As US schools resume testing, large numbers are opting out - AP THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

As US schools resume testing, large numbers are opting out

As US schools resume testing, large numbers are opting out

Standardized tests are returning to the nation’s schools this spring, but millions of students will face shorter exams that carry lower stakes, and most families are being given the option to forgo testing entirely.

With new flexibility from the Biden administration, states are adopting a patchwork of testing plans that aim to curb the stress of exams while still capturing some data on student learning. The lenient approach means large swaths of students will go untested, shattering hopes for a full picture of how much learning has been set back by the pandemic.

“We will end up with a highly imperfect set of data,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington. “This is something our country will have to commit to tracking and learning about for at least the next few years, and maybe the next decade.”

Some of the nation’s largest districts plan to test only a fraction of their students as many continue to learn remotely. In New York City, students must opt in to be tested this year. In Los Angeles, most students are not being asked to take state exams this year. Other districts are scaling back questions or testing in fewer subjects.

It’s the latest episode in a long-fought battle over school testing and, as in the past, parents are polarized. Some are demanding tests to get a sense of their children’s progress. Others see no need to put their children through that kind of stress.

As a teacher, Jay Wamsted believes there’s value in testing. But when his sixth-grade daughter Kira asked to opt out this year, he saw no reason to object. He already knows she needs to catch up on math after months of remote learning. And as a teacher at her school, he knew that many CONTINUE READING: As US schools resume testing, large numbers are opting out

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Grumpy Old Teacher

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Grumpy Old Teacher

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

And a #2 pencil.

The quote is attributed to Winston Churchill as he received the King’s appointment to be Prime MInister in May 1940 to form a new government and prosecute the war with Nazi Germany. However, for the last 20 years, it is the plaintive cry of every American school child in grades 3 through 10 taking numerous state tests because we must have data to measure … it used to be student learning, but now takes in school quality, teacher accomplishments, administrative worthiness, and district whatever … Grumpy Old Teacher (GOT) supposes that in the year of 2021, school testing is used to measure everything but the level of water in the kitchen sink.

It is 2021 and the ‘compassion and grace’ of the previous year has been replaced by the driving need, which rhymes with greed, of the Testing-Reform Complex to measure learning loss, a dubious concept at best that actually means how much worse will kids score on the tests this year.

Yes, we are testing this year and doing our best to intimidate parents and children who opted to continue their learning in their bedrooms to come onto our campuses because the test must be taken. CONTINUE READING“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Grumpy Old Teacher

A Memo from the Superintendent | The Merrow Report

A Memo from the Superintendent | The Merrow Report

A Memo from the Superintendent

To: Our teachers and other educators

From: Your Superintendent

May 18, 2021

As a lifelong public educator, I pride myself for having learned from the greatest educators in the history of civilization: John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Aristotle, Jean Piaget, Plato, and Sam Hinkie.  

For this particular testing season, I suggest that we rely on the wisdom of Sam Hinkie.

Many of you fear that remote learning has hurt our neediest students, making it all but certain that they won’t perform well on the forthcoming standardized tests. However, the tests are the law, and we all should agree on a strategy that will help our students, our district, and our teachers. 

There are two options.  One is to begin intense ‘drill and kill’ test practice right away.  While this is monotonous and boring, D&K often produces quick upticks in scores, which leads to positive coverage in the media.  

(Of course, the steep ‘learning curve’ is ephemeral, and the “forgetting curve” that CONTINUE READING: A Memo from the Superintendent | The Merrow Report

Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests - Rethinking Schools

Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests - Rethinking Schools

Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests

One month after taking office, the Biden administration faced its first major education policy test. It failed miserably. 

Despite a campaign promise to end standardized testing in public schools (See “Biden’s Broken Promise: Time to Opt Out!” by Denisha Jones), on Feb. 22 administration officials declared it would not grant “blanket waivers of assessments” for the current school year despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The announcement drew immediate grassroots protest that clogged U.S. Education Department (ED) phone lines and ensured that students returning to classrooms after a year of trauma and chaos would face hours of useless standardized tests mandated by the federal government.

The decision also set in motion a state-by-state battle around testing that is now underway, and reopened fault lines in the Democratic Party over education policy that were papered over during the campaign against Trump. 

One year ago, as the pandemic swept the country, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos granted testing waivers to all 50 states. The move  instantly underscored the educational irrelevance of the tests and their existence as an obstacle to serving the real needs of students.

As Biden pushed to reopen schools during his first 100 days, pressure built for a renewal of the testing waivers. A growing number of states including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina, and Georgia announced plans to seek them while the education world awaited confirmation of Miguel Cardona, the Connecticut state superintendent Biden nominated for education secretary.

But just days before Cardona’s confirmation, Acting Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum released a letter declaring that all states would be required to give the tests mandated by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as the “Every Student Succeeds Act”). Rosenblum came to Biden’s education policy team directly from Education Trust, the pro-testing corporate reform lobby that until late April was led by John King, a longtime, pro-testing proponent who succeeded Arne Duncan as secretary of education in the Obama Administration.

For months, pro-testing corporate reformers had worked to head off calls for another round of testing waivers. Mass standardized testing is the engine of corporate education reform and its supporters feared a second year without scores could permanently weaken the testing CONTINUE READING: Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests - Rethinking Schools

Testing Industry Scores Big in California | tultican

Testing Industry Scores Big in California | tultican

Testing Industry Scores Big in California

By Thomas Ultican 5/13/2021

At 1:45 PM this Wednesday, the California State Board of Education (SBE) adopted a “student growth model” to evaluate student learning. It is a method fans of standardized test based accountability have been trumpeting. The big winner here is the testing giant Education Testing Services (ETS) who created the model to be used.

Board member Sue Burr who was appointed to the board by then Governor Jerry Brown made the motion for using the growth model. She carefully presented her motion directly from the state’s California Department of Education (CDE) staff report which recommended:

“The student growth model methodology, which includes using RG [residual growth] scores and the EBLP [Empirical Best Linear Prediction] hybrid approach to report aggregated student growth, and that the following score reporting be adopted:

“1.        Report the EBLP weighted average for:

1. Schools
2. Student groups in a school
3. The “All” student group in an County or District
4. Student groups in a district with 500 or fewer students (with test scores)

“2.       At the Local Education Agency level, report the simple average for all race/ethnicity and program participation student groups with more than 500 scores.”

Board member Patricia Ann Rucker seconded the motion. She is a legislative CONTINUE READING: Testing Industry Scores Big in California | tultican

The Testing Game, Louisiana-style | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

The Testing Game, Louisiana-style | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

The Testing Game, Louisiana-style

Let’s say that I am at the end of my freshman year of high school in Louisiana. I must take two Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) exams: English I and Algebra I. So long as I minimally pass these exams (“approaching basic”), I am good for graduation three years from now. Furthermore, my state exam score counts as my final exam in the class (between 15 and 30 percent of my fourth quarter grade, according to state specifications; see below).

high-school-leap-2025-grade-conversion-tableDownload

If I score the highest level on my LEAP exams (“advanced”), then I get an A as an exam grade. If I score the second highest level (“mastery”), I get a B. The third level, “basic,” gets me a C, and the fourth (and lowest passing) level, “approaching basic,” earns a D.

Given that the state exams last between 225 and 260 minutes each, I might zoom through my LEAP test, aiming, if you will, for  CONTINUE READING: The Testing Game, Louisiana-style | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

NANCY BAILEY: We Need Clarity and Consistency From the President When it Comes to Democratic Public Schools

We Need Clarity and Consistency From the President When it Comes to Democratic Public Schools

We Need Clarity and Consistency From the President When it Comes to Democratic Public Schools

President Biden has accomplished much in his first 100 days. He’s a caring President when this is especially needed. There’s much to like about the President’s ideas and, here, for education, but his speech did not highlight some major concerns. He talked strongly about democracy, but he missed the chance to make important points about democratic public schools and teachers.

Here is the transcript of the President’s speech.

Why are clarity and consistency about schools so important?

The President once told educators and parents that he would end high-stakes testing, teaching to the test. However, earlier this year, the Biden administration said states must still test even after a year of disruption due to the pandemic.

Also, preschool is important, but in his speech, President Biden emphasized competition and the workforce. Most teachers and parents dislike connecting the economy, the workforce to children, especially using preschool.

This is the same old talk of previous Presidents, pandering to business. It doesn’t solve the nitty-gritty problems facing schools and teachers, difficulties that need to be fixed if CONTINUE READING: We Need Clarity and Consistency From the President When it Comes to Democratic Public Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

The chicken littling about Learning Loss is just never going to stop. Today I came across yet another article (that I won't link to) warning that the Learning Losses from the pandemic pause will haunt students for the rest of their lives.

The worst of the Learning Loss panickers are revealing too much about what they don't understand, but what they especially don't understand is what goes on in an actual classroom, because the whole concept of "falling behind" is a layperson's oversimplification of what actual education looks like.

I think I was a pretty run-of-the-mill example of the teaching profession in my thirty-nine years, so let me explain what my year generally looked like. 

At the beginning of the year, I'd launch the dual processes of Trying To Teach Stuff and Figuring Out What This Batch of Students Knows and Can Do. At no point in my career were the Big Standardized Test results a useful part of this process because A) the results were nothing but a score and we weren't even allowed to see the questions, so had no way of knowing what exactly students got right or got wrong and B) the results don't come until the school year was already well under way. 

In my career, I mostly taught grades 9 through 12, all tracks, so September always brought students with a very wide range of tools. One of things you get better at with experience is assessing what the students bring to the table, both academically and otherwise. And then you go from there.

This initial assessment does not tell you anything CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

Outrage Continues as Standardized Testing Moves Forward in this COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

Outrage Continues as Standardized Testing Moves Forward in this COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

Outrage Continues as Standardized Testing Moves Forward in this COVID-19 School Year

Standardized testing—required this school year by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s U.S. Department of Education despite the disruption of COVID-19—is now happening in many public schools across the United States. But even as the tests are being administered, the anger and protests against this expensive, time consuming, and, many believe, harmful routine are not abating.

Last week, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss reported: “The Biden administration is facing growing backlash from state education chiefs, Republican senators, teachers unions and others who say that its insistence that schools give standardized tests to students this year is unfair, and that it is being inconsistent in how it awards testing flexibility to states. Michigan State Superintendent Michael Rice has slammed the U.S. Education Department for its ‘indefensible’ logic in rejecting the state’s request for a testing waiver while granting one to the Washington, D.C., school system—the only waiver that has been given. Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, whose state was also denied a waiver, said testing this year ‘isn’t going to show any data that is going to be meaningful for learning moving forward… The controversy represents the newest chapter in a long-running national debate about the value of high-stakes standardized tests. Since 2002, the federal government has mandated schools give most students ELA and math standardized tests every year for the purposes of holding schools accountable for student progress. The scores are also used to rank schools, evaluate teachers, make grade promotion decisions and other purposes.”

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) describes itself as a nationwide multi-racial coalition of CONTINUE READING: Outrage Continues as Standardized Testing Moves Forward in this COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

USDOE Wants “Educator Stability.” It Also Wants Test Scores. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

USDOE Wants “Educator Stability.” It Also Wants Test Scores. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

USDOE Wants “Educator Stability.” It Also Wants Test Scores

On April 09, 2021, the US Department of Education (USDOE) released its COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2.

In perusing its table of contents, I noticed one section in particular: ” Supporting Educator and Staff Stability and Well-being: Stabilizing a Diverse and Qualified Educator Workforce.”

Educator stability now appears to be a focus of USDOE attention.

It took a pandemic.

For the past two decades, USDOE leadership, in concert with the two Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) reauthorizations produced by Congress, have done nothing to “stabilize” the educator workforce. On the contrary, the 2001 ESEA reauthorization, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), introduced the oppressive, test-and-punish course that threatened school stability by its abuse of student test scores being used to grade schools and teachers, all in the name of accountability to the never-realistic goal of 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

In 2007, when NCLB was up for reauthorization and its 100-percent-proficiency farce looming, Congress wouldn’t touch it. However, former US secretary of education Arne Duncan used his NCLB waivers to coerce states into adopting “college and career ready” standards (that would be the controversial Common Core State Standards) and related assessments, as in his federally-funded, consortium assessments. And so the testing oppression continued. No talk of educator stability. No, no. In fact, destabilization was the name of the game. Competition, Race for the (test-idolizing) Top— and a CCSS sales job reinforcing the NCLB-enabled, hand-over-fist revenue for testing companies capable of grabbing the gold.

