Bridging Differences

Dear Deb,

As usual, you raise lots of interesting questions and you sharpen our clear differences. Yes, I do think we should have national testing. This idea that fifty states should each have their own standards and their own tests is nutty. We are not getting higher standards; we may even be getting lower ones.

How did we get to this point? President Clinton's Goals 2000 pushed the states to create their own standards and tests (Clinton, to his credit, actually preferred national tests, but he couldn't persuade the Republican Congress to go along with his proposal for such tests). Then along came NCLB, and President Bush wanted a bigger emphasis on standards and testing, but knew that his own party would never accept national testing. So he built on the idea that each state should set its own standards, develop its own tests, grade its own progress towards the goal of having every student "proficient" in reading and mathematics by the year 2013-2014. Since the bill passed Congress in the fall of 2001, I assume that the goal of 2013-14 was based on the idea that this was the amount of time (12 years, starting in 2002) necessary to raise the achievement of children who were then in kindergarten.

As we both know, and as everyone knows who thinks about the matter, we will not reach the goal of having universal proficiency by 2014, unless we define "proficiency" to mean low-level, basic literacy.

Writing this goal, no matter how impossible and absurd, into federal law put pressure on the states to come up with plans to demonstrate that they intended to do it. How crazy was that? So every state has a year-by-year plan in which they will raise "proficiency" and "achievement" towards that elusive goal. This in turn guarantees that the states will dumb down their tests and focus relentlessly on test prep so that they can at least try to fulfill their promises to the feds.

We all know the results of this grand illusion.

First, we know from studies such as the one by the Center on Education Policy, that the curriculum has been narrowed in a majority of schools; many children are not having any chance to study the arts, history, or anything else that is not going to have an immediate impact on their reading and math scores. Though I would argue that children will get much higher reading scores if they spend more time learning history and engaging in the arts, school officials aren't willing to take the risk. The scores must rise! And they must rise by constantly drilling the kids in how to take tests and in practicing the kinds of test items that they are likely to encounter on the state tests. As a result of this idiocy, we may be losing a generation of young people who associate schooling with the worst kind of drudgery and test grind.

Second, we know from studies such as "The Proficiency Illusion" by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (where I am a trustee) that many states are using a very low-level definition of proficiency in order to inflate their scores and claim progress. There are states that tell the public that a large majority of the students are "proficient," and getting ever more proficient. Yet the proportion of students in these states who are proficient or even basic on NAEP remains nowhere near what the states are claiming.

We have a fundamental problem of honesty here. The public is being misled in most states about academic gains. NAEP is the only measure that is maintaining a consistent standard across the fifty states.

Yes, I believe we should have a scheme of national testing. Yes, you are right, I do not think that there should be "stakes" associated with national testing. I think that we should have national tests so that we have better information. Having watched the misuse of test results in NYC these past few years—where tests are being used to reward, punish, and grade students, teachers, principals, and schools, I would hate to see national tests corrupted in these ways. I see two healthy uses for national testing (I don't expect you to agree): First, the tests should provide information that is reliable and consistent. Second, the tests should provide information with a diagnostic value, so that educational shortcomings can be addressed in a timely manner.

The irony is that we already have national standards. They aren't exactly written out in a single document or series of documents. But if you want to know what they are, look at the handful of standardized tests given in states and districts; look at the textbooks used in the great majority of classrooms. These are not the standards that you or I would want; but there they are. I recall that about ten years ago, I gave a lecture in Wyoming on the subject of national standards and national tests. Several people in the audience, not surprisingly, objected, saying that they preferred their standards to be written in Wyoming. I pointed out that the textbooks most widely used in the state came from a New York City-based publisher and that the tests used by the state came from a testing company in New Hampshire. No one could point out what was especially local or Wyomingesque about their standards and tests.

I agree with your concern for democracy in our society. I don't think the problem is uniquely limited to what happens in schools. The changes in the mass media have made all of us feel like spectators and consumers of other people's decisions. This requires another discussion.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

It's fun occasionally to be reminded of why we were considered by so many to be "in opposition." When you took pleasure in the NY Times editorial promoting tests (this time national), I was reminded of our disagreements!

Allowing a national definition of success to rest on so many unaligned tests is patently absurd. You would "align" them, I would eliminate them! My quarrel with NCLB is with its power to define success, and then with its use of tests to do so. A more "sensible" NCLB, with a single consistent test, would make it more, not less dangerous. If teaching to the test is bad now, it would become suffocating if tried on the scale the NY Times suggests.

As I gather, however, you are not for tests that are high stakes, but just "fyi". It's important, if you hold this view, to spell that out. I doubt if it's what the NY Times has in mind, nor am I sure it's do-able until the politicians (and reporters) understand the limits of test data. I would argue that the task of strengthening schools that serve the larger purposes of education cannot be achieved until we flesh out the possible definitions we each hold of what being "well-educated" looks like. There may be more than one answer—which is why I go back to that other idea: a Consumer Reports on schooling. One that allows us to compare and contrast, but does not seek a single answer.

You suggest, as does NCLB, that if folks were forced to acknowledge their failure (by true scores, and true consequences) they'd go about fixing them in ways that would improve true test scores. For reasons good and bad there's no evidence for that. Just suppose Atlanta's improvement is related to just better prepping? Would you recommend we all do the same? No. You wouldn't. But once we go down that road…….

There is no way to be well-educated in everything by age 8, 12, 16. And which qualities of mind or skill we think deserves to push out others is hard to agree about. And unnecessary! We don't all agree about cars either, or any of the other stuff covered by Consumer Reports. But we can make our own judgments—or at least better ones than we might without it. Probably we rely in the end on what our friends and relatives also say, but that's fine, too. For cars and schools.

So, I want to pursue this. I met with a few people recently who were really struck by the idea of a CR-type review of NYC schools. I think it's do-able.

I ought to quit now. But I want to shift ground a little to an old obsession: where in the world do folks think we learn about the arts and science (and history and practice) of democracy? We once based it on such small, geographically close and "common" constituencies that it didn't take as much counter-intuitive understanding. But even then, the Federalist Papers did quite a job bouncing the ideas around. How can we ignite a similar debate? What role could a Consumer Reports play in such a debate?

Why aren't the major Universities—and I don't mean the education departments—convening folks to dig into the deeper question of the relationship between democracy and K-16 and beyond. We know that there are stress points in a democratic society—what do we know about how we weather them and what we lose during such historic moments. How instinctive was Giuliani's idea of postponing the election in NYC after 9/11? Or Chavez's retreat from democracy in Venezuela, or Putin's or Musharraf's dodges? Why do reformers look for the man on the white horse over and over? Or for technocratic solutions—the perfect test? I enjoyed James Traub's comment in last Sunday's NY Times piece ("Persuading Them"): "What we say about ourselves no longer has much effect; but what we are seen doing—on occasion, what we are caught doing—matters immensely." Maybe too many youngsters reach 18 without ever having seen democracy "done"—much less reflected on the dilemmas involved, guided by wise adults.

How can schools—without being inappropriately political—teach politics? How can we counteract our natural tendency to elevate "nonpartisanship" above politics, rather than seeking a more vigorous politics, with all its self-interested warts?

When we knock politics, we undermine the struggle to make democracy work. No politics, no democracy! While you and I are both feeling a little weary about how politics has distorted schooling, we both know that it takes renewing that discourse again generation after generation, not giving up on it.

Part of our weariness is that it takes a somewhat leveler playing field for the game to work at its best. When we lay the task all onto schools we undermine what schools can do, and forget about all the other parties to democracy's warts.

Ted Sizer and I once tried to get Harvard interested in the topic. Everyone said "yes yes", "great idea". But it never happened. Maybe NYU? Meanwhile we can also look around for folks to help us launch a CR for schools. Anyone else out there interested?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I note with pleasure that The New York Times endorsed (again) the principle of national testing. My guess is that the latest NAEP results for New York City prompted them to do so.

As you know, New York City has been trumpeting its "historic gains" in test scores without let-up over the past few years, since Mayor Bloomberg gained control of the school system and persuaded the Legislature to turn it into the Department of Education. As part of what may be a nascent Bloomberg-for-President campaign, the Department's very large public relations staff works hard to persuade the public that Chancellor Joel Klein has wrought a historic transformation and the kids in the city are now performing on a par with those in suburban districts. If only it were true!

Based on this energetic campaign, supplemented by a privately funded campaign of another $10 million, the city's leaders have been selling their corporate-style, top-down organization as a model for the nation. The state scores were trending steadily upwards, enough to persuade the Broad Foundation to give NYC its prestigious award as the most-improved urban district in the nation in September 2007.

When NAEP's urban district scores were released on November 14, it contained a heap of bad news for New York City. The reports compared progress in 11 cities and showed that NYC's public schools had made "no significant gains" from 2003-2007 in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade math. The only subject and grade where there was a significant improvement during these years was in 4th grade math. However, doubt has been cast even on that gain because (as an article in the New York Sun pointed out), 25 percent of the city students received accommodations (e.g., extra time), a rate far higher than in any other urban district and double the rate for the city's students only four years ago. Los Angeles, which has a far higher proportion of English-Language Learners than NYC, assessed with accommodations only 8 percent of its 4th graders on the math test, compared with NYC's 25 percent. Giving such a large number of accommodations presumably would give the city an extra boost in scores in 4th grade math.

Reporters wondered how the Chancellor's PR staff would "spin" the bad news. It didn't seem possible. After years of audacious claims about "closing the achievement gap," "historic improvements in reading and math," etc., how to explain that there had been NO significant gains in reading in either 4th or 8th grade? And how, after the state proclaimed that 8th grade scores soared in both subjects in the spring of 2007, to explain that 8th grade scores showed no significant gain on NAEP? How to explain that there had been no significant gain for any subgroup of students from 2003-2007, not for whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, or lower-income students in three of four tests?

But it was possible and they did it. First, the Department issued a press release that focused almost completely on the 4th grade math scores, barely mentioning the main findings. Then, when The New York Times published a first-page story that accurately described the NAEP results for the city, the Chancellor's office sent out an email that went to over 100,000 recipients, denying that acheivement was flat. He sent out a graph showing NAEP gains that started in the 2002-2003 year, before his reforms were implemented.

Even Lynn Olson, the very smart and able editor at Education Week, was taken in by the Department's statistical legerdemain. In her story about New York City, she reiterated the spurious claim that reading scores went up in the early days of Children First, but this was wrong. They went up on the NAEP test between 2002 and 2003. The 2003 test was given in January-February 2003; at that very moment, the mayor and the chancellor first announced what they intended to do in September. Klein started his "Children First" program in the schools in September 2003.

If one sees significance in the national tests, which have similar standards for all states and cities that take it, then the clear winner among the cities over the past five years is Atlanta. Atlanta has an enrollment that is more than 90 percent African-American; it has a superintendent, Beverly Hall, who has been on the job for eight years. Its NAEP scores in math and reading at both 4th and 8th grades have trended steadily upward over the past five years. Something is happening in Atlanta that the nation should pay attention to. Too bad the Broad Foundation didn't notice.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)