April 2011 Archives

In the mid-1920s our economy boomed. The stock market, then relatively new, soared to amazing heights, as the middle class invested their money and saw their wealth grow. But there was a problem. The stock market prices had inflated beyond the intrinsic worth of the companies they were based upon. This came to be known as a stock market bubble, because when the inflation of value stopped, the bubble burst and the economy collapsed.
The nation experienced another bubble recently with the rising value of real estate, which blew up in our faces a few years ago, and is still costing many of our communities dearly.

Take a look at the dynamics of these bubbles. In each case we had something with some intrinsic value, which people began obsessing over. The future value was projected to be far greater than the current value, and investors started pouring money into the market, bidding up the prices. The phenomena started to feed itself - as the price rose, people saw others making their fortunes, and more money flowed in.

In the case of the housing market, government policies fed the boom. Lax regulations allowed financiers to create "innovative" loans requiring no documentation of earnings or collateral. Loans were packaged and sold so the risk was passed on to investors. And those who stood to profit worked to inflate the bubble as much as they could, spinning projections of wealth, saying that growth is inevitable, and denying the dangers even as they grew. Real estate speculators, investment bankers and loan agents all saw their fortunes grow as money poured into the market. And very few saw what was coming, and even fewer raised any alarm.

But at some point reality began to set in. The bubble expanded to its limits, tottered, and when the money available to feed its irrational expansion dried up, the collapse was inevitable. And prices returned to earth, to some proximity to the intrinsic value of the stock or property. Our economy is still reeling, and millions have lost their homes and jobs.

We are now in the last upward push of the testing bubble.

Just like real estate, test scores have some intrinsic worth. They can be used to see how students at a given school are performing in some important areas of basic skills. We have had tests available for this purpose for decades, and they allow us to see patterns at the whole school or district level, and to judge the effectiveness of different curricula or instructional programs. But the value of these tests is being vastly inflated as a result of the phony imperative that we are in an "education crisis," and the only cure for this is "accountability" for test scores.

Corporate education reformers are so happy to have introduced "market forces" into the education arena, they have overlooked the fact that they are creating the most destructive dynamic of the marketplace -- the unsustainable bubble -- which is inevitably followed by a calamitous crash. And as with all of these bubbles, the longer it takes to burst, the greater the damage it will inflict.

Here are the things tests are supposed to accomplish for us:

Exit exams ensure high school diplomas "mean something." However research has revealed they do little good.

Make us competitive in the global economy. Except, as Yong Zhao has described, our biggest competitors are trying desperately to escape the trap rote learning and testing have landed them in, and are trying to change so as to foster the creativity our schools produced in the past

Furthermore, as Stephen Krashen reminds us

The core issue remains US performance on international tests and the studies relevant to the discussion are those showing the huge impact of poverty on these tests. When we consider children who do not live in poverty and who attend well-funded schools, US test scores are at the top of the world. Our "low"(actually mediocre) scores are because we have so many children living in poverty, more than all other industrialized countries.

Close the achievement gap, by allowing us to reward teachers with good scores, and punish or fire those with low scores, driving out the "bad teachers" responsible for the low scores and attracting ambitious effective teachers to replace them.

The trouble is, performance pay has not, thus far, even worked to raise test scores. Furthermore, raising test scores often results in WORSE education, rather than better, as Alfie Kohn recently explained. High stakes tests have driven schools attended by poor children towards a "pedagogy of poverty,"

One thing that always happens when there is a bubble is that there are people who are benefiting from the froth, who work as hard as they can to keep it inflating. In the housing bubble, the banking industry was making a fortune, and since they were selling off the loans as quick as they got them, they were not worried about the crash. And they convinced themselves it could only go up.

There is a phrase in Latin -- cui bono - which means "who benefits?" Whose interests are served by the inflation of the testing bubble?

Billionaire philanthropists and political leaders want poverty off the table as an issue needing attention. So instead of recognizing the crisis created by one in four children living in poverty, they have relocated our schools as the cause of the crisis, and accountability for test scores as the cure.

Politicians who wish to destroy teacher unions have also seized on this as a means of attacking them. Teacher unions must be resisting the removal of due process protections and seniority because they are trying to protect the "bad teachers" responsible for low test scores. Get rid of the unions, and then we can get rid of these lousy teachers and the scores will rise. At least that is the justification. And once the unions are weakened, pensions, benefits and salaries can be cut. Then there will be more money for tax cuts for the big corporations that provide the campaign dollars for the next election.

Projects that are able to focus narrowly on improvement of test scores for children in poverty are also winners. Once we define success as test score gains, then schools and teacher preparation or intern programs that master test preparation can appear successful.

Test publishers are big winners. Though the use of low quality multiple choice tests discredited No Child Left Behind, the test makers have come up with a way to keep the bubble full, by promising vastly improved tests. These new tests will, of course, cost billions of dollars more, but their value will be inflated even more, because now they will supposedly measure critical thinking and creativity.

And today's news announcing the partnership between Gates and Pearson reveals that any line separating philanthropists from profit-making test and curriculum publishers has been wiped out.

Scores of consulting firms that specialize in "school turnarounds," test preparation, student data analysis and other "reforms" that revolve around test scores are making their money off this trend.

One does not have to be venal to contribute to this problem. As Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" And some people have convinced themselves that improving test scores is a meaningful goal - even a moral imperative.

But moralistic proclamations notwithstanding, high stakes tests thus far have yielded few if any of the benefits we have been promised. They have not significantly budged the achievement gap - and in many ways have widened it. They have not made us more competitive, or prepared students better for college - as the rising number of students who need remediation indicates. They do not allow us to accurately identify the best or worst teachers, and when used for this purpose are likely to lower the quality of instruction rather than raise it, by forcing teachers to focus on test preparation.

Parents have begun to join teachers in calling out this charade. The testing bubble relies on most us believing that the scores offer real value, and can deliver even more if we just invest more money and importance in them. This town hall meeting in Florida gave Congressman Ted Deutch and Department of Education official Michael Yudin a taste of the skepticism that signals the beginning of the end for this bubble. When more superintendents join Texan John Kuhn in speaking out, more holes will appear in the bubble.

The sooner this bubble bursts, the sooner we can get to the REAL work involved in improving our communities and schools. We can roll up our sleeves and deal with some of the social issues that affect students' abilities to learn. We can allow teachers to reflect and collaborate with a focus on authentic student work that is creative, rich and open-ended, instead of focusing on test score data.

Several parents who have been organizing around this are leading the next Save Our Schools webinar discussion on Saturday, May 7th. You can read more about the event here.

What do you think? Are our leaders inflating the value of tests? How can we burst this bubble?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today I am sharing a guest post from a reader -- I will let him tell the tale:

By Ron Fink

I compose musical plays that are used in regular classrooms, grades K-9, all over the country. My writing partner and I build the plays around mandated curriculum, but we add stories, catchy tunes, clever lyrics, and lots of really dumb jokes.

Over the last 16 years teachers have produced about 115,000 performances of our 50+ shows. (We sell the scripts, the musical CDs and instructions on how any teacher, no matter how musically timid, can do a fun musical in their classroom. And of course, the show will match their official standards.)

So that's great, right? Teachers like what we do, and we're able to get fun, participatory material that stimulates independent thinking into our schools. The problem is that more and more teachers are being forced to cut anything interesting so they have more time to teach to the tests.

I recently received a Facebook post from a teacher, describing how, unlike in earlier years, she was allowed to teach nothing but math and reading. Her school was trying hard to raise their test scores, and had pretty much eliminated social studies, science, the arts, health, etc.

When I shared the note with our many teacher-customers, I received over a hundred responses. These are some of them:

At my school, my former principal would not let ANYTHING that was not related to testing happen until the middle of May, when testing was over. It was hard to get a play or a field trip or a special art project done until mid-May, and then there is not a lot of time left in the school year.

The best teachers know that it's the interesting, different stuff that makes learning great. Unfortunately, not all administrators share that vision.

We can't even display the kids' artwork on the bulletin boards anymore- it has to be data from the testing! Like kids want to stand around and discuss data.

What about highlighting the emails that said the opposite!? What about commending the teachers who are busting their butts to make sure it ALL happens: teaching the core curriculum, teaching test-taking strategies, AND integrating hands-on learning ie. musicals!? It IS doable and I am proof of it! Working in a low-income high-ELL neighborhood with apathetic students and ZERO parental support, I AM DOING IT ALL!

I haven't done any play in the past 3 years. It has been "discouraged", to put it nicely.

If you are a Program Improvement School, you're only allowed to teach math and language arts. 30 minutes a day is allowed for social studies, science, P.E., and art - all of these subjects combined 30 minutes a day! Our future is in the hands of people who will know how to bubble in the answer "C"

I have found over the years, the best way of ensuring student success, especially on standardized tests, is to keep them engaged in the learning process. Boredom is just a symptom of weak teaching, and like in any profession, you have people who love what they do and people who don't. I don't necessarily see anything systemically wrong, just a lack of enthusiasm.

I am one of the rule breakers. The teachers at my new school hate me and give me crap all the time about doing "extra stuff."

I am extremely blessed to be teaching at a public school where the arts are valued as an integral and necessary ingredient to a child's education.

We now have to give "benchmark" tests three times a year in addition to the standardized tests. This takes up approximately 3-4 weeks of instructional time when all is said and done. If not for all this testing, I would probably actually be able to allow my students to read real literature books and fill in fewer worksheets that are designed to prepare them for test success.

The stress of bucking the trend is tremendous but I do it anyway. I refuse to spend all year teaching children how to take state tests. I was hired to teach children to love learning, reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts.

I included your plays in my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades in Irvine Unified School District for about 14 years. I chose the plays that most closely matched the curriculum to avoid controversy. Some years, I did as many as three plays. The kids loved them! Parents raved. Last June I retired. 2009-2010 was the first year that I was not able to include a play mainly because of reluctant teammates and the RTI schedule for reading and math. It left little time for anything. I guess I just got tired that final year. No support whatsoever.

I find that the plays make a huge difference in student achievement. I assign my lowest students the biggest parts. By the time we are done they have a huge memory bank of sight words that leads to increases in comprehension and fluency. My English Language Learners gain confidence in not only reading but in writing and speaking as well...I have been lucky to have the support of my principals.

I know that in several school systems teachers are now required to assess their students by a program and it has to be done on a palm computer. It takes about 5-7 days to complete and we have to fit it in. I can tell you most days during the testing window that's all I get done and my students are left to do handouts since the assessments are one on one and timed so I can't be interrupted.

I'm lucky that my principals have always let me do what's best for my students, but that's not the norm in many schools.

Here in my little California town we are expected to assess, assess, assess. We give our elementary students three district assessments, some with 5+ pieces that must be administered one-on-one to first graders. The data must be "bubbled" for each individual answer, for each individual student, then scanned on a specific scanner and the district receives the results. Then the teachers are contractually bound to meet to discuss, compare and explain the results to one another and administrators.

Fortunately my test scores are among the highest in the district, and our school consistently has made AYP (Acceptable Yearly Progress) since this nonsense began. Therefore I have freedom to put on plays, go on nature walks, create literature groups, build pet rock houses with Legos, set up simulations, etc. However, even teachers at our school, including me, have seriously and sadly cut back teaching time of things not tested like social studies, art, health, etc.

I am a 4th grade teacher in Napa. We rarely, if ever, get to teach creatively. Our school is all about test scores, and they are always the main topic of conversation in any staff/district meeting. If you do not get your kids to perform on these tests there are consequences, they are subtle in that you get labeled a poor teacher, parents don't want their kid in your class, and you are scolded and criticized. As a matter of fact, last year my knees were literally shaking when I passed out the test.

I get fed up sometimes and teach what I am not suppose to....for example
we are reading Holes by Louis Sachar. The kids CLAP when we get out the book because they LOVE it.

I teach in a small rural school in Arizona. We are still allowed to teach multiple strategies for our students. I am teaching math right now so I am struggling with how to incorporate plays, but I will do it. Glad our district is not just "teaching to the test."

What do you think? Are your students able to play once in a while?

images by Ron Fink, used by permission,

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My recent dialogue with the Department of Education after President Obama acknowledged that we have gone overboard with standardized tests revealed that, in fact, there are plans to actually expand the number of mandated tests. Though we have heard a great deal about the $350 million the Dept of Ed is investing in the development of new tests, we have heard nothing about what these new tests will cost to administer, score or prepare for. As our collapsing state budgets result in increased class sizes, shuttered school libraries and the elimination of frills like music and foreign language classes, we must examine every education dollar critically. With these expenditures, our policymakers are choosing tests over teachers.

I recently asked some colleagues about how much we are currently spending on testing in California. I got this response from Joe Lucido, a teacher in Fresno, who shared the following. This, it should be noted, is before the expansions being planned by the Department of Education.

From Joe Lucido:

The state education budget gives the costs over the last three years which is helpful and really informing, although I am just giving you the upcoming year's numbers; (note: the numbers in the document are in "thousands", so you add three zeroes to the end of the number, which makes it actually millions.) Following this is a piece written by state policy consultant Jo Ann Rupert Behm; it breaks the CAHSEE costs down even more. The PDF of the Education Dept. budget can be downloaded here.

Now, you can use your "find" or "search" option on your computer to find each of these sections of within the budget:

6110-113-0001 STAR testing $74,485,000

6110-204-0001 CAHSEE Instructional support (test prep!!) $58,314,000

204 Budget Act Appropriation $72,752,000 ----(the actual CAHSEE test; notice how they made cuts in that the two previous years, but none for the upcoming)

The total using these figures would then be $205,551,000 PER YEAR, FOLKS!!! And that's just what's printed in the budget; there are hidden costs in the CAHSEE that Jo Ann talks about below. We need to be mailing our representatives THIS information to help them make cuts.

I believe anyone should be able to do this with any state's budget. Just go to that state's overall budget and find the "education" budget. Start going line by line---you'll find it.

Here is a more detailed analysis of the California High School Exit Exam, prepared by Jo Ann Behm.

The California high school exit exam [CAHSEE] has been an economic and social disgrace from the onset---trumping 2,000 days, and nearly 16,000 hours spent in K-12 classrooms where students take 30-40 high school courses and must pass 13 state mandated year-long courses earning 220-270 credits to graduate.

Abolishing the exit exam as a graduation requirement -- considered in recent budget talks but shelved -- would have meant only testing around 475,000 sophomores once and compiling those scores to compare schools and districts as the No Child Left Behind [NCLB] Act requires -- instead of mixing uses for graduation eligibility. Now, as many as 225,000 juniors and 125,000 besieged seniors remain strapped to the exit exam taking monotonous CAHSEE remediation programs in lieu of valuable electives, extracurricular activities, internships or jobs. Some re-test as many as eight times during high school---five times during their frantic senior year!

The 1999 Senate Bill 2X authored by then Senator, and subsequently State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell allocated $2 million to develop the exit exam. Now Californians easily shell-out over $550 million a year to administer, defend, tutor, and teach to the CAHSEE beginning in 7 th grade.

Here's how it adds up. The $1 million [Senate Bill 964] report delivered April 2005 advised postponing the diploma penalty for students with disabilities but was summarily ignored by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and State Board. Today another million dollar stakeholder panel [Assembly Bill 1040] is being convened to generate yet another report on CAHSEE alternatives for special ed students. Meanwhile starting in 2006 $56.4 million a year is awarded to help special ed seniors pass CAHSEE. $72.4 million a year gives general ed seniors additional CAHSEE tutoring. Add $5.5 million for intervention materials and $2.5 million for revised workbooks. Raising the number of times seniors can re-take CAHSEE from 3 to 5 times added $5.1 million. $275 million is spent yearly for "focused" CAHSEE tracking and test prep starting in 7 th grade for poor testers identified through STAR tests. The CAHSEE office at the California Department of Education [CDE] with a staff of 7 costs an estimated $2 million. The independent contract including travel to/from Virginia to deliver glowing CAHSEE reports to the State Board 2-3 times a year costs about $3 million. Educational Testing Service has a 3-year contract for $55.1 million to produce and score the CAHSEE. At least $10 million from taxpayer coffers has been sunk defending and settling the exit exam against four class action lawsuits.

There is a lot of waste too. School officials reported to the State Board in May 2007 that over $920,000 worth of exams had to be shredded because students who failed earlier never returned to retest.

Even more eye-popping, Adult Education bill [AB 2532] analysts estimated during an August 2006 Appropriations Committee hearing that non-credit test prep courses for "continuation" seniors denied diplomas [due to CAHSEE] would cost taxpayers $33.5 million for every 12,000 rejected graduates entering Adult Ed. In 2006, 25% or 12,000 out of the 48,000 seniors denied diplomas were expected to enroll.

In 2008 and 2009 CAHSEE casualties shot up toward 60,000 because diploma track seniors with disabilities were no longer exempted. The new budget deal at least releases special education students from the CAHSEE graduation requirement in 2010 [unless Supt. O'Connell overturns this]. Sadly, by then close to a quarter million shafted seniors since 2006 could be on the streets barely employable without a diploma unless they are one of the lucky ones who endure Adult Ed and pass. This new subclass will outnumber the population of 32 California counties.

This outrageous sacrifice of human and economic capital is driving California schools further in the hole financially while discouraging quality learning and durable school reforms.

Jo Ann Rupert Behm, M.S., RN
State & Federal Public Policy Consultant

Joseph Lucido has taught fifth grade for twelve years in Central Unified School District at Liddell Elementary, a two time California Distinguished School winner. He is the science lead for the site and has been a part of the CaMSP Math Lesson Study cohort for three years. He co-founded Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse in Fresno, CA eight years ago after being concerned about the devastating impact that high stakes testing was having on students nation wide.

JoAnn Rupert Behm, RN, M.S. is a graduate of Florida State University and the University of Arizona and a Viet Nam era 1st Lt. USAF. Beginning in 1975 she was founder and president of a national continuing education company for nurses. In the early '90's she turned to non-profit volunteering to assist families of students with disabilities navigate K-12 education in California public schools, becoming state president of the Learning Disabilities Association of California 2000-2002 and Public Policy Chair and State Coordinator of LDA's Healthy Children Project until 2007. For the past decade she has served on the federal governmental affairs committee of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates [COPAA]. As a tireless advocate in California and Washington D.C. she began to recognize the irrefutable and often irreversible harm inflicted mostly on students with disabilities, minorities, English language learners, and low-income students due to high stakes exit exams. Jo Behm brought the first class action lawsuit against California challenging the California High School Exit Exam in 2001 and was instrumental in legislation and expert testimony to postpone the graduation penalty for students with disabilities in 2006 and 2007 and 2010 indefinitely. She has spoken before the state legislature and halls of the U.S. Congress countless times and presented at multiple state and national forums in efforts to abolish graduation exit exams in California and the U.S.

What do you think? What is being spent on tests in your state? Are these testing programs worth the money being spent on them?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Teachers in Oakland have spoken. At the first Oakland Teachers' Convention, more than 200 teachers - close to ten percent of the teachers in the District, gathered and spent two and a half days in intense dialogue to come up with recommendations for the future success of our schools.

Last October I joined something called the Effective Teaching Task Force, one of more than a dozen task forces formed under our Superintendent, Dr. Tony Smith. Oakland Unified had been under the control of administrators appointed by the State of California following a financial bailout nine years ago. Dr. Smith was our first superintendent after all that time, and he took office in July of 2009.

When the Effective Teaching Task Force was launched by Deputy Superintendent Maria Santos, many of us were a bit suspicious. The convener was a young man named Ash Solar, who had been a TFA intern and taught for three years in Houston, before joining Oakland as an administrator. Some were concerned, because Ash is a part of the Broad Residency program, and recently got a dual masters degree in education and business administration from Stanford University. He seemed to fit the profile of a corporate education reformer, so we were afraid that pay for test scores was on the hidden agenda. But the president of our local union, Betty Olson-Jones, was willing to give him a chance, as were about fifteen teacher volunteers.

We dove in to the process, meeting several times a month, and wrestled with how we might develop our vision. Should we define what effective teaching looks like? How should we engage with our peers across the District? We got a strong message from teachers that they wanted teaching/learning conditions addressed very seriously, so we had to figure out how to tackle that. We did not want to buy into the prevailing message that the problem with our schools is bad teachers, nor that simply making teachers more effective will fix everything. But we saw the door open for a real dialogue about what we can do as teachers and a District to help teachers meet the challenges we face. This video was developed featuring myself and some of my fellow teachers, to encourage others to get involved in the process.

Task Force members held "listening tour" events where teachers were invited to share their views. We held two public forums, featuring Pedro Noguera and Linda Darling-Hammond, who each offered us valuable guidance.

Then came the Teacher Convention. On the night of Thursday, April 7, we gathered in a ballroom for dinner and speeches. More than 200 teachers representing 95 different schools listened to Tony Smith, Betty Olson-Jones and Maria Santos welcome us to the event. The following day we spent the morning in sessions designed to inform us about various District initiatives. Then we were divided into rooms where we were asked to respond to the California Standards for the Teaching Profession. This is when things got a bit hot. In several of the rooms, including the one I was in, teachers rebelled. They did not feel heard, and they felt as if their voices were being channeled into predetermined boxes.

This story written by local blogger Katy Murphy captured the tension. Union president Betty Olson-Jones took the podium at the front of the room and invited people to share their thoughts. Teachers gave voice to years of frustration, and demanded that the process shift so they might be heard. Everyone was asked to write down their feedback, and those who wanted to help were invited to stay and plan the agenda for the next day. A group of about thirty of us stayed three hours late, reading every message, and debating how to reshape the agenda to give space for teachers to be fully heard.

The next morning was a new day. We opened the process with Oakland teachers facilitating each room. We asked participants to discuss what was working in their classrooms, sites and at the District level, and what was not. Then we asked each of the six rooms to arrive at a set of recommendations. We did not need a lot of structure. What we needed was to trust the teachers to offer their wisdom.

Each of the six rooms became abuzz with teachers intensely working on their ideas and recommendations. Teachers shared wonderful experiences at some sites, where a focus on school culture and collaborative professional development has yielded great results. Others shared frustrations at outside consultants with top-down mandates and micro-managed timelines. Then each team whittled all this down to a set of recommendations, and brought these back to the full plenary session in the afternoon.

Each team had a representative read their recommendations to the room, as the Superintendent listened. As these people took the mic, we knew we had something very different on our hands from the previous day. First of all, the quality of the ideas was compelling. But far more moving was the fact that we had 200 teachers behind them, expressing their collective desires with powerful voices.

About two dozen teachers in the room wore signs that read "I received a pink slip." Lay-off notices went out in March to more than 500 of Oakland's 2,200 teachers, reaching some hired as long as five years ago. Betty Olson-Jones asked them to stand and be recognized, and the room recommended strongly that the layoff notices be rescinded.

The recommendations were concrete and many focused on changes that can be made without great expense. Around professional development, almost every group expressed a desire to see expert teaching recognized and elevated. Teachers suggested we be given time to observe one another, and that professional development be built around reflective practices such as Lesson Study or teacher action research, both of which are already under way in Oakland. Teachers recommended we make sure principals allow their staff to participate in the decisions around selecting their forms of professional development, and that real time be set aside for this collaboration. There was a very strong recommendation that Oakland teachers be the leaders of this work, rather than the reliance on expensive outside consultants.

Some schools in Oakland are thriving already. Teachers want the chance to visit them, and understand what they are doing to succeed. We want to build on our successes.

There was a strong sense of the importance of culture and the need to address societal inequities. Teachers called for professional development to unpack our own biases, and also for ethnic studies programs for our students to build pride and cultural strength.

Conditions were also an important issue. Teachers spoke of the need for small class sizes, although that is looking very problematic with the budget scenario we face in California. They asked for consistent school-wide discipline policies, and competitive compensation. Surveys focused on working conditions were distributed to teachers from each school, so the Task Force can find out what things are working well in the District, and where we need to improve the most.

As this video reveals, the atmosphere during these presentations was absolutely electric. The energy that is available when people are actually allowed to have some agency is amazing! This is the thing many of our would-be education reformers miss. They seem to think we have to bribe or browbeat teachers into doing their jobs. The energy in this room showed that teachers are determined to improve, and what they want most of all is the opportunity to learn together.

Tony Smith took the mic at this point, and recognized the passion that was before him. He pledged to do his best to rescind as many lay-off notices as possible, and to look for ways to re-cast professional development in line with the recommendations he had heard. The dire straits of the California budget could not be escaped as we contemplated enacting this vision. But the students will still be here in the fall, as will most of the teachers, and Tony Smith promised that he will be with us as well, for at least the next five years. (note: many of the layoff notices have now been rescinded.)

Oakland Unified, like many urban districts, has a tattered history of top-down reform efforts. Previous superintendents and state appointed administrators have declared the need for sweeping change, and brought in outside consultants with sure-fire training programs to reboot our schools every few years. This convention and task force are taking a different approach, because they not only invite the teachers to offer their leadership. They have initiated a process that will make teachers difficult to ignore. Working with Ash Solar for the past six months has been a pleasant surprise. Every time we pushed for more teacher voice, he responded and created the space for it, including at the Teacher Convention. During the sharing of recommendations on Saturday, one teacher thanked Ash Solar, Maria Santos, and Superintendent Tony Smith for allowing us to "hi-jack" the convention. The teachers in the room rose to their feet and gave the leadership a sustained standing ovation -- a spirit of unity I have never witnessed in my 24 years in this District.

Our recommendations will take some imagination to implement. Much of the professional development under way in Oakland is still of the "off the shelf" variety, provided by outside consultants, neatly aligned with District objectives and state standards. Can we release control enough to unleash the energy that teachers displayed at this convention? Teacher research is already underway through programs like the Mills Teacher Scholars. Can we create opportunities to expand this to more schools? Lesson study is also at work - can we learn from the programs like the Oakland History Collaborative that have used this successfully? Can we identify other places within the District where teachers are having success collaborating together that we can build on?

The answer to these questions will, in large part, depend on the sustained leadership from people like Betty Olson-Jones, Ash Solar, and most importantly, the classroom teachers who made that convention come to life, and who continue to stay involved in this work.

What do you think? In these times of cuts and crises, can we still make room for some collaboration?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Three years ago I started serving as a mentor for a young teacher at an alternative middle school in Oakland. This school was for special cases - students who had been pushed out of regular middle schools, usually because they were having behavior issues or getting in fights with other students. You can imagine the kind of environment you get when you gather all these students under one roof. The next year she landed a new position, this time at one of the wealthiest elementary schools in the hills of Oakland, surrounded by million dollar homes. She has left Oakland, but she reflects on this experience here:

by Sarah Rubenstein

It's been awhile...but I've been reading blog posts by Anthony Cody who is a former Oakland science teacher, and was my new teacher coach for two years in Oakland. He, along with many other educators, is questioning Obama's Department of Education policies. He asks if the high stakes testing model that results in the poorest schools having teachers and principals fired when they "fail," is actually a model that will create positive change in poor schools. Cody argues that our current system works to punish the students at those schools rather then help them.

So what does a (poor minority) student think when their school is labeled as failing, and teacher are fired? They think the teachers were bad. They think the school failed. They think they failed. But I think they already knew all that. I think that not just their school culture, but also the culture in general has already told many students in poverty that their schools are no good. So NCLB is just helping to reinforce that idea. NCLB is just helping to perpetuate the status quo and helping keep poor students under educated.

What I don't know is how a school system or the federal government can turn that culture around. I'm sure the words "culture of success" are in NCLB somewhere, but to really overcome the cultural norms of poverty and school failure, a much larger cultural shift will need to happen.

I taught at two "alternative" schools in Oakland. They were falling apart. The buildings were dingy and old. The portables had long since out lived their usefulness, and sometimes were now repurposed as classrooms. The computers were refurbished, the furniture mismatched and beaten up. The custodians came and went and so did the cleanliness of the school. Some quit, others reassigned, some were just temps anyway. The yard was asphalt full of pebbles and one piece of playground equipment was stuck next to a very busy street. The other school had some picnic tables. We had paper, pencils, and decent condition textbooks. The teachers were all first or second year teachers or "problem" teachers who didn't show up to work all the time. Teachers taught "elective" classes such as art or gym depending on the needs of the school. My principal regularly told me I was a good teacher, but it might have just been because I stayed late and showed up to work. One year my principal made us each cookies for Christmas. Another year two parents said thank you to me at the end of the year for all the calls home and hard work. More than 80% of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch, and were all minority students. The schools were in program improvement or would soon find themselves there.

The "hills" school I taught at was still a public school in the same district, but received a large sum of supplemental funding from the PTA. Not everything was perfect. The main building was of the same vintage, but with slightly better upkeep. The furniture was in good condition and replaced by the PTA as needed. The portables had mostly been replaced with a new building that the PTA raised a large amount of capital to have built. The custodian had worked there for a number of years. He kept the buildings cleaned on a regular basis. I believe he missed work once the whole school year, and genuinely seemed satisfied with his job. The yard was mostly new asphalt with a new cool play structure. A nature area was fenced off; there were classroom gardens, and general landscaping overseen by parent volunteers. I had a small supply budget from the PTA in addition to the supplies supplied by the principal from the district. Most teachers were experienced and had been at the school for more than 10 years. The PTA supplemented the district staff with classroom aids, language, gym, art, and music teachers. My principal regularly told me I was a good teacher, and I always assumed that was because there were parents who told her they liked me a lot better than the "teach to the test" science teacher they had they year before. For teacher appreciation week the parents organized flowers for all the teachers. The PTA hosted a few lunches for the teachers during the year. Individual parents, and the PTA gave me, and all the other teachers, Christmas, and end of year gifts and thank yous. Less than 2% of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch, and about 25% minority. The school had higher test scores then any other near by school and was a CA Distinguished School.

So, what's the difference? Why do some schools in Oakland fail while others thrive? I certainly experienced the extremes in the district. I do not think the kids at the "alternative" schools were being given even a fair shot to score well on the high stakes tests, even if you do not even take into account the poverty level. My students at the alternative schools did not meet the standards on the high stakes test, my students at the "hills" school did. I know for sure they were not being provided with an equal school or education. I know that separate but equal schools were ruled unconstitutional over 50 years ago, but how did that lead us back to separate and unequal?

When I think about the high stakes testing, taken by all my students, which lead to the punishment and reorganization of the schools with high poverty students, I just wonder why. Were my very hard working principals at the "alternative" schools ineffective? Was I? Yes, and yes. They were brand-new principals, I was a new teacher; our students were some of the highest need students in the country. But why were we the ones there in the first place? Because no one else was, because no one else would want to work in that kind of environment, for that kind of pay, and work so hard, and then just know at the end of the year that you will be told you are failing. Even if we did an amazing job, and our students got really high test scores, what would it matter? We still would be working so much harder and for less pay then our colleagues with more years teaching experience and tenure who would never again take the harder job for no additional pay. So we all worked there until we became demoralized and then moved on to slightly easier jobs in the district, and with each year we make a little bit more money too as we moved along in the pay schedule, but we don't have to work quite as hard as when we worked with those really high need students.

I had a few coaches and advisers who were retired teachers and I heard them all say that they thought experienced teachers should be offered more money to work in those really hard schools. We all know that those kids need experienced teachers in that classroom, but not very many people can figure out how to negotiate to get them there, and I honestly think the pay difference has to be quite big. I will say that the current contract between teachers unions and school districts generally do not include a way to pay more for experienced teachers working in high needs schools, but I see no other way around this problem.

A number of those retired teachers also remarked on how there are other things besides pay that might entice teachers to teach at high need schools, like more prep time, and fewer students. I had fewer students, so perhaps that helped. No more than 15 students were ever enrolled in my class, so usually 5-10 were in attendance. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have made it through the year with 30 students in a class at the "alternative" schools.

I never heard any of the retired teachers talk about the facilities, but I'll tell you it makes a big difference. My third year teaching I applied for a transfer and looked at two schools. One would be another high need school with a staff I liked, and a mission I believed in. The whole school, but especially the classroom I would have, was dark, dank, and falling apart. The "hills" school had new desks and chairs and felt like a science lab. I had cabinets and counters for science experiments. It was light and had lots of windows. I just couldn't teach another year in a dank room. Most good teachers I know spend 8-12 hours a day in their classroom. Many don't even leave the room for lunch because they are tutoring students or grading papers. Where would you want to work? Where would you want to go to school? All I know is the longer I am a teacher the less I want to work in a dark, room in disrepair, working long hours with little recognition, and with high need students for no additional pay and with the label of "failure" looming over me, the school, and my students. A nice school, with a clean room, decent hours, lots of recognition, average students, average pay and the label "success" for me, the school and my students just sounds like a better job.

