Schools flunked inquiries into suspicious scores in 2011
"By the time it's over, 2011 may well go down as the Year of the Test Scandal... The revelations came as schools, nearly a decade into the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era of test-based accountability, struggled to increase the percentage of students deemed "proficient" on state math and reading tests. Among the most high-profile cases: •In Atlanta, three years after the Journal-Constitution began probing unusual gains on test scores, a state investigation in July found that 178 teachers and principals had tampered with tests over the past decade. Last week, investigators said educat... more »
DCPS achievement gap blamed on officials, demographics, lack of funding
"Goldstein also concluded that while Rhee failed to significantly narrow achievement gaps, the gaps would be less disturbing if overall achievement levels were moderate or high. "But what we continue to see in D.C. is that white students score well above both national and urban district averages for their race; [and that] black, Hispanic and poor children score well below national averages for their races and classes," Goldstein wrote."
Former DC schools chief busy lobbying, helping (right-wing) politicians
"'She represents an approach to reforming education that we think is really destructive and is not going to face the problems of public education,' says Lisa Guisbond of Citizens for Public Schools, a Boston-based public education advocacy group. Along with a handful* of others, Guisbond's group arranged a boisterous demonstration in November when Rhee appeared at Boston's Symphony Hall, where marchers carried signs that read, 'Erasing Mistakes Doesn't Put Children First.'" *Contemporaneous local news reports put the number of protestors at 100.
The decline of thinking outside the box–study results
While IQ scores are indisputably on the rise, American creativity levels are bottoming out. Analysis of the results of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking suggests that the creative abilities of American children have been spiraling downward for almost 20 years. ....... That's a serious issue at a time when creative thinking is among the most desperately needed skills in the American workplace. A recent study found that 85 percent of employers concerned with hiring creative people say they can't find the right applicants. Kim blamed America's standards-obsessed schools for creat... more »
Fighting back against mandatory school testing– Mother Courage vs corporate reformers
"I’m angry that my kid is being held hostage to tests by a system that threatens to take away her school’s funding if she and her schoolmates don’t perform well. I’m angry that my child’s class spent an hour, during the math benchmark test in October, transcribing their answers from the test sheet to the Scantron sheet. I’m angry that whatever changes are coming to this system will not be soon enough—or even the right ones—to change the experience the “lost generation” will have. I’m not willing to be complicit in it. So, we are opting out of the mandated testing. What? You didn’t k... more »
Shock Treatment: Scores jumped, then stalled, after NCLB
As corporate reformers like Michelle Rhee continue to push for wrongly-headed "accountability," research debunks them. "After the initial shock of the law's "accountability" mechanisms wore off, there was a leveling-off of student gains—which suggests that bold new education policies are needed to unleash a fresh wave of academic progress, author Mark Schneider contends. The paper, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, speaks to some of the big questions swirling around the attempted, long-stalled reauthorization of the law, as well as to other major, multi-state policy effo... more »
Michelle Rhee’s 5-City California infomercial- coming to an auditorium near you!
"Last night, I drove over to the Shiley Auditorium on the beautiful campus of USD to hear Michelle Rhee talk about education reform, or as it should more aptly be called when it comes to Rhee, “reform.” San Diego was the first of five stops she is making in California as part of what she called a listening tour, or as it should more aptly be called when it comes to Rhee, a “listening tour.” But I’ll get to that in a minute."
IMPACT study scuttled by differences over method
The project was a sticky issue from the beginning. The selection of an outside researcher was supposed to be mutually acceptable to the union and the District. But former WTU president George Parker said he never signed off on Fryer. His successor, Nathan Saunders, also balked... Saunders said he was troubled by his connections. Saunders cited Fryer’s prior experience as a contractor hired by former Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to assess the now-defunct “Capital Gains” program that paid cash to middle schoolers for good grades and behavior. There was also the issue of EdLab’s funders,...more »
Slow down the school reform factory
"Even Michelle Rhee, the superstar reformer, accepted limits on using test results in Washington D.C.'s revised evaluation system. Called IMPACT, now in its third year, the approach acknowledges that teachers of untested subjects cannot be evaluated with "quantifiable measures of student performance." Instead, the Rhee plan relies on five annual observations by principals and specialist "master educators." Under Rhee, the D.C. schools attracted extensive outside funding to pay for the costs of the new system and for the merit bonuses it triggers, funding not likely to flow to New Je... more »
In which I nitpick on the subject of the opportunity/ achievement gap, charters, and Rhee’s legacy in DC
"...for the record, Rhee did not "streamline" the bureaucracy as Goldstein suggests in her post. As I discussed here and here, the bureaucracy actually got bigger and costlier under Rhee and Henderson. But I guess that's part of the Common Wisdom about Very Serious People that Very Serious Education Pundits are too busy and underpaid to shake themselves of. Or perhaps it's part of some misguided attempt to "balance" coverage. If the information is not accurate, if the coverage is based on assumptions rather than on facts and evidence, however, then that's not "balance," it's misinfo... more »
Braun: New kind of N.J. school privatization on the rise
Michelle Rhee continues to advise NJ Gov Chris Christie on corporate education reform. "Public education in New Jersey has been roiled recently by conflicts over charter schools, vouchers and "virtual" schools — but, now, a new type of privatization is on the horizon: allowing public schools to contract with a private company to offer "alternative" education."
More on the D.C. achievement gap and Michelle Rhee’s legacy
The takeaway, I think, is that Rhee pursued a number of reforms, but there is no evidence that her most controversial, anti-union moves are responsible for the limited growth we've seen--or that teacher-evaluation reforms alone can, over time, move many more poor, black, and Hispanic D.C. chidren to academic proficiency. Indeed, the D.C. public schools are still highly segregated by race and class, with quality teachers more clustered than ever in whiter, wealthier schools. These trends are negatively correlated with high academic achievement for disadvantaged kids.
The most important speech on education in years
So today we see Wall Street hedge funders and billionaires saying that they are leading the civil rights movement of our time. I have trouble imagining Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., walking arm in arm with billionaires in a crusade to privatize control of public education.
A superintendent calls school reformers’ bluff
So I’m calling on reformers — Kress and Rhee included — to lend support for a new kind of reform, one that steps outside the schoolhouse and shares the onus for achievement with more than just teachers. I’m calling for data-driven equality, modeled on Kress’s work, expanding it to force greater societal changes that will help teachers bridge the achievement gap.
In post-Rhee DC, achievement gaps remain staggeringly wide | The Nation
While white, black, and Hispanic children all made modest test score gains in D.C. since 2003, the Rhee agenda has not significantly narrowed achievement gaps between the various demographic groups, nor has it brought disadvantaged D.C. youth up to the national average scores for peers of their same race and class in other cities. [author fails to note that pre-Rhee, scores were already trending upward, in some cases by even better margins]
Rhee’s DC stand out achievement
"DCPS does NOT seem to stand out from other cities in its fraction of students who are poor, have disabilities, or who are learning English as a second language Yet it’s number one in most measures of disparity of scores between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. (ie whites vs blacks, whites vs hispanics, poor vs non-poor) Only Atlanta comes close. * DCPS leadership under Rhee et al has witnessed this gap grow wider not smaller "
2011 DC NAEP scores: still no miracle here
We have by far the biggest gap in academic achievement between the “haves” and “have-nots” of any city listed, and far greater than the national gap, or the gap in any other large city.
Summary of what I learned from the 2011 NAEP TUDA report
- DCPS is **not* last in every single category, in fact it’s number one in most measures of disparity of scores between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. (ie whites vs blacks, whites vs hispanics, poor vs non-poor) Only Atlanta comes close. - DCPS leadership under Rhee et al has witnessed this gap grow wider not smaller - Other trends have not changed much: eg gains in math (but not as much from 2009 to 2011 as it was in prior years) and flat or declining in reading - In other words, the miracles that were supposed to happen from the following magi... more »
D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study
"D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday. "The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average. "The study is based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal reading and math exams taken this year by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. "
How many DC schoolkids were left behind by all of the cheating by adults on the DC-CAS?
"Let us not lose sight of the real victims of the massive cheating scandal on the DC-CAS standardized tests here in the nation’s capital. It’s the students who are being falsely claimed as being proficient when they really need extra help. ... [W]e don’t really know the extent of the cheating — partly because DCPS and OSSE hide the data as well as they can, even the reports from CTB-McGraw-Hill. And they use Caveon to try to whitewash the whole thing. But I’ve done a couple of analyses in a couple of different ways, and it appears that it’s many hundreds of children, perhaps in the ... more »
