BloomKlein will comment: Let's celebrate - at least we're not as bad as Rochester.Gotta go, but here is just some initial stuff. The fur will be flying all day.
Note that Mayor Duffy - soon to be Lt Gov- in Rochester has been pushing for mayoral control based on the "success" of mayoral control in NYC. Next up to be debunked: phony claims to raising grad rates. But then again if you use credit recovery - fog a mirror and get creditb– and bogus tests to promote people (remember how they "ended" social promotion) you reap what you sow.
Dee Alpert said this:
If you go over NYSED's materials re these scores carefully, it says there's a technical report available which has information re how cut scores were determined - and refers you to www.nysed.gov to fish it out for yourself.
Hmnnn. It's not on the web page where links to prior years' technical reports are given and from what I can tell, it's not anywhere else on NYSED's web site either.
This is a nice way of saying that NYSED screwed with the cut scores ... again ... and that they probably should have been worse. Otherwise NYSED would have actually made the technical report (which experts could analyze and see what's missing) available.
However bad the NYCDOE's scores are in terms of % of kids who passed ... you can safely assume that it could, and probably should, have been a lot worse.
Dee Alpert
Leonie Haimson wrote:
State presentation here: http://ht.ly/2hO2G ;
ELA, NYC went from 69 percent of students passing exam last year to 42 percent of students passing this year – a 27 point - or 39% - decline. Statewide drop: 77.4% down to 53.2% -- a 24 point drop and a 31% decline. Charter school dropped from 76.1 to 43%; a 33 point drop and a 43% decline.
In Math, NYC went from 81.8 % passing in 2009 to 54% passing this year. A 28 point drop and a 34% decline. Charters went from 89.4% proficiency to 59.9%, a 29.5 point drop; a 33% decline. Statewide: 86.4 to 61: 25.4 point drop and a 29% decline.
How does that compare to the pre-Klein era? And does this mean that NYC’s claims of improvement compared to the rest of the state are dead in the water?
In math, Students with disabilities state wide dropped from 58.4 to 24.6; a 34 point drop and a 58% decline; ELL students, 67% down to 30.7%; a 36 point drop and a 54% decline.
In ELA, students with disabilities at proficiency dropped from 39.3 % to 15.2%; 24.1 drop and 61% decline….. ELL dropped from 36.4% to 14.3% proficient; 22.1 point drop; and a 61% decline!!!
Awfully sad, even though many of us have known about the state test score inflation for years now. The Mayor and his cronies sold the editorial boards and the legislature on the renewal of mayoral control, based in large part on these test scores.
Do we get a do over?
Tim Johnson - So thoughtful to wait to recalibrate until the 3rd term was in place...
Reality based Ed:
Now That The State Calls Bullshit On The Scoring, NY City Test Scores Plummet: Spill, baby, spill:
4 comments:
Norm,
I recommended your comment on NYT.
I also added my own and wrote a reaction on my blog.
http://www.incongressional.com/nyc-test-gains-have-been-a-sham/
Keep up the good work.
Instead of the UFT fighting against the bogus testing, they embraced it via school bonuses and now the new evaluation agreement while all along acknowledging the inherent testing problems at monthly delegate assemblies. And hey think about, the UFT agreed to monstrous ed deforms for what may turn out to be $200 million dollars in RTTT grant money. How much will NYC see? Burnt again.
How about we tie and feather the leadership and then strap them to classroom desks and force them to watch documentaries and textbooks outlining Vichy France. And then, (pardon the gross and despicable analogy but it is used to emphasize a point) we also force them to study WWII concentration camps and their use of Kapos.
Unity Caucus and Kapos = "Kapos received more privileges than normal prisoners, towards whom they were often brutal. They were often convicts who were offered this work in exchange for a reduced sentence or parole." You see, Unity just wants to hold onto their privileges for as long as they can even if it means "brutalizing" teachers. Have you spoken to an elementary school teacher lately???
Of course BloomKlein couldn't have cared less as long as he looked good in the press.
And who are the true victims in the end? The kids.
So so sad.
Within Sol Stern's article, Pedagogy of the Oppressor, in the Spring 2009 issue of City Journal, he notes:
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, [Brazilian educator Paulo] Freire had listed ten key characteristics of the “banking” method of education that purported to show how it opposed disadvantaged students’ interests. For instance, “the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly”; “the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply”; “the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined”; and “the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it.” Freire’s strictures reinforced another cherished myth of American progressive ed -- that traditional teacher-directed lessons left students passive and disengaged, leading to higher drop-out rates for minorities and the poor. That description was more than a caricature; it was a complete fabrication. Over the last two decades, E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge schools have proved over and over again not only that content-rich teaching raises the academic achievement of poor children on standardized tests but that those students remain curious, intellectually stimulated, and engaged -- though the education schools continue to ignore these documented successes.
See:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_freirian-pedagogy.html
Compare this with the NYS Education Department's Joint Intervention Team report about Albany High School. The team members made the following finding:
Observation:
A teacher's role as a "Sage on the Stage" is the primary instructional strategy observed at Albany High School. It includes the teacher talking and students listening or sitting passively unengaged; teacher led questions and answers; students taking turns reading from a textbook or novel. The use of flexible and appropriate grouping for instruction is extremely rare. The use of differentiated instruction or project-based learning was not observed in any classes. In most classrooms, a large percentage of students were neither involved or focused.
See:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33785515/Alb-Any-High
Whatever happened to good old "chalk and talk"?
Post a Comment