So that gets me back to my question of how you get experienced teachers into those highest need classrooms.

1. Pay More for the Experience
Certainly a pay difference will help, but it will have to be big. I would guess that it needs to be more than $10,000 above what they would be making in an average school, perhaps even much more. Teachers are generally paid for slightly less than 40 hours a week, but I would estimate good teachers work at least 60 hours. So the pay difference may need to be as much as an additional 50% of their salary.

2. Better Facilities
If a school is "failing" build a new one. Literally. Maybe just a good renovation will do, but make sure it is clean bright and is someplace you would want to spend 8-12 hours a day. Ensure the worst schools have the best maintenance staff, maybe pay them better too. Make sure things are clean and in good repair. Make sure all the teachers have computers, projectors, and all the supplies they need.

3. Positive Recognition
No one wants to work somewhere were they are told they are bad at their job. Teachers are teachers because they want to make a difference. Figure out some kind of systems to recognize good teachers publicly and privately and do it often. This might sound different then the current trend of reporting bad teachers test scores in the newspaper, and that is because it is the exact opposite.

While getting good, experienced teachers into the "failing" classrooms will not change the entire culture of failure it will certainly help the cultural shift. Kids know the difference between a quality experienced teacher and a new teacher, and that combined with the excellent new facilities will send a strong cultural message about the value of the school. I'm sure some similar measures need to be taken to bring in experienced administrative staff as well. I've never met a principal who didn't work hard long hours, but the experienced ones just do better at a hard and complex job, and every teacher will tell you that good leadership is important to the success of a school. Probably the high stakes testing won't really be needed in the same way since the only goal of the tests would be to identify the highest need schools that would get more money for teachers pay and better facilities.

Of course, doing what I have proposed will cost money. And it will be clear and explicit that the money is going into poor schools to help poor communities. Your tax dollars will be helping to educate the poor, and rewarding teachers who work, and maybe even live in those high poverty communities. Perhaps the unspoken classism (and racism) in NCLB is really the problem and the reason why no politician is ready to step up and do what is necessary to really make sure that no child is left behind.

Sarah Rubenstein taught for three years in the Oakland Unified School District. She began teaching as an intern teacher and Oakland Teaching Fellow. Sarah worked in three different schools, teaching math and science in grades 4-12. Last year she moved with her family to Washington State and is a full time mother. This post ran as the first entry in her new blog, Teacher's Ed.

What do you think? Should we pay teachers more to work at high needs schools? How much would it take? Should we fight for more investments in buildings and equipment? And how about positive recognition for a job well done?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Three weeks ago I shared an interview with Superintendent John Kuhn of the Perrin-Whitt Independent School District in the great state of Texas. Today he offers us a reflection on a recent experience at the state Capitol.

Yesterday I testified before the Public Ed. Committee of the Texas House of Representatives on behalf of a bill that would initiate a two-year moratorium on standardized testing, known as STAAR in Texas. Here are the remarks I shared before the representatives began asking questions:

I have a dilemma: I personally believe state testing is morally compromised because TEA has overwrought test security to the point that it is a parody of big government interference and micromanagement, because testing has turned the adventure of education into something that feels more like an assembly line, because Austin has nudged our teachers from behind their podiums and has said Pearson can assess better than they can, because student creativity is being sacrificed in favor of standardization, because scores are used to unfairly punish schools and teachers that embrace the neediest students, and because test scores have been used during the past five years to drive a labeling process that has systematically concealed the fact that some schools are comparatively underfunded. Is a high target revenue "recognized" school really any better than a low target revenue "acceptable" school? Texas has published these labels with no mention of funding disadvantages, leaving the public to assume underperforming schools do so for no other reason than they are less competent institutions. I'm worried STAAR will continue this kind of railroading of our local schools.

So my dilemma is this: I would prefer that my son not participate in this test, to avoid the weaponization of his data, and the perversion of his education. People say ending testing will water down education. I see test prep as watering down education. But as a superintendent, my school needs my son's score to help my school's rating--assuming he will pass. My board would likely not appreciate it if I held my son out of testing. I haven't decided what I will do.

Representative, you make a good point. The state has adopted the role of teacher, and teachers are the students. And this is the root of the problem--you are a bad teacher, and that is why we students are getting rowdy now. That is why we are passing notes to one another saying how mean you are. We are not upset that you grade us. We are upset that your grading system is arbitrary and capricious. We are upset at the way you hang our grades on the wall for everyone to see, instead of laying our papers face down on our desks when you pass them back. We are upset because when you treat us unfairly there is no principal we can go to, to report you for being unjust. There is no one but you and us, ruler and ruled. Your assignments are so complicated and sometimes seem so pointless. You never give us a break, never a free day or a curve. And we heard you in the teacher's lounge talking about how lazy we are. You stay behind your desk, only coming out to give us work or gripe at us. You never come to our games; you didn't ask me how I did in the one-act-play.

Representative Hochberg, the problem isn't that Texas wants to grade us; the problem is that Texas is THAT teacher, the one who punishes the whole class for the misbehaviors of a few bad apples, who worries more about control than relationships, who inadvertently treats all kids as if they are the problem kids. This approach has made you the teacher all the kids dread. The one who builds fear instead of trust, who never takes late work or asks how our weekend was. You are the teacher and we are the student, and if you want us to mind, you should create a happy classroom, work with us, relate to us, build trust with us, seek our input, and ask our opinions once in awhile. Give us choices. Give us room to experiment and permission to risk new things in your classroom, permission to try and fail without disappointing you.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Parent activists Tim Slekar and Michele Gray have recently made headlines with their decision to publicly boycott that state's standardized testing of their children. In this guest post they offer some advice, and urge others to help our politicians understand what is happening to our children in the name of reform.

By Tim Slekar and Michele Gray

In the days since Anthony "misrepresented" the President's comments concerning high stakes standardized tests, the narrative is shifting. The opposition of parents and education professionals to the current school reform direction is finally being heard. Although I am not foolish enough to believe that the tide has turned, it is empowering listening to teachers, parents, administrators, teacher education faculty, and educational researchers shout out a pro-public schools massage while saying no to more testing. Anthony points out two examples -- Jon Stewart skewering the anti-teacher media and The New York Times finally admitting that there is a legitimate debate between the reformers and the parents and communities who support their local public schools.

Much more needs to be done.

Michele and I know the Save Our Schools March has rekindled the "Teachers' Letters to Obama" movement, and expanded it to include students, parents and citizens. We strongly encourage anybody that cares about the future of public schools to participate. To be even more effective, Michele and I would like to encourage supporters of public education to communicate with their state and local representatives which is what we did last week when we met with Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey's aides.

Here are the cliff notes from our meeting with Senator Casey's aides.

• We heard the President's comments on testing loud and clear and we liked what he said! We also watched Duncan's Education Department essentially say, 'don't listen to that guy.' Senator Casey should know that we are unhappy with the retraction.

• We want the same education for our children as Sasha and Malia.

• If the Senator can't support our position understand that we will not support him in the upcoming elections. In fact the Senator should start to pay close attention to the voices of parents and teachers that value public schools. These traditional supporters are not likely to continue blindly supporting the Senator.

• We have heard from thousands of teachers and parents since we boycotted NCLB testing. These voices are telling us that restoring trust in teachers and public education, and valuing community schools and teachers is a make or break issue.

• If the Senator wants the support of pro-public school voters then he needs to start showing us he also values the Presidents comments on testing and does not support the position of Duncan's Department of Education.

• Parents and teachers are telling us that they will not vote for the 'lesser of two evils.' They are quite aware that the reformers destructive take over of public schools has been fully embraced by both political parties. And parents and teachers have had it. In fact, as an example of this angst the Senator should read what Shaun Johnson said on his blog.

As a dedicated Democrat, I volunteered for the Obama campaign in Indiana while in graduate school. I was extremely happy when Indiana went blue for the first time since the 60′s. But now, I'm done. Between his comments on testing...and of the many other disappointments as a progressive Democrat, I think the best and only option right now is abstention.... I have no other option.... So, that's it President Obama, I'm out.

Senator Casey's aides were completely blown away. They were surprised when we presented them with research about high stakes standardized tests and what these test are doing to children, teachers and schools. Casey's people were very alarmed and committed to pursue this issue. They had worked in public education years before but were not aware of the growing dissatisfaction.

Michele and I urge you to start talking to your local elected officials. Don't just express frustration, but work to educate them about what's really going on with testing and corporate reforms. There is a faint light beginning to glow at the end of this dark tunnel. Carpe Diem!

Timothy Slekar is Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Penn State Altoona and blogger for Huffington Post.. Michele Gray is a mom and public education activist from State College, PA. Tim and Michele organized a boycott of NCLB testing and were featured on CNN.

What do you think? Have you been to visit any elected officials? How did you present your concerns?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The New York Times posted a column this morning titled The Deadlocked Debate over Educational Reform. And last week the Times ran a story covering the dialogue I was able to provoke with representatives of the Department of Education regarding President Obama's critical remarks about testing. This latest column was a bit confusing. Just as soon as they have discovered that the debate exists, they wonder if a debate is even possible!

Remember NBC's Education Nation last fall? The "supermen" of reform ruled the stage, and the leading experts were Bill Gates, Davis Guggenheim and Michelle Rhee. Teachers were given a town hall to vent, but critics of corporate-sponsored reform efforts were otherwise ignored. Watching that program you would not have thought there was a real debate under way - just a powerful movement which would soon sweep to victory. After all, we had some of richest men in the world in alliance with seemingly progressive non-profit enterprises, and the enthusiastic support of the US Department of Education, with a wallet stuffed with billions of taxpayer dollars to support their brand of reform.

But now, six months later, where are we?

In New York City, the idea that corporate CEOs have the magical tools to manage complex educational systems was dealt a body blow by the demise of Cathie Black. President Obama is publicly expressing sympathy for students overburdened by standardized tests, apparently unaware of his administration's plans to greatly expand testing. His Department of Education is obliged to debate and defend these plans, and people have begun to see what is in the works.

The shiny superwoman of reform, Michelle Rhee, lost a bit of luster, after some of the schools she pushed forward as evidence of success were found to have cheated. This news comes on the heels of reports that she exaggerated test score gains in her own classroom. Ms. Rhee has protested that she should not be judged so narrowly, but this seems hypocritical given her eagerness to judge teachers based on test results.

The union-busting debacle in Wisconsin has flushed out some fresh allies for teachers. Jon Stewart, whose mother was a school teacher when he was growing up, has done devastating riffs on the hypocrisy of the completely unaccountable Wall Street types, who criticize teachers for our bulging pension funds and Cadillac health benefits.

