Shame on those teachers who are intentionally making kids anxious about standardized tests: parents complain about Common Core at CVESD

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader and the Chula Vista Star-News in reporting the implementation of Common Core standards in Chula Vista schools. Star-News Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did the Reader's Susan Luzzaro.


Kristin Phatek
Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better
solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

See all posts re Common Core from CVESD Reporter blog.

UPDATE April 24, 2014:

Anthony Millican reports that 21 children out of 22,000 in grades 3-10 have opted out of field testing of the Smarter Balanced Assessment in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Surprised? Susan Luzzaro made it sound like there were droves of angry parents protesting the test, didn't she?

Mr. Millican provided the following information:

Can students opt out of the District’s Local Measure assessments?

Parents can request that a student opt out of state-mandated assessments, such as the STAR in the past and now CAASPP (which includes the Smarter Balanced Assessment). However, parents cannot opt out their child from school and District assessments. These assessments provide important information necessary to communicate to parents about student progress through report cards. Opting out of school and district assessments would be like refusing to take a spelling quiz or refusing to turn in homework. Evidence of student performance in these areas is necessary in any educational program.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has administered Local Measure assessments since the year 2000. The Local Measure assessments differ from state assessments, but they are administered concurrently. Our teachers regularly assess for learning all the time through quizzes, benchmark assessments, and summative assessments to measure student progress. Parents expect that.

How many parents have opted out their student from the new online state tests?

Very few. Salt Creek Elementary has had the highest number of parent opt-out requests. There are 631 students in grades 3-6 at Salt Creek who are taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment and there have been 7 parent requests for opting out a total of 9 children from the field test of the Smarter Balanced assessment. This represents only .0014 percent of the student population. Furthermore, some of those parents have stated that their concern was only for the field test and that they were in support of the operational Smarter Balanced Assessment to begin next year. Districtwide, of 22,000 students in grades 3-10, parents of only 21 students have requested to opt out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment, or .00095 of the student population.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of parents want to know how their students are doing academically. The transition of our Local Measure assessments from the 1997 California Content Standards to the new Common Core State Standards reflects our District's commitment to ensure every student meets or exceeds the goal of being college and career ready.

UPDATE April 15, 2014:

I just spoke to Anthony Millican at CVESD, and he tells me that it is not at all true that if a student "failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade." I hope that Susan Luzzaro at the Reader will publish this fact, since her article offers no contradiction to this quote in its first paragraph.

Mr. Millican notes that many teachers are delighted with Common Core. I'll bet the students of those teachers are also delighted. Why didn't Ms. Luzzaro quote any of them?

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm sure that there are many classrooms in Chula Vista Elementary School District where confident, competent teachers--and their students--are completely relaxed about upcoming standardized tests. In fact, those kids probably think that taking tests is fun.

But what about the teachers who simply don't know how to teach well? They are having hissy fits, and pointing the finger at Common Core Standards. There is nothing at all wrong with Common Core Standards. It's just that many teachers don't grasp the concept of a basic concept. That's what Common Core is all about: basic concepts.

Historically, a large percentage of teachers have taught mostly by rote, without teaching kids how to think. Also, there are some pretty good teachers who simply don't like to go into depth when teaching a subject. They like to teach a concept and then move on. This method is NOT used in countries with highly successful education systems.

These two types of teachers are intentionally upsetting children so that parents will come in and complain about Common Core instead of complaining about the teacher.

Why isn't this parent asking why 70% of kids don't understand basic facts? Has she not been paying attention for the past decades as student performance has gone down? Does she know during those decades fewer and fewer teachers have come from top colleges? The average teacher these days is simply not up to the job. As teachers have become weaker, the job itself has become harder.

So why doesn't the district simply teach the teachers how to teach? Perhaps you think that the district is run by brilliant minds? Administrators tend to be people who were very immersed in teacher culture and school politics when they were teachers. They played the game. They followed the right people. Don't expect them to have a particularly good understanding of the educational process, and don't expect them to know how to teach teachers.

Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

Perhaps she might consider this solution to the problem: Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--without firing or laying-off any teachers!

San Diego County parents should have access, as do parents in Los Angeles, to information showing how much the students in each classroom are learning each year, as measured by year-by-year changes on standardized test scores. The Los Angeles Times published these "value-added" scores for each teacher. Why doesn't any San Diego news source publish our information?

Amazingly, it was revealed that students of the most admired and highly-regarded teachers frequently showed remarkably little improvement. You can always find teachers and parents who think they know who the best teachers are, but it turns out they're often completely wrong.

Of course, test scores are only a clue, not a final determination, as to whether a teacher is doing a good job. Proper evaluation would consist of regular observations, interviews and test scores of both students and teachers. In the current system, most principals have very little knowledge about what most of their teachers are doing in the classroom. Often, years go by without a principal spending more than a few moments in a teacher's classroom. And in my 27 years teaching in CVESD, not once did any principal ever sit down and talk to me about my thinking about how to educate children.

If teacher performance were evaluated effectively, there would be an added bonus: administrators could be chosen from among the best teachers.

But the district administration isn't the only problem. There's also the teachers union. The one thing you can count on the California Teachers Association to do is to protect incompetent teachers. The parent in the article below who claims that Common Core is "advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education" is doing what the teachers union calls "staying on message". She certainly sounds like she was coached.

The test isn't creating a problem, it's exposing a problem that has existed for years.

Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
“My son had been experiencing headaches”
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

One night last year, Gretel Rodriguez was playing the word game Hangman with her son who attends HedenKamp Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District. He chose an unusual word. When Rodriguez asked him why, her son said he was learning it for the California State Test. Then he said he was nervous — worried that if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade.

Rodriguez said in an April 7 interview, “My son had been experiencing headaches, then when he told me his worries, I made up my mind to opt him out of any standardized exams.”

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Rodriquez ask the school district if test results might be used to hold a child back? Did she ever consider helping her child to get the problem into perspective? Does she normally try to teach coping skills to her child? Does she teach her child to search out the facts before dissolving in fear? I suspect that the teacher might have been manipulating his or her students emotionally instead of dealing with his or her own fears about test results. Was the teacher really afraid of what might happen to himself (or herself)?

Also, I'm wondering why the reporter who wrote this piece, Susan Luzzaro, fails to tell us if this child's fear is based on reality. Why doesn't Ms. Luzzaro report on this important question? Luzzaro's entire article seems to be based on the belief that the district actually flunks kids who do poorly on the test.]

Rodriguez is one of many parents, locally and nationally, who are choosing to opt their children out of testing.

“By opting my son out of standardized tests I’ve also ensured he doesn’t have to take the SBAC [Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium] test this year as well,” Rodriguez continued.

In 2012, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium was one of two companies that split a $330 million Department of Education grant to develop a computer-based test aligned with Common Core Standards.

In 2014, students will be taking a Smarter Balanced field test, or a test to test the test — based on Common Core Standards. The test will be administered to California students between March and June.

Rodriguez has another son who is a special-education student in the Sweetwater Union High School District. At first he told his mother that he wanted to continue taking the standardized tests and Rodriguez agreed.

Recently he changed his mind and asked his mom to opt him out. Rodriguez said she was happy about his decision because the new Common Core test has no modifications for special-education students or English-language learners.

The Phataks have three children in public schools. Two of them go to Salt Creek Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District; their older son attends Eastlake Middle School in the Sweetwater district.

When asked which tests she was going to opt her children out of, Kristin Phatak answered, “All of them.”

Phatak believes that “tests designed by publishing companies are not a good measure of my children’s progress. They also encourage teaching to the test.”

Regarding the Smarter Balance test aligned with Common Core, Phatak stated, “I firmly believe that test is being designed to fail the children, and in turn fail the teachers and the schools. It’s an attack on public education.”

When asked why she believes the test is designed to fail, Phatak resonded, “When you start looking at the money behind new Common Core Standards and the Smarter Balance testing, you begin to question both of them. Venture philanthropists, like the Gates Foundation, have poured millions into advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education.

[Maura Larkins' comment: The Gates Foundation? Phatek sounds pretty paranoid to me. Why wouldn't Bill Gates simply be trying to do for education the same thing he does for health--giving away huge amounts of money in an effort to make life better for people around the globe? Or perhaps Phatek has simply been influenced by teachers who don't want to improve their performance.] "In states like Kentucky, where the Smarter Balanced Consortium test has already been used, the student failure rate was 70 percent. New York also had disastrous results with their Common Core exam. The push is to tie test scores to teacher evaluations. You can’t fail the teachers unless you fail the kids.”

Phatak encourages “parents who wish to be in tune with their childrens’ education to go to the Smarter Balance website and take the pilot test that corresponds to their child’s grade level.”

Phatak said she began talking to other moms about opting out last year. She is “shocked” because so many are coming up to her this year and telling her they are opting out.

Phatak is in contact with parents across the United States through her Facebook page, though she is not a member of a national opt-out organization.

“There are no consequences for refusing to take the tests,” Phatak said. “They [districts] cannot hold a child back.”

Opting out is not new to San Diego. In 2002, the Wall Street Journal carried a report on 212 Rancho Bernardo students who refused to take standardized tests. Rancho Bernardo parents expressed reasons similar to Chula Vista parents. They felt there was “no personal incentive for their children to labor over tests that aren’t included on school transcripts or are required for high school graduation.”

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader (above story) and the Chula Vista Star-News (story below) in reporting this issue. Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did Susan Luzzaro.

Common Core receives mixed reviews
Robert Moreno
Chula Vista Star-News
Sep 28 2013

California's newest testing method is getting high praise by education officials in the South Bay, but some parents in the area’s school districts are giving the new testing measure an F.

The Golden State signed on for the model on Aug. 2, 2010, with full implementation this school year. Forty-five states — including California — use the Common Core method of testing.

John Nelson III, E.d.D, assistant superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, said the new testing model places higher standards on students than the STAR testing did.

“We (the district) believe that these new Common Core standards reflect the academic need of all students to be successful,” he said. “We know that the old standards, we’ve learned a lot of good lessons from them; however, when it came to being college- and career-ready, the standards fell short.”

Nelson said under the STAR testing standards, students entering college were not prepared and as a result, dropout rates at the university continues to be high.

Common Core tests students from K-12 in math, English, science and social science. The tests and curriculum are based more on the use of critical thinking skills than memorization.

While the elementary school district approves the new testing measures, some parents are not getting with the Common Core program.

Kristin Phatak has a son in the Chula Vista Elementary School District and another in the Sweetwater Union High School District. She is opposed to the Common Core because she said it is “dumbing down” the education standards.

[Maura Larkins' comment: How does Kristin Phatek come up with this stuff? I'm guessing that she like the old rote-memory method of teaching that left students unprepared for college. Kids were left with very little understanding of basic concepts, and a whole lot of memorization that tended to be forgotten. I agree with John Nelson that the new concept-based instruction is better for kids.]

“California and Massachusetts were known in the nation as having some of the highest standards in the United States,” she said. “They did not use California or Massachusetts standards to rate these standards, they actually lowered the standards, and so by California signing on to these standards, we have in effect lowered our standards.”

Nelson said the Common Core is not dumbing down education standards, but rather deepening the understanding of learning. He said it is more critical thinking-based than the STAR testing.

Phatak claims that the Common Core puts local school districts in violation of the Williams Settlement Act.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2000 and argued agencies failed to provide public school students with equal access to instructional materials, safe and decent school facilities and qualified teachers. As a result of this, for every student in a classroom, the school must make available one textbook for each student.

Phatak said because there are no textbooks available for the Common Core, teachers are struggling to come up with their own curriculum with Common Core methods.

[Maura Larkins' comment: What is this woman talking about? You can use ANY textbook to teach Common Core. But teachers who rely on textbooks to guide every step of instruction are simply failing to understand how to teach basic concepts. For one thing, the teacher should be guided by what her students know, and how well they are learning. The teacher's instruction should largely be coming from the teacher's brain rather than a textbook, and should be using his or her own words. The teacher should be making heavy use of the white board and a marker--and should be putting manipulatives in students' hands.

“What’s happening now is that the publishers have not come out with the textbooks for Common Core, yet the Chula Vista Elementary School District and the Sweetwater School District have decided to go ahead and implement it,” she said.

Nelson said the Common Core is not solely dependent on textbooks.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Hear, hear!]

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding in the community, Common Core is not about the curriculum, it’s about how we teach,” he said. “Literature is literature. Now we did achieve use of more complex literature but Common Core is about changing the instructional practice of teachers.”

Monica Cervantes is another parent who is against the Common Core. She has a child attending Tiffany Elementary School in Chula Vista. She said the elementary school district adopted the model without conducting research to see if it will actually work.

“I think before you implement any type of curriculum, you have to make sure it works,” she said. “If you go back and look where it was implemented first there is a lot of downfall with this.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recently announced that the Sweetwater Union High School District is receiving more than $8 million in state funding with the transition to the new testing model.

Manny Rubio, director of grants and communications with the Sweetwater Union High School District, said a portion of that money could be spent on new textbooks used in preparation for the Common Core.

The Sweetwater District is adhering to the Common Core too, because Rubio said the testing is mandated by the state, and therefore they have no choice but to implement it.

“This is something that is coming from Sacramento. It’s our mandate as far as following the law that they’ve issued.

My understanding is that ... we do not have a choice (to not implement the Common Core),” Rubio said.

Rubio said the district is implementing a Common Core curriculum for teachers this year with pilot testing for students. He said come next school year, the district will have mandated testing.

Tina Jung, information officer for the California Department of Education, said the adoption of the Common Core is not mandatory. She said it is up to the local school districts, not the state, to decide if they want to implement the testing.

“It is completely voluntary on the states and schools,” she said. “We can’t tell districts what to do. California is a local control state, that means local districts have more control than the state.”

Jung also said if a district accepts money from the state for Common Core, then that money must be used for Common Core purposes.

Because she did not want her child to take the Common Core test, Phatak withdrew one of her children from Tiffany Elementary school. The child is now being home schooled.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Phatek help her child cope with anxiety instead of taking such a drastic measure. I have a suspicion that there's a lot more going on in Phatek's family than is revealed here.]

Cervantes said she plans to opt her child out of Common Core testing.

“We (parents) can try to stop this because this was adopted and not mandated by the state,” she said. “We have a choice, it is not mandated. They chose to adopt this.”

According to the California Department of Education’s website, the Common Core describes what each student should know and be able to do in each subject in each grade.

The name Common Core derives from the testing method that uses a set of national standards that apply to every school, district and state that has adopted the Common Core model.

Rubio said parents “will not” have a choice of opting a child out of the testing.

But while Rubio mentions that students can’t opt out, California’s education code says differently.

According to Education Code 60615, a student can opt out of testing.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted,” the code reads.

James Milgram, Stanford University mathematics professor


I just noticed that the San Diego Union-Tribune has published a hysterical commentary on this subject by Lance T. Izumi. Mr. Izumi's rant contained an interesting fact:

...Stanford University mathematics professor James Milgram, an architect of California’s previous top-ranked state math standards and a member of Common Core’s Validation Committee, harshly criticizes the rigor of Common Core’s math standards: “With the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the [Common Core] math standards end after Algebra II. They include no pre-calculus or calculus.”...

Professor Milgram wants every kid in California to learn calculus!?!

That's ridiculous. I took calculus in high school, and it didn't do me one bit of good because I didn't understand the basic concepts well enough. I got an A in the class, not because I understood the material, but because I learned and applied formulas. I had to take calculus over again at UCLA. I also took vector calculus, and when I graduated I thought I knew math.

Even though I wasn't interested in going to graduate school at the time, I decided to take the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) at that time. I figured I'd never again do as well on the math section of the GRE than when I was fresh out of college math classes.

I was wrong.

I spent the next fifteen years teaching basic math concepts to fourth and fifth graders. I taught those basic concepts like they were going out of style. As a result, I myself came to understand those concepts really, really well.

Then I took the GRE again. My GRE math score went up 100 points, from 640 to 740.

My big improvement was due to focusing on elementary math concepts. I have had proof in my own life that if you want your kid to be really good in math, you must make your kid really learns basic concepts. And you shouldn't worry one bit whether your kid takes calculus in high school.


Will Susan Luzzaro continue to turn her back to
requests for more even-handed reporting?

I sent the following email to the Reader on April 17, 2014:

Regarding this story:
Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

In the very first paragraph, Susan Luzzaro quotes a parent saying that her child was worried that "if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade."

Ms. Luzzaro makes absolutely no effort in the article to assure Readers that the test is not actually used to flunk children. This is not good journalism.

I urge the Reader and Susan Luzzaro NOT to leave this false impression dangling in the minds of readers. Luzzaro should issue a clarification about the matter.

COMMENTS ON SUSAN LUZZARO ARTICLE:

eastlaker April 10, 2014 @ 12:41 p.m.

If you want to teach to the test, you need to know the answers. But--these are new tests, and most of the time, teachers don't even have the materials to work from...

So, the testing is being done initially on materials the students have not been given. Gee, how fair is that?

Especially when not only the students will be evaluated, but the teachers will be evaluated.

Maura Larkins' response to eastlaker:

The test might be new, but basic concepts are NOT NEW.

Are you saying that teachers need sample questions in order to figure out how to respond to a test? Well, sadly, you might be right. During my years at CVESD, long before Common Core, I regularly heard teachers at CVESD complain that they couldn't do the math the students were expected to do. So they demanded that the tests be changed, rather than that they themselves should have to go home and study their students' textbooks. We are not dealing with a new problem here. It's just that the teachers are now getting support from far-right wing nuts regarding this particular test because the test is supported by the Obama administration.

I would think you would be happy that teachers can't "teach to the test" if you think teaching to the test is bad. It sounds like you're saying that Common Core is forcing teachers to actually teach concepts rather than memorizing a certain type of test question. And if all the students and teachers are in the same boat, then what's the problem? The test will measure everybody fairly.

A good test measures thinking ability. That's why teachers who can't teach reasoning and logic hate good tests so much. When kids are thought to respond to any question with logic, then they do great on standardized tests. In fact, tests are a terrific instructional tool. I used to do a quiz every morning about the previous days' lessons, with the wording of the questions constantly changing. The kids enjoyed it. I would give the answer to each question as soon as the kids had written down their answers. It was an ideally teachable moment. The kids were interested in the answers, and they weren't graded by me. They were just testing themselves. It's a great way to focus kids' attention. And it's also a way to produce spectacular results on standardized tests.
I notice that many of the commenters believe that "teaching to the test" is a bad thing, as can be seen in the following comments.

anniej April 10, 2014 @ 9:17 a.m.

Teaching to the test, that is what our students are learning. There is little creativity, little interest being taught because it has become all about learning 'data '. BORING Back in my day, long long ago we were not taught to the test. We were engaged, we were involved, there was discussion, interesting learning.

Maura Larkins to anniej: You are right that interest and creativity are essential to learning. This is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. It's the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".

shirleyberan April 10, 2014 @ 9:27 a.m.

They were teaching to testing years ago when mine was is elementary 15 whatever years ago. I think it was the new thing to do back then. No wonder our kids can't read and write or do simple math. I think it was eastlaker who mentioned a sorry lack of critical thinkers.

Maura Larkins: to shirleyberan: The lack of critical thinking is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. Critical thinking is the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".

oneoftheteachers April 10, 2014 @ 6:36 p.m.

First of all, let's dispel the myth that corporations fostered:our educational system was broken. The US has some of the best universities in the world attended by graduates of our American public schools.

Maura Larkins' response: No one is saying that American universities are broken. They're so good that people from all over the world come to attend them. It's a disgrace that so many of our K-12 graduates are not prepared for our own universities.]

It's interesting that there is only ONE comment one this page (at 9:50 a.m. on April 17, 2014) that even suggests looking at this issue differently.

Bvavsvavev had the courage to say: "I am not an expert in education, so I don't know the answers. What I do know is that change is needed, money is needed, and testing is needed. The hows and whys can be left to experts to figure out."

Of course, he is immediately shot down by the regular commenters.

Interestingly, the Reader is the only news outlet in San Diego or elsewhere that prevents me from making comments. The reason was not that I made an improper comment, or even a comment that the Reader didn't like. In fact, the very first time I tried to sign up to make comments I was unable to do so. Who could have set this up? I suspect that Susan Luzzaro might have originated the idea. Susan Luzzaro's husband Frank, a former teacher and union official at Chula Vista Elementary School District, has made it clear to me that he doesn't want me revealing events at CVESD, at least not those that involve him. I once contacted the Reader to complain about not being able to make comments, and the result was that I was allowed to comment on this one story! Obviously, there is little effort at the Reader to provide a public forum. It's very much a controlled environment, run by political paymaster Jim Holman.

Who are the smartest kids in the world? The Pisa tests reveal who's rising and who's falling

Pisa tests: What do we know now?
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News
December 2013

Singapore is among the high-achieving countries at the top of global tests

How Pisa became the world's most influential exam

Would $4,000 make poor children cleverer?

The results of the latest Pisa tests, launched by the OECD this week, are going to be analysed disputed and selectively quoted for the next three years.

But what have we found about the world's education systems, from these tests taken by 15 year olds in maths, reading and science?

The coverage has been dominated by the rise and fall in national rankings, or in the UK's case getting stuck in the middle.

But there were also overarching findings from this mammoth trawl of data, based on 500,000 teenagers in 65 countries and education systems.

For instance, behaviour in class is better now than three years ago.

And among better-off countries, the amount spent on education does not seem to have any clear link with improving results.

But there were other more specific lessons.

East Asia's success not 'cultural'

The runaway success story has been the achievement of a clutch of Asian education systems. But results saw the OECD's Andreas Schleicher challenging any stereotypes about some places having an inherent "culture" of education.

Results in Shanghai and Vietnam are much better than three years ago, he says, but the "culture" hasn't changed.

The improvements reflect a deliberate policy of ensuring that a high proportion of pupils will succeed.

This also applies in other parts of the world. Poland has been transformed into one of the best school performers in Europe and the OECD argues this reflects an active policy of change and not any inherent quality of its culture. The implication of this is that other countries could follow their example.

High results or happy children?

Is it a good thing to be successful at any price? South Korea might be at the top end of the performance tables, but it's at the very bottom in how happy pupils are in school. Punishingly long hours of study, high pressure tests and extra lessons out of school might deliver high results. But is that the system to pursue?

In contrast, Peru, Albania and Indonesia, among the lowest test performers, have the highest proportions of children who like being at school.

The tests raise big questions about the balance of happiness and success

[Maura Larkins' comment: I suspect that one type of happiness, the enjoyment of intellectual pursuit, does play a large role in student success. I'm guessing that the truly strongest education systems, the ones that support achievement throughout a student's lifetime, rely on intrinsic motivation rather than duress.] And the Pisa study also showed no clear link between parental choice and better standards - but would parents accept a more controlling, centralised system to raise results?

Expect more examination of the relationship between cramming, creativity, choice and happiness.

Irresistible rise of rankings

The impact of Pisa as an international phenomenon could be directly linked to its bold willingness to rank countries. These league tables emerged about the same time as universities first experienced being listed like football clubs. It was an unfamiliar approach, but ranking has spread like ivy over ancient institutions. Everyone stands back and says it's a terrible over-simplification - and then starts planning ways to get higher.

Scandinavian gloom

Seekers after educational excellence once used to head pilgrim-like towards Finland. This was the most quoted example of a high performing school system, even though in many ways it was a very distinctive and individual system. Scandinavia was the education world's sensible successful neighbour.

But Finland has slipped downwards and the gloom has spread across Nordic countries, with Sweden among the biggest fallers. Norway and Denmark are absent from the top end of the tables. Their sluggish performances has been overtaken by countries such as Estonia, Poland and Ireland.

Are regions a better way of measuring results?

The headline results for these tests are about the performance of countries or at least big Chinese regional education systems that are as big as countries, such as Shanghai or Hong Kong.

But this year's results show much more local detail. And it often entirely contradicts the national picture.

For instance, the education system in the United States has been seen as one of the great under-performers, struggling among the below-average stragglers.

Go down to state level and it can be an entirely different story. Massachusetts would be a match for the best European systems. There are similar examples in Italy and Spain. Wales is a long way behind the other parts of the UK.

What this means, the OECD says, is that there are often bigger differences within countries than between countries. And if one region can perform so well, why not the rest of the country?

Boston Massachusetts had results completely unlike the US national score

Hungry newcomers

Education systems are inextricably linked with economies and the ambitions of their people. And the rising stars are those that are pushing up from below, in Asia, South America and eastern Europe. Vietnam, Brazil are Poland are getting the praise for progress, following in the footsteps of Singapore and South Korea.

Baltic states such as Estonia are now more likely to be among the top performers than wealthier western European countries.

Old empires

The great powers of the 20th Century are conspicuous by their absence from the top of these education rankings. The UK, France, Russia, the US, all with very different systems, have collectively shown no sign of a resurgence. They each will have a complicated, entrenched set of legacies. Expect more political introspection and rummaging through the ideas box.

Rise of global tests

Where is this all heading? Economies, employers, digital technologies and media operate globally across international boundaries.

But education has until recently remained stubbornly inward looking, with national systems only measured against national exams. Pisa has thrown down a challenge on their credibility.

What happens if national exam results are going up when international tests are staying flat? And how can we rely on the accuracy of a sample-based process such as Pisa? More examination of the examinations is lying ahead.

High school students' SAT scores continue to slip; worse yet, the high scorers don't want to be teachers

Has teaching become a profession for dummies? Many SAT high-scorers would like to teach, but apparently most of them want salaries commensurate with their scores. My plan requires only 25% of teachers to be high scorers in order to give every child the benefit of an above-average teacher. It wouldn't result in any increased costs. And weak teachers wouldn't need to be fired, because everyone's skills would be used to maximum benefit. Impossible? See how I did the math HERE and HERE.

"Significantly lagging behind were students hoping to major in three of the most popular fields -- education (1442)..."

"Students wishing to major in multi/interdisciplinary studies earned the highest combined SAT score (1757)."

High school students' SAT scores continue to slip
Lynn O'Shaughnessy
CBS News
MoneyWatch
September 26, 2013

(MoneyWatch) The latest SAT test figures released today by the College Board suggest that most freshmen aren't academically prepared for college.

High school seniors who graduated earlier this year generated the exact same scores as last year's crop of test takers. The latest results continue a pattern of stagnating test scores that educators have lamented for years. The 2013 figures suggest that only 43 percent of SAT takers among this year's freshmen are ready for the academic rigors of college studies.

The average high school senior earned a 496 on the critical reading portion of the test and a 514 on the math section (The highest score possible for each of these sections is 800). Students fared the worst in the writing section, with an average score of 488. While the average composite score of 1498 out of a possible 2400 is identical with last year's result, it's 20 points lower than in 2006, when the SAT writing section was introduced.

Who is ready for college

Students who earn a 1550 on the test, according to the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark, have a 65 percent probability of earning a first-year GPA of a B minus or higher. Most of the students who meet the readiness benchmark (78 percent) are enrolled in four-year institutions.

David Coleman, the College Board's president, said the latest batch of stagnant scores represents a "call to action."

"We must dramatically increase the number of students in K-12 who are prepared for college and careers," he said in a statement. "Only by transforming the daily work that students do can we achieve excellence and equity."

That's easier said than done. FairTest.org, which is an opponent of the SAT and state-level programs that focus on K-12 testing, compiled this chart showing how much SAT scores have slipped since 2006:

Students planning to major in some of the liberal arts and sciences performed significantly better than many who are aiming at more vocationally oriented degrees. Students wishing to major in multi/interdisciplinary studies earned the highest combined SAT score (1757), followed by the physical sciences (1673), English language and literature (1665), and social sciences (1661).

Significantly lagging behind were students hoping to major in three of the most popular fields -- education (1442), psychology (1484), and business management and marketing (1497). Some of the lowest scores came from students wanting to major in parks and recreation (1328) and construction trades (1274).

Lafayette Elementary, Clear View Elementary and Mar Vista Academy lose scores

The tip of the iceberg?

3 Schools Stripped of API Rankings for Cheating
Lafayette Elementary, Clear View Elementary and Mar Vista Academy lose scores
By Rory Devine and Andie Adams
10 News
Sep 25, 2013

Three San Diego County schools are disqualified from receiving state funding or awards for two years because of standardized test cheating – not by the students, but by the teachers. NBC 7's Rory Devine reports.

Three San Diego County schools are disqualified from receiving state funding or awards for two years because of standardized test cheating – not by the students, but by the teachers.

Lafayette Elementary, Clear View Elementary and Mar Vista Academy (formerly Mar Vista Middle School) will be stripped of their scores on California’s Academic Performance Index (API).

The rating system allows schools to set and meet performance targets, and losing the API scores can lead to funding cuts or removal of faculty and administrators.

Cheating can encompass many mistakes, from telling students outright that they have the wrong answer, to handing out the wrong study guide.

That’s what happened at Mar Vista Academy.

“It was brought to the attention of the principal that a teacher using a study guide possibly contained questions from a previous year,” said Manny Rubio, spokesman for the Sweetwater Union School District.

That study guide was given to hundreds of students in Mar Vista’s math classes, despite training for teachers on what is and isn’t allowed.

The state does let teachers use similar questions from previous tests as study guides, but teachers cannot use the exact questions.

At Lafayette Elementary, homonyms were left in a pocket chart on the board while students took the test, administered by a substitute teacher. A third grader pointed out that one of the homonyms was on the test.

The third school, Clear View Elementary, was stripped of its API scores after a teacher checked the testing booklets of certain students when they finished a section of the test. The teacher then put the test booklet back on the students’ desks on a specific page and told the students they need to check it.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District says the state’s initial determination to disqualify Clear View is under review. The district contends the irregularity may not have affected enough students to merit a disqualification.

“Most of the time, it is something that they hadn’t really planned on doing or thought about doing,” said Rubio. “In some cases it is. Unfortunately you’ll also see schools where it was intentional. It was very much their way of trying to boost their students’ performances.”

The state says it takes the reliability of assessments very seriously, as do the schools, which self-report.

Most schools abide by the law; 27 out of more than 10,000 California schools were flagged for irregularities this year.

Source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/3-san-diego-schools-disqualified-from-state-rankings-225278382.html#ixzz2g0A7iIoD

Not a Single Liberian Student Passed This Year's University Admission Test

There are obviously a lot of changes to be made, but to start with, the university should admit the highest scorers, and give them remedial instruction. The fact that they didn't learn English shouldn't disqualify them. Doesn't the University know how to teach English?

Not a Single Liberian Student Passed This Year's University Admission Test
28 August 2013
Written by Ndesanjo Macha
Global Voices

As Liberia marks the 10th anniversary of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the 14-year civil war, nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed this year's admission test to the University of Liberia. It is the first time that not a single candidate passed the admission test.

Liberia's president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, acknowledges that the education system in Liberia is “in a mess”. Public Domain photo from the US State Department.

The BBC has reported that Liberia's Education Minister Education Minister, Etmonia David-Tarpeh, found it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed. She therefore intends to meet university officials to discuss the matter. She describes the failure rate as “mass murder.”

However, a private consultant, James Dorbor Jallah, who was hired by the university to manage the entrance examination confirmed the report and said the days are over when students were admitted into the University of Liberia through bribery or based on how many important people they know.

The world has reacted on Twitter with shock and disbelief at the news.

This is how Kenyan Harvard Kennedy School Professor Calestous Juma (@calestous) described the news:

King Leopold II of Belgium was the sole and de facto owner of the Congo Free State, the present day the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 1885 to 1908.

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett believes in standardized tests for accountability in schools--except if it would make a GOP donor unhappy

Accountability for you, but not for me, seems to be a common policy in schools I've worked in. Now it's been exposed in the state superintendent's office in Indiana.

"Christel’s ninth- and 10th-grade students got brutally low scores on the English and math tests, with only 70 percent passing English and just a third passing math...

"Bennett’s staff swung loyally and swiftly into action; within a day they had found what they called a “loophole” in the state law that allowed them to change Christel’s grade."

The Case of the Missing Zeroes
An astonishing act of statistical chutzpah in the Indiana schools’ grade-changing scandal.
By Jordan Ellenberg
Slate.com
Aug. 2, 2013

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett resigned Thursday amid claims that, in his former position as superintendent of public instruction in Indiana, he manipulated the state’s system for evaluating school performance.

Bennett, a Republican who created an A-to-F grading protocol for Indiana schools as a way to promote educational accountability, is accused of raising the mark for a school operated by a major GOP donor. Bennett calls that charge, which arose from emails among Bennett’s staff obtained by the AP, “malicious and unfounded” and “frankly so off base.” He offered a different explanation for why the grades for Indianapolis charter school Christel House Academy—whose mark soared from a C to an A—and 12 other schools were changed at the last minute. According to Bennett, he was just correcting a simple math mistake.

Bennett’s explanation is perfectly mathematically reasonable, and it would get him off the hook. The only problem is that the story he’s telling appears to be totally false.

