Florida puts limits on standardized testing

Florida puts limits on standardized testing:

Florida puts limits on standardized testing

TALLAHASSEE – Responding to a backlash about the continued use of high-stakes standardized tests, the Florida Legislature on Thursday passed significant changes to the system that was primarily put in place by former Gov. Jeb Bush.

The changes, though not as wide as critics wanted, still represent a departure for Republicans who had fully embraced the reforms championed by Bush during his eight years in office. Bush is touting his reforms in what appears to be a likely presidential campaign.

The measure sent to Gov. Rick Scott would limit the amount of testing that can be done in public schools, including a firm cap of 45 hours of state-authorized testing per year. It would also undo a restriction on school starting dates that had been put in place at the urging of Bush. Schools could start as soon as Aug. 10 under the bill.

House Speaker Steve Crisafulli contended that the changes should not be seen as retreat from the A+ plan adopted back in 1999, Bush's first year as governor.

"We have made great strides in Florida based on the A+ plan," said Crisafulli, a Merritt Island Republican. "I think we continue to make great strides, and a lot of that was based off those policies, but we're always open to massaging those policies, and that's what taken place."

Scott has not yet said whether he will sign the bill into law, but the GOP governor in the past has echoed those who said the amount of testing in state schools has gotten out of hand. Scott earlier this year suspended an 11th-grade standardized test that had been scheduled for spring.

Bush's A+ plan expanded the use of standardized tests from the third grade to 10th grade. It also created an A-to-F grading system of schools tied to test results. Schools with top grades are rewarded with extra money, and chronically failing schools can be subject to sanctions.

Other tests, including end-of-year exams, were added later by legislators to the state's standardized testing regimen. This year Florida switched to a new test — called the Florida Student Assessment — based on new standards primarily founded on Common Core. The rollout of the test was marred by technical glitches.

But even before the test was given this year a backlash was mounting. One southwest Florida school district voted in August to opt out of statewide testing. The board reversed the decision a week later.

The mounting frustration was evident on the Senate floor last week. Sen. Tom Lee, who had been Senate president while Bush was in office, complained there was "too much damn testing" going on in the state. He also complained about the influence on education policy by the foundation set up by Bush to promote his changes.

Senators insisted on adding clauses to the bill sent to Scott that would delay the release of this year's school grades until an independent review of the new test can be performed. Other sanctions associated with annual testing would also be put on hold while the review is underway.

Some legislators said the bill still doesn't do enough to undo the current system.

"I don't think it's a panacea, and I'm afraid we will hear a lot from educators," said Rep. Dwight Dudley, a St. Petersburg Democrat.

Despite the public criticism leveled at the group, the executive director of the Foundation for Florida's Future still praised the bill now headed to Scott.

"They voted to keep education transparent and provide teachers with the information they need to help students learn, while ensuring testing at every level is done Florida puts limits on standardized testing:

Why the Senate’s proposed No Child Left Behind rewrite doesn’t go far enough - The Washington Post

Why the Senate’s proposed No Child Left Behind rewrite doesn’t go far enough - The Washington Post:

Why the Senate’s proposed No Child Left Behind rewrite doesn’t go far enough

 Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Senate education committee, and ranking Democrat Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state recently reached an agreement on a rewrite of No Child Left Behind that, if it were to become law, would significantly reduce the federal role in local public education.

The “Every Child Achieves” proposed legislation would, for example, shift decisions about how to evaluate teachers, what to do about low-performing schools and other matters from the federal government to states and local school districts. But there is something it would not do: eliminate federally mandated standardized testing for grades 3-8 and once in high school.

Here is a piece that looks at the details of the proposed legislation, written by Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond. Neill is executive director of  FairTest, or the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which is dedicated to eliminating the abuse and misuse of standardized tests. Guisbond is an assessment reform analyst at FairTest.

By Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond

Despite proposing important steps to reduce the harmful uses of standardized exam results driven by No Child Left Behind, this month’s Senate committee draft legislation – “Every Child Achieves” – fails to address the law’s deeply destructive annual testing mandate. To fix this, Congress must respond to the growing grassroots movement calling for less testing and more learning.