For me, the most interesting portion of the commentary in the Times is this:

The data can appear as divided as the rhetoric. New York City's Department of Education will provide you with irrefutable statistics that school reform is working; opponents of reform will provide you with equally irrefutable statistics that it's not. It can seem equally impossible to disentangle the overlapping factors: Are struggling schools struggling because they've been inundated with students from the failing schools that have closed around them? Are high school graduation rates up because the pressure to raise them has encouraged teachers and principals to pass students who aren't really ready for college?

The New York Times has laid out for themselves and the rest of the media some of the key questions they must investigate if they are worthy of being called journalists.

Last year when NBC News was criticized for their unbalanced coverage during Education Nation, the President of their news operation, Steve Capus, said this,

NBC News [personnel] are not the experts in this place. ...the role of a news organization is to put a spotlight on these issues/challenges, and on the people who are doing incredibly strong work to try to affect change. The news division's involvement begins and ends with that spotlight. We're not coming at this from a policy angle.

I wrote at the time,

Flabbergasting. NBC News has no experts on education policy. According to the material on their Education Nation website, "Education is key to the success of our country..." Education is "one of the most pressing national issues of our time." Yet this multi-million dollar news organization has nobody on their staff they consider to be expert in this crucial field? If this issue is indeed key to our success, shouldn't they have some expertise?

In this commentary from the New York Times, they seem to likewise be throwing in the towel on figuring out what the truth really is. The studies are contradictory, so it is apparently hopeless. But I know there are good journalists there, at the New York Times and elsewhere, capable of finding the truth here.

The New York Times ends their column on a rather wistful and passive note:

Presumably, the deadlock will eventually be broken, and a "winner" will emerge. Either the education reformers will manage to take control of a critical mass of school districts, or they won't. Before that happens, perhaps the various narratives and counter-narratives will decalcify and some actual debate will take place.

There is a genuine debate taking place here. The "reformers" have used the power of the media and government, and billions of dollars in philanthropic money to push anyone who questions their strategies off the stage up to this point. But we will be silenced no longer. It is a real sign of progress that the New York Times recognizes that we present a challenge that must be reckoned with. Actions like the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action this summer will ensure we continue to have our voices heard. Perhaps the next time a major organization like NBC News decides to focus for a week on this crucial issue, it will be treated like a genuine exchange of ideas. And perhaps our nation's journalists will help us sort through conflicting claims to uncover the evidence that supports or undermines them.

Update: I just got word that NBC News intends to do Education Nation programming again, the week of Sep. 25th. Will they recognize that a real debate exists and use the programming as an opportunity to explore the differing perspectives? You can leave comments on their Facebook page here.

What do you think? Is this recognition a sign of progress? How can we help elevate the debate?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In my recent exchange with the Department of Education regarding President Obama's remarks critical of our obsession with testing, it became clear that there is a vast expansion of testing on the horizon. Few reports have emerged that describe this, and I fear the public may be unaware of the resources that soon will be diverted from our already decimated classrooms. I asked two of the nation's experts on this trend to share what they have learned about this recently. Here is their report.

by Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian

When the plans to create Common Core Standards were announced, Secretary Duncan told us that it would be accompanied by assessments to enforce the standards. We were also told that developing standards would be relatively inexpensive, but developing assessments, by contrast, will be a "very heavy lift financially" (USA Today, June 14, 2009).

It is gradually becoming clear that the lift will be extremely heavy. The new tests will be computer-based, administered online, and "will make widespread use of smart technology. They will provide students with realistic, complex performance tasks, immediate feedback, computer adaptive testing, and incorporate accommodations for a range of students" (Duncan, 2010). Duncan noted that "with the benefit of technology, assessment questions can incorporate audio and video. Problems can be situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays."

An example:
The National Education Technology Plan 2010 (U.S. Department of Education; Office of Educational Technology) describes one kind of testing that is being developed, testing that takes place "in the course of learning" (xvii) and that tries to find out what students are thinking while doing projects:

As students work, the system can capture their inputs and collect evidence of their problem-solving sequences, knowledge, and strategy use, as reflected by the information each student selects or inputs, the number of attempts the student makes, the number of hints and type of feedback given, and the time allocation across parts of the problem.

Aside from the mind-control aspect of this kind of testing, how much will it cost, in addition to the cost of developing, testing and revising the new tests?

If we are going to have computer-based tests, and if they are to be delivered to students via the internet, the first requirement is that all students need to be connected to the internet. A recent article in the New York Times gives us some idea of what will be involved. The article begins by noting that money is scarce these days:

Despite sharp drops in state aid, New York City's Department of Education plans to increase its technology spending, including $542 million next year alone that will primarily pay for wiring and other behind-the-wall upgrades to city schools ... and $315 million for additional schools by 2014...

(New York Times, "In city schools, tech spending to rise despite cuts," March 30, 2011)

Buried deep the article is a statement by "city officials" that the huge expenditures for technology are primarily to make it possible for students to take computerized national standardized tests.

We can expect this to happen nation-wide. If the New York figure is extrapolated to the entire country, the cost to connect all children to the internet will be at least 50 times the cost of connecting New York City alone, or $25 billion (New York City enrolls one million students, the USA as a whole, over 60 million). This is only to connect students to the internet. The whistles and bells needed to do "computer adaptive testing" with audio and video will cost more.

Technology, of course, continues to develop all the time, and consumers have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to discard the old and embrace the new, even at considerable expense. We can expect that after every student is connected, sooner or later the set-up will become obsolete and need to be replaced, either in part or totally. The schools, we predict, will cheerfully pay up, eager for the "newest" technology, and the computer companies will cheerfully accept their money.

The billions spent so that students can take national tests will have a huge payoff for the entire computer industry in other ways. This was enthusiastically announced by Education Secretary Duncan's Chief of Staff and former CEO of the New Schools Venture Fund, Joanne Weiss. Weiss noted that because all students will have internet access in order to be tested, technology companies can now profit from one giant national market for all their educational products:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale

WHY THIS IS A BAD IDEA
We have nothing against private enterprise making an honest profit for providing a needed service or useful product. But in this case there is no evidence that the product is needed nor is there evidence that it will be useful. Just because something is high-tech doesn't mean it is good. As Gerald Bracey pointed out, computers have made it possible to do in nano-seconds what shouldn't be done at all. We are about to waste a gigantic amount of money when it is badly needed elsewhere, and where it can be put to much better use.

First, there is no evidence supporting the idea that tests to enforce national standards, no matter how subtle and refined, will have any positive impact on student learning. In fact, the evidence we have suggests that it will not: States that use more high-stakes tests do not do better on the NAEP tests than states with fewer (Nichols, Glass and Berliner, 2006), and the use of the standardized SAT does not predict college success over and above high school grades (Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson, 2009; Geiser and Santelices, 2007).

Of course, the administration has argued that these will be new and better tests, more sensitive to growth in learning, able to chart student progress through the year, and able to probe real learning, not just memorization. Before unleashing these "improved" tests on the country, however, there should be rigorous investigation, rigorous studies to show that these measures are worth the investment. Right now, the corporations and politicians insist that we take on faith the claim that these tests are good for students. Such claims exhibit a profound lack of accountability.

Second, there is overwhelming evidence that dealing with poverty is an excellent investment, one that will not only improve school achievement but also affect quality of life and personal happiness.

• There is very good evidence that our international tests scores are "low" because of poverty. Studies show that middle-class American students in well-funded schools score at the top of the world on international tests. Our overall average is less than spectacular because we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, at least 20%, the highest among all industrialized countries (Berliner, 2011). In urban areas, where test scores are the lowest, the poverty level is much higher: 51% in Cleveland and Detroit, 37% in Miami, and 35% in Dallas and New Orleans. (These figures are based on the federal poverty level. If we consider the percentage of children eligible for free and reduced lunch, between 130 and 185% of the federal level, the figure is much higher, with 81% of children in Detroit and 68% in Miami living in poverty. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty (see e.g. here), families need an income of twice (200%) the official federal level to meet basic needs. Nearly 40% of children in the US live in families with incomes of less than 200% of the official federal level.)

Studies show that children living in poverty suffer from conditions shown to impact educational attainment and school performance, such as "food insecurity," environmental toxins, lack of health care, and lack of access to books. The impact of these factors is enormous: No matter how good teaching is or how carefully a curriculum is put together, it will be of little value when students are hungry, malnourished, in poor health, and when they have little or no access to reading material.

• When these conditions are dealt with and alleviated, school performance improves. Providing food for hungry children has been shown to produce dramatic differences in behavior and performance in school (Berliner, 2009), having medical insurance improves school performance (Berliner, 2009), and increasing access to books as well as providing time to read for pleasure results in better literacy development (Shin and Krashen, 2009).
The obvious cure for poverty is full employment, with a living wage paid for honest work. Our society today provides neither of these, with unemployment high and with wages low: As of this writing, the average pay for a retail sales position, about $20,000 per year, is well below the federal poverty line for a family of four (Gibson, 2011).

The obvious step to take now is to make sure children are protected from the effects of poverty. A great deal of this, e.g. improving libraries in high poverty areas to the point where children of poverty have access to a print-rich environment, can be done at a fraction of the cost schools will be required to spend just on the technology aspect of the new testing program.

The Department of Education plans to use American students as experimental subjects to try out an extremely expensive, time-consuming and dubious testing program that will engulf classrooms. If it fails, the effect on students will be devastating, with schools robbed of money, and a generation of students poorly educated, teacher professionalism subsumed by data management, and schools robbed of funds for anything but technology repair. But the testing and technology companies will win, profiting regardless of the success or failure of their products and always ready to convince us that the next versions will be better.

The DOE's stubborn refusal to even consider dealing with poverty as a means of improving school performance, their insistence of "rigor" and "accountability" in testing students but willingness to give testing and technology companies a free ride, and their enthusiasm about opening new and profitable opportunities to "education entrepreneurs" is highly suspicious behavior. It raises the possibility that DOE policy is designed to profit a small part of the private sector, not the 60 million students in our public schools.

Update: This post by former test-scorer Todd Farley offers additional insights into the process underway to develop tests for the Common Core Standards.

Dr. Stephen Krashen is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. He has written numerous books on his research into literacy and language acquisition. In recent years he has emerged as a persistent voice pointing towards the basic steps we should take to build literacy and strong academic skills for our students.

Susan Ohanian, a longtime teacher, has written 25 books on education, including When Childhood Collides with NCLB and co-authorship of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? Since the passage of NCLB, she has run a website of resistance, www.susanohanian.org, which received the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public language. She is a fellow at National Education Policy Center and an editor at Substancenews.net

Sources:

Berliner, David C. (2009). Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved 4/7/11 from Bowen, W., Chingos, M., and McPherson, M. 2009. Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Universities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Duncan, A. 2010. Beyond the Bubble Tests: The Next Generation of Assessments.

Geiser, S. and Santelices, M.V., 2007. Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes. Research and Occasional Papers Series: CSHE 6.07, University of California, Berkeley.

Gibson, E. 2011. Retail sector adding jobs, but not always careers. Associated press. Ventura Star, April 6, 2011.

Nichols, S., Glass, G., and Berliner, D. 2006. High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability increase student learning? Education Policy Archives 14(1).

Weiss, J. 2011. The innovation mismatch: "Smart capital" and education innovation. Harvard Business Review.

What do you think? Are the investments in the next generation of assessments wise? Who will benefit?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week I kicked the hornet's nest by pointing out that President Obama's remarks at a town hall meeting do not align with the policies being carried out by his Department of Education. This was picked up by a number of fellow bloggers, including Valerie Strauss, Deborah Meier, Doug Noon and Ira Socol.Today, the New York Times ran an article on the imbroglio, featuring quotes from myself and our correspondent at the Department of Education, Justin Hamilton.

Let me explain why I think this is resonating so much.

The Obama campaign relied on the energy of millions of us, activated by a call to our hopes and dreams. We were exhausted by eight years of Bush, seven years of No Child Left Behind, and Obama promised a fresh start. We have not seen that fresh start in education. Instead we are seeing a deep entrenchment on the part of the Department of Education, finding ever more creative ways to pretend that making the tests more frequent will somehow make them benign. Those of us who are experiencing the effects of these policies are not deceived. We see how they are destroying schools, and stealing opportunities from children.

Three years ago, in 2008, I actively campaigned for Barack Obama during the primary. I knocked on doors in my neighborhood, and brought together more than a hundred educators to raise thousands of dollars for his campaign. About 18 months ago, deeply disappointed by the way that President Obama was continuing the test-aholic traditions of NCLB, I wrote him an open letter. I posted it here on my blog, and launched a Facebook group called Teachers' Letters to Obama in order to gather more letters, and create a forum for educators to gather and discuss how we might reshape the education debate. We gathered 107 letters, which were sent to both President Obama and Secretary Duncan. We eventually had a brief conversation with Secretary Duncan, but otherwise, our concerns have been ignored.

Last week, President Obama reminded us all why his election gave many of us so much hope. In 338 words he spoke of how he wanted his daughters, Sasha and Malia, to have their learning tested. He described a low-stakes, low pressure environment, with the results used not to punish them, their teachers or their school, but simply to find out what their strengths are, and where they might need extra support. He spoke of the need to avoid teaching to the test, and the value of engaging projects that would make students excited about learning. President Obama has made sure his daughters can learn this way. If only Department of Education policies would allow students in our public schools this same privilege!

President Obama needs to understand. Those of us who care deeply about our children and public schools cannot support his candidacy if he does not fix his education policies so they align with what he said on March 28th.

We have created a petition asking President Obama to support the Guiding Principles of the Save Our School March and National Call to Action, which are aligned with his. Please sign it here.

And we want to help him and Secretary Duncan understand how their policies must change.

If you are a student, in 338 words or less, please describe how you want to learn and have your learning tested.

If you are a parent, in 338 words or less, describe how you would want your children to learn and have their learning tested.

If you are teacher, in 338 words or less, say how you think your students will learn best, and how we should measure their learning.

We will gather these messages over the next few weeks, and on May 1, we will send them to President Obama and Secretary Duncan. We will also make the collection available for download so that everyone can understand why we need dramatic change for our schools.

President Obama, we want for America's children what you want for yours.

Please help us to Save Our Schools.

What do you think? Can you express, in 338 words or less, what you want for yourself, your children, our schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last Monday, President Obama went off script at a town hall meeting, and in response to a question from student Luis Zelaya, offered us a vision for education. In 338 words, he made it clear that current Department of Education policy is way out of line with what he knows is best for his own daughters, and for students across the nation.

After I expressed this view in my blog Monday night, Justin Hamilton, a press secretary for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, wrote to me and I then sent him four questions. On Friday he answered three of them, and today answered the fourth. in this post I offer my thoughts on his response to my last question.

To start with, I want to thank Justin Hamilton for responding to my questions. I know they have a lot on their hands, and I appreciate him taking the time to do this.

My final question was inspired by this statement from President Obama:

So what I want to do is--one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring.

This is a very rich statement. The President touches on the human cost of our obsession with testing. He describes a phenomenon that has become rampant in many of our schools - especially the ones under the greatest pressure to increase test scores, lest they suffer from the "forceful interventions" mandated by Department of Ed policies.

President Obama seems to understand that when schools focus on tests, learning loses meaning for students. They no longer are learning about things that matter to them, and they become bored and alienated. I have seen this in classrooms in Oakland. Many of my own students arrived to my 6th grade science class never having had the chance to do hands-on experiments in elementary school, because all available instructional time was devoted to reading and math.

My last question to Mr. Hamilton was this:

Many of the core elements of Race to the Top and the Blueprint are related to test scores. Department of Ed policy calls for the linking of teacher evaluations and pay to student test scores. The Blueprint calls for tracking of student test scores of teachers according to the place they were prepared. We still have the threat of reconstitution hanging over the bottom tier of schools, attended exclusively by children in poverty. All based on test scores. The President described the tests that Sasha and Malia took as "low stakes." All these changes RAISE the stakes on the tests, for teachers and schools. How does this move us towards the "less pressure-packed environment" the President is advocating?

In his response, Mr. Hamilton acknowledges the expansion of tests under way. But he makes the point that these are only to be "a part" of teacher evaluation, or of school-wide accountability indicators. Since they are only one part, somehow this makes the pressure evaporate into thin air! This is like telling the contestants at a beauty contest, "it really doesn't matter what you look like. Your appearance only counts for 50% of your score."

Mr. Hamilton tells us "States will be required to identify just 15 percent of schools for interventions based on student assessment information--and at the high school level, States would use graduation rates as well."

Just 15%! As was discussed in my response Sunday, these will be schools attended exclusively by children living in poverty. These students will continue to feel the harshest pressure to perform on tests, and their curriculum will continue to be focused on test outcomes rather than the authentic learning the President points out is so valuable.

Mr. Hamilton then suggests:

Race to the Top and the Blueprint would "raise the stakes" for test scores in teacher evaluation only because teacher evaluation today typically takes no account of test scores or a teacher's impact on student learning. In other words, tests scores are currently not low-stake factors in teacher evaluation--they are no-stake factors. As Secretary Duncan has said, it does not make sense to exclude evidence of student growth in learning from teacher evaluation, anymore than it would make sense to base teacher evaluation solely on student achievement data.

I do not get this as a response. If President Obama has asserted that tests ought to be low stakes, and occur in a less pressure-packed environment, how does this policy "concur"? Secretary Duncan obviously believes this, and has the policies that are making it happen in states across the nation, but please, do not tell me black is white. These two things do not match!

One last point to emphasize. The Department of Education is preparing the biggest expansion of testing ever attempted in the history of the world. For every problem that was raised with No Child Left Behind, the answer is another test.

Problem: We have narrowed the curriculum to focus only on reading and math
Solution: Test ALL subjects, at huge expense

Problem: The tests only measure a narrow range of knowledge and understanding
Solution: Invest billions in computer systems so students can take fancier tests that can be scored by things like the Pearson Intelligent Essay Assessor

Problem: We need to improve feedback and evaluation for teachers
Solution: Evaluate them based on test scores

Problem: We do not want to judge schools, teachers or students based on a single test score.
Solution: Mandate quarterly, monthly, weekly tests, and call them "formative"

All of these "solutions" create more problems than they solve. You cannot make teacher pay and evaluations depend in large part on student test scores, and then blithely pretend this will not cause them to teach to the test because other factors are also considered. Our students need rich projects related to their lives, not endless focus on test preparation. And our students in poverty need relief from test pressure most of all. The tragedy of current education reform is that in the name of equity and justice, poor and minority students are being tested to educational death.

What President Obama said last Monday resonated across the land like a mighty Liberty bell of truth about testing. Hard as they try, the Department of Education just cannot unring that bell.

Over at Save Our Schools we have launched a petition drive to invite President Obama to endorse our guiding principles, and if he does so, to speak at our rally on July 30th in Washington, DC.

UPDATE: If you would like see what is in the works and give feedback to the Next Generation of Assessments being developed by Pearson, one of the largest test publishers around, you can join this Wiki.

What do you think? Are Secretary Duncan's policies likely to cause more teaching to the test?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A week ago I posted a blog pointing out that President Obama's remarks at a town hall meeting seemed to undermine Department of Education policies. I received a request for a correction to my post from Justin Hamilton, Press Secretary to Secretary Duncan. He agreed to answer some questions for me. Friday I posted his responses to my first three questions. Today, he has answered the fourth.

My question:
President Obama also said:

So what I want to do is--one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring.

Question #4: Many of the core elements of Race to the Top and the Blueprint are related to test scores. Department of Ed policy calls for the linking of teacher evaluations and pay to student test scores. The Blueprint calls for tracking of student test scores of teachers according to the place they were prepared. We still have the threat of reconstitution hanging over the bottom tier of schools, attended exclusively by children in poverty. All based on test scores. The President described the tests that Sasha and Malia took as "low stakes." All these changes RAISE the stakes on the tests, for teachers and schools. How does this move us towards the "less pressure-packed environment" the President is advocating?

Mr. Hamilton's response:

Secretary Duncan totally concurs with President Obama--and, contrary to the claim of your blog post, has said much the same thing about the limits of bubble-tests and avoiding teaching to the test.

In his September 2010 speech "Beyond the Bubble Tests," Secretary Duncan said:

It is no secret that existing state assessments in mathematics and English often fail to capture the full spectrum of what students know and can do. Students, parents, and educators know there is more to a sound education that picking the right selection for a multiple choice question. State assessments currently tend to focus on concepts that are easy to measure. They rely mainly on multiple choice items with fill-in-the-bubble answers...Schools may give lots of tests--often too many--but the assessments aren't always testing important knowledge and skills in a comprehensive way or providing high-quality information about student progress....

One of the biggest frustrations of teachers with existing assessments is that they fail to test higher-order reasoning and writing skills, and thus fail to show what students know and can do. One-shot, year-end bubble tests administered on a single day, too often lead to a dummying down of curriculum and instruction throughout the course of the entire school year.... I've said repeatedly--though it sometimes goes unreported--that we should never, ever evaluate teacher and school performance based just on test scores, or use the results of a single test on a single day as the only measure of teacher performance.... Teachers absolutely deserve multiple observations against clear standards by trained observers and principals when they are evaluated.

Your question, moreover, conflates two issues as if they were one. The first issue is whether the Administration's policies will "raise" the stakes placed on tests in school accountability. The second question is whether the Administration's policies will increase the stakes placed on tests in teacher evaluation.

With respect to school accountability, the Administration's Blueprint plainly diminishes the stakes placed on tests in schools. For starters, it allows States to factor in measures beyond test scores to differentiate schools. Unlike the case under current law, States will be required to identify just 15 percent of schools for interventions based on student assessment information--and at the high school level, States would use graduation rates as well. (In most cases, States and districts would determine what the right intervention is for a given school).

This subset of schools will have to show extremely low performance school-wide or with subgroups of students over several years. In distinction to NCLB, these schools would thus be identified based on trend data for many students over the course of several years. No longer would schools be held accountable based on the results of a single test on a single day, where one subgroup of students just missing the mark could lead to mislabeling a school and start it down the path of a series of one-size-fits-all interventions.

By contrast, the Administration's policies would likely lead to an increase in the use of test scores--to repeat--as one factor, among many, in teacher evaluation. Yet programs like Race to the Top and the Blueprint would "raise the stakes" for test scores in teacher evaluation only because teacher evaluation today typically takes no account of test scores or a teacher's impact on student learning. In other words, tests scores are currently not low-stake factors in teacher evaluation--they are no-stake factors. As Secretary Duncan has said, it does not make sense to exclude evidence of student growth in learning from teacher evaluation, anymore than it would make sense to base teacher evaluation solely on student achievement data.

Secretary Duncan disagrees with skeptics of standardized tests who contend that because state tests are flawed measures of learning, states and public schools should simply abandon standardized testing, or exclude it all together from teacher evaluation. But he does agree that the quality of state assessments needs to improve dramatically to better measure higher-order thinking skills and to make the results of assessments instructionally useful for teachers and principals.

That pressing need is why the U.S. Department of Education held a $350 million Race to the Top Assessment competition last year. Two consortia, covering 44 states, are now in the midst of developing the next generation of assessments--and they will move far beyond the bubble-tests now used in most public schools.

Justin Hamilton, Press Secretary to Arne Duncan

What do you think? Is the Department of Education moving us away from the high-stakes, pressure-packed environment President Obama criticized in his remarks? Or will their policies lead to even more pressure to teach to the test?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last Monday, President Obama went off script at a town hall meeting, and in response to a question from student Luis Zelaya, offered us a vision for education. In 338 words, he made it clear that current Department of Education policy is way out of line with what he knows is best for his own daughters, and for students across the nation.

After I expressed this view in my blog Monday night, Justin Hamilton, a press secretary for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, wrote to me and requested that I correct my post, providing me with his official interpretation of what the President meant to say. I then sent him four questions. He has answered three of them, and in this post I offer my thoughts on his response to my second question.

Here is the question I asked on Wednesday, followed by the answer provided by the Department of Education:

Question 2: President Obama said:

Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well.

The Department of Education's Blueprint for a new NCLB calls for the continuation of the practice of labeling schools as failures, although it will impose this crushing status on only the bottom 5% of our schools. If punishing schools has not worked - as the President acknowledges in this remark, (and was not shown to work in Chicago under then CEO Arne Duncan) why is it being continued for any schools at all?

Press Secretary Justin Hamilton's response:

The biggest problem with AYP is that it gives schools the same label, whether they're missing their targets by a little or a lot. Under NCLB, chronically low-performing schools are already identified as being schools in need of reconstitution. However, NCLB provided almost no resources for improving schools that, by any measure, are chronically low-performing or have persistent achievement gaps. Interventions in these schools typically have involved little more than cosmetic change. By contrast, the administration has invested $4 billion to support the transformation of the lowest-achieving schools and required more meaningful interventions in schools with persistent achievement gaps.

It is not "punishing" a school that has does a poor job, year after year, and sometimes for decades, to support dramatic change in that school. Children get only one chance at an education. To fail to forcefully intervene in a school that cheats children out of the opportunity to receive a quality education punishes children. As Secretary Duncan has said, for far too long, adults, educators, and leaders have passively observed educational failure in these schools with a complacency that is deeply disturbing. States and districts have largely tinkered in chronically low-achieving schools--many of which serve low-income minority students--instead of treating them as educational emergencies. Secretary Duncan does not support maintaining the status quo in these schools or continued tinkering.

For a moment I thought he was talking about the United States action in Libya, instead of our neighborhood schools. In both cases, the Federal Government has decided "forceful intervention" is the only solution. . The "meaningful interventions" to which Mr. Hamilton refers are the four very limited alternatives "chronically underperforming" schools have been offered:

• Turnaround: Fire the principal and at least half the staff.
• Restart: Close the school and reopen as a charter.
• Closure: Simply close the school and ship students elsewhere.
• Transformation: Fire the principal and engage in extensive restructuring.

Unfortunately we have seen the results of "forceful intervention" in our nation's impoverished schools. At Fremont High School in Los Angeles, where the administration ran roughshod over teachers and students, to Central Falls High in Rhode Island.

Dana Goldstein visited Central Falls High and, a year after the controversy, offers us a window on the aftermath of this sort of forceful intervention, which was officially endorsed at the time by Secretary Duncan. Here is what she reports from her conversations with teachers there:

Despite their clear pleasure in working with the students, [teachers] Kulla and Cherko said teacher morale throughout the building remains low, in part because of last year's termination crisis and the resulting high-turnover among staff, and in part because student discipline remains a major problem.

"The kids, when they're here, need to know this is a place of learning," Kulla said. "Right now they don't." Cherko added that the layoff crisis was interpreted by many students as a sign that their teachers were incompetent. "I'm not sure they realize how nationally-driven what happened last year was," he said. "They say, 'The teachers got fired because they're bad at their jobs.'"

There are multiple problems with the Department of Education's strategy here.

Problem One. The process to determine which schools are "chronically underperforming" relies primarily on test score data - these same tests that the President asserts we should not be teaching to. How can we continue to make such high stakes decisions using such flawed sources of data? Won't this continue to force the poorest schools to focus on test preparation to avoid this undesirable status?

Problem Two: Communities are systematically disempowered by these forceful interventions, which disrupt or destroy local schools. As was reported in Education Week recently, urban activists from around the country are beginning to take notice and organize around this issue.

Problem Three: The accountability system ignores external factors that affect student performance, such as levels of poverty, homelessness, hunger and violence, each of which have huge impacts on student achievement. Under this policy, it is the teachers and administrators alone at these schools who are held accountable. This narrow focus only provides us with scapegoats, rather than long-term solutions.

Problem Four: The schools targeted for these interventions are all afflicted by poverty, and mostly attended by students of color. These students already experience a high degree of disruption in their lives due to their economic circumstances and the often violent environments in which they live. Subjecting them to disruptive "forceful interventions" is a very bad idea. Labeling their schools failures, and stigmatizing the teachers and administrators who work with them is a poor way to foster respect for learning. As was revealed by research on school closures in Chicago, this does not yield improved outcomes for students.

We need to move away from the test-and-punish regime that is the hallmark of No Child Left Behind. President Obama is correct when he suggests that we need to move away from the high-stakes attached to standardized tests. For struggling schools, we need strategies that build on their strengths, and provide support in the least disruptive and most constructive manner possible. Congresswoman Judy Chu offered such an approach last summer, and the Forum of Educational Accountability has likewise offered a comprehensive alternative based on strengthening schools.

Once again, I believe it is Department of Education policy that is out of step with President Obama. We are organizing the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, with a march and rally on July 30th in Washington, DC, in order to suggest that our schools be guided by President Obama's vision, as expressed in his honest statement Monday. Please join us.

What do you think? Is the Department of Education carrying out President Obama's vision? Or are they still using high-stakes tests to punish schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The journalist Michael Kinsley once said "a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth." A week ago, President Obama opened his mouth in an unscripted town hall, and the truth accidentally fell out. By now, you have read his words. You can view the event here.

President Obama was responding as a father, and reflecting on how he sees his own daughters, Sasha and Malia, experience tests at their exclusive private school. This is an excellent model for the way student learning should be assessed.

Just to be clear, the whole point of my post Monday night was to draw a contrast between the model of assessment that President Obama described, and the one currently being developed by Department of Education policy. In his response to three of my four questions, Mr. Hamilton has completely ignored President Obama's thoughts, and instead has described in great detail all the myriad forms of testing the DoEd feels are necessary. The model offered by the President cannot be forgotten simply because it is not "official policy."

The real question now becomes, "Is Department of Education policy truly guided by the wisdom and insight of the man we elected as President?"

So let us return to what President Obama said was appropriate for his own daughters.

Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn't a high-stakes test. It wasn't a test where they had to panic. I mean, they didn't even really know that they were going to take it ahead of time. They didn't study for it, they just went ahead and took it. And it was a tool to diagnose where they were strong, where they were weak, and what the teachers needed to emphasize.

This aligns with what research says about assessment. To be useful it ought to be low-stress, low stakes. The purpose should be to help teachers in the classroom understand where students are strong, and where they may be struggling. This is the essence of formative assessment, and it is worth taking the time to understand what this is. Current thinking has been greatly influenced by a paper done more than a decade ago by two researchers in the UK, Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black. You can download their seminal work, Inside the Black Box, Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment, here.

Wiliam and Black show through extensive research that assessment can be tremendously valuable in promoting student growth, but only when it is closely tied to the classroom practice of the teacher. The teacher needs to have that information immediately, in order to provide useful feedback to the students, and modify instruction accordingly. It is called "formative" because it not only informs - it reshapes lessons that are underway.

This sort of assessment is actively undermined when we shift our focus to high stakes tests of any kind. And when those high stakes tests are given with greater frequency, that does NOT make them formative. I posted an interview some months back with Dr. Myron Atkin. He was so clear on this, I want to share his words again. He said:

Regrettably, the testing companies have hijacked the formative label and are marketing it toward ends that are the polar opposite of what the research highlights as so powerful in student learning. Much of what the companies are marketing as formative assessment consists of prescribed mini-tests inserted at specified points in the curriculum for the purpose of giving students practice for the standardized examinations at the end of the year. In much too facile a fashion, it separates assessment from teaching and learning instead of integrating all three

One-size-fits-all, large-scale, end-of-year summative testing has already weakened education by reducing the curriculum to outcomes that can be assessed by relatively inexpensive tests using multiple-choice and other short-answer questions. We are now seeing a solidification of that influence as testing companies aggressively promote infusion of the entire curriculum with scores of mini-tests -- under the guise of promoting formative assessment. Preparing for the big tests by having the students take many little ones of the same kind may be one way to teach, but it isn't formative assessment.

The key benefits of formative assessment emphasized in the research literature are associated with changes in the classroom that result when teachers and students collaborate closely in examining the quality of student work. What does quality look like? What might the student do to improve school work to bring it to a higher quality than it is right now? This integration of teaching, learning, and assessment is complex work, but potent. It takes time and effort: hours, days, weeks, and months - not the periodic 15 or 20 minutes needed to respond to questions purchased from a remote "item bank" developed by the testing companies to foreshadow the final examination. Reporting mini-test scores to the students and even discussing common incorrect answers has little relationship to the type of feedback studied by Black and Wiliam that produced such large gains in achievement.

Standardized testing has a place in a comprehensive system of assessment, but not if it saturates the curriculum in ways that weaken teaching and learning, and not if it is directed primarily toward preparation for tests that are known to have serious limitations of scope and depth. The saddest element for students, teachers, parents, and the general public is that we know better.

In the extensive answer provided by Mr. Hamilton, the description he offers of formative tests supported by the Dept of Ed is much more closely aligned with the "hijacked" form of formative assessment than the authentic assessment that Wiliam and Black described. No, a test is not a test. There is a distinction between formative and summative assessments as Mr. Hamilton suggests. But there is a much more critical distinction between assessments that are developed by teachers, closely connected to their classroom instruction, and these state-mandated high-stakes tests that will emerge from the latest efforts by the Department.

As I said, there is a great deal of wisdom in those 338 words spoken by President Obama last Monday. We are planning a Save Our Schools March next July 30 to ask that our schools be allowed to follow his vision. Please join in our efforts. Tomorrow, Obama Knows Best Part Two: Too Often we are Using These Tests to Punish Students or Schools.

Update: This guest post by Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian describes in more detail the great expansion of testing now under way: High Tech Testing On the Way: 21st Century Boondoggle?

What do you think? Are the forms of testing described by Mr. Hamilton wise? Do they align with President Obama's vision?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

On Monday night I posted a blog pointing out that President Obama's remarks at a town hall meeting seemed to undermine Department of Education policies. I received a request for a correction to my post from Justin Hamilton, Press Secretary to Secretary Duncan. He agreed to answer some questions for me, which I posted earlier today. Note that in my questions, I included President Obama's remarks. Mr. Hamilton has removed those quotes in his reply.

From Justin Hamilton:
Before I answer your questions, I want to say that President Obama and Secretary Duncan believe that assessing student achievement and their progress is important information to track. They also believe that the quality of testing that happens in schools today needs to improve dramatically. I would encourage you to read Secretary Duncan's speech "Beyond the Bubble Tests," in which he explains what the Department is doing to support the development of a new generation of assessments that are useful to students, parents, and teachers and promote good instruction in the classroom. Here's a link to the speech.

Here are the answers to your specific questions.

Question 1: Isn't the Department of Education proposing a significant expansion in the frequency of tests, in order to capture growth? Is it not possible we will have tests in the fall and spring both for this purpose?

Yes, it is possible that some districts and schools will opt to have tests in the fall and spring to measure student growth. To measure student growth, states, by definition, will need to track student achievement over two or more points in time. That does not mean that tests automatically will need to be done in the same school year. The Department's Blueprint for reforming ESEA does not add any additional tests for purposes of federal accountability beyond those currently required under NCLB--English language arts and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and science, once at each schooling level.

Switching to measuring student growth--as opposed to using tests just to measure absolute levels of proficiency--may result in an increase in the frequency of tests. But that does not mean that students will face more high-stakes standardized tests. Secretary Duncan has taken the position that formative assessments are not high-stakes tests but are invaluable to good teaching because they help teachers identify the instructional needs of students and areas where their own practice can be strengthened.

In fact, as you note, President Obama's comments about the formative assessments that Sasha and Malia take at Sidwell Friends School are entirely consistent with the notion that formative tests are not high-stakes tests and are instructionally useful.

It may be your position that, for counting purposes, a test is a test, and that the distinction between formative and summative assessments is meaningless. Or that the administration should not be pressing schools to do more to measure growth in student learning during the school year--and should not expect states to use formative tests as part of their efforts to do so. We disagree. We draw a distinction between high-stakes testing and formative assessments--and Secretary Duncan has said repeatedly that schools are doing too little to measure student growth during the school year and are too preoccupied with measuring student proficiency with one-shot high-stakes tests.

In the "Beyond the Bubble Tests" speech linked to above, Secretary Duncan, like President Obama, said that he believes schools give too many tests that aren't assessing important knowledge and skills or providing high-quality information about student progress. Instead of fostering a classroom culture of continuous improvement, our current assessment system often leaves teachers and parents feeling frustrated and lacking information that could help them accelerate student learning.

The Department is supporting the development of the next generation of tests by two, large state consortia covering 44 states with $350 million from the Race to the Top fund. These tests will go beyond the bubble tests common in classrooms today. They will give parents and teachers information they need to know whether a student is on track for success in college and careers, not just measure against a state baseline for proficiency. They will assess students' ability to read complex text, complete research projects, excel at classroom speaking and listening assignments, and work with digital media. They will provide a series of interim evaluations during the school year to measure whether students are on track. All of these assessments will be instructionally useful - unlike the one-shot, end-of-year standardized tests given as part of current accountability systems. Again, it may be your position that a test is a test, and it is not worthwhile to distinguish between fill-in-the-bubble tests and tests that measure critical thinking skills--or that it is impossible to develop a much better system of standardized assessments. Secretary Duncan is on the record disagreeing with those positions.

Question 1 (part 2): And isn't the Department also proposing to greatly increase the subjects that are tested, beyond reading and math? Won't this have the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the number and frequency of tests?

The Department will continue to require annual testing in reading and mathematics. Under the Blueprint, states will have the option to include the results from other subjects in their accountability system. They will not be required to add new subjects. The policy of allowing states to add new subjects stems from Secretary Duncan's desire to be responsive to concerns that the current NCLB accountability system is narrowing the curriculum in some schools by producing an undue focus on English language arts and mathematics.

It's important to note that President Obama and Secretary Duncan believe that many other factors should be included in the accountability system. Secretary Duncan has repeatedly said that multiple indicators must be used to assess school and teacher performance. Under the Blueprint, the administration proposed not only to broaden the accountability system to include measures of student growth in subjects other than English language arts and math, it also proposed a variety of measures of school performance at the high school level apart from standardized test scores, such as graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and the rate of college enrollment without the need for remediation. In addition, states and districts under the Blueprint would collect information about teaching and learning conditions, including information on school climate such as student, teacher and school leader attendance; disciplinary incidents; or student, parent, or school staff surveys about their school experience.

Question 2: The Department of Education's Blueprint for a new NCLB calls for the continuation of the practice of labeling schools as failures, although it will impose this crushing status on only the bottom 5% of our schools. If punishing schools has not worked - as the President acknowledges in this remark, (and it was not shown to work in Chicago under then CEO Arne Duncan) why is it being continued for any schools at all?

The biggest problem with AYP is that it gives schools the same label, whether they're missing their targets by a little or a lot. Under NCLB, chronically low-performing schools are already identified as being schools in need of reconstitution. However, NCLB provided almost no resources for improving schools that, by any measure, are chronically low-performing or have persistent achievement gaps. Interventions in these schools typically have involved little more than cosmetic change. By contrast, the administration has invested $4 billion to support the transformation of the lowest-achieving schools and required more meaningful interventions in schools with persistent achievement gaps.

It is not "punishing" a school that has does a poor job, year after year, and sometimes for decades, to support dramatic change in that school. Children get only one chance at an education. To fail to forcefully intervene in a school that cheats children out of the opportunity to receive a quality education punishes children. As Secretary Duncan has said, for far too long, adults, educators, and leaders have passively observed educational failure in these schools with a complacency that is deeply disturbing. States and districts have largely tinkered in chronically low-achieving schools--many of which serve low-income minority students--instead of treating them as educational emergencies. Secretary Duncan does not support maintaining the status quo in these schools or continued tinkering.

Question 3: As a proponent of project-based learning, I am happy to hear the president acknowledge that this form of learning is not measured by current forms of assessment. Will project based learning be included in the assessments used for accountability purposes? If so, how will this be done?

Under the Blueprint and Race to the Top, states may use a variety of tests to measure student growth. These tests can be portfolios, observation of student work against a rubric aligned with state standards, or assessments designed by teachers according to state guidance. All of these assessments must be rigorous and comparable across classrooms.

Justin Hamilton, Press Secretary to Secretary Duncan

Note: Mr. Hamilton overlooked the fourth question I asked and is now working on a response. It is expected to arrive Monday.

Update: See Part One of my response here: Obama Knows Best: How Should we Assess Learning?

Update 2: See Part Two of my response here: Obama Knows Best: "Too Often we are Using these Tests to Punish Students or Schools"

What do you think? Do you feel the Department of Education's policies are aligned with President Obama's remarks on Monday?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

On Monday I wrote a post contrasting President Obama's insightful thoughts about standardized tests to policies that are being pursued by his own Department of Education. Justin Hamilton, a press operative for the Department of Education believes I have misinterpreted President Obama's remarks, and on Wednesday he sent me an email requesting that I correct my post.

He offered me the following "clarifications":

While President Obama and Secretary Duncan are open to how we can best assess student progress in subject areas like history and science, they believe annual measures in reading and math are needed to assess progress toward college and career-readiness.

More must be done to improve the quality of those assessments, so that they're a more meaningful measure of student learning. That's why we've invested $350 million through Race to the Top to help states develop the next generation of assessments and help us move beyond bubble tests.

They were sent Wednesday night. Yesterday I wrote and asked when I could expect answers, and they wrote back "We're close to having answers for you. Could you hold off until tomorrow?" I replied, sure, "by noon tomorrow?" Reply: "I think we can do noon."

It is now past noon in Washington, DC, and I am still waiting for answers. [note: I am told they are working on it and should have answers soon!] When they arrive, I will post them immediately. But meanwhile, perhaps with the help of my readers we can sort this mess out. Mr. Hamilton thinks I am misinterpreting President Obama and there are no inconsistencies between his statements and Department of Education policies. My questions attempt to clarify this.

Question 1: The original question from the student expressed the view that students have too many tests. President Obama replied:

"we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids," and suggested perhaps we might move to a system that tests less frequently.

Isn't the Department of Education proposing a significant expansion in the frequency of tests, in order to capture growth? Is it not possible we will have tests in the fall and spring both for this purpose? And isn't the Department also proposing to greatly increase the subjects that are tested, beyond reading and math? Won't this have the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the number and frequency of tests?

Question 2: President Obama said:

Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well.

The Department of Education's Blueprint for a new NCLB calls for the continuation of the practice of labeling schools as failures, although it will impose this crushing status on only the bottom 5% of our schools. If punishing schools has not worked - as the President acknowledges in this remark, (and was not shown to work in Chicago under then CEO Arne Duncan) why is it being continued for any schools at all?

Question 3: President Obama also said this:

Because there are other criteria: What's the attendance rate? How are young people performing in terms of basic competency on projects? There are other ways of us measuring whether students are doing well or not.

As a proponent of project-based learning, I am happy to hear the president acknowledge that this form of learning is not measured by current forms of assessment. Will project based learning be included in the assessments used for accountability purposes? If so, how will this be done?

Question 4: President Obama also said:

So what I want to do is--one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring.

Many of the core elements of Race to the Top and the Blueprint are related to test scores. Department of Ed policy calls for the linking of teacher evaluations and pay to student test scores. The Blueprint calls for tracking of student test scores of teachers according to the place they were prepared. We still have the threat of reconstitution hanging over the bottom tier of schools, attended exclusively by children in poverty. All based on test scores. The President described the tests that Sasha and Malia took as "low stakes." All these changes RAISE the stakes on the tests, for teachers and schools. How does this move us towards the "less pressure-packed environment" the President is advocating?

What do you think? Who has been misinterpreting President Obama? Me - or the Department of Education?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend