It’s All About the Bell Curve: Sheri Lederman’s Day in Court
I traveled up to Albany this morning to hear the oral arguments in the Lederman v. King case presented to Acting Supreme Court Justice Roger McDonough by Bruce Lederman, and Colleen Galligan representing the State Education Department. This is the first time in my life I have sat in a courtroom proceeding. I don’t even watch Law and Order. Let’s just say I was most definitely not in my element. But I’m a pretty good observer of human behavior, a decent note-taker, and I had personal reasons for caring deeply about the outcome of this case, above and beyond all the reasons we all should care about a case that may have far-reaching implications for the misguided reforms of Race to the Top (see full disclosure below). What I witnessed was a masterful take down of the we-need-objectivity rhetoric that is plaguing education. So I should begin by saying that I am hopeful, because it seems someone with the power to make a difference gets it. Judge McDonough gets that it’s all about the bell curve, and the bell curve is biased and subjective.
In case you need a refresher on how test scoring works these days (and who doesn’t) I suggest you start with the excellent fact sheets from Fair Test, first on norm-referenced tests, or NRTs, and then oncriterion-referenced tests, or CRTs, and tests used to measure performance against state standards. In particular note the following important points:
“NRTs are designed to sort and rank students 'on the curve,' not to see if they met a standard or criterion. Therefore, NRTs should not be used to assess whether students have met standards. However, in some states or districts a NRT is used to measure student learning in relation to standards. Specific cut-off scores on the NRT are then chosen (usually by a committee) to separate levels of achievement on the standards. In some cases, a CRT is made using technical procedures developed for NRTs, causing the CRT to sort students in ways that are inappropriate for standards-based decisions.”
As you may notice, we’ve come a long way from getting a 91 out of 100 on a test and knowing that was an A-. Testing today is obtuse and confusing by design. In New York State, we boil it down to a ranking from one to four. That’s right, there’s even jargon for “ones and twos” that is particularly heinous when you learn that politicians have interests in making more than 50% of students fall in those “failing” categories. Today the state released the test score resultsfor students in grades 3-8 and their so-called “proficiency” is reported as below 40% achieving the passing levels. By design the public is meant to read this as miserable failure.
The political narrative of public education failure extends next to the teachers, who must demonstrate student learning based on these faulty tests, even if they don’t teach the subjects tested, and even if they teach students who face hurdles and hardships that have a tremendous impact on their ability to do well on the tests. In Sheri’s case, her rating plunged from 14 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points on student growth measures. Yet her students perform exceedingly well on the exams; once you are a “four” you can’t go up to a “four plus” because you’ve hit the ceiling. In fact, one wrong answer could unreasonably mark you as a “three” and you would never know. Similarly, the teacher receives a student growth score that is also based on a comparison to other teachers. When it emerged in the hearing today that the model, also known as VAM, or value-added, pre-determined that 7% of the teachers would be rated “ineffective” Judge McDonough caught on to the injustice that lies at the heart of the bell curve logic: where you rank in the ratings is SUBJECTIVE.
In his affidavits, Professor Aaron Pallas of Teachers College brilliantly explains the many flaws with this misuse of student test Alexandra Miletta: It’s All About the Bell Curve: Sheri Lederman’s Day in Court: