CURMUDGUCATION: Joy, Data and Jumbo Shrimp

CURMUDGUCATION: Joy, Data and Jumbo Shrimp:
Joy, Data and Jumbo Shrimp

Sir Michael Barber is the Big Cheese of Pearson (Motto: All Your School Are Belong To Us), and he recently decided to celebrate Oxymoron Day by delivering a speech entitled "Joy and Data."

While that speech spurred some twitter snark, nobody who wasn't actually in the room ever got to hear it. Barber is like that; he doesn't seem to feel any impulse to get people to like him, agree with him, or praise him. It's hard and foolish to judge from out here in Ordinary Shmoe Land, but don't think that will stop me-- Barber seems like a man who is so powerful, and so sure he's right, that he's not going to waste time trying to justify his ways to anybody who doesn't actually matter.

And Barber's ways are big. Big. His premise, as unloaded in a few different papers, is that if we could collect all the data, we would know everything, and we could predict everything and control everything. We just need all the data.

We do not, however, have all the data about his speech. So we have to depend on what slipped through the tweeterverse. 

Barber is aware that not everybody sees the beauty in this relentless cataloging of everything. Quotes the tweeterverse:

There's a tendency to see data and evidence...in conflict with joy and spontaneity.

Well, yes. When Knewton, a Pearson data-grabbing group, describes how collecting data would let them tell you what breakfast you should eat on test day, that seems like a spontaneity-killer.

Valerie Strauss has collected some tweets from Jenny Luca highlighting some of the key points. None of them are encouraging.

The future of education will be more joyful with the embrace of data. Also, don't get things wrong-- the data does not undermine creativity and inspiration, nor does it tell us what to do, nor does it CURMUDGUCATION: Joy, Data and Jumbo Shrimp:

Climbing Rungless Ladders | WagTheDog

Climbing Rungless Ladders | WagTheDog:
Climbing Rungless Ladders

Talk with most ed reformers about the importance of the Common Core and many will bring up the need for higher learning standards and more academic rigor in the classroom.

Unfortunately, misguided and poorly designed implementation efforts have resulted in many disadvantaged students being subjected to “grit building” learning activities that are comparable to being required to climb a rungless ladder…

In January, 2015 it was revealed that 51 percent of K-12 students were living in poverty. One would expect that a data-driven campaign to raise academic achievement in America would take into account this staggering figure.

The Ed Department awarded Race To The Top funds to assist states that adopted the Common Core Standards and has established spending priorities and guidelines to support successful implementation of the Standards.

At a time when so many students are living in poverty one would expect that funding priorities would include, additional staff, smaller class sizes, after school programs, morning programs, school counselors, along with essential wrap around and community-based services to help ameliorate the affects of poverty.

Instead the Ed Department has set spending priorities such as upgrading and expanding data collection systems, purchasing new computers and upgrading technology infrastructure to accommodate online testing, implementing new VAM teacher evaluation systems, high quality CCSS professional development for teachers, and designing or purchasing curriculum materials and standardized testing programs.

So while these new and improved tests will allow parents to see if there child is “on track” for college and careers and how effective their child’s teacher is, many poor children will Climbing Rungless Ladders | WagTheDog:

CTU to lead picket before Board of Ed meeting calling for end to charter expansion - Chicago Teachers Union

Chicago Teachers Union | CTU to lead picket before Board of Ed meeting calling for end to charter expansion:

CTU to lead picket before Board of Ed meeting calling for end to charter expansion

BY CTU COMMUNICATIONS  |  05/26/2015

CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has organized a picket line before the Chicago Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, May 27, to highlight the hypocrisy of the district’s insistence on expanding charter operations throughout the city while claiming a $1 billion budget deficit. The financial “crisis” for Chicago Public Schools is the result of the district’s own fiscal irresponsibility—hundreds of millions of dollars mired in scandal, swap deals and failed, privatized outsourcing. By allowing the unchecked growth of charter schools, including some into closed neighborhood school buildings, CPS continues its plan to weaken communities by creating a culture of chaos that the district will use to justify cutting school budgets, closing schools and laying off thousands of CPS educators and education support staff.

