged school districts for a two-year assignment. The program allows the students to begin teaching just months after graduation while they work toward their teaching certificate, instead of having to wait a year or more to get into the classroom. Teach For America accepted about 3,300 students this spring — fewer than one in five of those who applied — and roughly 2,400 are expected to begin teaching in the fall, according to Todd McGovern, a Teach For America spokesman.
http://insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2006/05/26/teach
---
TFA founder Wendy Kopp gave a speech in April at Washington University in St. Louis.
Someone from the audience asked Kopp about TFA's role in affecting change in the socioeconomic domains that contribute to the achievement gap. She said that TFA stays out of those ideological debates and focuses on its core competency -- finding and developing the educational leaders of the future. But being silent on the issue of other factors that contribute to the achievement gap is not the same as staying out of ideological debates on the issue; a widely-respected organization such as TFA could make meaningful, powerful, substantive contributions to the national conversation regarding educational reform. However, because TFA (or perhaps just Kopp representing TFA) does not make these contributions, it tacitly contributes to the notion that the achievement gap can be closed by attracting, training, and sustaining great teachers, i.e., TFA's mission.
I respect and admire TFA on many levels, but Kopp's talk underscored the extent to which TFA unwittingly plays into the hands of conservative ideologues who want to shirk the role of federal, state, and local governments in closing the achievement gap and make educational reform exclusively about school reform. While reforming schools is absolutely crucial, we have to do more than just find, train, support, and sustain great teachers.
TFA is taking an extraordinarily powerful and public -- albeit implicit -- stand on how to close the educational achievement gap. I know that TFA staff and all the incredibly dedicated teachers and alums from TFA are working their asses off to make a difference. I also know that, from talking to my colleagues in the public education advocacy community, TFA teachers are consistently spoken about in glowing terms.
The irony here, however, is that each successful TFA teacher builds this consensus: all teachers have to do is work harder, longer, better, and more passionately on behalf of children, and we can close the educational achievement gap ourselves. In the speech at Washington University, Kopp embodied and testified to this notion. To illustrate this point, she told the story of a TFA teacher named Aurora. Aurora was from a low-resource background. She was placed in a Houston 4th grade classroom. She discovered that the students were nowhere near the 4th grade proficiency benchmarks, so she got the key to the school from the janitor and came in early and stayed late every day. She asked the parents to let the students stay late each day. She also had her students come in on Saturdays. At the end of the year, the students all passed the 4th grade test.
A moving story, indeed. But what does this suggest?
1) academic success depends on teachers working much longer hours than they already do - while this might be reasonable to ask of young, ambitious, TFA teachers who are single, unmarried, and have no kids, it is not reasonable to ask this of older teachers who are married, have kids, and who must struggle in balancing work/life commitments. Not only is it not reasonable, but it is not practical. In other words, it won't work. Because it won't work, it won't scale. Because it won't scale, the most it can possibly hope to achieve is modest, limited success in a certain number of schools populated with young, ambitious, 20-something TFA teachers.
To make this point, look at the issue that KIPP schools are faced with right now. In a recent interview, KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg said, "(I)t's getting harder to find the teachers that are already at the master level." ( source - http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/feinberg.html ) KIPP seems to thrive on the energy of its young, ambitious, mostly white teachers who are genuinely committed to helping poor kids of color. I take nothing away from what the founders of KIPP are committed to and what they want. I admire them, like I admire many people who actually want to do something about social justice and closing the achievement gap. But while Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg might be willing to work 10 hour days for 5 days, 5 hours more on Saturdays, and 1 extra month in the summer, I doubt that many others will. It's no coincidence that the majority of "KIPP'sters" are in their 20's, are single, and have no kids. Doing the right thing is noble work . . . until you hit 30. Or get married. Or have kids.
2) academic success depends on students working much longer hours than they already do - this troubles me because Kopp's story does not include details about what the students were actually doing in the classroom with Aurora. It's reasonable to assume that, because Aurora was committed to having the students pass the 4th grade test, that she spent her efforts focused on helping the students pass the test. But as I know from my Princeton Review days, test preparation and education are not the same thing. Did Aurora spend a lot of class time helping the 4th graders learn about the Declaration of Independence? Did she encourage the students to write poems and short stories? Did she ask them to do self-portraits using watercolor paints? I don't know. But I doubt it. What she probably did, like any good educator would do, was identify the discrete skills and tasks that were going to be tested in the state test and then made sure that her students were proficient in these areas. The "good news" at the end of Kopp's story was that all the students passed the test. But high test scores, as we know, are not necessarily indicative of better-educated students.
Therefore, the apparent success story that Kopp told is fraught with tension. But this tension did not get acknowledged (at least not by Kopp). Instead, it left the audience with this question: why can't all teachers be like Aurora?
George Bush and the supporters of NCLB ask the same question: why can't all teachers be like this? But instead of framing this like a rhetorical question, what if we really asked ourselves, "Why can't all teachers be like this?" As I said, not all teachers can be like this because not all teachers can devote this much time to their jobs. This is not because they are lazy or deficient. It's because they want to have lives that include something other than work. We wouldn't think of asking this of any other profession, yet it seems almost natural to expect teachers to work 60 to 80 hours per week. In fact, a lot of teachers already work this many hours. But where is this getting us?
So a model of success that is predicated on this workload virtually ensures that it cannot scale. But if it could scale, then becoming a teacher would not be all that different from entering a monastery, i.e., to become a teacher, you need to renounce all other connections to the world.
But I want teachers to be connected to the world. I want teachers to have lives outside the classroom. I want teachers to have kids. And I also want teachers to have time away from work so they can reflect on what they are doing and not be completely burned out by what they are doing.
But the most disturbing part of Kopp's story came at the end when she said that Aurora was now a student at Harvard's National Institute for Urban School Leaders. Kopp said, understandably quite proudly, that Aurora was on track to become the youngest graduate of the Institute ever. But this was no cause for celebration for me. Why not? Because if Aurora emerged from her own TFA experience convinced that all we need to do is have teachers work longer and harder and better, and all students need to do is work longer and harder and better, then she will be in a very powerful position to convince others that this is all we need to do. Her convictions are buttressed by the fact that she had done this herself, and that surely others could do this. So I'm afraid of Aurora's "success." If she is, in fact, put in charge of a large urban district, I can only imagine what might ensue.
http://insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2006/05/26/teach
---
TFA founder Wendy Kopp gave a speech in April at Washington University in St. Louis.
Someone from the audience asked Kopp about TFA's role in affecting change in the socioeconomic domains that contribute to the achievement gap. She said that TFA stays out of those ideological debates and focuses on its core competency -- finding and developing the educational leaders of the future. But being silent on the issue of other factors that contribute to the achievement gap is not the same as staying out of ideological debates on the issue; a widely-respected organization such as TFA could make meaningful, powerful, substantive contributions to the national conversation regarding educational reform. However, because TFA (or perhaps just Kopp representing TFA) does not make these contributions, it tacitly contributes to the notion that the achievement gap can be closed by attracting, training, and sustaining great teachers, i.e., TFA's mission.
I respect and admire TFA on many levels, but Kopp's talk underscored the extent to which TFA unwittingly plays into the hands of conservative ideologues who want to shirk the role of federal, state, and local governments in closing the achievement gap and make educational reform exclusively about school reform. While reforming schools is absolutely crucial, we have to do more than just find, train, support, and sustain great teachers.
TFA is taking an extraordinarily powerful and public -- albeit implicit -- stand on how to close the educational achievement gap. I know that TFA staff and all the incredibly dedicated teachers and alums from TFA are working their asses off to make a difference. I also know that, from talking to my colleagues in the public education advocacy community, TFA teachers are consistently spoken about in glowing terms.
The irony here, however, is that each successful TFA teacher builds this consensus: all teachers have to do is work harder, longer, better, and more passionately on behalf of children, and we can close the educational achievement gap ourselves. In the speech at Washington University, Kopp embodied and testified to this notion. To illustrate this point, she told the story of a TFA teacher named Aurora. Aurora was from a low-resource background. She was placed in a Houston 4th grade classroom. She discovered that the students were nowhere near the 4th grade proficiency benchmarks, so she got the key to the school from the janitor and came in early and stayed late every day. She asked the parents to let the students stay late each day. She also had her students come in on Saturdays. At the end of the year, the students all passed the 4th grade test.
A moving story, indeed. But what does this suggest?
1) academic success depends on teachers working much longer hours than they already do - while this might be reasonable to ask of young, ambitious, TFA teachers who are single, unmarried, and have no kids, it is not reasonable to ask this of older teachers who are married, have kids, and who must struggle in balancing work/life commitments. Not only is it not reasonable, but it is not practical. In other words, it won't work. Because it won't work, it won't scale. Because it won't scale, the most it can possibly hope to achieve is modest, limited success in a certain number of schools populated with young, ambitious, 20-something TFA teachers.
To make this point, look at the issue that KIPP schools are faced with right now. In a recent interview, KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg said, "(I)t's getting harder to find the teachers that are already at the master level." ( source - http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/feinberg.html ) KIPP seems to thrive on the energy of its young, ambitious, mostly white teachers who are genuinely committed to helping poor kids of color. I take nothing away from what the founders of KIPP are committed to and what they want. I admire them, like I admire many people who actually want to do something about social justice and closing the achievement gap. But while Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg might be willing to work 10 hour days for 5 days, 5 hours more on Saturdays, and 1 extra month in the summer, I doubt that many others will. It's no coincidence that the majority of "KIPP'sters" are in their 20's, are single, and have no kids. Doing the right thing is noble work . . . until you hit 30. Or get married. Or have kids.
2) academic success depends on students working much longer hours than they already do - this troubles me because Kopp's story does not include details about what the students were actually doing in the classroom with Aurora. It's reasonable to assume that, because Aurora was committed to having the students pass the 4th grade test, that she spent her efforts focused on helping the students pass the test. But as I know from my Princeton Review days, test preparation and education are not the same thing. Did Aurora spend a lot of class time helping the 4th graders learn about the Declaration of Independence? Did she encourage the students to write poems and short stories? Did she ask them to do self-portraits using watercolor paints? I don't know. But I doubt it. What she probably did, like any good educator would do, was identify the discrete skills and tasks that were going to be tested in the state test and then made sure that her students were proficient in these areas. The "good news" at the end of Kopp's story was that all the students passed the test. But high test scores, as we know, are not necessarily indicative of better-educated students.
Therefore, the apparent success story that Kopp told is fraught with tension. But this tension did not get acknowledged (at least not by Kopp). Instead, it left the audience with this question: why can't all teachers be like Aurora?
George Bush and the supporters of NCLB ask the same question: why can't all teachers be like this? But instead of framing this like a rhetorical question, what if we really asked ourselves, "Why can't all teachers be like this?" As I said, not all teachers can be like this because not all teachers can devote this much time to their jobs. This is not because they are lazy or deficient. It's because they want to have lives that include something other than work. We wouldn't think of asking this of any other profession, yet it seems almost natural to expect teachers to work 60 to 80 hours per week. In fact, a lot of teachers already work this many hours. But where is this getting us?
So a model of success that is predicated on this workload virtually ensures that it cannot scale. But if it could scale, then becoming a teacher would not be all that different from entering a monastery, i.e., to become a teacher, you need to renounce all other connections to the world.
But I want teachers to be connected to the world. I want teachers to have lives outside the classroom. I want teachers to have kids. And I also want teachers to have time away from work so they can reflect on what they are doing and not be completely burned out by what they are doing.
But the most disturbing part of Kopp's story came at the end when she said that Aurora was now a student at Harvard's National Institute for Urban School Leaders. Kopp said, understandably quite proudly, that Aurora was on track to become the youngest graduate of the Institute ever. But this was no cause for celebration for me. Why not? Because if Aurora emerged from her own TFA experience convinced that all we need to do is have teachers work longer and harder and better, and all students need to do is work longer and harder and better, then she will be in a very powerful position to convince others that this is all we need to do. Her convictions are buttressed by the fact that she had done this herself, and that surely others could do this. So I'm afraid of Aurora's "success." If she is, in fact, put in charge of a large urban district, I can only imagine what might ensue.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Privatizing Schools and Wars
More evidence of the virtues of privatizing key public functions. As with private SES (supplemental educational service) providers, there is absolutely no accountability.
Here's the link to the AP story. See below for excerpt.
---
U.S.-paid contractors accused of abuses in Iraq
By AP
LONDON -- The U.S. is riding roughshod over human rights by outsourcing key anti-terror work in Iraq to private contractors, who operate beyond Iraqi law and outside the military chain of command, Amnesty International said yesterday.
It called for tighter rules on the use of contractors in a statement released with its 2006 annual report detailing human rights violations in 150 countries around the world. The rights watchdog said contracting for military detention, security and intelligence operations fuelled violations.
"We're concerned about the use of private contractors in Iraq because it creates a legal black hole of responsibility and accountability," Amnesty's secretary-general, Irene Khan, told AP Television News.
"These contractors are protected from being prosecuted under Iraqi law, but they're not part of the U.S. military command. So when they commit crimes, or when they abuse human rights, they're accountable to no one." Few aspects of the multibillion-dollar U.S. contracting effort in Iraq have been disclosed.
Here's the link to the AP story. See below for excerpt.
---
U.S.-paid contractors accused of abuses in Iraq
By AP
LONDON -- The U.S. is riding roughshod over human rights by outsourcing key anti-terror work in Iraq to private contractors, who operate beyond Iraqi law and outside the military chain of command, Amnesty International said yesterday.
It called for tighter rules on the use of contractors in a statement released with its 2006 annual report detailing human rights violations in 150 countries around the world. The rights watchdog said contracting for military detention, security and intelligence operations fuelled violations.
"We're concerned about the use of private contractors in Iraq because it creates a legal black hole of responsibility and accountability," Amnesty's secretary-general, Irene Khan, told AP Television News.
"These contractors are protected from being prosecuted under Iraqi law, but they're not part of the U.S. military command. So when they commit crimes, or when they abuse human rights, they're accountable to no one." Few aspects of the multibillion-dollar U.S. contracting effort in Iraq have been disclosed.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Racial Discrimination in Test Scoring
Monty Neill, Executive Director of FairTest, posted this message to the Assessment Reform Network today. The skinny: what I posed as a series of troubling hypothetical questions turns out to be true. A minority kid who scores poorly on a test overall but who happens to answer a difficult question correctly will have this question invalidated if the high scoring students (invariably white and affluent) happen to answer this question incorrectly.
--
When the Texas TAAS test was taken to trial, one study introduced by plaintiffs was that the item selection on the TAAS used point biserial correlations. Those with too low correlation were not used. The upshot is that items which Person A got right but that people who generally got more items correct did not get right - such items were removed. This situation can have a racial etc dimenson (Person A is black or Latino ; those scoring higher tend to be white). The point was the use of this technology could (and in TX did) have a discriminatory impact. The judge agreed this was a correct finding, then proceeded to ignore the finding.
The technology is question was developed for NRTs. Its point is to be able to separate - discriminate among - test takers - be it to rank them on a curve from from first to 99th percentile or sort proficient from not-proficient as well as basic from not-basic. Note also that as tests need to sort, this means most questions that almost everyone gets right must be removed . . .
Subsequently, Walt Haney concluded from examining several states' test manuals (NY and MA, maybe others) that they were doing the same. He pointed out that this will make it unlikely if not impossible for all testtakers to score proficient. The states protested it was not true.
(T)his is the technology the industry has, so they use it.
--
When the Texas TAAS test was taken to trial, one study introduced by plaintiffs was that the item selection on the TAAS used point biserial correlations. Those with too low correlation were not used. The upshot is that items which Person A got right but that people who generally got more items correct did not get right - such items were removed. This situation can have a racial etc dimenson (Person A is black or Latino ; those scoring higher tend to be white). The point was the use of this technology could (and in TX did) have a discriminatory impact. The judge agreed this was a correct finding, then proceeded to ignore the finding.
The technology is question was developed for NRTs. Its point is to be able to separate - discriminate among - test takers - be it to rank them on a curve from from first to 99th percentile or sort proficient from not-proficient as well as basic from not-basic. Note also that as tests need to sort, this means most questions that almost everyone gets right must be removed . . .
Subsequently, Walt Haney concluded from examining several states' test manuals (NY and MA, maybe others) that they were doing the same. He pointed out that this will make it unlikely if not impossible for all testtakers to score proficient. The states protested it was not true.
(T)his is the technology the industry has, so they use it.
Dear Mr. President - Thanks!
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to write to thank you for what you've done for our country. While I quibble with many of your ideas -- your belief that threats and punishments are the way to improve schools, that invading, destroying, and occupying a sovereign nation is the way to help it achieve peace and democracy, that increasing air pollutants constitutes clear skies, and that logging 300-year-old trees is the way to achieve healthy forests -- there is one thing that you and I are completely aligned on: the need for less critical thinking in our nation's classrooms.
The National Reading Panel --- your hand-selected group of literacy experts -- makes the need for less critical thinking abundantly clear. As you know, the National Reading Panel had the nerve to use "research" and "analysis" to come to the conclusion that "phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers apply [decoding skills] to read text and to spell words." (quoted in Garan, Elaine. 2002. Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with the Truth. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH., p. 47; taken from the NRP Report of the Subgroups, Chapter 2, p. 116) But, thanks to those wonderful public relations people from Widemeyer Communications, the Washington PR firm hired by McGraw-Hill to promote Open Court in Texas and to write the Summary Booklet and produce the promotional video that explains the NRP's "research," phonics has become (once again!) The Next Big Thing.
See? People don't have time to read a 500 page report. That would require us to think. And to read! That's why it's so much better to have our reading and thinking done for us. After all, if you can't believe what a Washington-based PR firm hired by the biggest educational company in the world to promote its products tells you, then who can you believe? Like you, Mr. President, I read the front page. Let all those other lazy folks with too much time on their hands read the rest of the paper. You and I have much more important things to do!
But I know you, you sly old fox, you. You're just waiting for us to raise our hands in the back of the classroom and say, like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter, "Ooo! Ooo! Mr. President! Mr. President! There appears to be a discrepancy between what the NRP actually wrote and what right-wing pundits say the NRP wrote!" And you, the Firm Believer in Truth, would acknowledge us with a Cookie for Justice.
So, please forgive us for not raising our hands. Please understand that your teaching methods are so advanced that many of us have mistaken you for a dangerous ideological zealot.
I'd like to ask you for your advice, Mr. President. Where do you weigh in on the following?
1) Medical research that shows that up to one-third of clinical studies lead to conclusions that are later overturned, according to a recent paper in JAMA.
2) Fat is good for you.
No, it's bad for you.
No, it's good for you.
Some fats are better than others.
3) Echinacea helps colds.
No it doesn't.
4) Prostate cancer is best cured by surgery.
Prostate cancer is best cured by radiation.
5) Barry Bonds took steroids.
Barry Bonds did not take steroids.
6) Your administration broke the law under the NSA surveillance.
Your administration did not break the law under the NSA surveillance.
I know I might be out of line here, but something jumps out at me when I think about all these things. It appears that Truth is not so much about facts and evidence as it is about belief and hiring the right PR firm. What are your thoughts?
Goodness knows that to be able to address the issues listed above, you'd have to know about things like how medical research is conducted and how research is funded. You'd have to be able to examine arguments and evaluate the evidence. You'd have to have access to reputable sources.
But, thanks to you, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts have reduced the amount of instruction in history, social studies, and other non-tested subjects. Mercifully, our already over-burdened children won't have to think about issues like Truth vs. truth vs. evidence vs. belief. They have too many other important things to think about, like who is going to win American Idol and whether or not Tom Cruise is gay.
I heard some commie liberal quip recently, "Facts, like history, belong to the conquerors." I'm not sure what he meant, but it sounded a lot like the usual liberal whining we are so tired of.
Thank you for your service to our country.
Best wishes,
I wanted to write to thank you for what you've done for our country. While I quibble with many of your ideas -- your belief that threats and punishments are the way to improve schools, that invading, destroying, and occupying a sovereign nation is the way to help it achieve peace and democracy, that increasing air pollutants constitutes clear skies, and that logging 300-year-old trees is the way to achieve healthy forests -- there is one thing that you and I are completely aligned on: the need for less critical thinking in our nation's classrooms.
The National Reading Panel --- your hand-selected group of literacy experts -- makes the need for less critical thinking abundantly clear. As you know, the National Reading Panel had the nerve to use "research" and "analysis" to come to the conclusion that "phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers apply [decoding skills] to read text and to spell words." (quoted in Garan, Elaine. 2002. Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with the Truth. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH., p. 47; taken from the NRP Report of the Subgroups, Chapter 2, p. 116) But, thanks to those wonderful public relations people from Widemeyer Communications, the Washington PR firm hired by McGraw-Hill to promote Open Court in Texas and to write the Summary Booklet and produce the promotional video that explains the NRP's "research," phonics has become (once again!) The Next Big Thing.
See? People don't have time to read a 500 page report. That would require us to think. And to read! That's why it's so much better to have our reading and thinking done for us. After all, if you can't believe what a Washington-based PR firm hired by the biggest educational company in the world to promote its products tells you, then who can you believe? Like you, Mr. President, I read the front page. Let all those other lazy folks with too much time on their hands read the rest of the paper. You and I have much more important things to do!
But I know you, you sly old fox, you. You're just waiting for us to raise our hands in the back of the classroom and say, like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter, "Ooo! Ooo! Mr. President! Mr. President! There appears to be a discrepancy between what the NRP actually wrote and what right-wing pundits say the NRP wrote!" And you, the Firm Believer in Truth, would acknowledge us with a Cookie for Justice.
So, please forgive us for not raising our hands. Please understand that your teaching methods are so advanced that many of us have mistaken you for a dangerous ideological zealot.
I'd like to ask you for your advice, Mr. President. Where do you weigh in on the following?
1) Medical research that shows that up to one-third of clinical studies lead to conclusions that are later overturned, according to a recent paper in JAMA.
2) Fat is good for you.
No, it's bad for you.
No, it's good for you.
Some fats are better than others.
3) Echinacea helps colds.
No it doesn't.
4) Prostate cancer is best cured by surgery.
Prostate cancer is best cured by radiation.
5) Barry Bonds took steroids.
Barry Bonds did not take steroids.
6) Your administration broke the law under the NSA surveillance.
Your administration did not break the law under the NSA surveillance.
I know I might be out of line here, but something jumps out at me when I think about all these things. It appears that Truth is not so much about facts and evidence as it is about belief and hiring the right PR firm. What are your thoughts?
Goodness knows that to be able to address the issues listed above, you'd have to know about things like how medical research is conducted and how research is funded. You'd have to be able to examine arguments and evaluate the evidence. You'd have to have access to reputable sources.
But, thanks to you, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts have reduced the amount of instruction in history, social studies, and other non-tested subjects. Mercifully, our already over-burdened children won't have to think about issues like Truth vs. truth vs. evidence vs. belief. They have too many other important things to think about, like who is going to win American Idol and whether or not Tom Cruise is gay.
I heard some commie liberal quip recently, "Facts, like history, belong to the conquerors." I'm not sure what he meant, but it sounded a lot like the usual liberal whining we are so tired of.
Thank you for your service to our country.
Best wishes,
Sunday, May 21, 2006
2014 Cannot Happen
The distribution of children's test scores along a "normal" curve has everything in the world to do with fairness (or a lack thereof). How "normal" is the distribution of test scores when we all know that it is largely determined by and is a measure of affluence, not academic achievement?
The truly seismic shift with NCLB is that such "normal" distributions run directly counter to the stated goal of NCLB: all children will reach the proficient or advanced level in the tested subjects by 2014. What I have not fully appreciated until today -- a major "a-ha moment" -- is that this is really, really, really not possible. I'd always seen the goal of 2014 as a misty-eyed attempt for the nation to become Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. In short, it was just plain stupid and criminally naive to say that all kids could reach the proficient or advanced level, including kids with IEP's for whom it had already been determined that grade level proficiency ain't gonna happen ever. That's why they have IEP's - to recognize and compensate for the fact that they are not at grade level. Hello!
But, with this newest insight, I see that 2014 is not only stupid and criminally naive, it just plain won't ever happen because the very thing that is used to determine whether or not kids are at grade level -- the standardized test -- has built within it at its very core a mechanism that will always produce advanced, proficient, and not proficient students. Not sometimes produce. Always produce.
How unclothed does the Emperor have to be before we call him naked?
The truly seismic shift with NCLB is that such "normal" distributions run directly counter to the stated goal of NCLB: all children will reach the proficient or advanced level in the tested subjects by 2014. What I have not fully appreciated until today -- a major "a-ha moment" -- is that this is really, really, really not possible. I'd always seen the goal of 2014 as a misty-eyed attempt for the nation to become Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. In short, it was just plain stupid and criminally naive to say that all kids could reach the proficient or advanced level, including kids with IEP's for whom it had already been determined that grade level proficiency ain't gonna happen ever. That's why they have IEP's - to recognize and compensate for the fact that they are not at grade level. Hello!
But, with this newest insight, I see that 2014 is not only stupid and criminally naive, it just plain won't ever happen because the very thing that is used to determine whether or not kids are at grade level -- the standardized test -- has built within it at its very core a mechanism that will always produce advanced, proficient, and not proficient students. Not sometimes produce. Always produce.
How unclothed does the Emperor have to be before we call him naked?
A Question About Curves
I'm not a psychometrician, so I don't really get something about standardized tests. So here's a simple question: are standardized tests able to show that every kid is at the proficient or advanced level by 2014?
From what I understand about large-scale standardized assessments, the test developers strive to construct exam questions that will discriminate different levels of competence in the test-taking population. When a test question proves to be skewed (either too easy or too hard), there are statistical processes that can be applied to take that into account in making the ultimate judgment about the score a student receives, which is a way to counteract design problems. Statistical corrections are imposed when a test question does not perform in the way it was hoped when the question was designed. It is quite possible that strong students who answer a question incorrectly on a tested concept could end up with a high score after all is said and done, particularly if the question ends up being answered incorrectly by virtually everyone.
But NCLB says that all children must/can/will be at the proficient or advanced level by 2014.
So which is it? Tests that produce "a normal curve" with "well-designed" questions OR all children can reach grade level by 2014? It can't be both. It simply is not possible. We either get all kids up to grade level by 2014 or we stick with the time-honored tradition of predictable rank ordering through standardized tests.
What's interesting about "a normal curve" is the underlying notion that predictable rank-ordering is the norm. That lining students up and saying, "OK, lil' Johnny, you're Number One because you're the smartest kid in the school. So you stand at the front of the line. As for you, lil' Becky, you're Number 357 because you're the 357th smartest kid in the school. So you stand at the end of the line." Of course, there is nothing "normal" or "natural" about rank-ordering kids on the basis of a single measure, especially a standardized test that pre-supposes such a "normal" distribution of grades and, indeed, guarantees this kind of distribution through its organic, tree-grown, natural, hand-picked "statistical processes" that are created to "counteract design problems." In other words, what we have here is Ye Olde Selfe-Fulfilling Prophece.
This "normal" distribution is said to facilitate the fairest construction possible. As if lining kids up and calling the one with the highest score "smart" and the one with the lowest score "in need of improvement" is fair. What are the odds that the "smart" kid happens to be white and come from affluent, college-educated parents? What are the odds that the "in need of improvement" kid happens to be black or Hispanic and come from poor, uneducated parents or from a single, poor, uneducated parent?
I love the image of an unruly test question that gets out of hand and does not perform in the way it was hoped when it was designed. It reminds me of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, who ultimately did not perform in the way Frankenstein hoped when he designed it. Like the Frankenstein monster, the unruly test question has order imposed on it. But instead of an angry mob with flaming torches, the test question has "statistical corrections" imposed on it. Either way, the effect is the same: disorder and monstrousness are not tolerated. In the end, we can rest assured that the reality we created ahead of time will be the reality that is re-created on the test. "Strong students" won't be adversely affected by the monster test question. It will be chained down, burned, deleted.
As long as the monster wreaks havoc on everyone, all will be well.
Of course, there's a problem if the monster/unruly test question befriends someone along the way. In the Frankenstein story, "virtually everyone" found the monster to be terrifying and hideous. But the monster made friends with a blind man, an outcast. For the blind man, the monster was not monstrous. Children who take one of these tests and answer the unruly question correctly do not find the question unruly. So what then? What happens to the logic -- the "statistical corrections" -- that would otherwise save "strong students" from being penalized? What if several "weak students" answered the unruly question correctly? And what if these "weak students" happened to be black or Hispanic? Are there certain "statistical corrections" and algorithms that check the race and socioeconomic status of students? And, if so, do these statistical corrections throw out the correct answers of these students on the unruly question, reasoning that these students must have guessed because the strong students did not answer it correctly?
From what I understand about large-scale standardized assessments, the test developers strive to construct exam questions that will discriminate different levels of competence in the test-taking population. When a test question proves to be skewed (either too easy or too hard), there are statistical processes that can be applied to take that into account in making the ultimate judgment about the score a student receives, which is a way to counteract design problems. Statistical corrections are imposed when a test question does not perform in the way it was hoped when the question was designed. It is quite possible that strong students who answer a question incorrectly on a tested concept could end up with a high score after all is said and done, particularly if the question ends up being answered incorrectly by virtually everyone.
But NCLB says that all children must/can/will be at the proficient or advanced level by 2014.
So which is it? Tests that produce "a normal curve" with "well-designed" questions OR all children can reach grade level by 2014? It can't be both. It simply is not possible. We either get all kids up to grade level by 2014 or we stick with the time-honored tradition of predictable rank ordering through standardized tests.
What's interesting about "a normal curve" is the underlying notion that predictable rank-ordering is the norm. That lining students up and saying, "OK, lil' Johnny, you're Number One because you're the smartest kid in the school. So you stand at the front of the line. As for you, lil' Becky, you're Number 357 because you're the 357th smartest kid in the school. So you stand at the end of the line." Of course, there is nothing "normal" or "natural" about rank-ordering kids on the basis of a single measure, especially a standardized test that pre-supposes such a "normal" distribution of grades and, indeed, guarantees this kind of distribution through its organic, tree-grown, natural, hand-picked "statistical processes" that are created to "counteract design problems." In other words, what we have here is Ye Olde Selfe-Fulfilling Prophece.
This "normal" distribution is said to facilitate the fairest construction possible. As if lining kids up and calling the one with the highest score "smart" and the one with the lowest score "in need of improvement" is fair. What are the odds that the "smart" kid happens to be white and come from affluent, college-educated parents? What are the odds that the "in need of improvement" kid happens to be black or Hispanic and come from poor, uneducated parents or from a single, poor, uneducated parent?
I love the image of an unruly test question that gets out of hand and does not perform in the way it was hoped when it was designed. It reminds me of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, who ultimately did not perform in the way Frankenstein hoped when he designed it. Like the Frankenstein monster, the unruly test question has order imposed on it. But instead of an angry mob with flaming torches, the test question has "statistical corrections" imposed on it. Either way, the effect is the same: disorder and monstrousness are not tolerated. In the end, we can rest assured that the reality we created ahead of time will be the reality that is re-created on the test. "Strong students" won't be adversely affected by the monster test question. It will be chained down, burned, deleted.
As long as the monster wreaks havoc on everyone, all will be well.
Of course, there's a problem if the monster/unruly test question befriends someone along the way. In the Frankenstein story, "virtually everyone" found the monster to be terrifying and hideous. But the monster made friends with a blind man, an outcast. For the blind man, the monster was not monstrous. Children who take one of these tests and answer the unruly question correctly do not find the question unruly. So what then? What happens to the logic -- the "statistical corrections" -- that would otherwise save "strong students" from being penalized? What if several "weak students" answered the unruly question correctly? And what if these "weak students" happened to be black or Hispanic? Are there certain "statistical corrections" and algorithms that check the race and socioeconomic status of students? And, if so, do these statistical corrections throw out the correct answers of these students on the unruly question, reasoning that these students must have guessed because the strong students did not answer it correctly?
Friday, May 19, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Private Tutoring Companies Are Not Accountable
Under NCLB, public school teachers must meet federal regulations that determine what a “highly qualified” teacher is. However, private supplemental education service (SES) providers do not have to meet any federal regulations regarding who they hire, how they are trained, and whether or not they are qualified to teach. Moreover, unlike the accountability provisions that public schools must adhere to, there is no federal requirement that tracks the success or failure of these private supplemental educational service providers. And yet millions of dollars have already poured into these private companies and, without significant changes in the law, will continue to do so.
According to a 4/5/06 report from the federal dept. of ed, states are trying to fill in the gap in the federal law. However, according to the report:
17 states said they will evaluate student achievement on state assessments, although only one of these plans to use a matched control group. The most common approaches that states have implemented to monitor providers, according to the federal report, are surveying the districts about provider effectiveness (25 states) and using providers’ reports on student-level progress (18 states).
Other relevant facts:
FYI - SES tutoring providers in Missouri are approved by the state dept. of education. Missouri has criteria for approval listed on the DESE web site. It also lists the approved providers. Of the 68 SES providers approved by the state of Missouri, nearly 60% are private companies.
According to a 4/5/06 report from the federal dept. of ed, states are trying to fill in the gap in the federal law. However, according to the report:
- 15 states had not established any monitoring process of SES providers at all
- 25 states had not yet established any standards for evaluating provider effectiveness
- none had finalized their evaluation standards
17 states said they will evaluate student achievement on state assessments, although only one of these plans to use a matched control group. The most common approaches that states have implemented to monitor providers, according to the federal report, are surveying the districts about provider effectiveness (25 states) and using providers’ reports on student-level progress (18 states).
Other relevant facts:
- The number of state-approved supplemental service providers has tripled over the past two years, rising from 997 in May 2003 to 2,734 in May 2005.
- Private firms accounted for 76 percent of approved providers in May 2005.
- A growing number and percentage of faith-based organizations have obtained state approval, rising from 18 providers (2 percent of providers) in May 2003 to 249 (9 percent) in May 2005.
FYI - SES tutoring providers in Missouri are approved by the state dept. of education. Missouri has criteria for approval listed on the DESE web site. It also lists the approved providers. Of the 68 SES providers approved by the state of Missouri, nearly 60% are private companies.
Growth Models Approved in TN and NC
Excerpt from today's Washington Post:
--snip--
TWO STATES TO EXPERIMENT WITH "NO CHILD" CHANGES
Washington Post -- May 18, 2006
by Lois Romano
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced yesterday that under a new pilot program, North Carolina and Tennessee will be the first states permitted to change the way they assess student progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The "growth model" assessment will allow the schools to be in compliance by measuring the progress of individual students annually, instead of an entire grade of different students.
Spellings said that those states were selected because they have a sophisticated data-collection system already in place for assessing students.
"I do want the world to know if there is a better way to calculate and show progress," she said. "I'm open-minded about this."
--end snip--
This kind of "flexibility" and "open-mindedness" on the part of ED is ultimately meaningless as long as the 2014 Sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of children and schools. If TN and NC prove successful in implementing these so-called "growth models," all it will mean is being able to track students as they get farther and father away from an arbitrary and impossible goal. No, this does not mean these kids can't learn. Of course they can. But they learn at their own pace and in their own way. We need to respect and support this, not punish those who do meet these expectations.
Just ask drop-outs like Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, what they think of being held to arbitrary standards of achievement. Ask Albert Einstein what he would have done had he been held to grade level expectations. Einstein was considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, shyness, or the unusual structure of his brain (examined after his death). He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect. Some researchers have speculated that Einstein may have exhibited traits of autism.
--snip--
TWO STATES TO EXPERIMENT WITH "NO CHILD" CHANGES
Washington Post -- May 18, 2006
by Lois Romano
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced yesterday that under a new pilot program, North Carolina and Tennessee will be the first states permitted to change the way they assess student progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The "growth model" assessment will allow the schools to be in compliance by measuring the progress of individual students annually, instead of an entire grade of different students.
Spellings said that those states were selected because they have a sophisticated data-collection system already in place for assessing students.
"I do want the world to know if there is a better way to calculate and show progress," she said. "I'm open-minded about this."
--end snip--
This kind of "flexibility" and "open-mindedness" on the part of ED is ultimately meaningless as long as the 2014 Sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of children and schools. If TN and NC prove successful in implementing these so-called "growth models," all it will mean is being able to track students as they get farther and father away from an arbitrary and impossible goal. No, this does not mean these kids can't learn. Of course they can. But they learn at their own pace and in their own way. We need to respect and support this, not punish those who do meet these expectations.
Just ask drop-outs like Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, what they think of being held to arbitrary standards of achievement. Ask Albert Einstein what he would have done had he been held to grade level expectations. Einstein was considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, shyness, or the unusual structure of his brain (examined after his death). He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect. Some researchers have speculated that Einstein may have exhibited traits of autism.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
How Much Longer?
Here's a protest song for the digital age.
Mr. President
You've lied to us before.
How much longer do you think we'll believe you?
Mr. President
You've lied to us before.
How much longer do you think we'll believe you?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
NCLB and Conspiracy Theorists
You hear lots of supporters of NCLB say that those who suggest that NCLB is an attempt to destroy public schools are all a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
NCLB is not a plan to destroy public schools. It's worse than that. I don't believe that anyone is out to "destroy public schools." Quite to the contrary, Bush, Spellings, Greene, Finn, et al, are out to improve public education. Of course, their attempts to improve public schools means that public schools will be irrevocably damaged, perhaps destroyed. Anyone who raises this objection is accused of being a union sympathizer, a racist, an obstructionist, and a promulgator of "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
It all depends on what you mean by "public schools." If, by "public," you mean schools that are operated by private, for-profit corporations like Edison, Inc., then the Bush Team's plans are just swell. But if by "public" you mean something else, e.g., schools that are overseen by the public and which do not profit from children by viewing them as commodities, then you might have some issues with The Decider's vision.
Team Bush believes with the energy of a recent religious convert that market-based competition is good, that unions are bad, and that all we need to do is raise our expectations of kids. Sounds wonderful. But this translates into an attack on public education as we currently know it. "Competition is good" underlies the support of vouchers. Vouchers drain money away from public schools and into the hands of unaccountable private schools, some of which are parochial schools. Not only does this undermine public education, but it undermines the First Amendment of the Constitution.
"Unions are bad" underlies the logic of Year 4 and Year 5 of AYP sanctions, where the law allows districts to fire "bad" teachers and principals and where "bad" is defined as "unable to raise test scores." How often have we heard conservatives say that all we need to do is get rid of the unions, and THEN our schools will operate perfectly? Well, here's what they've always wanted: carte blanche to throw them all out. Trouble is, lots of good teachers are members of unions. So when we throw out some of the most seasoned and gifted educators, we damage public schools even more.
But not in the minds of Team Bush. See, all that teachin' stuff is really a load of hooey. All we need is to get some folks in there who really care about kids, who believe that all kids can learn, and that we all need to do is hold them to higher standards. And one bright sunny morning in 2014, all children will wake up at grade level. See? It ain't hard.
So how do we get them all to grade level? Well, we destroy yet another pillar of public schools: a broad-based education that includes history, geography, music, art, foreign languages, and recess. Under The Decider's plan, we focus only on reading and math, and occasionally on science. As Decider himself admitted recently, "History may not cut it." He said, "Math and science are going to be vital to make sure that this country educates the engineers, the chemists, the physicists -- the types of folks that John Chambers and Francois are going to be looking for to hire. That's what we're really talking about."
So let's be clear: this is definitely NOT a plan to destroy public schools. It's a bold, aggressive plan to change them so completely as to make them unrecognizable to anyone that cares about them. This is public policy in action. This is happening.
For a tremendous take on what is meant by "privatization" and "the end of public schools" as per NCLB, see Craig Gordon's piece.
NCLB is not a plan to destroy public schools. It's worse than that. I don't believe that anyone is out to "destroy public schools." Quite to the contrary, Bush, Spellings, Greene, Finn, et al, are out to improve public education. Of course, their attempts to improve public schools means that public schools will be irrevocably damaged, perhaps destroyed. Anyone who raises this objection is accused of being a union sympathizer, a racist, an obstructionist, and a promulgator of "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
It all depends on what you mean by "public schools." If, by "public," you mean schools that are operated by private, for-profit corporations like Edison, Inc., then the Bush Team's plans are just swell. But if by "public" you mean something else, e.g., schools that are overseen by the public and which do not profit from children by viewing them as commodities, then you might have some issues with The Decider's vision.
Team Bush believes with the energy of a recent religious convert that market-based competition is good, that unions are bad, and that all we need to do is raise our expectations of kids. Sounds wonderful. But this translates into an attack on public education as we currently know it. "Competition is good" underlies the support of vouchers. Vouchers drain money away from public schools and into the hands of unaccountable private schools, some of which are parochial schools. Not only does this undermine public education, but it undermines the First Amendment of the Constitution.
"Unions are bad" underlies the logic of Year 4 and Year 5 of AYP sanctions, where the law allows districts to fire "bad" teachers and principals and where "bad" is defined as "unable to raise test scores." How often have we heard conservatives say that all we need to do is get rid of the unions, and THEN our schools will operate perfectly? Well, here's what they've always wanted: carte blanche to throw them all out. Trouble is, lots of good teachers are members of unions. So when we throw out some of the most seasoned and gifted educators, we damage public schools even more.
But not in the minds of Team Bush. See, all that teachin' stuff is really a load of hooey. All we need is to get some folks in there who really care about kids, who believe that all kids can learn, and that we all need to do is hold them to higher standards. And one bright sunny morning in 2014, all children will wake up at grade level. See? It ain't hard.
So how do we get them all to grade level? Well, we destroy yet another pillar of public schools: a broad-based education that includes history, geography, music, art, foreign languages, and recess. Under The Decider's plan, we focus only on reading and math, and occasionally on science. As Decider himself admitted recently, "History may not cut it." He said, "Math and science are going to be vital to make sure that this country educates the engineers, the chemists, the physicists -- the types of folks that John Chambers and Francois are going to be looking for to hire. That's what we're really talking about."
So let's be clear: this is definitely NOT a plan to destroy public schools. It's a bold, aggressive plan to change them so completely as to make them unrecognizable to anyone that cares about them. This is public policy in action. This is happening.
For a tremendous take on what is meant by "privatization" and "the end of public schools" as per NCLB, see Craig Gordon's piece.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
What to Assess and How to Assess It
In Table 1.2 in the Assessment Training Institute's valuable text Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, authors Rick Stiggins, Judy Arter, Jan Chappuis and Steve Chappuis write, "Teachers have clear learning targets for students; they know how to turn broad statements of content standards into classroom-level targets.” But how might the “Indicators of Sound Classroom Assessment Practice” in Table 1.2 be adjusted to accommodate constructivist/student-directed learning?
I’m thinking specifically of the challenge that pre-determined learning outcomes pose and how such outcomes play less of a role in a constructivist classroom. The text says, “Teachers select learning targets focused on the most important things students need to know and be able to do.” Here, the emphasis is on the teacher doing the work, not the student. It’s the teacher that determines what is most important, not the student. It’s the teacher that says, “Here is what you need to know,” and it’s the student who is at the effect of that decision. While there’s certainly a role for teacher-directed learning involving direct instruction and pre-selection of learning outcomes, I’m wondering how the question of what to assess gets answered in a student-directed pedagogy.
I try to give students a set of very broad standards to work with that they are charged with interpreting in dialogue with me and with other students. It is up to them to choose work that shows they have met these standards and then make arguments (written and oral, formal and informal) about how the work meets the standards. I ask students to work on projects of their own design, come up with the goals and outcomes, and then ask them to determine if those goals and outcomes were met. I then ask them to reflect on this process of articulating and meeting goals. In the more day-to-day sense in the life of the classroom, it might be that the classroom is divided 50/50 or 60/40 in terms of teacher-directed to student-directed learning. If that is the case (i.e., you have both modes), then you need to accommodate student-directed learning in the question of what to assess. Obviously, in the case of student-directed learning, the question of what to assess is left to the student. But how can the student know what to assess? How can the student be taught how to assess it meaningfully such that the assessment produces insight and insight produces learning? I’m thinking specifically of the pedagogy and curriculum of The Met School, where each student creates his/her own curriculum and drives his/her own learning. While ATI’s notion of involving students in assessment and having them be key players in assessment is radical (and crucial), the implicit context in which this radical innovation occurs is pretty conventional.
So how to take a radical notion of formative assessment for learning and put it in a radical context of constructivist learning?
The Six Traits rubric keeps coming to mind as The Great Model of Formative Assessment. In addressing the issues I described above, i.e., the issues of what to assess and how to assess it in a student-centered pedagogy, the Six Traits rubric has this to say: introduce the six traits of writing as a possible model for what “good” writing is. Have students work with it to get familiar with it. Then, once they have used it and begun to internalize it a bit, invite them to critique it. Invite them to add more traits. Invite them to refine the performance descriptors. In so doing, it strikes an ideal balance between teacher-directed and student-directed learning. The teacher, as a more knowledgeable and experienced learner, brings in the Six Traits rubric and says, “Try this. I think it’s pretty useful. What do you think? But before you answer, get to know it really well so that your answer will be thoughtful and meaningful and based on your personal experience.” The students respond to the direction of the teacher and come back with their analysis. “Yes, it works well, but how about this?” or “No, it doesn’t work well: I tried applying it to Shakespeare and it was terrible!” So what to assess and how to assess it? In this case, the teacher starts the dialogue with a specific example: here is what to assess, and here is how to assess it. The students are then free to respond. But their response is also potentially generative, i.e., it critiques the model but also introduces new ways of thinking. These new ways of thinking are posed to the teacher and to the other students, who then critique these new ways of thinking and generate yet more ways of thinking.
So the Six Traits rubric is not merely about learning the traits of writing to become a good writer; it’s about using the traits as a point of departure for critical reflection and analysis.
In using the traits, we can get beyond the whole subjective/objective debate and the validity/reliability conundrum and say, “Yes, these are wholly subjective and wholly arbitrary measures and traits. HOWEVER, they apply pretty well to most kinds of writing done in academic settings AND they provide the ground for an inquiry into what we mean by ‘good writing.’” The traits are pretty good on validity, but not so good on reliability (without intense training and without having multiple raters checking each other’s work, i.e., without a lot of money!) BUT, we can relax a bit by recognizing that most measures tend to lean one way over the other, i.e., that measures tend to be more valid than reliable or more reliable than valid. Yes, I know the hard-core psychometricians will argue this point. But you will never be able to convince me that a high-stakes, multiple-choice, standardized, norm-referenced test taken in a timed environment is ever going to be anything more than reliable. Valid? Hardly. By the same token, you’ll be wasting your breath if you want to argue that trait-based or rubric-based assessment of student work samples is as reliable as the US postal service. Sure, it’s sort of reliable. Sort of. But valid? Oh my word, yes!
My point? As long as we have multiple measures of student learning, and as long as some of these measures are high in validity and others are high in reliability, and as long as the measures attempt to be both valid and reliable (recognizing this might not actually be possible, but it’s a good goal to shoot for), and as long as these measures can be used in combination with each other and serve to corroborate or question their findings, we can relax.
And if this doesn’t reassure us, then perhaps Albert Einstein can. Einstein, the most brilliant high-school dropout to walk the planet, said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” With this, Einstein gives us the freedom to do the most comprehensive assessment work possible, keeping in mind that our work will always be flawed, will always be somewhat contrived and artificial, and will never fully account for what a student knows and can do – indeed, will never tell us who a student is.
But, having said this, it’s not like we can dance in the streets and do The Nihilist Shuffle, shouting, “Hurray, everything counts! And nothing counts!” It’s not like this gets us off the hook. In fact, it does precisely the opposite. Because our measures are flawed, because the questions of what counts and why are shaped socially, culturally, and historically, and because there is no divine Law of Assessment that says, “Thou shalt have criterion-based tests,” we have to work very hard to say, “This is what counts, and here is why it counts, and here is how I know it counts, and here is evidence of it counting.” This forces us to make arguments, to do the work of assessment, and not kick back and rely on the unquestioned wisdom of the ancients. Getting to say what counts and why is a profoundly powerful experience. It is an inherently contested conversation. It will always produce disagreement. But these disagreements are good. They are not outside the issue of assessment. They are the issue of assessment.
I’m thinking specifically of the challenge that pre-determined learning outcomes pose and how such outcomes play less of a role in a constructivist classroom. The text says, “Teachers select learning targets focused on the most important things students need to know and be able to do.” Here, the emphasis is on the teacher doing the work, not the student. It’s the teacher that determines what is most important, not the student. It’s the teacher that says, “Here is what you need to know,” and it’s the student who is at the effect of that decision. While there’s certainly a role for teacher-directed learning involving direct instruction and pre-selection of learning outcomes, I’m wondering how the question of what to assess gets answered in a student-directed pedagogy.
I try to give students a set of very broad standards to work with that they are charged with interpreting in dialogue with me and with other students. It is up to them to choose work that shows they have met these standards and then make arguments (written and oral, formal and informal) about how the work meets the standards. I ask students to work on projects of their own design, come up with the goals and outcomes, and then ask them to determine if those goals and outcomes were met. I then ask them to reflect on this process of articulating and meeting goals. In the more day-to-day sense in the life of the classroom, it might be that the classroom is divided 50/50 or 60/40 in terms of teacher-directed to student-directed learning. If that is the case (i.e., you have both modes), then you need to accommodate student-directed learning in the question of what to assess. Obviously, in the case of student-directed learning, the question of what to assess is left to the student. But how can the student know what to assess? How can the student be taught how to assess it meaningfully such that the assessment produces insight and insight produces learning? I’m thinking specifically of the pedagogy and curriculum of The Met School, where each student creates his/her own curriculum and drives his/her own learning. While ATI’s notion of involving students in assessment and having them be key players in assessment is radical (and crucial), the implicit context in which this radical innovation occurs is pretty conventional.
So how to take a radical notion of formative assessment for learning and put it in a radical context of constructivist learning?
The Six Traits rubric keeps coming to mind as The Great Model of Formative Assessment. In addressing the issues I described above, i.e., the issues of what to assess and how to assess it in a student-centered pedagogy, the Six Traits rubric has this to say: introduce the six traits of writing as a possible model for what “good” writing is. Have students work with it to get familiar with it. Then, once they have used it and begun to internalize it a bit, invite them to critique it. Invite them to add more traits. Invite them to refine the performance descriptors. In so doing, it strikes an ideal balance between teacher-directed and student-directed learning. The teacher, as a more knowledgeable and experienced learner, brings in the Six Traits rubric and says, “Try this. I think it’s pretty useful. What do you think? But before you answer, get to know it really well so that your answer will be thoughtful and meaningful and based on your personal experience.” The students respond to the direction of the teacher and come back with their analysis. “Yes, it works well, but how about this?” or “No, it doesn’t work well: I tried applying it to Shakespeare and it was terrible!” So what to assess and how to assess it? In this case, the teacher starts the dialogue with a specific example: here is what to assess, and here is how to assess it. The students are then free to respond. But their response is also potentially generative, i.e., it critiques the model but also introduces new ways of thinking. These new ways of thinking are posed to the teacher and to the other students, who then critique these new ways of thinking and generate yet more ways of thinking.
So the Six Traits rubric is not merely about learning the traits of writing to become a good writer; it’s about using the traits as a point of departure for critical reflection and analysis.
In using the traits, we can get beyond the whole subjective/objective debate and the validity/reliability conundrum and say, “Yes, these are wholly subjective and wholly arbitrary measures and traits. HOWEVER, they apply pretty well to most kinds of writing done in academic settings AND they provide the ground for an inquiry into what we mean by ‘good writing.’” The traits are pretty good on validity, but not so good on reliability (without intense training and without having multiple raters checking each other’s work, i.e., without a lot of money!) BUT, we can relax a bit by recognizing that most measures tend to lean one way over the other, i.e., that measures tend to be more valid than reliable or more reliable than valid. Yes, I know the hard-core psychometricians will argue this point. But you will never be able to convince me that a high-stakes, multiple-choice, standardized, norm-referenced test taken in a timed environment is ever going to be anything more than reliable. Valid? Hardly. By the same token, you’ll be wasting your breath if you want to argue that trait-based or rubric-based assessment of student work samples is as reliable as the US postal service. Sure, it’s sort of reliable. Sort of. But valid? Oh my word, yes!
My point? As long as we have multiple measures of student learning, and as long as some of these measures are high in validity and others are high in reliability, and as long as the measures attempt to be both valid and reliable (recognizing this might not actually be possible, but it’s a good goal to shoot for), and as long as these measures can be used in combination with each other and serve to corroborate or question their findings, we can relax.
And if this doesn’t reassure us, then perhaps Albert Einstein can. Einstein, the most brilliant high-school dropout to walk the planet, said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” With this, Einstein gives us the freedom to do the most comprehensive assessment work possible, keeping in mind that our work will always be flawed, will always be somewhat contrived and artificial, and will never fully account for what a student knows and can do – indeed, will never tell us who a student is.
But, having said this, it’s not like we can dance in the streets and do The Nihilist Shuffle, shouting, “Hurray, everything counts! And nothing counts!” It’s not like this gets us off the hook. In fact, it does precisely the opposite. Because our measures are flawed, because the questions of what counts and why are shaped socially, culturally, and historically, and because there is no divine Law of Assessment that says, “Thou shalt have criterion-based tests,” we have to work very hard to say, “This is what counts, and here is why it counts, and here is how I know it counts, and here is evidence of it counting.” This forces us to make arguments, to do the work of assessment, and not kick back and rely on the unquestioned wisdom of the ancients. Getting to say what counts and why is a profoundly powerful experience. It is an inherently contested conversation. It will always produce disagreement. But these disagreements are good. They are not outside the issue of assessment. They are the issue of assessment.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Talk Is Cheap
A supporter of NCLB recently characterized the opposition’s views of the law. According to him, opponents of NCLB say the following:
We must make two broad points:
NCLB focuses exclusively on school-based reform, completely ignoring the inextricable link between students and the reality in which they are immersed (their homes and neighborhoods).
Joseph Bottini, a retired teacher who spent 35 years in the classroom, posted recently to the Assessment Reform Network (ARN) list: “If a kid comes to school high, tired, hungry, abused, jaded, or otherwise not ready to focus, the best teacher in the world can't be successful with too many of them. It is not the kids, teachers, school or not even the tests; it's the life they are living. Tests do little more than tell us what we already know and steals time away from teaching/learning.”
NCLB, through initiatives such as Reading First, defines "school-based reform" as an obsessive focus on basic skills like phonemic awareness. Such "reform" comes at the expense of a comprehensive education that all students need to grow and thrive. The recent report from the Center on Education Policy confirms what many of us already knew anecdotally, that such "reform" comes at the expense of non-tested subjects such as history, music, and foreign languages. Most disturbingly, this narrowing of the curriculum occurs most often in schools with high percentages of poor minority students, the very subgroups that NCLB was ostensibly designed to serve.
In order to accomplish substantive school-based reform, we need to focus on the factors that most contribute to the reasons why schools struggle in the first place. Do schools struggle because children are not as phonemically aware as they need to be, or is something more substantive involved? As has been consistently emphasized, one basic yet powerful reform is class size reduction: make classes smaller, especially in urban school districts, and watch what happens.
Of course, making classes smaller means creating a lot more classes. More classes means more buildings. And more buildings means more teachers. More classes, buildings, and teachers means a lot more money. Quite a lot more.
We can also commit as a nation to improving the quality of teacher preparation and dedicate the funds necessary to provide on-going, high-quality professional development to people charged with shaping the future of our country, i.e., teaching our children.
Guess what? This will cost a lot more money, too. Quite a lot more. Richard Rothstein, in his book Class and Schools, estimates it will cost somewhere around $156 billion.
But this is not a money issue. This is a political will issue. Love him or hate him, George W. Bush summoned the political will to invade Iraq and commit more than two billion dollars per week to its care and feeding . . . with no end in sight. On occasion, a voice such as Senator Russ Feingold’s is heard, raising objections to this new adventure in imperialism. But by and large, we do not say, “This costs too much.” The reason? Because it is believed to be vital to our national security. And so we spend whatever it takes to get it done.
But for the cost of a year and a half in Iraq, we can create smaller classes, we can train and support teachers, and we can take substantive actions towards closing the educational achievement gap.
And why would we do this? Because it is vital to our national security to do so.
So the Bush administration can talk all it wants to about its educational priorities, about how much it wants to leave no child behind, and the need to stay competitive in the global marketplace by improving math and science education. But as long as the federal government contributes a paltry 10% to the education of America's children, such talk is cheap.
- NCLB is wrong because it does not "fix poverty."
- Schools are doing everything right and the reason that disadvantaged children do less well in school than their more advantaged peers is entirely due to their economic circumstances.
We must make two broad points:
- socioeconomic reform is crucial
- school-based reform is equally crucial
NCLB focuses exclusively on school-based reform, completely ignoring the inextricable link between students and the reality in which they are immersed (their homes and neighborhoods).
Joseph Bottini, a retired teacher who spent 35 years in the classroom, posted recently to the Assessment Reform Network (ARN) list: “If a kid comes to school high, tired, hungry, abused, jaded, or otherwise not ready to focus, the best teacher in the world can't be successful with too many of them. It is not the kids, teachers, school or not even the tests; it's the life they are living. Tests do little more than tell us what we already know and steals time away from teaching/learning.”
NCLB, through initiatives such as Reading First, defines "school-based reform" as an obsessive focus on basic skills like phonemic awareness. Such "reform" comes at the expense of a comprehensive education that all students need to grow and thrive. The recent report from the Center on Education Policy confirms what many of us already knew anecdotally, that such "reform" comes at the expense of non-tested subjects such as history, music, and foreign languages. Most disturbingly, this narrowing of the curriculum occurs most often in schools with high percentages of poor minority students, the very subgroups that NCLB was ostensibly designed to serve.
In order to accomplish substantive school-based reform, we need to focus on the factors that most contribute to the reasons why schools struggle in the first place. Do schools struggle because children are not as phonemically aware as they need to be, or is something more substantive involved? As has been consistently emphasized, one basic yet powerful reform is class size reduction: make classes smaller, especially in urban school districts, and watch what happens.
Of course, making classes smaller means creating a lot more classes. More classes means more buildings. And more buildings means more teachers. More classes, buildings, and teachers means a lot more money. Quite a lot more.
We can also commit as a nation to improving the quality of teacher preparation and dedicate the funds necessary to provide on-going, high-quality professional development to people charged with shaping the future of our country, i.e., teaching our children.
Guess what? This will cost a lot more money, too. Quite a lot more. Richard Rothstein, in his book Class and Schools, estimates it will cost somewhere around $156 billion.
But this is not a money issue. This is a political will issue. Love him or hate him, George W. Bush summoned the political will to invade Iraq and commit more than two billion dollars per week to its care and feeding . . . with no end in sight. On occasion, a voice such as Senator Russ Feingold’s is heard, raising objections to this new adventure in imperialism. But by and large, we do not say, “This costs too much.” The reason? Because it is believed to be vital to our national security. And so we spend whatever it takes to get it done.
But for the cost of a year and a half in Iraq, we can create smaller classes, we can train and support teachers, and we can take substantive actions towards closing the educational achievement gap.
And why would we do this? Because it is vital to our national security to do so.
So the Bush administration can talk all it wants to about its educational priorities, about how much it wants to leave no child behind, and the need to stay competitive in the global marketplace by improving math and science education. But as long as the federal government contributes a paltry 10% to the education of America's children, such talk is cheap.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Is college worth it?
When you consider the mythology and salvational rhetoric that surrounds the institution of higher ed, ACT's desire to prepare all students for college seems quite noble. Indeed, for much of K-12, the whole gestalt is based on the unexamined dictate, "Thou shalt produce students who graduate and go on to college."
But as we know, many students who graduate from high school are not prepared for college. And those that are prepared (academically and in all other ways) are not prepared for Death by Lecture, Teaching by Grad Student, Class Size for the Masses As Taught to the Masses by Adjunct, and college loan debts that rival an unlucky bus tour in Vegas.
What is so great about college? There are lots of great things. But it would be nice to understand a bit more clearly what we mean by "the college experience," esp. since we are selling this idea to as many K-12 students as will listen. What are we selling them on? And if only 50% of them are finishing college with a degree, maybe we should interpret this as a rejection of our sales pitch?
I went to Princeton. It was a pretty good experience over all. But here are the low-lights:
Econ 101 - freshman year with Branson; 400 students crammed into McCosh hall; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another; precept led by somone from China; could not understand a word he said; switched to precept led by John Duka; a good guy, but he had no idea how to teach. End result: maybe a B-.
Biology 101 - sophomore year led by some high-ranking hoo-hah; 250 students crammed into a lecture hall; most of the students were pre-med; they had to get A's to get into med school; it was a requirement for me, so I took it; competition was cut-throat, grades were distributed on a curve; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another; labs led by Jonny LabGuy; a cipher. End result: C.
Religion 410 - junior year led by some former White House aide; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another
Religion 310 - senior year led by septuagenarian with a negligible pulse and a limp; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another
I could go on. The piece de resistance: Robert Darnton, senior year, graded my history comps. Having taken a couple pretty good courses in post-structuralism (OK, not all of the classes were bad), I proceeded to deconstruct the questions. Note - not "deconstruct" as it has been perverted to mean, but "deconstruct" as Derrida, et al, described it. I was proud of what I did for my comps. But of the 3 essays I wrote, I got two C's and one C-. Why? I called Darnton afterwards. What happened? He said he wanted history, not an op ed. I have since referred to this as "Darnton's Dilemma." Ironically, it served to make the point I made in the comps, i.e., what we mean by "history" determines what counts as fact, how it counts, and why. And who gets to say what "history" is. Darnton failed to see the irony.
Now, nearly 20 years after graduating, I still have $30K in debt to make up for one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another and two C's and one C-.
Yes, you could say I'm disappointed.
I recently called my student loan processor, ACS. The pay-off amount is $30K. If I keep paying the $252.36 every month, I have 191 more months to go. That's 16 years from now. Total amount left to go? $48,200. That means I will have spent 34 years paying for my Princeton education.
With ACS, since 2002, I have paid $3,647.75 in principal and $8,213.17 in interest, amounting to $11,860.92 in the last 4 years. If you add the total paid to the total amount due over the next 16 years, that comes to $60,060.92. The original loan amount was $32,866.14. So ACS will realize approximately 200% ROI. Not a bad business to be in.
Note - the $60,060.92 does not include payments I made on the loan prior to consolidation in 2002. Likely add another $10 - $15K.
Keep in mind: I racked up this debt when Princeton only cost about $10K per year. For the 2005-06 academic year, Princeton charges for a resident student are: tuition, $31,450; room, $4,610; and board, $4,153. In addition, they allow $3,212 for books and personal expenses, bringing the total to $43,425, not counting travel expenses which vary based on state (or country) of residence.
$43,425 per year. PER YEAR. So, is a Princeton education worth it?
But as we know, many students who graduate from high school are not prepared for college. And those that are prepared (academically and in all other ways) are not prepared for Death by Lecture, Teaching by Grad Student, Class Size for the Masses As Taught to the Masses by Adjunct, and college loan debts that rival an unlucky bus tour in Vegas.
What is so great about college? There are lots of great things. But it would be nice to understand a bit more clearly what we mean by "the college experience," esp. since we are selling this idea to as many K-12 students as will listen. What are we selling them on? And if only 50% of them are finishing college with a degree, maybe we should interpret this as a rejection of our sales pitch?
I went to Princeton. It was a pretty good experience over all. But here are the low-lights:
Econ 101 - freshman year with Branson; 400 students crammed into McCosh hall; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another; precept led by somone from China; could not understand a word he said; switched to precept led by John Duka; a good guy, but he had no idea how to teach. End result: maybe a B-.
Biology 101 - sophomore year led by some high-ranking hoo-hah; 250 students crammed into a lecture hall; most of the students were pre-med; they had to get A's to get into med school; it was a requirement for me, so I took it; competition was cut-throat, grades were distributed on a curve; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another; labs led by Jonny LabGuy; a cipher. End result: C.
Religion 410 - junior year led by some former White House aide; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another
Religion 310 - senior year led by septuagenarian with a negligible pulse and a limp; one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another
I could go on. The piece de resistance: Robert Darnton, senior year, graded my history comps. Having taken a couple pretty good courses in post-structuralism (OK, not all of the classes were bad), I proceeded to deconstruct the questions. Note - not "deconstruct" as it has been perverted to mean, but "deconstruct" as Derrida, et al, described it. I was proud of what I did for my comps. But of the 3 essays I wrote, I got two C's and one C-. Why? I called Darnton afterwards. What happened? He said he wanted history, not an op ed. I have since referred to this as "Darnton's Dilemma." Ironically, it served to make the point I made in the comps, i.e., what we mean by "history" determines what counts as fact, how it counts, and why. And who gets to say what "history" is. Darnton failed to see the irony.
Now, nearly 20 years after graduating, I still have $30K in debt to make up for one boring, incomprehensible lecture after another and two C's and one C-.
Yes, you could say I'm disappointed.
I recently called my student loan processor, ACS. The pay-off amount is $30K. If I keep paying the $252.36 every month, I have 191 more months to go. That's 16 years from now. Total amount left to go? $48,200. That means I will have spent 34 years paying for my Princeton education.
With ACS, since 2002, I have paid $3,647.75 in principal and $8,213.17 in interest, amounting to $11,860.92 in the last 4 years. If you add the total paid to the total amount due over the next 16 years, that comes to $60,060.92. The original loan amount was $32,866.14. So ACS will realize approximately 200% ROI. Not a bad business to be in.
Note - the $60,060.92 does not include payments I made on the loan prior to consolidation in 2002. Likely add another $10 - $15K.
Keep in mind: I racked up this debt when Princeton only cost about $10K per year. For the 2005-06 academic year, Princeton charges for a resident student are: tuition, $31,450; room, $4,610; and board, $4,153. In addition, they allow $3,212 for books and personal expenses, bringing the total to $43,425, not counting travel expenses which vary based on state (or country) of residence.
$43,425 per year. PER YEAR. So, is a Princeton education worth it?
Being Poor in the Land of Plenty
Having grown up in a small town in Georgia, I knew many poor people who believed that being poor is a shame. They hid their accents, for fear that a Southern accent made them seem stupid.
But being poor is not a shame. It's a reality, and that reality shapes what is possible. Rocks are hard, water is wet, the sky is blue, and poverty shapes what is possible. A disproportionate percentage of poor people are black and Hispanic. We all focus on the issue of race when we should focus on the issue of poverty. Racial minority groups are loathe to call poverty a disability because disparity in this country has always been framed as a black/white issue, so calling attention to poverty calls attention to race. And because race is such a huge issue in this country, we quickly get caught up in it and quickly lose sight of the real issue -- the disparity between the haves and the have nots.
The thing that jumps out at me is the issue of stigma, and that parents of black, disabled, and other minority children are loathe to be labeled as "disabled" for fear that the label reveals some kind of hidden truth about about them, e.g., they really aren't as smart as white, "normal" or "decent" people.
The same kind of experience with stigmatic labels can be seen in the use of the word "queer" to describe gays and lesbians. What gays and lesbians realized was that the word "queer" did not, in fact, relate to anything inherently negative or flawed or deficient on their part. But allowing the word to go unchallenged and used against them, it carried with it theses negative associations. What they realized was that, in their silence, they were complicit in this public secret, this hidden, unvoiced belief that there really was something wrong with being gay or lesbian. But in the last 10 years, gays and lesbians have taken up the word "queer" as their own word, proclaiming, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." The word has been subverted and turned 180 degrees from being a term of derision and negativity to a term of celebration and power. The specter of AIDS forced many gays and lesbians to out themselves, to risk being associated with the negative labels, in order to do something about the health crisis that was being labeled as "a gay disease."
A similar kind of linguistic phenomenon can be seen with the use of the "n" word by African-Americans.
Disabled children receive a qualitatively and quantitatively different kind of support than poor children. Poverty is not seen as a disabling factor despite the fact that there is evidence that shows that it is. The key argument behind the status quo (i.e., inequitable taxation that puts an undue burden on middle and low-income people and gives incentives and loopholes to the super-rich) is the old trickle down economics theory of Ronald Reagan. As you recall, trickle down economics is the idea that rich people drive the economy and make our country great; they take all the risks and do all the important, hard work that creates all those wonderful jobs and opportunities. The phrase most often associated with this theory is, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
But now we have evidence that shows -- unequivocally -- that this theory is bankrupt and immoral. The rising tides that inundated New Orleans did not lift any boats. Instead, they drowned a city where close to 25% of the citizens were at or below the poverty line. Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein discusses evidence from a new study that reveals trickle down economics for what it is: a hoax, a dirty trick, a smoke and mirrors game played by the super-rich at the expense of the super-poor.
As my colleague Jim Horn said, "There is no clearer predictor of test performance than family income. When (do we) begin to make the case that children on free and reduced-priced lunch deserve the same consideration as other disabled students? Is there any disability that can be shown to have a more direct and predictable influence on achievement measured by test scores? Is there any disability that is a more accurate predictor of a child's future opportunities?"
I would add these questions: When are we going to stand up and call poverty what it is -- a disabling force? When are we going to denounce the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps logic of this country and shine the light on what it really means to be poor in this land of opportunity?
But being poor is not a shame. It's a reality, and that reality shapes what is possible. Rocks are hard, water is wet, the sky is blue, and poverty shapes what is possible. A disproportionate percentage of poor people are black and Hispanic. We all focus on the issue of race when we should focus on the issue of poverty. Racial minority groups are loathe to call poverty a disability because disparity in this country has always been framed as a black/white issue, so calling attention to poverty calls attention to race. And because race is such a huge issue in this country, we quickly get caught up in it and quickly lose sight of the real issue -- the disparity between the haves and the have nots.
The thing that jumps out at me is the issue of stigma, and that parents of black, disabled, and other minority children are loathe to be labeled as "disabled" for fear that the label reveals some kind of hidden truth about about them, e.g., they really aren't as smart as white, "normal" or "decent" people.
The same kind of experience with stigmatic labels can be seen in the use of the word "queer" to describe gays and lesbians. What gays and lesbians realized was that the word "queer" did not, in fact, relate to anything inherently negative or flawed or deficient on their part. But allowing the word to go unchallenged and used against them, it carried with it theses negative associations. What they realized was that, in their silence, they were complicit in this public secret, this hidden, unvoiced belief that there really was something wrong with being gay or lesbian. But in the last 10 years, gays and lesbians have taken up the word "queer" as their own word, proclaiming, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." The word has been subverted and turned 180 degrees from being a term of derision and negativity to a term of celebration and power. The specter of AIDS forced many gays and lesbians to out themselves, to risk being associated with the negative labels, in order to do something about the health crisis that was being labeled as "a gay disease."
A similar kind of linguistic phenomenon can be seen with the use of the "n" word by African-Americans.
Disabled children receive a qualitatively and quantitatively different kind of support than poor children. Poverty is not seen as a disabling factor despite the fact that there is evidence that shows that it is. The key argument behind the status quo (i.e., inequitable taxation that puts an undue burden on middle and low-income people and gives incentives and loopholes to the super-rich) is the old trickle down economics theory of Ronald Reagan. As you recall, trickle down economics is the idea that rich people drive the economy and make our country great; they take all the risks and do all the important, hard work that creates all those wonderful jobs and opportunities. The phrase most often associated with this theory is, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
But now we have evidence that shows -- unequivocally -- that this theory is bankrupt and immoral. The rising tides that inundated New Orleans did not lift any boats. Instead, they drowned a city where close to 25% of the citizens were at or below the poverty line. Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein discusses evidence from a new study that reveals trickle down economics for what it is: a hoax, a dirty trick, a smoke and mirrors game played by the super-rich at the expense of the super-poor.
As my colleague Jim Horn said, "There is no clearer predictor of test performance than family income. When (do we) begin to make the case that children on free and reduced-priced lunch deserve the same consideration as other disabled students? Is there any disability that can be shown to have a more direct and predictable influence on achievement measured by test scores? Is there any disability that is a more accurate predictor of a child's future opportunities?"
I would add these questions: When are we going to stand up and call poverty what it is -- a disabling force? When are we going to denounce the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps logic of this country and shine the light on what it really means to be poor in this land of opportunity?
Pushouts in New York City
I just looked up "pushouts" in a NY Times database and found some interesting info. There are allegations of pushouts in NYC, but the Times does not report definitive testimonial from any teachers or counselors. This is not surprising, given the fact that anyone who reported this would risk being fired. However, one of the articles quotes Elisa Hyman, a lawyer with Advocates for Children, an advocacy group that helps students who have been pushed out gain reinstatement: ''We've had guidance counselors calling on their cellphones from bathrooms saying they've been told to get rid of kids.''
The reporters make note of the fact that corroborating pushout claims is impossible. "While the Department of Education classifies each student who leaves school under one of dozens of codes, it does not release -- or apparently even compile -- information on how many students leave under which circumstances and what becomes of them. Furthermore, students leaving in similar circumstances may be classified differently."
However, NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott both publicly acknowledged the pushout problem and pledged to do something about it. Mr. Klein said he wanted to make it ''unequivocally clear'' that he did not support this practice and would be taking steps to end it. ''It is a disservice to our students and ourselves,'' he said, ''to rely on shortcuts or play numbers games in order to make things look better than they really are.''
What it boils down to is intimidation and bullying on the part of school administrators. In effect, the schools are expelling students for poor academic performance but then labeling them in such a way that they are not counted as drop-outs. Also of note: it is not the students who are choosing to "drop out." "Court documents and interviews with parents and students from (Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn) indicate that hundreds of students may have been discharged from Lane and shuffled into one bureaucratic category or another that avoided increasing the school's dropout rate, a category monitored closely in performance reviews. The students, often stunned by the discharge and sometimes referred to alternative programs, have in many cases simply drifted away from school. Of the dozen students interviewed for this article, eight were no longer pursuing a diploma of any kind. None had a clear understanding of their rights." According to the data received in the course of the lawsuit by Advocates for Children, Lane has recently discharged some 1,400 students a year, under one of several dozen codes that are supposed to show where they are going.
The reporters make note of the fact that corroborating pushout claims is impossible. "While the Department of Education classifies each student who leaves school under one of dozens of codes, it does not release -- or apparently even compile -- information on how many students leave under which circumstances and what becomes of them. Furthermore, students leaving in similar circumstances may be classified differently."
However, NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott both publicly acknowledged the pushout problem and pledged to do something about it. Mr. Klein said he wanted to make it ''unequivocally clear'' that he did not support this practice and would be taking steps to end it. ''It is a disservice to our students and ourselves,'' he said, ''to rely on shortcuts or play numbers games in order to make things look better than they really are.''
What it boils down to is intimidation and bullying on the part of school administrators. In effect, the schools are expelling students for poor academic performance but then labeling them in such a way that they are not counted as drop-outs. Also of note: it is not the students who are choosing to "drop out." "Court documents and interviews with parents and students from (Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn) indicate that hundreds of students may have been discharged from Lane and shuffled into one bureaucratic category or another that avoided increasing the school's dropout rate, a category monitored closely in performance reviews. The students, often stunned by the discharge and sometimes referred to alternative programs, have in many cases simply drifted away from school. Of the dozen students interviewed for this article, eight were no longer pursuing a diploma of any kind. None had a clear understanding of their rights." According to the data received in the course of the lawsuit by Advocates for Children, Lane has recently discharged some 1,400 students a year, under one of several dozen codes that are supposed to show where they are going.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
High School Drop-Outs vs. High School Push-Outs
This report by veteran education reporter John Merrow makes the phenomenon of high-school "push-outs" crystal clear. When calculating their graduation rates, Florida schools remove all students who are transferred to GED programs from their rolls. "If they're totally withdrawn from here, then they're not going to count against us. So in essence, they then improved our graduation rate if they withdraw . . ." says Karen Wilson, principal of Evans High School in Orlando. Evans' graduation rate has improved. In the last year, it was calculated, Evans referred 271 failing students into GED programs, thus taking them off its own rolls. That same year, its graduation rate rose from 61 percent to 66 percent, enough to satisfy state and federal requirements. But at the same time, the actual number of diplomas handed out fell from 412 to 354. In two years, Evans has transferred 440 students into GED programs. In that same time, only 14 enrolled.
Last year in Orlando, high schools transferred 1,201 teenagers to the GED; 315 actually enrolled and 135 earned a diploma. That leaves 886 teenagers unaccounted for.
Thousands of Florida teenagers are disappearing from the rolls. Last year, the number of failing students transferred to the GED rose from 11,615 to 17,144.
Last year in Orlando, high schools transferred 1,201 teenagers to the GED; 315 actually enrolled and 135 earned a diploma. That leaves 886 teenagers unaccounted for.
Thousands of Florida teenagers are disappearing from the rolls. Last year, the number of failing students transferred to the GED rose from 11,615 to 17,144.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Assessment Training Institute
I highly recommend the work that Rick Stiggins, Judy Arter, Jan Chappuis, and Stephen Chappuis are doing through their organization, the Assessment Training Institute (ATI). ATI was just acquired by ETS in March, so I don't know what the future holds for the quality of their work. However, I just returned from a 3-day seminar with Rick, Judy, and Jan in Portland, OR, and was absolutely blown away. The work focuses on high-quality formative assessment, which they refer to as "assessment FOR learning." They contrast this with the traditional mode of summative assessment, which they call "assessment OF learning." While summative assessment certainly has a role to play, it does little to promote teaching and learning. The key to implementing their principles is to create learning teams in the school building that focus on the on-going creation of high-quality assessments for learning. In this way, assessment is indistinguishable from instruction because assessment drives instruction. Also, peer-based professional development becomes a part of the culture of the school, not a one-day in-service training that sounds great, but quickly fades from memory.
More info at http://www.assessmentinst.com
While it's relatively easy to critique the stupidity of NCLB, it's much more difficult to articulate a vision of something that can replace it, especially a vision that can be implemented in a practical way. But as far as school-based reform goes, Stiggins, et al, go the farthest of anyone I know in articulating a vision of teaching, learning, and assessment that can (and does) work.
More info at http://www.assessmentinst.com
While it's relatively easy to critique the stupidity of NCLB, it's much more difficult to articulate a vision of something that can replace it, especially a vision that can be implemented in a practical way. But as far as school-based reform goes, Stiggins, et al, go the farthest of anyone I know in articulating a vision of teaching, learning, and assessment that can (and does) work.
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