Fred Smith/Robin Jacobowitz: Why Biden Admin Support for Testing in Pandemic is Wrong

 Fred is back to our pages with a co-authored screed on the increasingly sellout Ed Dept no matter who is installed at the top - below are ed deform snakes.

Appointees at Ed Dept planning strikes at pubed

Here's our reaction to USDE's push to resume testing this spring.  Please feel free to share with your readers and allies.

Robin Jacobowitz is director of education projects at the Benjamin Center for Public Policy Initiatives at SUNY New Paltz.

http://www.bencenblog.com/2021/03/02/building-back-better/

Building Back Better?

by Robin Jacobowitz and Fred Smith - March 2, 2021

This week, the United States Department of Education (USDE) sent a letter to chief state school officers directing them to administer state-level standardized testing in 2021. 

This annual testing, waived in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is required under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and has had bipartisan support. It encompasses English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests in grades 3 – 8; science in grades 4 and 8; and one test each in ELA, math, and science at the high school level. These tests are now needed, the federal Department of Education rationalizes, to “understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning and identify what resources and supports students need.” 

We focus this blog post on the 3 – 8 statewide exams for two reasons. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has expressed disappointment in their resumption, which would target more than one million students. At the same time, the plan for the high school-level tests, known as the Regents Exams, remains in flux. 

We support the search for understanding the impacts the pandemic has had on our students and schools. But we object to the premise that imposing the tests in 2021 will yield any meaningful answers either about its effect on students and teachers or regarding the numerous ways instruction has been organized and delivered this school year. 

We find no justifiable logic in administering these statewide tests to a population of young people already enduring a year of disruption and hardship. As students and teachers struggle through unmatched upheaval, the USDE is choosing to deprive them of precious instructional time and instead subject them to mind-numbing exams whose worth, as we have previously written, was questionable even in good years. 

These exams are not needed to tell us what we already know: student learning has suffered this year, and even more so for students from disadvantaged and traditionally marginalized backgrounds. In requiring the tests, the USDE is reverting to old habits in a crisis and failing to exert educational leadership. In 2021, testing becomes a ship without an anchor.

Then there are the practical concerns. 

We object to the loss of time and resources that administering the tests will entail. The conduct of mass standardized testing is not a simple endeavor. There is a multi-million dollar price tag that goes to private vendors who are responsible for test development. Even if the 2021 exams incorporate questions developed but not used in 2020, there are the associated costs of test administration — producing the exams (in print or computerized form) and ancillary materials, and providing for their shipment and security. Added to these are the contractual expenditures paid to testing companies for scoring, data processing and reporting services. 

Beyond that is the immeasurable value of the time and effort that students and teachers invest in test preparation and sitting for the exams — and the toll paid in test anxiety during an already extremely stressful school year. 

Moreover, with testing suspended in 2020 at the federal level, what is the proposed baseline against which to measure pupil achievement, class performance, different learning arrangements and various modes of testing?  In “normal” times, these are legitimate areas of investigation for state- and district-wide test populations, as are investigation of subgroup outcomes and comparison of ways in which instruction is delivered. That’s not the case here.

The USDE acknowledges the complexities of the moment and makes a virtue of necessity by allowing states to have some flexibility — granting discretion in “reducing the length of the tests, offering remote administration of the tests, or extending the window for the administration of the tests, including the possibility of administering the test over the summer or in the fall.” 

To contemplate bringing students and teachers to school over the summer for the purpose of taking a test clearly disregards the weight they have shouldered this school year and ignores the serious financial straits many districts currently face. 

The “flexibility” offered by the USDE renders the process confusing and cumbersome, and in effect, un-standardizes the process. Most significant for a testing regime seeking useful information, this flexibility makes the tests unreliable. 

Such concessions place an even greater burden on administrators as they figure out how to give the tests; on teachers who must adjust their lesson plans to accommodate the exams; and on students who are targeted to take them. They beg questions about what we learn from a scrambled exercise in which participating school districts may follow different procedures. 

With New York and other states balking at the prospect of testing this year, maybe we’ll see a re-awakening of the grass roots opt-out movement. We agree that it is important to understand how our students have fared through this pandemic. But forcing the administration of state-level tests is an impediment to that goal, and does not help us reach it. 

We should turn to our teachers for a frontline assessment of where their students are and elicit their thoughts about how we might address deficiencies and inequities going forward. Instead it seems that Washington D.C. is bent on taking the absurdity of testing to another level. President Biden promised that teachers would have a friend in the White House. USDE’s first step, however, signals business as usual. Is this how we “build back better?”

In December of 2019, Joe Biden promised that if elected, he would stop standardized testing. Yet the U.S. Department of Education has announced that states must test students in the midst of the pandemic.  That is a wrongheaded policy that puts data first and children last. Write Joe Biden. Tell him to step in and cancel the tests.

1. Pick up the phone and call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414.

Here is a suggested script.

"My name is (name) from (state). I am calling to ask the President to keep his promise about eliminating standardized testing. Forcing schools to administer annual tests undermines the administration's call to support our students' social-emotional and mental health in this time of crisis. The tests must be canceled. Period."

2. Then pick up the phone and call the U.S. Department of Education at this number 800-872-5327. Press 3.

Here is a suggested script. 

"My name is (name) from (state). I strongly opposed Mr. Rosenblum's recent letter that forces schools to administer annual tests this year. All of our schools' efforts must be used to support our students' social-emotional and mental health in this time of crisis.  Test results will be meaningless. Please tell Dr. Cardona that tests must be canceled. Period."

3. Finally, send an email to the White House by clicking here (letter prepared by our friends at NYC Opt Out).

 

School Scope: Those SHSAT Tests, Part 2

Published in The WAVE: WWW.Rockawave.com - August 23, 2019

School Scope:  Those SHSAT Tests, Part 2

By Norm Scott

Debates over the controversial SHSAT special high school admission tests has roiled the local education world and has driven a rift between the Asian and Black/Latinx communities. State law forces the city to use only the SHSAT despite de Blasio’s attempts to have it changed. Let me state right up front: I am opposed to using a standardized test as a sole criteria for admission to specialized high schools for a number of reasons, which I will get into in a follow-up column. (For SHSAT news - https://shsatsunset.org.)

In a previous column (Those SHSAT Tests Part 1 https://www.rockawave.com/articles/school-scope-315). I wrote about my experiences prepping for tests in the late 1950s/early 60s for Brooklyn Tech (which I didn’t get in) and the NY State Scholarship exams in my junior and senior high schools (where I was successful). I described my evolution in learning how to take tests between the disaster in the 8^th grade where time was called with 65% of the test completed and 12^th grade where I had mastered test time management. Both times I had been well-prepared to answer the questions but the test prep my schools offered did not address the “how to take a test” issue. I pointed to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that addressed test taking using the LSAT (law school admissions) as an example. Gladwell referred to a tortoise and hare concept of test taking and how time limits favor hares whereas tortoises who take a slow and steady course bring skills to the table that hares may lack. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisionist-history/.)

What if the SHSAT were not timed? Would some tortoises pick up enough right answers to get into the specialized schools? A for-profit web site actually has a guide on how to apply for extra time on the SHSAT, a legitimate exercise for students with IEPs, but something that has been abused for SAT’s and other tests, as pointed out in this March 14, 2019 NYT piece:

Is the College Cheating Scandal the ‘Final Straw’ for Standardized Tests?

“For parents desperate to boost their children’s SAT or ACT scores, the test preparation company Student-Tutor offered an enticing solution: claim a learning disability and qualify for extra time. “This time advantage can help raise their scores significantly!” the website blared. “Some students have even reported raising their score by as much as 350+ points!” This week’s college admissions scandal provided an instruction manual for gaming the SAT: bribe the proctor, hire a stand-in, see the right psychologist to get a signoff for more time.

college admissions experts said that in some communities, it is well known which psychologists will provide paperwork attesting to disabilities like A.D.H.D. — for thousands of dollars. “Parents have figured out that this is a freebie,” said Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, a special education lawyer. ‘This was a scandal waiting to happen’.”

The NYC Marathon has no time limits and when I used to volunteer there were people coming in late in the evening. We often hear this said about many aspects of life – even applying to the baseball season: it is a marathon, not a sprint. Should this concept be applied to standardized tests? What if we totally removed time limits? I see the good, bad and ugly to that. I could see myself spending hours on a question that stumped me once freed from the time limits.

I went from a tortoise when I took the Tech test in 1958 to a hare when I received a NY State scholarship in 1962. But was I any smarter other than having figured out how to use limited time on tests to my advantage? Well, I did figure out how to manage a test. I learned to take the number of questions and divide it into the amount of minutes I had and to set up sign posts as to where I should be at different times. Thus on a 50 question test in 60 minutes I had a little over a minute for each question. My strategy was to run through the test answering all the quickie questions to gain time, putting a little dash next to those questions that looked solvable with a little more time – I would go back after knocking off the easy ones. The ones that seemed hardest got a dot, so they could be attacked with the balance of time. The aim was to come down to two options and guess, giving me a 50-50 chance even on the hardest questions. If half the test were in the hardest category, that was a sign to just go home.

Norm takes unlimited time when he blogs at ednotesonline.com.

NYState Opt Out Leader Jeanette Deuterman Castigates Mulgrew and UFT - and NYSUT Leaders for "Unforgiveable Betrayal"

Our hope was that Andy Pallotta would in fact come to realize that not supporting a student protection opt out bill would be a PR nightmare and he would instead lead with his moral compass rather than what he was told to do, regardless of the consequences from UFT. We had been conversing with NYSUT’s VP, who assured us on several occasions that NYSUT was is full support of the bill and NYSUT’s “lobbyists have been lobbying in support of this bill”. ... Jeanette Deuterman

NYSUT has made a big showy campaign of “Correct the Tests!”, and collecting testing horror stories. Yet, when the opportunity arose that would eliminate the source of many of those stories and protect children in EVERY corner of NYS, they instead chose to sabotage our kids... Jeanette Deuterman

Watch what they (UFT/NYSUT/AFT) do, not what they say -- an aging but still wise sage
 
I told Jeanette at the Skinny Awards dinner that I found it hard to believe Andy Pallotta would ever go against the Unity Caucus machine. And so it was. Ultimately they side with the enemy - Cuomo, state ed dept, DOE. Fact is high stakes testing has been used against teachers so often and also entire schools. The ATR pool is an outcome.

Jeanette Deuterman on the fate of Robert Jackson’s opt out bill. The UFT's support of high stakes testing and undermining of opt out smacks of their being in bed with the deformers as opt-out has been the major weapon forcing changes.

An Unforgivable Betrayal

6 years. 6 years I, we, have been working alongside teachers and union leaders to try to make a difference for NYS children caught in the middle of politics, greed, and power struggles. Every year, I personally spend the two months leading up to the tests reading through hundreds of horror stories sent to me by desperate parents trying to do what should be a simple action: opt out of state assessments. For some of us, opting out is as simple as receiving notification by our school districts that we have this right, filling out a simple form, turning it in, and protecting our children from multiple hours and weeks of meaningless testing. For many parents, this process begins with schools telling them they in fact do not have this right. They are told if they opt out they will be held back, will fail, won’t get into middle school, high school, or even college. They are threatened with CPS and calls to immigration. During testing their opt out children are harassed, reprimanded and bullied by administrators trying to set an example. They are excluded from pizza parties, candy gifts, and school carnivals. The adults in these situations completely lose their moral compass, and the children become the targets. It is sad and unconscionable. And more importantly, completely preventable.

This year we had a breakthrough that could have ended these grueling months of horror stories and interventions. We had a Senator willing to step up, and we had a bill. This was the bill we had dreamed about. One that would make it illegal to treat kids in this manner. This bill didn’t address the larger challenge of over-testing, the chronic problems with the curriculum, or the eroding data privacy. But IT WOULD HAVE PROTECTED CHILDREN. So simple, yet so profound.

Months ago began the hard work of drafting the bill, finding just the right sponsors, and getting the word out that this was the bill that hundreds of thousands of parents wanted our elected officials to pass. Senator Jackson and his team worked tirelessly to get this right. NYSAPE put out an action alert calling on parents and teachers to send letters to legislators telling them to support the bill and sign on. As momentum was growing, the political games began.

Let me be clear. I’m rank and file all the way. I’m the daughter of a NYSUT unionist and the sister of two more. I have made lifelong friends with local union leaders and members across the state. NYSUT members make up half of my organization and sit on my steering committees. It is because of these teachers that the absolute duplicity of their union makes me speak so loudly against it right now. They deserve a union that represents them and their children. They deserve one that will operate with democratic transparency. We all deserve that.

It’s no secret that I am not a Michael Mulgrew fan. I have witnessed the complete and utter lack of democracy that is the current teacher’s union. The union is run by voting. The majority wins. But what looks democratic on the surface hides the ugly truth. The UFT (city caucus run by Mulgrew) has the votes to control the union. The RA (where voting takes place) is held in places that many members of smaller locals can not afford to get to or are willing to travel to. The UFT delegates ALWAYS show up. There are caucuses within the UFT, such as MORE, desperately trying to make a difference and change the leadership, but even that is a battle that may never be won. I attended an RA once, to witness first hand the block voting, noise signals, and complete domination by the UFT/Mulgrew. It was heartbreaking. My only face to face meeting with Mulgrew ended with him refusing to back down on keeping testing as the major piece of the evaluation system because he believed, taking it out of the hands of administrators, even if it placed it on the backs of kids, was preferable. I had heard very early on with this student protection bill that Mulgrew, who very publicly, and very often, has spoken out against opting out, would not allow this bill to pass. 

Our hope was that Andy Pallotta would in fact come to realize that not supporting a student protection opt out bill would be a PR nightmare and he would instead lead with his moral compass rather than what he was told to do, regardless of the consequences from UFT. We had been conversing with NYSUT’s VP, who assured us on several occasions that NYSUT was is full support of the bill and NYSUT’s “lobbyists have been lobbying in support of this bill”. For what it is worth, I absolutely believe she PERSONALLY was behind us and this bill. But as we know, that makes no difference in the larger picture of roles within the organization. This “support” was contrary to what we were hearing from legislators. In fact, they weren’t hearing ANYTHING from NYSUT about the bill, and most believed NYSUT was NOT supporting the bill. We kept asking, and asking for this support in writing FOR MONTHS. Not once were we told that support was contingent on an amendment. Funny thing is, the bill sponsors, who would be the ones to make changes and amendments, weren’t told that either. This wasn’t the first time either. A few years ago we worked with Todd Kaminsky on reversing some of the most damaging aspects of the Education Transformation Act. Those bills were also killed, mostly in part because NYSUT made it clear to legislators that they would not support. Mulgrew’s insistence on keeping testing in the evaluation matrix was again the reasoning.

The night before the last day of session this week we had a miracle. The Senate passed the bill, and we heard word that the Governor would sign if it passed the Assembly. The kids in NY were about to have their win! Here’s the way it works at the end of session - if bills make it to the last day and are ready for a floor vote, they can pass. If a person or organization wants to kill a bill, but they don’t want to take the fall for killing it, they propose amendments on the last day. It happens ALL THE TIME. And that’s exactly what happened here. NYSUT realized this thing could pass. This is the only part I will guess at - Mulgrew must have made some calls to the Assembly and NYSUT, throwing his weight around. What we know for a fact: Suddenly Benedetto, who had to be the one to bring it to a floor vote, indicated he would ONLY do so if NYSUT put their verbal support in writing. This is cowardly and a huge red flag of just how little the voices of constituents matter. Benedetto should lose his Assembly seat for that. NYSUT now had a problem. They had been called out as the last remaining factor for months and years of work that culminated in this bill getting passed. I’ll admit, the amendment was a genius idea. The language of the amendment protected schools against a threat that the Regents already eliminated when they removed the Title I funding ties to participation in our NYS ESSA plan. It wasn’t an amendment that made sense, as there is currently no law or regulation at the state or federal level that puts Title I money in jeopardy, nor does NYS have ANY jurisdiction over federal Title I money, but man that sounds plausible!! And it makes them look like they’re the only ones who thought enough about children in poverty!! Win win! Best yet, it can’t be done because it’s too late AND it’s not based in any current law or regulation issue!! And added plus is that everyday parents and teachers don’t know enough about ESSA and Title I to challenge them. I have already seen local members believe the justification of killing this exceptional and desperately needed law, defending the action.

NYSUT has made a big showy campaign of “Correct the Tests!”, and collecting testing horror stories. Yet, when the opportunity arose that would eliminate the source of many of those stories and protect children in EVERY corner of NYS, they instead chose to sabotage our kids. This is unforgivable. I will personally be sending Andy Pallotta, Jolene DiBrango, and Michael Mulgrew each and every heartbreaking story that comes to my inbox, so they can see first hand what they have supported and encouraged by killing this bill. I encourage all of you to do the same. The stories are listed on the Long Island Opt Out and NYSAPE websites. Pick a few out and send them along. Maybe it will have an impact, maybe it won’t.

Rank and file will still be my friends, my colleagues, and my family. Perhaps we can still make important changes in spite of the obstacles that NYSUT leadership places in our way. Onward.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RIRo6XnnhbyX-jNi2-v8cVrZuhK64oApvwKxScpAqmk/mobilebasic

NYSAPE Parents Demand the NY Legislature Repeal the Education Transformation Act & APPR; Stop Playing Political Games with Our Children’s Education

Be sure to read this and spread the word. This bill is a sham!

New York State Allies for Public Education - NYSAPE
Parents Demand the NY Legislature Repeal the Education Transformation Act and APPR; Stop Playing Political Games with Our Children’s Education

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 30, 2018
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley; nys.allies@gmail.com
Jeanette Deutermann; nys.allies@gmail.com
NY State Allies for Public Education - NYSAPE

Parents Demand the NY Legislature Repeal the Education Transformation Act & APPR; Stop Playing Political Games with Our Children’s Education

NY State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of over 50 parent and educator groups active across the state, vehemently opposes the new teacher evaluation bill, passed by the NYS Assembly and now being considered by the NY Senate as S08301. This bill would change the teacher evaluation system in the state for the fourth time since 2010. This bill, like the current evaluation system, fails the most important measure, it does absolutely nothing to alleviate the impact a test-and-punish system has had on our children.

Contrary to the claims of some of its supporters, a careful reading of the bill indicates that it continues to link teacher evaluations to growth scores, using either state standardized exams or alternative assessments approved by the State Education Commissioner. The bill also leaves the controversial HEDI rubric and corresponding weights in place.

NYSAPE recognizes that the American Statistical Association and the National Science Foundation have concluded that rating teachers based on student growth scores yields statistically invalid and flawed results.

Jeanette Deutermann, a co-founder of NYSAPE and leader of Long Island Opt Out, said “Backroom deals and political leveraging have resulted in an Assembly and Senate bill that purposely fails to decouple test scores from the teacher evaluation system, fails to reverse the destructive receivership law, fails to remove the arbitrary and capricious growth model, and leaves room for grade 3-8 state assessments to once again be used in our evaluation system. Teachers and students deserve a bill that reverses the destruction caused by the Education Transformation Act.”

NYSAPE shares the concerns of the New York State School Boards Association and the New York Council of School Superintendents that this bill, if passed, could mean even more testing.  If districts decide to tie teacher ratings to student scores on alternative assessments, those assessments would come in addition to the annual state tests that are required by federal law.

Education historian Diane Ravitch points out, “The current teacher evaluation law (APPR) was passed to make New York eligible for federal funding from the Race to the Top program in 2010. Under this law, 97% of teachers in the state were rated either effective or highly effective. The law is ineffective. It should be wholly repealed, rather than amended as proposed. Let the state continue setting high standards for teachers and let local districts design their own evaluation plans, without requiring that they be tied to any sort of student test scores.”

“The entire idea of basing teacher evaluations on student growth is a farce. Districts will create new metrics that are just as unreliable and invalid as the grade 3-8 test scores. It is time that politicians cease meddling in matters they do not understand and return teacher and principal evaluation back to professionals and elected school boards,” said Carol Burris, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education and a former New York State High School Principal of the Year.

“The worst outcome would be if this faulty bill passed in exchange for more concessions to charter schools, either increasing their funding or raising the charter cap.  Already charter schools in NYC are given preferable treatment in being able to claim free space at the city’s expense, when more than half a million of our public school students are crammed into overcrowded schools, with no hope of relief,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

Parents and educators have been demanding for a long-time that the APPR system be entirely repealed so districts can design their own evaluation plans untied to student test scores.  It’s time Albany stands up for children and stops playing political games with their education.

NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state.
 

This year's tests are a disaster! -- NYSUT President Andy Paliotta

A companion piece to my earlier post:

NYSAPE: Commissioner Elia and the Board of Regents Continue to Fail New York’s Children; Parents Demand the Immediate Removal of Commissioner Elia

For months NYSUT has raised strong concerns and questions about SED's rush to implement computer-based testing. After a data breach earlier this year, NYSUT wrote a detailed letter to the State Education Department (SED) and Board of Regents, calling on them to put the brakes on computer-based testing. NYSUT has been expressing concerns about inequity for low-wealth districts; a lack of infrastructure and poor Internet capability in some schools, and whether computer-based testing accurately measures student learning — or just how well students can maneuver around a keyboard.

Notwithstanding NYSUT's warnings and concerns, students in nearly 300 schools sat down to their computers last Wednesday to test-drive the new English Language Arts computer-based tests in grades 3-8. Widespread reports of technology failures from teachers detailing disastrous system crashes; log-in failures and nonsensical answers for questions on the tests came flooding into NYSUT, news outlets and across social media.

Email the Commissioner and the Regents and share your experience with this year's first round of state testing.

Teachers in Victor, Saranac Lake, Shenendehowa and Spencerport, for example, reported some schools were unable to administer the computer-based tests properly because of technological failures. In at least one fourth-grade class in the Capital Region, students' entire tests were wiped out by malfunctioning computers. In Yonkers, some students "lost" their tests, while others attempting to answer multiple choice questions reportedly could only choose between four answers — all of which said “system error.”

While SED tried to call it a "glitch," NYSUT called last week's rush to computer-based testing nothing short of disaster! If children are going to sit for state standardized tests and are prepared to do their very best, SED must be able to guarantee that the tests are fair and accurate, and they don't leave kids anxious and rattled.

Last week's disastrous foray into computer testing, coupled with ongoing concerns about the benchmarks and developmental appropriateness of the tests, left children frustrated and teachers angry that their warnings were ignored. If SED wants to restore the trust and confidence of parents in its testing system, this isn't the way to do it.

	Email the Commissioner and the Regents and share your experience with this year's first round of state testing. Concerned about state testing? Get the Facts! Know your rights on opt-out.
	In solidarity, Andrew Pallotta NYSUT President
	P.S.:   Whether this testing disaster affected you or not, get the facts about opting out.

Ed Deform Coming Unhinged

Is ed deform, mistakenly labeled as a real reform movement, coming apart at the seams? The opt-out movement where 220,000 did not take the test in NY State is the most obvious sign. Also the media criticisms of Eva and Success Academy as the press becomes more skeptical of charter claims.

Look at the media coverage on charter scams, testing, the attacks on teachers as the cause of the problems there has been a turning - you can hear it in commentary as many former ed deform supporters have begin to see the light of the failures of those policies.

Now don't get me wrong -- ed deformers are loaded with dough and have bought a chunk of ed coverage -- ie - Chalkbeat and the Campbell Brown phony The 74 ed media as examples, plus the Gates, Walton, hedge funds etc. They claim the anti-ed deform movement is fueled by the teacher unions when we know full well how little the unions have done as they waffle on the fence though Randi and crew have become more bold as the worm turns - always tailing but we'll take what we can get from them.

In just the past few days here are some things to munch on.

Ravitch: Jesse Hagopian: The Black Resistance to Charters and Corporate Reform is Just Beginning

The New Yorker - wonderful piece: Stop Humiliating Teachers

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/stop-humiliating-teachers
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The lawsuit just filed on behalf of the receivership schools

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-lawsuit-just-filed-on-behalf-of.html
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Fred Klonsky: In Chicago, DFER has been run out of town
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/in-chicago-dfer-has-been-run-out-of-town/
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Washington State Supreme Court: Charter schools are unconstitutional

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/state-supreme-court-charter-schools-are-unconstitutional/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left_1.1

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The Charter School Movement Is a Vehicle for Fraud and Corruption

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48531/california-charter-schools/
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The Fight to Bring Transparency to California’s Charter Schools

http://www.alternet.org/education/fight-bring-transparency-californias-charter-schools

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E.D. Hirsch, Ed Reformer Pivots -rethinking his position on blaming teachers:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/education-reform-movements-co-founder-denounces-its-focus-on-teacher-quality/2016/09/11/79da4976-763d-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html
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A blistering opinion should shame Connecticut lawmakers, who have failed to address the problem of educational inequality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/opinion/a-holistic-ruling-on-mbroken-schools.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
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Ed deform is racist in nature:

Ed Deform Racist Policies Attack Black Teachers - a Civil Rights Issue for Our Times

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/black-teachers-public-schools-education-system-philadelphia

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Charter privateers on the defensive but not giving up on their Orwellian takeover schemes 

 

Howie Schwach on High Stakes Testing in 2001 - Teachers Concerned, UFT Ignores - Ed Notes Redux - Feb. 2001

Is it a contradiction for the union to remain silent when enormous sums are expended for practice tests while at the same time calling for more funding for schools? ...Ed Notes, Feb. 2001

Schwach raises a number of issues such as “What constitutes an adequate education?” “Does high stakes testing actually help foster an inadequate education?” “Is the movement to higher standards being used by politicians and educators to the detriment of the children?” These are the kind of questions that should be debated regularly in the UFT. Sadly, if you attend Executive Board and Delegate Assembly meetings, you will hear President and Staff Director reports talk about the politicians we are able to elect---some of whom have contributed to the very climate Schwach points to.... Ed Notes, Feb, 2001

"I teach a fourth grade class in Rockaway, and I would bet that I spend more than a third of my time teaching students how to take the test and doing test prep material" a teacher e-mailed. "I understand that lots of things depend on how well my kids do on the test, including whether my principal keeps her job, but I have to question taking all of that time from teaching the material that I am supposed to be teaching."... Letter to Howie Schwach, Jan 21, 2001 in The Wave, reprinted in Ed Notes, Feb. 2001.

Below, read a Feb. 2001 Ed Notes reprint of an article written by Howie Schwach for the School Scope column in The Wave, (a column I took over when Howie retired from teaching to become editor of The Wave.)

Some  things to note:

• Some of us were agitating for the UFT to put a stop to the testing craze even then, but like now the UFT leadership defended the testing craze.
•  
• Rockaway schools were under the control of Kathy Cashin - Supt of Region 5, which combined Dist. 23, 19(Bklyn) and 27(Queens) - known as a testing queen then but who seems to have changed her tune since becoming a NY State Regent with a direct aim at Meryl Tisch's job as regent head.

(I lost many of the hard copies of Education Notes from 1997-2005 in the Sandy hurricane. I've started printing out the old pdfs and reading some of them from 1999-2001 reminded me of how many issues we are dealing with today were on the table then -- and the entire  archive will make for an interesting history of the UFT and the BOE/DOE. I am realizing that a hard copy newsletter was more my forte than a linear blog where one issue at a time gets covered and then disappears from view. I intend to create a separate blog where the newsletters can be read in the format they were intended.)

Ed Notes Reprint, Feb. 2001

Howard Schwach writes a weekly, and sometimes controversial, educational column for “The Wave” (www.rockawave.com) a local newspaper serving Rockaway, Broad Channel, Ozone Park. Schwach is a longtime teacher in District 27 and has been critical of the powers that be in the district (including the UFT,) often accusing district personnel of paying more attention to politics than education. Recently, I emailed him an article entitled “The Testing Obsession,” by Howard Gardner, the guru of “multiple intelligences,” an article in which Gardner states: “In the quest to improve public schools, we've made test performance more important than education.” (Email me at norscot@aol.com to receive a copy.) Schwach reprinted the Gardner piece in the Jan. 13 edition of “The Wave.” Here is his follow-up article in the Jan. 21 edition. Schwach raises a number of issues such as “What constitutes an adequate education?” “Does high stakes testing actually help foster an inadequate education?” “Is the movement to higher standards being used by politicians and educators to the detriment of the children?” These are the kind of questions that should be debated regularly in the UFT. Sadly, if you attend Executive Board and Delegate Assembly meetings, you will hear President and Staff Director reports talk about the politicians we are able to elect---some of whom have contributed to the very climate Schwach points to----but nary a mention of the issues raised by Schwach, issues that impact teachers and schools on a daily basis. Is it a contradiction for the union to remain silent when enormous sums are expended for practice tests while at the same time calling for more funding for schools?


Last week’s column that posited the idea that test scores rather than education has become the be all and end all in this city has caused lots of reaction from school board members, parents and teachers.

That surprised me somewhat, because I thought of that column as a necessary, albeit somewhat boring topic.
Obviously, it has touched a nerve with many people.

"Your column in today’s paper was right on line, " one long- time school board member e-mailed. "There has been a good deal of positive press recently given to whatever district in Harlem where the kids went to school during vacation and on Saturdays in order to be prepped for the upcoming reading test. This sickens me. I think that it is great that the kids spend extra time in school, but let’s teach them something tangible, not how to take a test. In my opinion, that is nothing different that a Kaplan’s SAT class."

"I teach a fourth grade class in Rockaway, and I would bet that I spend more than a third of my time teaching students how to take the test and doing test prep material" a teacher e-mailed. "I understand that lots of things depend on how well my kids do on the test, including whether my principal keeps her job, but I have to question taking all of that time from teaching the material that I am supposed to be teaching."

Those e-mails are representative of the general feeling that the standardized tests have become too important and that "teaching to the test" has become more prevalent in our schools than educating students.

There is ample evidence of that fact in our district. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on "test prep" materials that are designed to teach students how to take a particular test. There is ample evidence of that fact in our district. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on "test prep" materials that are designed to teach students how to take a particular test. "If there were some way the practice tests could be used to help us in the classroom, I would understand their use, "a middle school teacher says, "but we just mark them and pass them on to supervisors or store them away after they are marked. They seem to serve no educational purpose other than prepping the kids for the ‘real’ test."

Of course, we all know the reason why so much time is taken prepping for the tests. It is because the tests have become high-stakes, do or die indications of how well students are doing in any particular district, in any particular school.

The mayor, of course, wants to raise the stakes even more by predicating salary raises on test scores. That, however, is the mayor and we can discount anything he says about education.

The fact is that the standardized test scores (particularly the fourth and eighth grade scores) are important to many groups.

They are important to the politicians who fund the schools, particularly now that a judge has ruled that education funding has been disproportionate all of these years. Politicians will make education a seminal issue and will get elected or dumped based on test scores in the schools in their districts.
They are important to school superintendents. You will remember that Brenda Isaacs was supposedly removed from her superintendency because of poor test scores in the district. The fact that a number of superintendents had far poorer scores in their districts did not deter the chancellor from removing her. Superintendents now serve at the whim of the chancellor and they have a mandate to get scores up in their districts, or else.

They are important to school principals. Principals gave up their tenure for a large chunk of change and now serve almost at the whim of their superintendents. Sure, there has to be a hearing, but the stats can almost always be used to prove that the principal has not done a good job. Therefore, principals serve at the whim of the superintendent and can be removed if the test scores do not go up.

They are important to assistant principals, especially the majority administrators who have less then five years in their position and can be dumped back to teacher at the whim of the principal and the superintendent. If scores go down, they are the first to go and they know it. Therefore, they put unnatural pressure on teachers to get the scores up.

They are important to teachers, who are at the bottom of the food chain. Teachers may be working with students who are reading on a low Level I, but they are still told that it is their responsibility to get them to Level II, something that everybody knows is not within the realm of possibility.
It is now important to kids. Most of them will be promoted no matter what they do on the tests and they know it.

They are important to some parents who wrongly use them as an indication of what a school is really about. The fact is, there is real education going on in lots of classrooms in schools where the test scores are low and there is no education at all going on in some classrooms in schools that have high reading scores. Education is a function of the teacher and the students and has little to do with school wide reading scores.

Last week I asked what education was really all about. Howard Gardner posited one answer.

There is, of course, some agreement on learning basic skills such as making change and reading a map, reading and understanding a book, critical reading and an ability to form judgments and opinions independently.

The New York Times recently did an article entitled "What Kind of Education is Adequate? It Depends." The articles writer, Randal Archibold, asked a number of people the kind of people they considered to be educated.

Leon Botsetin is the president of Bard College. He says, "A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It’s knowing what you do not know, the skills of critical thought."

Paul LeClerc is the president of the New York Public Library. "Ideally, one should know who Shakespeare was and why he was important to us. At the same time, one should know who Toni Morrison is and why her voice and take on America are important to us."

Michael Goldstein is the head of a charter school in Boston. He says that an educated person today can "write and e-mail a persuasive, three-paragraph letter to the editor about voting improprieties in your local district; research on line and analyze the statistical difference between Pat Buchanan’s vote totals during the ’96 and ’00 elections; read and comprehend the ‘no cell phone’ sign at restaurants."

Robert Silvers is the editor of the New York Review of Books. He says that an intellectual person "acquires some intellectual curiosity about learning more and exploring the possibilities of science and the understanding you get from literature and the arts."

Many people have an idea of what an educated person should be able to do what he or she should know. An entire book, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, by three educators, discussed the facts that an educated person should know. Knowing what skills an educated person should have is a little more complicated.

In any case, however, those skills do not include knowing how to take a test and that is what we are trying to teach our students (mostly without success) in today’s classrooms.

Students today have to read 25 books to meet the new standards. They have to "address literature." They have to "create a persona" when they write.

The standards are generally benign, but what we teach to reach those standards is often not so.

Perhaps it is time for a real change.

(Education Notes comment: The UFT must be the force for such change.)

The Opt Out movement is a bomb set off at ground zero of ed deform

Opt out nukes ed deform

Teacher led fight backs against ed deform have generally been a dud and parents have never been organized enough to make a major impact. But common core and high stakes testing has galvanized resistance from both the left and the right. Despite the billions in astroturfed money going to spread ed deform, we are seeing a growing counter-reaction.

And we also are seeing the stages of a major reaction against charters - the more they push down people's throats the more scandals. Eva who pushes choice doesn't give her parents a choice to opt out.

Even PBS reported on the opt out movement - yesterday at the NYCORE conference I challenged some Chalkbeat people to cover that movement in a serious, in depth manner.

I'm going to follow up with my report of my meeting with a PTA in a Title I school but for now let me repost a Ravitch blog that had the Fair Test report:

FairTest: Test Resistance Goes Viral

The Opt Out movement is spreading like wildfire. It is led by parents, not unions, though some union locals have voted to honor the wishes of parents. Parents understand that the tests are designed to fail most children. They understand that test prep and testing are stealing time from instruction. They aren’t commanded by anyone. They are listening to their children

This message was written by Bob Schaeffer of FairTest:
Normally, FairTest sends out these news clips summaries once a week, early each Tuesday afternoon. With school standardized exam season now in full gear, however, the flow of stories about testing resistance and reform actions is accelerating rapidly. This special edition — with updates from more than half the 50 states over just three days — reports on the first, too-modest steps by policy makers across the U.S. to respond to the growing grassroots pressure for assessment reform.

As more students opt out, parents demonstrate, school board members pass resolutions and polls show strong public opposition to test misuse and overuse, we are confident that there will be many more updates by next Tuesday and in the coming weeks.

John King Departure, New Fed Job Linked to Failure of CIA Torture Program

Ed Notes has learned that the CIA was behind the move of John King. Having demonstrated he could run an effective torture program for students and teachers based on high stakes testing and tortuous standards, the CIA jumped at the opportunity to embrace his skills as a way to recover public standing from the recent revelations about their torture program, especially given the fact that so much of it failed to gain useful information.

"This is a win-win," said a CIA source. "Water boarding and rectal infusions never worked but a constant barrage of testing is guaranteed to get results. With so many teachers running screaming out of the profession and so many kids throwing up during testing, it was clear that we've been barking up the wrong torture tree.

"We also looked at John King's success in pushing charters to destroy the public school system. He will be devising charter terrorist groups. Every terrorist deserves a choice.

"And who better than John King to make this work? If I were in ISIS and Al Qaueda I would be packing up and leaving - fast."

Rebecca Mead in New Yorker on Teachers Refusing to Give Test and on Louis C.K. Slam of Testing and Common Core

This week, teachers at International High School at Prospect Heights, which serves a population of recently arrived immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, announced that they would not administer an assessment required by the city. A pre-test in the fall “was a traumatic and demoralizing experience for students,” a statement issued by the teachers said. “Many students, after asking for help that teachers were not allowed to give, simply put their heads down for the duration. Some students even cried.” When a comedian points out the way in which the current priorities don’t add up, it earns even the attention of those who haven’t thought much about school since they graduated. But the brutal math of the New York City school system is no laughing matter.... Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker

Rebecca is an opt-out parent in Brooklyn and talks about our pals at the International School at Prospect Heights campus - see the video I made (Video and Press Release: NYC High School Teachers Refuse to Administer Test). 

The Louis C.K. story has been circulating for days, topped by his appearance on Letterman. I posted some of his tweets the other day - Even more Louis CK Tweets this time about CC and "Bill Hates"!!!

His kids go to public school in Manhattan. Here are some more links to stories.

Diane Ravitch: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/louis-ck-common-core_b_5250982.html

An ed deform Newsweek writer, who claims to be a former teacher - attacked Louis and used the same old tired excuses, even resorting to pulling same race card used by Arne Duncan -- that it is white middle class people protesting because they have nothing to lose while ed deform will save the poor children on the plantation.

Louis C.K.        ✔ @louisck 

@alexnazaryan the things you say about me are shallow and mean but you posed in front of some books for your pic & thus sound smart.

Ravitch does touch on this issue in one of her responses to Nazaryan.

Actually, we at Change the Stakes are beginning to see a real uptick in parents of color joining the opt-out movement. CTS has been going into these neighborhoods to provide info for people.

"LOUIS C.K. HAS FIGURED OUT WHY OUR KIDS ARE SAD"

"Their love of learning is dying. And the only way to fix it is to listen to them."
by Ben Collins
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/louis-ck-education

Gothamist--has embedded clip of Louis CK on Letterman. First two minutes of video

http://gothamist.com/2014/05/02/video_louis_ck_slams_common_core_te.php

Boing Boing piece by Cory Doctorow:

http://boingboing.net/2014/05/02/standardized-testing-and-schoo.html

Louis on ABC News. On Facebook: 1 minute video.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152184094139818&set=vb.214832449817&type=2&theater

 

May 1, 2014

Louis C.K. Against the Common Core

Posted by Rebecca Mead

On Thursday morning, thousands of children who attend public school in New York City will be sitting down for the second of three days of standardized math tests. Among them will be the offspring of Louis C.K., the comedian. Earlier this week, he took to social media to express his frustration at his daughter’s math homework, tweeting the questions she was required to solve to his more than three million followers. “My kids used to love math! Now it makes them cry,” he wrote.

Math looks different these days from when Louis C.K. and his contemporaries attended school, and many similarly aged parents have found themselves puzzled by the manner in which math concepts are being presented to this generation of learners as well as perplexed as to how to offer the most basic assistance when their children are struggling with homework. If you are over the age of twenty and not yourself a teacher, it is unlikely that you will have an intuitive facility with a “number line,” or know how to write a “number sentence,” or even understand what is meant by the omnipresent directive to “show your work.”
In several of his tweets, C.K. blasted the Common Core, the federally approved (but not nationally mandated) standards that most states, including New York, have adopted. Parental critiques of Common Core math problems have gone viral before. At the same time, defenders of the Common Core have argued that the standards themselves are not the problem so much as the poorly conceived or badly expressed curricula in which they are often embedded. This defense sounds reasonable enough, though parents whose children come home with worksheets presenting obscurely worded or illogically presented problems and bearing the words Common Core can hardly be blamed for conflating the two.

More:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/05/louis-ck-against-the-common-core.html