Four Points of CPS Charter Hypocrisy

• Lying to the Illinois General Assembly that there would be no charter schools placed into any school building that was part of the mass school closings in 2013. CPS is “selling” the Peabody Elementary School building—closed in 2013—and putting Rowe Charter into that building.
   
• Expanding charter operations—a Noble Street charter school moving into the Uptown neighborhood; Rowe moving into the Peabody building; a Perspectives charter school moving to 85th & Lafayette—as the district claims a massive budget deficit.
   
• Ignoring community opposition to place a Noble Street charter school into a community that has voiced outrage over the proposal. “They told my mom what she wanted to hear to get me and my brother to go there, but she realized after a few years of struggle, that the school doesn’t live up to its promise,” said a former Noble Street student who is now attending a neighborhood high school in Uptown. Another student added: “Noble schools don’t work with kids to do better—they just kick them out to their neighborhood schools.”
   
• Rewarding an ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Howard Brookins with the lucrative placement of a Perspectives charter school into the Rev. Charles Jenkins’ Legacy Project development, with no disclosure of how the project is being financed.

WHO: CTU teachers and community partners and allies

WHAT: Picket line before the Chicago Board of Education meeting

WHEN: Wednesday, May 27, 2015, at 6:30 a.m.

WHERE: Chicago Board of Education, 42 W. Madison St., Chicago

Chicago Teachers Union | CTU to lead picket before Board of Ed meeting calling for end to charter expansion: 

After Duval charter school closes, many ask: Where's the money? | jacksonville.com

After Duval charter school closes, many ask: Where's the money? | jacksonville.com:

After Duval charter school closes, many ask: Where's the money?

Founder shuttered two other schools, has prior record of bankruptcy

Dennis Mope’s dream of running a network of military-themed charter schools for at-risk students ended quickly and with little warning this month in Jacksonville and Orlando.

Two of Mope’s Acclaim Academy charter schools closed abruptly, displacing hundreds of students just three weeks before the end of the school year.

A third school in Kissimmee was supposed to close in March but Osceola County’s school district took it over last month and will keep it open until the school year ends in June.

Five other of Mope’s planned Acclaim Academies never got off the ground.

Although one received district approval to open in Palm Beach next August, the plan was scrapped. Four other charter school applications in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Volusia and Lee counties were all withdrawn, some before they were rejected by the school districts involved.

In Jacksonville, the fallout was immediate and unexpected.

Parents of 229 students scrambled over three days to find new schools for their children. Some students still had to take final tests or state-mandated exams at new schools.

Duval County School Board members said they are not sure why the school “ran out of money” and had to close, saying the children were hurt most.

“They should be focused on passing their exams; they shouldn’t have to worry about what school they’re going to go to,” said Becki Couch, a School Board member, “all because their charter school [operator] didn’t have its act together.”

Scott Shine, another Duval County School Board member wrote that “The actions of Acclaim are, at minimum, irresponsible and reckless. This could go much deeper,” in an email.

Acclaim’s teachers were shocked to find out that their last paycheck, issued late April or early May, was to be their last. Some teachers, who had arranged for the school to save parts of their paycheck to repay them over the summer, were told not to expect it.

Some Duval School Board members questioned what the school district knew, and when, about Acclaim Academy’s troubles.

“We knew they were beginning the school year under a deficit,” Couch wrote in an email to Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

“Do you think the Board should have been notified of the declining financial status of the school so we could make the determination how we wanted to proceed so as not to disrupt student academic learning during this pivotal time of the year? I am disturbed that we have been completely blind-sided by this when according to state statute the Charter School is required to provide an annual audit report and monthly financial statements.”

Vitti said that the early school closures were Acclaim’s decisions, not the district’s.

Unlike Osceola County, Duval schools was unwilling to take over the Jacksonville Acclaim Academy, even for the final three weeks, because that would cost about $500,000 plus the temporary hiring of school staff, which included teachers Duval had let go, Vitti wrote.

But Vitti is requesting that the district or the state conduct an audit of the school’s finances, “in case of malfeasance.”

Through it all, Acclaim Academy’s founder has yet to answer questions.

Dennis Mope, an Orlando-area businessman, said “no comment” to news crews on the scene of the Orlando school closure, and he did not return phone calls or emails about After Duval charter school closes, many ask: Where's the money? | jacksonville.com:

How Common Core tests are scored: PARCC and Pearson graders can shoot for 60 answers per hour | cleveland.com

How Common Core tests are scored: PARCC and Pearson graders can shoot for 60 answers per hour | cleveland.com:

How Common Core tests are scored: PARCC and Pearson graders can shoot for 60 answers per hour

WESTERVILLE, Ohio – Grading a student answer each minute could easily be overwhelming for the 121 graders at Pearson Inc.'s Ohio scoring center for the new Common Core exams from PARCC.

But this operation in a suburban office complex outside Columbus is a very focused assembly line operation: Scoring 55 to 80 answers an hour is no problem for most.

"I feel like I've been doing well," said scorer Launica Jones, who previously worked as a substitute teacher in both Cleveland and Columbus and started grading PARCC exams last month. "I've actually been told to slow down a few times."

It's a pace that works here, partly because the dozens of full-time graders in Ohio spend their eight-hour shifts focused on just third grade math tests. If your third grader took the PARCC math exams this spring, there's a good chance that one of their answers was scored a laptop here at this Westerville office.

They don't grade English here this year and don't score any other grades either. Those are for the other dozen PARCC scoring centers to worry about.  (The pace for English essay questions is a bit slower, but still quick: 17-19 per hour for high school exams.)

Graders don't score whole tests. They work with just one question at a time, grading that single question a few hundred times a day.

And each grader has been drilled several times in how students should answer that particular question before they start.

Michelle Kohlhorst said she has also managed the speed just fine. Since starting as a full-time grader April 13, she has scored a succession of five third grade math questions. Each time, she said, she and other graders pick up speed the more they work with a new question.

"When we first start training on an item, I think, 'Whoa! This is confusing'," Kohlhurst said. "The more we talk about it and go through training, it gets a little easier."

Inside a test grading center

PARCC, the Common Core testing coalition Ohio belongs to, and Pearson, the company hired to provide and grade the mostly-online exams, offered a few reporters a chance to visit the Columbus scoring facility today.

We cannot talk in detail about how any individual questions are scored. But the visit was a look inside a process that is often mysterious to teachers and parents who wonder what happens when their students' answers go into the corporate black box of Pearson.

In person, scoring is a very human process, with people who are between jobs or seeking a little extra pay- $12 per hour -  trying to follow a template to give consistent scores.

Signs taped to posts inside the scoring room remind scorers of their mission: "The right score, the right feedback, for every learner, everytime."

Scoring the first round of PARCC exams given this spring is a large task logistically, even for Pearson, an international corporation that does testing and educational publishing, said Bob Sanders, Pearson's national director of performance scoring.

The second round of PARCC tests – the End of Year exams – that have started in Ohio already will be graded entirely by computers. But the first round of tests – the"performance-Based" exams that students already took – require students to write longer answers.

That leaves 54 million answers from kids in 11 states for Pearson to score for PARCC.

So Pearson has hired 14,500 scorers – about 3,400 working in regional testing centers How Common Core tests are scored: PARCC and Pearson graders can shoot for 60 answers per hour | cleveland.com:

Gary Rubinstein’s Blog: I’ll Huffman and I’ll Puffman and I’ll Blow Your District Down | National Education Policy Center

Gary Rubinstein’s Blog: I’ll Huffman and I’ll Puffman and I’ll Blow Your District Down | National Education Policy Center:

Gary Rubinstein’s Blog: I’ll Huffman and I’ll Puffman and I’ll Blow Your District Down

Kevin Huffman was the first Teach For America alum to become a state education commissioner.  Despite having only taught for two years between 1992 and 1994 and having had no role related to schools for the next seventeen years (he was a VP of TFA for a time) he was appointed to his position in Tennessee in 2011 by the current Governor, Bill Haslam.  In November 2014 after the Governor was re-elected, Huffman ‘resigned’ saying that “it feels like the right time to pass the baton.”  Huffman was one of the ‘Chiefs For Change’ a group of reform-minded ‘leaders’ who have nearly all resigned or been fired over the past few years.

There is a trend I’ve noticed recently where reformer leaders resign their positions rather than get fired and then they disappear from the public.  Besides Huffman, the most notable one is Huffman’s ex-wife, reform celebrity Michelle Rhee, now Michelle Johnston.  My sense is that these reformers are following the old adage sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”  I have mixed feelings about this rotating group of reformers strategy.  On the one hand, it seems like the opposition to their brand of reform is winning some battles as these leaders step down.  But I worry that these are only victories on a superficial level and that these reformers are still very active behind the scenes while new fresh faces, someone like Campbell Brown, get a turn to be in the spotlight before they too go underground.

Sometimes these reformers pop up again in unexpected places.  Huffman was in Pennsylvania the other day where he testified in front of their senate and also wrote an op-ed for one of the local papers with the title ‘Want Pa. schools to flourish?  Try this Tennessee model that worked.”

Tennessee has been getting a lot of mileage out of their 4th and 8th grade NAEP ‘gains’ on the most recently published scores a few years ago.  Obama praised them in a State of The Union address for this.  Reformers do like to cherry pick the results that suit their narrative.  So there was little mention about how Tennessee’s 12th grade NAEP scores had some of the lowest increases or about how their scores on their own test scores have been flat or even down by a little in recent years.  Also the NAEP gains, reformers imply, are a direct result of the reforms they enacted through Race To The Top even though some other states, notably Louisiana, did the same reforms, even more so, and didn’t get any gains at all in NAEP.

Huffman is encouraging Pennsylvania to start a state-run district modeled after the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) which, itself, is modeled after the New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD).  Throughout the country, different states are considering creating their own version of this kind of school district.  It is unfortunate that in the ed reform discussion there is way more PR than there is true transparency.  So Huffman can get the opportunity to speak to the Pennsylvania senate and to write an op-ed where he can say:

The early returns in Tennessee are promising. Last year, schools completing their second year in the ASD had strong growth, and we anticipate that this year’s results will show even stronger performance.

This is not true, even by Tennessee’s own metrics.  The mission of the ASD is to take schools that are in the bottom 5% in the state in terms of test scores and, in a five year period, get those schools into the top 25%.  The initial idea was that there could be no accusation of them doing this with different students since they would take over existing neighborhood schools.  This isn’t quite what happened and now they have gotten permission to recruit kids from further away districts for next year.

But just by the numbers, the results are truly mixed.  Of the original 6 ASD schools that are currently in their third year Gary Rubinstein’s Blog: I’ll Huffman and I’ll Puffman and I’ll Blow Your District Down | National Education Policy Center:

Hawaii Teachers Union Reformers: Old Guard Rejected Election “Because They Didn’t Like” Results - Working In These Times

Hawaii Teachers Union Reformers: Old Guard Rejected Election “Because They Didn’t Like” Results - Working In These Times:

Hawaii Teachers Union Reformers: Old Guard Rejected Election “Because They Didn’t Like” Results

This post first appeared at Labor Notes.

Remember the Hawaii teachers who in 2012 led a statewide work-to-rule campaign against low pay? This spring they won the top three spots in the Hawaii State Teachers Association—but the union’s board of directors is refusing to let them take office.

The board has kept the vote results secret, citing vague irregularities—and ordered a new election.

Teachers Corey Rosenlee, Justin Hughey and Amy Perruso ran for president, vice president and secretary-treasurer of the 13,000-member statewide local. They were backed by a reform caucus, Hawaii Teachers for Change.

Votes were cast April 13-24, and the results were supposed to be certified May 4. But board members delayed announcing the outcomes—claiming they were waiting for runoff results for the vice presidency, since no candidate for that post had won a majority.

The union’s elections committee certified the tallies. But after the May 15 runoff, the board voted not to certify results for any post.

“They basically rejected the results because they didn’t like them,” said Perruso, a high school social studies teacher in Oahu. “That’s not a legitimate way to run a union.”

#tellusnow

Vice President Joan Lewis and Secretary-Treasurer Colleen Pasco, running for president and vice president, were among the board members who voted to toss the election results. In a press release, the winning candidates point out that HSTA by-laws prohibit members of the board whose elections are challenged from voting to reject the results of an election.

Rosenlee, Hughey, and Perruso each won by more than 150 votes, according to their press release. The incumbent slate’s third candidate, Osa Tui, publicly acknowledged that Perruso beat him, and has withdrawn from the secretary-treasurer race.

Three days after the board meeting, in an email to union members explaining the decision, the board majority claimed that “many” members said they hadn’t received email or paper ballots, and that there’d been possible ethics violations about where in schools the campaign materials were put.

The Teachers for Change slate is pursuing a legal challenge to the decision, arguing that tossing the results violates the union’s own rules.

Their supporters have started an online petition and a hashtag, #tellusnow, to build pressure on the board to come clean about the numbers and respect the outcome.

The board has announced a “three hour walk-in only” revote on June 2—one day before summer break at most Hawaii schools. Rosenlee said the new election format is intended to discourage turnout by making teachers travel to vote at a time when they would ordinarily be picking up their kids, grading year-end assignments, or supervising graduations.

Teachers for change

Perruso said the board’s decision reflects the problems that led her group to run in the first place: they’re out of touch with members and make decisions behind closed doors.

At the union’s most recent convention, she said, Hawaii Teachers for Change delegates spearheaded supported several resolutions that members voted up, including one to push for smaller class sizes.

But the board, at its discretion, either ignored or voted not to adopt those resolutions.

The reform slate wants to address the reasons why educators are feeling increasingly demoralized—including low pay and new teacher evaluations tied to students’ standardized test scores.

The challengers campaigned on turning the HSTA into a more activist union whose members fight for teachers and students, following the model of Chicago and Los Angeles.

Mitzie Higa, an Oahu middle school curriculum coordinator and supporter of the Hawaii Teachers for Change team, said the caucus’s three candidates were already highly visible education activists before they ran for union leadership.

“They were doing things without anyone’s permission,” Higa said. “They were doing it because it was right.”

Work to rule

Rosenlee, Perruso, and Hughey based their run on the support they’d generated in a month-long work-to-rule campaign. It started at Rosenlee’s suburban Honolulu high school in 2012 and spread to over 100 schools across the islands.

Organized outside official union channels, the grassroots action aimed to draw attention to Hawaii teachers’ low pay and overwork. It made national headlines.

One day each week, teachers would work only their mandated hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Before school they would gather outside, wave signs, and talk to parents. Then just before 8, they would march in.

When the school bell rang at the end of the day, they would march back out, rally again, and end their workday—skipping the Hawaii Teachers Union Reformers: Old Guard Rejected Election “Because They Didn’t Like” Results - Working In These Times:

Proposed Changes to Education Act Undermine Civil-Rights Protections for New Majority of Students | Commentary : Roll Call Opinion

Proposed Changes to Education Act Undermine Civil-Rights Protections for New Majority of Students | Commentary : Roll Call Opinion:

Proposed Changes to Education Act Undermine Civil-Rights Protections for New Majority of Students

This school year marks the first time in American history that students of color make up the majority of students in our nation’s public schools. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The statute sought to create equal educational opportunities for disadvantaged students, particularly students of color, which had long been disregarded due to segregation and political disenfranchisement. Unfortunately, the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, which would amend and alter the ESEA, rolls back our nation’s core education civil rights protections. In fact, under the guise of providing flexibility to states, the ECAA sacrifices critical accountability provisions which formed the civil rights foundation of the ESEA. Amendments that could have restored these provisions were withdrawn, and the ECAA was rushed through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for consideration on the Senate floor.

In the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court held that separate but equal was unconstitutional. A decade after Brown, in 1965, Congress passed the ESEA, marking a hard-fought civil rights triumph that helped move our public schools toward education equality.

Unfortunately, today’s public schools remain segregated with high poverty school districts lacking critical resources. As such, we must acknowledge that the students protected by the ESEA still need the protections under the ESEA. While formerly counted as “minorities,” these students now make up the new majority of students in our nation’s public schools and need equal access to educational opportunities to help them succeed.

Over the past 50 years and several reauthorizations, the ESEA continues to serve as the bedrock of civil-rights education law. It has invested critical dollars in schools with underserved students, and has ensured accountability for the performance of students of color. Most importantly, it has provided much needed oversight of states and school districts with poor records of serving students of color. While we acknowledge that there is still much more to be done to close achievement gaps and remove barriers to educational opportunities for vulnerable students, the ESEA has helped move the needle in a positive direction.

To continue with this progress, any reauthorization of the ESEA must include language that Proposed Changes to Education Act Undermine Civil-Rights Protections for New Majority of Students | Commentary : Roll Call Opinion:

California Districts Not Focused on Needs of English Learners

Study of New School Accountability Plans Shows Districts Not Focused on Needs of English Learners:

Study of New School Accountability Plans Shows Districts Not Focused on Needs of English Learners

Report on 1st Year of LCAP Calls for Stronger State Guidance, More Local Commitment to Research-based Approaches and Stronger Engagement With EL Families & Communities

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (May 21, 2015)  - A new report that reviewed the Local Control Accountability Plans of 29 key school districts throughout the state, and the impact those LCAPs are having on English Learner students, was released today by Californians Together.

The report, titled "Falling Short on the Promise to English Learners, A New Report on Year One District Local Control Accountability Plans," found that LCAPs tend to be characterized by woefully inadequate specificity and weak attention to how schools are meeting the various needs of English Learners. In addition, the study, which was conducted in collaboration with the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University, found that districts tended to not identify effective, research-based practices for working with underserved populations. 

"We saw clearly that this has been a missed opportunity for school districts to finally move toward best and proven practices when it comes to delivering education programs and services for the diverse English Learner population," said researcher and report co-author Laurie Olsen of Californians Together. "The state's new Local Control Funding Formula for districts was specifically intended for these communities." 

A sampling of districts with the largest English Learner enrollment, high percentage of English Learners and several with a history of comprehensive services for English Learners were included in the report.  These 29 districts constitute 32 percent of all of California's 1.4 million English Learners.  

"As it is functioning now, the LCAP is far from adequate as an accountability mechanism to target funds and ensure equity and access to educational services to ELs", concluded Dr. Magaly Lavadenz, author and Director for the Center for Equity for English Learners, Loyola Marymount University. Among the key findings presented in the report: 

• There was difficulty in ascertaining actual funding allocations by districts that were related to ELservices and programs.
• The state's year one LCAP design was inadequate to ascertain whether or not districts areplanning for increased or improved services to ELs.
• Very few districts explicitly specify services and programs that align to various EL needs.

The report offered a series of findings and recommendations for six specific areas: 1) English Language Development and Professional Development, 2) Representation of Parents of ELs in the LCAP Process, 3) EL Programs, 4) Course Access, Actions and Services, 5) District- and School-wide funding allocation for EL Needs, and 6) EL Student Outcomes Measures and Data to Inform Goals.

Officials from Californians Together praised the report as a timely spotlight on the critical importance of planning for and delivering quality education to English Learners. 

Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, President of Californians Together: "This report can be a valuable tool for engaging and informing policy and practice at the local and state levels to strengthen LCAP development and program implementation for English Learning moving forward. It also serves as a clear call to action for both local and state policymakers." 

The report is attached and can be downloaded at: www.californianstogether.org.

Californians Together is a statewide coalition of 25 parent, teacher, education advocacy and civil rights groups committed to improving policy and practice for educating the state's 1.4 million English Learners.  Since 2001, Californians Together, a nonprofit organization,  has served as a clarion voice on behalf of language minority students in California public schools.  

####

FALLING SHORT ON THE PROMISE TO ENGLISH LEARNERS: A REPORT ON YEAR ONE LCAPS

Making it rain tests: Are the new Common Core exams invalid? Inaccurate? | Cloaking Inequity

Making it rain tests: Are the new Common Core exams invalid? Inaccurate? | Cloaking Inequity:

Making it rain tests: Are the new Common Core exams invalid? Inaccurate?

In the Spring of 2015, tests developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium will be administered to well over 10 million students in 17 states to determine their proficiency on the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). There has been allot of controversy surrounding the development and implementation of the Common Core (See Dewey, Testing Companies, and the Origin of the Common Core), the Opt Out of testing movement (See Who’s the William Wallace of testing: @JessedHagopian or Liz King?) and high-stakes testing (See Does High-Stakes Testing & Accountability= Social Justice & Civil Rights? )

Furthermore, a new analysis of mathematics test questions posted online by Smarter Balanced reveals that, question after question, the tests:

• Violate the standards they are supposed to assess;
• Cannot be adequately answered by students with the technology they are required to use;
• Use confusing and hard-to-use interfaces; or
• Are to be graded in such a way that incorrect answers are identified as correct and correct answers as incorrect.

As a society we can agree that no tests that are flawed should be given to anyone. Certainly, with stakes so high for students and their teachers, I argued that Smarter Balanced tests should not be administered until they are ready and tested to be valid. The boycotts of these tests by parents and some school districts are justified. Responsible government bodies should withdraw the tests from use before they do damage.

So millions of dollars of public tax dollars and countless hours of wasted instructional time have just been spent on Making it rain tests: Are the new Common Core exams invalid? Inaccurate? | Cloaking Inequity:

Hillsborough School Board member: Firing Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is a good deal

Hillsborough School Board member: Firing Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is a good deal:

Board member: Firing superintendent is a good deal 

In other words: Our Gain is NY's Loss!

Tampa, Florida -- One school board member is telling us that paying more than a million dollars to fire Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is actually a good deal for taxpayers.

The Hillsborough County School Board is meeting right now to vote on whether to end Elia's contract. Just last month, she was named Florida's Superintendent of the Year.

One school board member is telling us that paying more than a million dollars to fire Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is actually a good deal for taxpayers.

First, Elia and Griffin have a thorny history. And this conflict is sort of a snapshot that shows why, suddenly, there's an item on the school board's agenda to terminate Elia.

During the last election, Superintendent Elia actually put a sign in her yard supporting the candidate running against April Griffin for school board.

Now, Griffin says, anyone they would hire to replace Elia would make a lot less than Elia's current pay package of $439,000. So, in a few years with a new superintendent, the district would save that million dollars.

But across the Tampa Bay Area, the state, and even the country, Elia is respected and popular.

Elia's colleagues named her the Florida Superintendent of the Year just last month. She's one of four finalists for a national superintendent of the year award.

lia started as a teacher in Hillsborough County in 1986, when she accepted a position at Plant High School as a reading resource specialist. She then spent the next 20 years working her way up, before becoming the head of the eighth-largest school district in the nation in 2005.

So, how likely is this to happen?

To end Elia's contract, four of the seven board members would have to vote "yes" Tuesday.

On their last reviews, three board members gave her an "F." Two members gave her a "B" or better. And two members are brand new on the board. Their opinions aren't really clear.

Those two board members may be the deciding votes at 3 p.m. Tuesday. 10 News will be there, with coverage on wtsp.com and the 10 News mobile app.

Read More:

Former Western New Yorker MaryEllen Elia to be state education chief

Hillsborough School Board terminates Elia

Hillsborough's Gates Foundation-backed teacher evaluation system loses support

Elia major issue in school board election