Meanwhile, USDOE has for years doled out charter school funding without CONTINUE READING: USDOE Wants “Educator Stability.” It Also Wants Test Scores. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago | Diane Ravitch's blog

What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago | Diane Ravitch's blog

What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago

In 2011, I was interviewed by Terri Gross on “Fresh Air,” her NPR program. When my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. When it was published, there was quite a lot of speculation about why I changed my views. Apparently, no one ever has a change of mind or heart. I have been consistent over the years in admitting that I was wrong when I supported charter schools, testing, and accountability. It was really hard for some people to accept the plain statement, “I was wrong.”

On the 10th anniversary of this interview, I post it now (I didn’t have a blog in 2011).

The book became a national bestseller, a first for me. (My next book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement, was also a national bestseller).

I had a wonderful appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart about Death and Life. When I heard I was invited on his show, I had never heard of it. I watched the day before I appeared. Stewart interviewed Caroline CONTINUE READING: What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back - Counter Punch org

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back - CounterPunch.org

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

There’s hope in the air, a scent of spring, anticipation of change, democracy may pull through. Why, then, with K-12 public schools, the broken promise, the dismay?

Biden raised hopes when he promised, Dec 16, 2019, that he’d “commit to ending the use of standardized testing in public schools,” saying (rightly) that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” Yet on Feb 22, his Department of Education did an about-face, announcing, “we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning …parents need information on how their children are doing.”

How the children are doing? They’re struggling, that’s how, doing their best, and so are teachers and parents. And it’s the least advantaged who are struggling the most, who, in the transition to online teaching, are likeliest to be without access to the internet, whose families are most vulnerable to loss of jobs, health care, lives. Now this? It costs $1.7 billion to administer these tests, but the toll on kids— the tears, terrors, alienation— is incalculable.

Most people have no idea what a blight these exams are, how they’ve stripped K-12 curricula of civics, history, literature, the arts, languages, even the sciences. Since schools live or die on the basis of test scores, what does not get tested does not get taught, and education is reduced to CONTINUE READING: The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back - CounterPunch.org

Is Canceling “High Stakes Testing” More Important than Halving Childhood Poverty? | Ed In The Apple

Is Canceling “High Stakes Testing” More Important than Halving Childhood Poverty? | Ed In The Apple

Is Canceling “High Stakes Testing” More Important than Halving Childhood Poverty?

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist , calls our nation “a beacon of failure,”

“The U.S., with its cherished image as a land of opportunity, should be an inspiring example of just and enlightened treatment of children. Instead, it is a beacon of failure,”

“Though an average American childhood may not be the worst in the world, the disparity between the country’s wealth and the condition of its children is unparalleled.”

Our childhood poverty rate is 19.9 percent, the highest among all developed countries, except Romania.

President Johnson’s “War On Poverty” offered hope; however the Republican Calvinist approach, “helping” the poor would only reinforce poverty, prevailed. 

The Biden initiative, the American Rescue Plan reverses half a century of ignoring the “truly disadvantaged” and offers hope for abandoned Americans.

 Nick Kristoff in the New York Times writes,

  Today one of our saddest statistics is this: American children ages 1 to 19 CONTINUE READING: Is Canceling “High Stakes Testing” More Important than Halving Childhood Poverty? | Ed In The Apple

The Year Without Standardized Testing | gadflyonthewallblog

The Year Without Standardized Testing | gadflyonthewallblog

The Year Without Standardized Testing

Last year was the first in nearly two decades that the US did not give standardized tests to virtually every student in public school.

Think about that.

Since 2001 almost every child took the tests unless their parents explicitly demanded they be opted out.

For 19 years almost every child in grades 3-8 and once in high school took standardized assessments.

And then came 2019-20 and – nothing.

No multiple guess fill-in the bubble questions.

No sorting students into classes based on the results.

No evaluating teachers and schools based on the poverty, race and ethnicities of the children they serve.

And all it took to make us stop was a global pandemic.

What are the results of that discontinuity?

We may never really know.

There are so  CONTINUE READING: The Year Without Standardized Testing | gadflyonthewallblog

Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor | janresseger

Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor | janresseger

Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor

After a chaotic schoolyear including remote learning and sometimes complicated hybrid schedules of in-person and remote learning, students are returning to full-time school to face the annual standardized tests. These are the tests that Congress requires under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the tests first required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). They are the foundation of a two-decade-old scheme to hold schools accountable. Betsy DeVos cancelled required standardized testing last spring after schools shut down as the pandemic struck the Unites States.

The U.S. Department of Education announced in late February, before Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was even confirmed, that it is requiring standardized testing this spring. There is a whole lot of confusion between the federal government and the states right now because the federal guidance about testing this year features “flexibility.”

Here is some of the letter, dated February 22, 2021, from acting assistant secretary of education, Ian Rosenblum, a letter which informed states they must test students this year: “We remain committed to supporting all states in assessing the learning of all students. The Department is, therefore, offering the following flexibility with respect to your assessment, accountability, and reporting systems for the 2020-2021 school year… We are inviting states to request a waiver for the 2020-2021 school year of the accountability and school identification requirements… A state receiving this waiver would not be required to implement and report the results of its accountability system, including calculating progress toward long-term goals and measurements of interim progress or indicators, or to annually meaningfully CONTINUE READING: Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor | janresseger

Education Matters: Now that the testing EO has come out, the big question is what will DCPS do?

Education Matters: Now that the testing EO has come out, the big question is what will DCPS do?

Now that the testing EO has come out, the big question is what will DCPS do?

If the past is prologue, the answer to that question is the opposite of what is right. They will still use the tests to bludgeon teachers and save money. Who wants to make a bet what they will do?

First, some random thoughts.

Executive orders from the state diminish the power of localities. They make Corcoran a de facto king of education. That wouldn't be a good thing even if we had a reasoned educator in charge instead of the jackbooted noneducator thug we currently have. 

We should all oppose high-stakes testing as it is currently done. Is there a need for an assessment? Sure, but what we have is punitive accountability on steroids that isn't meant to help. It's meant to harm. Greene and presumably the board's full-throated embrace of them is beyond troubling. 

Despite months of telegraphing waivers for the tests were coming, the district spent weeks cajoling families to return and watched up the stress level of students and staff alike, and for what? It's my thought Greene can taste that A grade and is willing to walk over the bodies of teachers and students to get it. Anybody paying CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Now that the testing EO has come out, the big question is what will DCPS do?

Dana Goldstein: Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times

Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times

Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss?

Research shows many young children have fallen behind in reading and math. But some educators are worried about stigmatizing an entire generation.

Over the past year, Deprece Bonilla, a mother of five in Oakland, Calif., has gotten creative about helping her children thrive in a world largely mediated by screens.

She signed them up for online phonics tutoring and virtual martial arts lessons. If they are distracted inside the family’s duplex, she grabs snacks and goes with the children into the car, saying they cannot come out until their homework is done. She has sometimes spent three hours per day assisting with school assignments, even as she works from home for a local nonprofit organization.

It all sometimes feels like too much to bear. Still, when her fifth-grade son’s public-school teacher told her he was years behind in reading, she was in disbelief.

“That was very offensive to me,” she said. “I’m not putting in myself, my hard work, his hard work, for you to tell me that he’s at second-grade reading.”

Ms. Bonilla’s experience illustrates a roiling debate in education, about how and even whether to measure the academic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s children — and how to describe learning gaps without stigmatizing or discouraging students and families.

Studies continue to show that amid the school closures and economic and health hardships of the past year, many young children have missed out on mastering fundamental reading and math skills. The Biden administration has told most states that unlike in 2020, they should plan on testing students this year, in part to measure the “educational inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”

But others are pushing back against the concept of “learning loss,” especially on behalf of the Black, Hispanic and low-income children who, research shows, have fallen further behind over the past year. They fear that a focus on what’s been lost could incite a moral panic that paints an entire generation as broken, and say that relatively simple, common-sense solutions can help students get CONTINUE READING: Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times