Bennett told AEI’s Rick Hess, “As we were looking at the grades we were giving our schools, we realized that state law created an unfair penalty for schools that didn't have 11th and 12th grades. Statewide, there were 13 schools in question had unusual grade configurations. The data for grades 11 and 12 came in as zero. When we caught it, we fixed it.”

Bennett’s stated rationale makes sense. Here’s an analogy. You’re teaching a course with three exams, and each student’s overall exam grade for the class is computed as an average of her three individual exams

(1/3) * (exam 1) + (1/3) * (exam 2) + (1/3) * (exam 3)

But what happens if a student misses exam 3, with a justified absence, and the test can’t be made up? Then we have what’s called a “missing data” problem—we have to infer something about the student’s performance without the full complement of data we have for everybody else. One natural approach is to compute that student’s overall exam grade as the average of the exams she did take:

(1/2) * (exam 1) + (1/2) * (exam 2).

What you shouldn’t do is give the student a zero for the exam and average it into her grade.

Christel House had started out as a middle school and was adding one high school grade each year; for the 2011-12 school year, it served students through the 10th grade. High schools, according to Indiana statute, were to be graded on four metrics, averaged like so:

30% * (English scores) + 30% * (algebra scores) + 30% * (graduation rate) + 10% * (college and career readiness score)

But, as Bennett said in an official statement, “Christel House only served students in grades K-10, thus the graduation rate and college and career readiness measures could not be calculated because the school did not serve grades 11 and 12.” So it faced a missing data problem, like the student who had to miss an exam.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be fair to count those scores as zero! The obvious fix, just as with the student, is to grade such a school on the two scores that it does have:

50% * (English scores) + 50% * (Algebra scores)

Does that mean Bennett really did get railroaded, and he was just fixing an obvious error?

No—because the “fixed” version of the grade was what Indiana was already using before Bennett started tinkering with the gears. When you dig into the numbers, the story about the unfair zeroes looks like a complete fabrication.

Christel’s ninth- and 10th-grade students got brutally low scores on the English and math tests, with only 70 percent passing English and just a third passing math. Here’s how Jon Gubera, then the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, described Christel’s performance in one of the emails released by the AP:

“OK, here is their breakdown ...

They served grades K-10 in 2011-12 so they are a combined school but do not have any graduates. So their grade is a combination of the standard E/MS model and the HS 9&10 model which only counts ECA proficiency.

E/MS results: 3.00 on E/LA (no growth bonuses) and 4.00 on math (bottom 25% bonus) = 3.50 points (B)

HS results: 2.00 on E/LA (70% pass rate) and 0.00 on math (33% pass rate) = 1.00 points (D)

Final Combined results: E/MS 3.50 x .76 (76% of school is in grades 3.8) = 2.66 + HS 1.00 x .24 (24% of school is in high school) = .24. Thus overall grade is 2.66 + .24 = 2.9 (C).

Bottom line: their terrible 10th grade Algebra I results (33% passing) was the principal factor in earning a C grade."

Christel’s grade 3–8 scores came to a 3.50, or a B, and their high school scores, thanks to the algebra fiasco, were a 1.00, or a D. The school’s score is then an average of the grade 3–8 scores and the 9–10 scores, weighted according to the proportion of students in each group.

Where are the zeroes for the graduation rates and readiness score that got averaged into Christel’s score—the “unfair penalty” that Bennett claims he fixed? They’re not there, because that’s the part that Bennett, as far as I can tell, simply made up.

Gubera’s computation wasn’t satisfactory for Bennett, because it didn’t give Christel an A, and—judging by the emails obtained by the AP—he had already told Christel administrators they were getting an A. No mere numbers were going to make a liar out of him!

What’s more, Bennett wrote in one of the emails, the low grade for Christel meant “legislative leadership as well as our critics of A-F are going to use this against us to undo our accountability metrics through legislation.” He went on: “If you can’t tell, I am more than a little miffed about this. I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past 6 months.”

Bennett’s staff swung loyally and swiftly into action; within a day they had found what they called a “loophole” in the state law that allowed them to change Christel’s grade. The statute clearly states that high schools without 12th-graders get a score made up half of the English score and half of the algebra score. What’s more, the law said schools that combined high school grades and lower grades should use a weighted average of the elementary/middle school measures and the four high school measures.

Here’s where Bennett’s team found the loophole big enough to drive a charter school through. A normal person would do exactly what Chief Accountability Officer Jon Gubera did—give Christel the weighted average of its elementary/middle school score, according to the rules for elementary/middle schools, and its high school score, according to the rules for high schools.

But Bennett had a better idea. Christel was, technically speaking, not a high school, so the statutory formula for the high school grades didn’t apply. But it also didn’t have all four high school measures, so, he argued, the rules for combined schools didn’t apply either. There were just 13 schools in the state that had both middle school and high school grades but no seniors. For these schools, Bennett reasoned, the Indiana education poobahs should have a free hand to set the grades however they pleased. You can guess what happened next: Bennett ruled that the ninth- and 10th-graders in these schools didn’t count at all. So it was that the offending algebra grades vanished in a puff of bureaucratic smoke. (Anne Hyslop at Ed Money Watch has an even more detailed accounting of the process, if you like watching sausage get made.)

This was an act of astonishing statistical chutzpah. Suppose the syllabus for my math class said that the final grade would be determined by averaging the homework grade and the exam grade, and that the exam grade was itself the average of the grades on the three tests I gave. Now imagine a student gets a B on the homework, gets a D-minus on the first two tests, and misses the third. She then comes to me and says, “Professor, your syllabus says the exam component of the grade is the average of my grade on the three tests—but I only took two tests, so that line of the syllabus doesn’t apply to my special case, and the only fair thing is to drop the entire exam component and give me a B for the course.”

I would laugh her out of the office. Or maybe suggest that she apply for a job as a state superintendent of instruction.

The saddest part is that I’m guessing Bennett sincerely felt he was doing the right thing. In his mind, he knew Christel was a great school, so if the scores said otherwise, the scores had to be wrong. In this respect, ironically, he ends up echoing his policy opponents, adopting the position that a mechanistic testing and scoring procedure can’t be allowed to override firsthand knowledge about teachers and schools.

Saying this out loud wasn’t an option, so any test scores that seemed to indicate learning problems at Christel had to be eliminated from the spreadsheet with extreme prejudice. (I attempted to reach both Tony Bennett and Jon Gubera and have not received a reply from either man. If I do hear back, I will add an update to this story.)

Bennett told AEI’s Hess, “I'm a track and field guy. I run, I try to keep my weight down at about 190. Christel has been a track-performing school for a number of years. If I get on the scale one day, am doing everything the same, and am still wearing my same clothes and they fit, and the scale suddenly reads 215, I am going to question what's going on.”

But Christel wasn’t doing everything the same. It didn’t have a 10th grade before, and then it did, and whatever it was doing to teach those new 10th-graders math, it didn’t lead them to pass algebra.

Bennett could, and should, have faced up to that fact, given the school the C it earned, and delivered them some honest tough love: “You’re still doing well at the stuff you’ve always done well, but you obviously haven’t succeeded at the new stuff you’re trying to do. We believe you can do it, but until you do, your grade’s going to suffer.” Isn’t that what accountability in education means, if it still means anything at all?

Lynne Varner says Seattle teacher protests against testing are focused on the wrong problem

You would think that smarter kids would do better in school, right?

Wrong--and least not for poor black kids.

The fact is that any child of average intelligence can succeed in school--as long as he/she has a rich environment of verbal interactions, a wide variety of experiences, a safe home, preparation for kindergarten and full support for emotional, physical and educational success. Of course, all these things also contribute to a higher IQ.

If your parent or parents are away working at two jobs, or, in a worst-case scenario, abusing drugs and hanging out with gangs, you aren't likely to develop anything approaching your full potential.

A brilliant child with a bad home situation and intellectually impoverished environment will not do anywhere near as well in school as a child with a plodding, low-average intellect who is raised to be a success.

This is true of all races, but the statistics show that a much higher percentage of white and Asian kids are groomed for success. The situation among poor blacks is so bad that the benefits of high intelligence are completely wiped out, statistically speaking. A lot of good brains are being wasted.

The high cost of wasted educational opportunity — now that’s worth a teacher protest
Boycotting a Seattle Schools standardized test is small potatoes. But don’t worry. There’s plenty in education to get riled up over.
By Lynne K. Varner
Seattle Times
February 7, 2013

I remain unconvinced the Garfield High School teachers’ boycott of the Measures of Academic Progress test is anything more than adult hubris.

For one, nearly all Seattle Public Schools have begun administering the required test, despite differing views about its value. For another, the test is unlikely to survive as a ninth-grade requirement. The case to keep it is stronger for middle and elementary grades, but even there pilots of new tests by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium may yield better options.

The push for more sophisticated tests has good intent. But the boycott and its attendant protest rallies — designed to pressure Superintendent José Banda into making a decision a mere three months before he plans to anyway — is overkill.

I’ll give boycotters something to protest.

Let’s start with dismal news that African-American, Latino and Native American elementary students still lag white students in core subjects, such as math and reading. We know this from results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test given to fourth- and eighth-graders across the nation.

Sure, Washington state as a whole posts test scores above the national average on the NAEP, but that’s far from the case for brown children and those from low-income families. Here’s a chant: “Education, not academic stagnation!”

I’m a parent and I’ve also written about education long enough to become as frustrated as the Garfield teachers and parents. I’m frustrated that despite the $13 billion spent every two years on the K-12 system, students still graduate from high school who don’t read well or understand basic math.

Who’s going to take to the streets about that?

Seattle is a city that prides itself on progressive values but I see a regressive bent in some corners, particularly the obsession over education reforms.

I remember the outrage in 2011 when a Seattle high-school principal was fired from a school that had only 5 percent of African-American students, 16 percent of Latino students and 3 percent of bilingual students passing the district’s standardized math test.

The principal was reinstated and the furor died down. But I’ve wondered what happened to the students with the abysmal scores. Our attention waned because the school’s overall test scores are quite good.

How are those students surviving without basic math skills? Is their future what we would want for our own children?

Schools, teachers and parents are working harder than ever. I see it when I’m out reporting but I also see the efforts reflected in data. Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of college degrees going to blacks, Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders went up. That’s progress.

But I worry about high-school students and young adults because they are most likely to get caught on the wrong side of the growing mismatch between skills required for available jobs and the skills they actually have.

If the skills gap is not addressed, attention toward picket lines will soon be directed toward growing unemployment lines.

Critics of the MAP and other standardized tests point out their cost. They aren’t cheap. But neither is a poor education.

My next point puts this into context: Eliminating the achievement gap would have boosted by $240 million the earnings of currently working African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, according to the Washington state Policy and Budget Center.

Protesting standardized tests is not so much wrong as it is misdirected.

The high cost of wasted educational opportunity is the bigger problem and far worthier of a rally or two.

Perspective on the 12 Indicators: 'Quality Teaching'

Perspective on the 12 Indicators: 'Quality Teaching'
Voice of San Diego
Apr 23, 2013
By OSCAR RAMOS

I’m working my way through San Diego Unified’s leaked draft of their 12 indicators for quality schools. Since this document apparently hadn’t been shared out with other stakeholders (the union, parent groups, the general community, etc.), I imagine it’s going to go through a lot of changes.

But that doesn’t stop us from basing our discussion on the assumptions this document makes, so I’ll go ahead and dive in. For now I'm only going to focus on the first indicator of school quality (Quality Teaching). I'll delve into the rest of the document in the future.

I was surprised that Objective 1.1 (Engaging and supporting all students in learning) was such a large proportion of the rating system (40 percent), given that student achievement represents a comparatively much smaller percentage (it’s there, though, as I’ll get to later).

One problem with giving so much importance to Objective 1.1 is that the evidence it describes needs to happen every day in the classroom, but the principal usually only observes teachers a couple of times a year (sometimes only once). For the ratings in this category to be mean anything, the principal would need to observe teachers constantly. One way to improve this measurement would be to expand the responsible party to include a student feedback component, or even a parent/community feedback component.

Now, I don’t like the idea of people randomly walking into my classroom unannounced, looking specifically to find faults in my instruction. I can imagine such a situation bordering on teacher harassment in a worst-case scenario. But it is possible to create a healthy school culture in which teachers are comfortable with people visiting their classes. The Preuss School, where I teach, has many visitors who want to learn about our instructional practices, and many of our teachers are accustomed to a steady stream of visitors. Nurturing a culture of constructive, open observations requires a lot of cooperation and trust between principals and teachers.

Another important prerequisite for frequent observations is principals who are well-versed in instructional practices and who are their schools’ education leaders. This may sound obvious, but I’m concerned that many in the current wave of self-designated education reformers from the business sector don’t value school leadership that is capable of engaging on the instructional level with teachers. They seem to favor data managers as school leaders.

Peter Orszag (President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, and current vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup) has written about this concern.

[The Gates Foundation researchers] found that teacher analysis could be done without having observers make random visits to the classroom; allowing a teacher to submit a self-selected set of videos from the classroom worked just as well, because even the best classes conducted by bad teachers were worse than those from better teachers. I’m not anti-data. Data is an important tool for guiding teacher instruction, and for assessing whether teachers are responding to their students’ strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think it should be used primarily as a punitive tool, especially given that students don’t have a stake in these assessments. As a reader for the AP European History exam last year, I had the pleasure of reading all kinds of nonsensical letters written by students who sat for the exam but didn’t attempt to answer the essay question I was grading — a few actually wrote that they were too tired to write the essay. Granted, it’s a long exam, but I wouldn’t want their teacher’s livelihood to depend on whether a student had enough energy to complete an exam that has little to no bearing on his/her future (some colleges won’t even give credit for high AP scores).

I would use test scores (in the case above, AP scores) to assess whether a teacher is updating his or her lesson plans to address student deficiencies, as measured by a variety of data. I think this is a critical component of teacher quality assessment, but it is currently under-weighted in this draft of Quality Teaching.

The way I’m reading the document, there is a section dedicated to student achievement: Indicator 1.5.2, which is under Objective 1.5: Assessing Student Learning (10 percent). Being able to adapt lesson plans to target individual and group weaknesses is the mark of a good teacher. Even a great teacher can have a group of students that doesn't respond to his or her lessons because of a glaring underlying weakness, be it academic or personal. That teacher is going to have to develop new approaches in order for students to succeed. That’s going to require collaboration with colleagues, research on content and teaching techniques and developing new lesson plans.

I had such an experience at one point in my career, a few years back. I had just finished a successful school year with a group of students that had responded well to the academic supports I had implemented that year, so I was pretty happy. It became immediately clear the next year, however, that my lesson plans weren’t working on my new students. They were dealing with motivational issues — something my lesson plans didn’t account for. I worked with my colleagues to address my class's needs throughout the year, and I feel better-equipped to address those sorts of issues in the future. But I may get a group of kids with issues I’ve never dealt with before, and I’ll need to work quickly in order to address their needs.

It’s like a batter who hits home runs every time the pitcher throws a fastball. That’s great, as long as he keeps getting fastballs. But pitchers are going to discover his weakness (let’s say it’s the slider), and then throw that. The mark of a good hitter is one who can make the necessary adjustments and learn to hit sliders for extra bases. It takes time for good teachers to develop new tools and techniques to adapt to their students' academic needs.

The catch, though, is that teachers actually need to put in the work to make those adjustments and get better results. Indicator 1.5.2 means collecting data on student achievement. It means that teachers have to learn how to adjust to shifting circumstances in their classrooms. It also means that principals (currently the responsible party for this indicator) have to work with teachers to help them make those adjustments and assess whether those changes are appropriate. It also means that we need to have accurate metrics by which to assess student learning. That’s a whole lot of effort for something that counts for only 10 percent.

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat

It's ridiculous to say that teachers and administrators in Georgia and elsewhere committed crimes only because they had to give high-stakes tests to students.

The Georgia indictments are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg of White Chalk Crime in schools.

The indicted educators tried to get rewards that they had no right to, and to take them away from those who deserved them. This happens all the time in schools. It's the reason the education system is failing. The wrong people are in charge of most districts, and too many of the wrong people are teaching kids.

If we had a system for correctly evaluating teachers, like this one, we wouldn't need to test kids so much, and we would save billion dollars a year. We could trust the teachers to do their job, and part of that job is to know exactly what each child knows and how each child learns best. Standardized testing could go back to its original purpose: to make an official determination of which kids are most advanced academically.

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
By Michael J. Feuer
Edweek.org.
April 9, 2013

News came down, or up, earlier this month about the indictment of the former Atlanta schools chief Beverly Hall and 35 other current and former officials for their alleged roles in a massive cheating scandal that has rocked the city for the past three years.

The best coverage of this story is by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and her colleagues, whose fine journalism uncovered the muck.

There is nothing good to say about cheating on tests, which, in this extraordinary case, involves allegations of tampering with student answers, racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. It’s wrong, period, and if Ms. Hall et al. are found guilty, they will hopefully use their time in jail to think about the damage they have caused to the kids, to the system, and to the public’s trust in schools and in the measures we use to gauge their quality.

Still, some of the reactions to the scandal have been surprising, if not scandalous in their own right. The most troubling response comes from people opposed to standardized testing generally and to current federal policy specifically. They somewhat gleefully use this sorry episode as the ultimate smoking gun, the perfect we-told-you-so case that clinches their claims about the evils of testing, and, by extension, the entire reform movement. It’s a big nail, they hope, in the coffin of test-based accountability.

"Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct?"

Among the more remarkable statements is one posted by William C. Ayers on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog. For Bill Ayers, an education professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Atlanta story proves that “teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the ‘outcomes’ both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.”

Mr. Ayers goes further. Not only does he attribute the alleged cheating to the testing policy, thereby essentially absolving Ms. Hall and her colleagues of their own ethical and professional lapses, but he uses the example to issue a sprawling condemnation of the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and even the president. As he puts it, “the road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.”

I have four problems with this logic (echoed in other commentaries, such as Jason Stanford’s bold assertion in the Huffington Post that “high-stakes testing makes cheating inevitable”; and FairTest’s pronouncement in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year that “[t]hese scandals are the predictable result of overreliance on test scores”).

First, shifting the blame for egregious mischief away from the perpetrators and onto the system strikes me as morally and politically bankrupt. Here’s an analogy to consider: Do we react to the worst instances of tax evasion by condemning the concept of taxation rather than by prosecuting the evaders? I assume that Mr. Ayers would not call for abolition of the graduated income tax as a way to finance public goods and redistribute wealth just because the system has its imperfections and because some people lie on their tax returns. Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct? Banking executives accused of fraud will be delighted.

Second, even if one could make an evidence-informed case that testing “inevitably” leads to illegal behavior—as if high-stakes testing overwhelms the human capacity for moral choice—there is the added problem of guilt by association. Pinning the responsibility for the Atlanta disaster on the White House is an extravagant example of misdirected blame. Maybe current federal policies lead to unwanted outcomes, such as narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but that’s a far cry from the outright fraud of the sort listed in the Atlanta indictment. Nothing in the No Child Left Behind law requires states or districts to use test scores to fire teachers and principals or to protect and reward those who achieve targets by tampering with answer sheets. In any case, there’s no evidence that federal policy causes cheating, or that “cheating is inevitable.”

Third, indicting testing, rather than cheating, undermines the possibility for reform in the design and uses of tests. The compelling logic in Campbell’s Law—“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures ...” —is supported by abundant empirical evidence on the effects of overreliance on tests for accountability.

But what’s often ignored in the popular frenzy against testing, especially in the wake of cheating scandals, is the benefits side of the argument: Tests can help gauge individual learning, give teachers additional information about their students’ progress, provide objective indicators of student achievement, and expose inequalities in the allocation of educational resources.

We may never be able to completely “overturn” Campbell’s Law, but what’s needed is a sensible approach to assessing the ratio of benefits to costs and to the design of mechanisms meant to keep the ratio strongly positive.

Fourth, it turns out that in Atlanta there were schools, and kids, that actually did improve during Ms. Hall’s tenure, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Sean P. “Jack” Buckley noted, “There were obviously rampant violations of testing integrity going on there, but there were also schools there that were legitimately improving.”

We shouldn’t allow score gains inflated from cheating to be misconstrued as evidence that any measured improvement in student learning—especially among poor and minority children—must always be the result of cheating or other mischief. This kind of smoking-gun logic saps the morale of educators, parents, and policymakers working in behalf of our most disadvantaged students and provides free ammunition to those who believe investments in public education are essentially futile. Just when we education researchers and social scientists are facing increasingly mean-spirited political challenges to our profession, Bill Ayers’ and others’ evidence-free diatribes further erode public confidence in the credibility of our work. One can only hope that the temptations of guilt by association won’t prevail, and that the research community as a whole won’t be blamed for the shoddy logic of some of its members.

Michael J. Feuer is a professor of education policy, the dean of the graduate school of education and human development at the George Washington University, and president-elect of the National Academy of Education.

Grand jury indicts 35 in Georgia school cheating scandal

See further discussion here.

What do you expect when you allow schools to keep their culture of secrecy and backdoor politics? If you want real reform, you have to change the culture of the education establishment.

Schools don't like people who make waves. They like people who fall in line with school politics.

"For example, teachers who reported other teachers who cheated were terminated, while teachers who were caught cheating were only suspended."

Beverly Hall reminds me of the administrators and board members I knew at Chula Vista Elementary School District.

Report: Test cheating may be widespread

Grand jury indicts 35 in Georgia school cheating scandal
35 employees indicted over alleged cheating
By Chelsea J. Carter
CNN
March 29, 2013
Watch this video

Atlanta (CNN) -- In what has been described as one of the largest cheating scandals to hit the nation's public education system, 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators and administrators were indicted Friday on charges of racketeering and corruption.

The indictment is the bookend to a story that was once touted as a model for the nation's school districts after the district's test scores dramatically improved in some of its toughest urban schools.

Among those indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury was Beverly Hall, the former schools superintendent who gained national recognition in 2009 for turning around Atlanta's school system.

"She was a full participant in that conspiracy," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told reporters during a news conference announcing the charges.

"Without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree in which it took place."

The indictment follows a state investigation that was launched after a series of reports by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper found large, unexplained gains in test scores in some Atlanta schools.

A state review determined that some cheating had occurred in more than half of the district's elementary and middle schools. About 180 teachers were initially implicated in the scandal.

Threats and intimidation

Hall has denied any role in the cheating scandal. In 2011, she told The New York Times that her subordinates had allowed the cheating to occur, but denied she was involved.

Hall resigned from her position in 2011 following the state investigation, which lambasted her leadership and found widespread cheating in dozens of Atlanta schools.

The alleged cheating is believed to date back to early 2001, according to the indictment, when standardized testing scores began to turn around in the 50,000-student school district.

For at least a period of four years, between 2005 and 2009, test answers were altered, fabricated and falsely certified, the indictment said.

Hall allegedly oversaw a system where threats and intimidation were used against teachers, it said.

"As a result, cheating became more and more prevalent," the indictment said.

By the time the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, as the standardized test is known, was administered in Atlanta Public Schools, "cheating was taking place in a majority of APS's 83 elementary and middle schools."

The allegations, the indictment said, are substantiated by the Georgia Governor's Office of Student Achievement analysis of erasures on standardized tests.

'Suspicious' test score gains

According to the indictment, Hall placed unreasonable goals on educators and "protected and rewarded those who achieved targets by cheating. It also alleges she fired principals who failed to achieve goals and "ignored suspicious" test score gains throughout the school system.

In 2009, Hall was named the National Superintendent of the Year by the Schools Superintendents Association, which at the time said her "leadership has turned Atlanta into a model of urban school reform."

But the indictment paints another picture of Hall, one of a superintendent with "a single-minded purpose, and that is to cheat," Howard told reporters.

"For example, teachers who reported other teachers who cheated were terminated, while teachers who were caught cheating were only suspended," the indictment alleges.

"The message from Beverly Hall was clear: There were to be no exceptions and no excuses for failure to meet targets."

At the heart of the conspiracy to cheat, the indictment said, was money.

"It is further part of the conspiracy and endeavor that targets achieved through cheating were used by Beverly Hall to obtain substantial performance bonuses," the indictment said.

It also alleges a number of others received performance bonuses based on test scores.

2011: Seven edcuators step down as scandal unfolds

Racketeering and conspiracy

Of the 65 counts in the indictment, Hall and 34 others were charged with one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as RICO.

In addition to racketeering, Hall also is charged with making false statements and writings and theft by taking.

If convicted on all counts, she could face a maximum of 45 years in prison.

Among those also indicted were four of Hall's executive administrators, six principals, two assistant principals, six testing coordinators, 14 teachers, a school improvement specialist and a school secretary.

These Atlanta Public Schools officials are among those named:

-- Millicent Few, director of human resources, is accused of participating in the conspiracy and making false statements during the investigation.

-- Tamara Cotman, a regional supervisor who oversaw dozens of Atlanta's schools, is accused of intimidating witnesses, including a principal and other staff, in an effort to hinder an investigation.

-- Sharon Davis-Williams, who also oversaw a region of Atlanta's schools.

-- Michael Pitts, who oversaw a region of Atlanta's schools, also is accused of intimidating witnesses, primarily staff at Parks Middle School, in an effort to hinder or delay an investigation.

-- Christopher Waller, principal at Parks Middle School in Atlanta, where at least four teachers are accused of conspiring to cheat on standardized tests, is also alleged to have pressured teachers to cheat as early as spring 2006.

-- Armstead Salters, principal of Gideons Elementary School, where at least four teachers say he allegedly pressured them into cheating.

Hall and the 34 others named in the indictment have been ordered to surrender to authorities by Tuesday, said Howard, the district attorney.

Teachers union sabotages teacher evaluations in every county in Maryland

Maryland rejects Montgomery’s teacher evaluation plan and 8 others
By Lynh Bui
Washington Post
February 1, 2012

The Maryland State Department of Education has rejected new teacher-evaluation proposals from nine of the state’s 24 county school systems, saying that the proposals do not align with state law, federal education reforms or, in some cases, either.

Among school systems that failed to meet the state’s criteria were Montgomery and Frederick, two of the top performing districts in Maryland and the only two counties in the state to reject Race to the Top funds. The school systems had hoped that rejecting those funds would grant them more autonomy in crafting their evaluation proposals.

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr said the state did not immediately provide a reason for rejecting the system’s proposal. He said a more detailed assessment will come next week.

Maryland education officials met with county superintendents Friday to discuss the assessments. The meeting came a day after the U.S. Department of Education released a report criticizing how Maryland has fallen behind in implementing key elements of Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s signature education reform initiative.

Much of the tension over redesigning teacher-evaluation programs in Maryland reflects the ongoing national debate over how to best tie student learning, student improvement and standardized tests to the evaluation of teacher performance.

While counties that took Race to the Top money were required to make student achievement 50 percent of the measure of teacher performance, Montgomery and Frederick only had to comply with a new state law that made it a “significant” factor in a teacher’s rating.

Starr said he worries that the state and counties have different interpretations of what “significant” should be. In its proposal, Montgomery didn’t require the use of the state’s standardized test, the Maryland School Assessment, as part of its teacher evaluation proposal but allowed it to be one of many data options principals could use.

“I’m disappointed that the strengths of the Montgomery County Public Schools system are being compromised as a result of this decision,” Starr said. “We have clearly shown over the years that a collaborative approach to teacher evaluations and support that also uses student achievement data sets the stage for improvement of student achievement.”

State Superintendent of Schools Lillian M. Lowery said in a statement that officials were “working very hard to develop fair and meaningful evaluation programs, putting student work at the very heart of how they review educators.” She added that “while there are elements of the evaluations to resolve in some instances, in some of our school systems, we continue to work with system leadership.”

A. Duane Arbogast, the acting deputy superintendent for academics in Prince George’s County, said that school system worked with its teachers’ union to find a formula that both “felt comfortable with” to submit to the state.

Under its proposal, which was also rejected by the state, teacher evaluations would have consisted of student surveys, student learning objectives and state assessments. Arbogast said the state wanted the county to use the Maryland School Assessment as 20 percent of the rating measuring student growth — not the 15 percent that Prince George’s proposed...

Florida Adopts Different Standards For Students Based On Race

It seems that Florida teachers should get a cut in pay along with their new achievement goals for kids. As a teacher, I knew how easy it was to improve scores of average and high-performing kids. I knew my real achievement was bringing the kids who were behind up to grade level and above grade level. Kids in middle class families tend to get more intellectual stimulation outside the classroom, including verbal interactions with parents.

Florida is pretty much telling teachers to worry only about Asian, white and Hispanic students, and forget about black students.

Florida has not only given up on equal achievement for all races, it has also given teachers permission to pretty much ignore black students altogether. They not only have lower goals for black students, but they also say that fewer black students need to meet those lower goals!

Florida Adopts Different Standards For Students Based On Race
JONATHAN TURLEY
JonathanTurley.org
October 15, 2012

As the Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, the Florida State Board of Education is moving to create different grading in schools on the elementary and secondary levels in terms of the levels of proficiency expected for students based on their race.

The plan would set different goals for students in math and reading based upon their race. The plan would expect schools to show that Asian students meet 90 percent to be performing at or above grade level in English and white students would have to meet 88 percent of the goals. However, Hispanics would be expected to meet only 88 percent while black students would be expected to meet just 74 percent of black students.

In math, the schools would need to reach 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient and 86 percent for white students. Hispanics would be expected to be at 80 percent while blacks would be expected to be at 74 percent.

By lowering the percentages for hispanic and black students, the school officials hope to satisfy federal and state guidelines. However, it also institutionalizes the lower scores for minority groups. It also raises the danger that teachers might push harder with white and asian students to achieve higher levels of performance after achieving lower levels for hispanic and black students. I understand the frustration with these state and federal goals. I also understand the differentials found in the baseline for different communities. However, in my view it is still a mistake. I have long argued for a greater investment in our public school system with additional teachers and better pay for teachers. My wife and I are committed to public schools and send our kids to public schools. We believe strongly in the key role that public schools play not only in socializing children but in society as a whole in having a common educational experience...

Chicago teachers strike to avoid effective evaluations of teachers

I am disappointed in Chicago teachers. If they don't want student scores used in teacher evaluations, then they should have long ago come up with an effective teacher evaluation system. They simply don't want effective evaluations because they don't want to admit that some teachers are much, much better than others. Here's my idea for how to use teacher evaluations.

From Wall Street Journal:

"The two sides have been negotiating for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security. The city has offered teachers a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% annual raises for the next three years. The average teacher salary in Chicago is about $70,000.

"On Sunday night, city officials and union leaders said the wage issues aren't the sticking point. Rather, the two sides are at loggerheads over a new teacher-evaluation system and how much of it should be weighted on student test scores, and over job security for teachers laid off from low-performing schools."

In contrast, teachers in San Diego Unified agreed to concessions in the face of revenue losses by the school district, as discussed in Voice of San Diego:

"The tentative agreement rolls back layoffs thanks to concessions from educators, who agreed to forgo a series of pay raises they were promised by the school board two years ago. Union members also agreed to continue taking five unpaid days off for the next two years.

"A more controversial aspect of the tentative agreement is a provision that calls for teachers to take up to 14 additional unpaid furlough days if voters fail to pass either of two tax measures placed on November’s ballot. That would shorten the school year by as much as three weeks."

Chicago Teachers Go on Strike
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO
Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2012

Chicago's public-school teachers hit the picket lines Monday, shutting down classes for about 350,000 students in the nation's third-largest school district.

The strike came after the city and the Chicago Teachers Unions failed to reach agreement on a four-year contract. The two sides had been negotiating for months and kept talking until late Sunday night before the union announced the strike would go forward. It is the first teachers strike in Chicago in a quarter-century and the first in a big U.S. urban district since one in Detroit in 2006...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel criticized union leaders for not delaying the strike, given the progress both sides said had been made in talks through Sunday. "This is a strike of choice," Mr. Emanuel said at a news conference Sunday night. "And because of how close we are, it is a strike that is unnecessary." Union leaders said the city's recent concessions were effectively too little, too late, after what they have characterized as bullying in talks in the months leading up to the deadline... The conflict comes amid broader tension during the economic downturn between public-sector unions and state and local governments trying to plug budget gaps.

The Chicago battle has pitted Karen Lewis, one of the country's most vocal labor leaders, against Mr. Emanuel, one of its most prominent mayors and the former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. The Democratic mayor has made efforts to overhaul the city's public education a centerpiece of his administration.

The two sides have been negotiating for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security. The city has offered teachers a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% annual raises for the next three years. The average teacher salary in Chicago is about $70,000.

On Sunday night, city officials and union leaders said the wage issues aren't the sticking point. Rather, the two sides are at loggerheads over a new teacher-evaluation system and how much of it should be weighted on student test scores, and over job security for teachers laid off from low-performing schools...