NCLB, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), significantly harmed public education, especially for vulnerable students. This is primarily because of two flawed components: mandated annual testing in reading and math in grades 3-8, plus once in high school; and the punitive sanctions attached to those tests. The consequences include narrowed curriculum, teaching to the test, increased cheating, a wider school-to-prison pipeline, and emotional damage to children.

Unfortunately, the bill proposed by Sens. Alexander and Murray keeps the mandate to test every student every year in elementary and middle school.Advocates for assessment reform will push for amendments to eliminate the every-grade testing requirement, specifically cutting reading and math tests to once each in elementary, middle and high school (“grade span” testing).

The Senate committee bill would allow use of performance assessments as one part of an accountability system. Performance assessments include portfolios, projects and extended tasks, such as research papers and lab experiments. Well-designed and implemented performance assessments promote in-depth, engaging instruction with powerful outcomes for students. However, their positive impact is limited in the context of a test-driven system. Without addressing the problem of testing in every grade every year, therefore, this rewrite would perpetuate an educationally damaging system.

The bill does provide for an “innovation” program, through which up to five states can apply in the new law’s first three years. It would allow states to build systems focused on portfolios and projects that could replace statewide exams for accountability purposes. The systems could include locally-designed assessments that vary across schools and districts but still produce comparable results across the state.

While creating the new assessments, participating districts would not have to use the state test. The best current example is the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a network of 48 public high schools. They require students to successfully complete extended tasks in four Why the Senate’s proposed No Child Left Behind rewrite doesn’t go far enough - The Washington Post:

A Bipartisan Proposal to Fix No Child Left Behind: A Good First Step; Further to Go | ED.gov Blog

A Bipartisan Proposal to Fix No Child Left Behind: A Good First Step; Further to Go | ED.gov Blog:

A Bipartisan Proposal to Fix No Child Left Behind: A Good First Step; Further to Go

 Earlier this week, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA), the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate education committee, announced an agreement to begin a bipartisan process of fixing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The committee will consider the proposed bill next week. This agreement, however, is just a beginning. As I detailed in a speech yesterday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., there is work ahead to deliver a bill that fulfills the historic mission of this law.

Congress originally passed ESEA 50 years ago this week. Then as now, it stood to connect civil rights to education, enshrining America’s core value that every child deserves a quality education, no matter her race, disability, neighborhood, or first language. I am happy to see this bipartisan effort come together, yet I also know the distance we have to go toward a bill that establishes an expectation of excellence for all American children, and stays true to ESEA’s role as a guarantor of civil rights.

ESEA must continue this nation’s vital progress in closing gaps for vulnerable students. In that effort, there is more yet to do.

Positive Steps

The Alexander-Murray proposal moves reauthorization forward in important ways, including requiring States to adopt college- and career-ready standards as part of the effort to ensure that all students are prepared for the demands of higher education and the workforce. It also would require that states set achievement goals and graduation rate goals for all students and student subgroups. And, the proposal would provide more flexibility than NCLB for states and school districts, and ensure that parents know how their children and children’s school are doing by keeping requirements for annual statewide assessments.

The bipartisan agreement also provides improved support for educators, especially for principals and school leaders. And it takes steps in the right direction by promoting transparency on resource inequities and rejecting earlier proposals to allow resources to be siphoned away from our neediest schools.

Further to Go

Yet there are areas where this bill doesn’t do enough to support the learning of students throughout this country. As the bill progresses, we look forward to working with Congress to ensure that a final bill will do more to maintain the crucial federal role in protecting our country’s most vulnerable students. The goal is not just to identify a problem, but to do something about it.

A good bill must expand access to high-quality preschool, to give children a chance to get off to a strong start in life.

A good bill must ensure that schools and educators have the resources and funds they need to do their jobs – and that schools with high proportions of low-income and minority students receive their fair share of those resources.

A good bill must ensure meaningful accountability, and support for action, in any school where subgroups or the whole school are persistently underperforming.

A good bill must ensure bolder action and focused resources for the lowest-performing five percent of schools, including America’s lowest-performing high schools.

A good bill must ensure strong support for innovations by local educators that change outcomes for students.

And a good bill needs to close a long-standing loophole in federal law that undermines the ability of Title I funds to provide supplemental resources for schools serving high concentrations of students from low-income families, and allows local funding inequities to continue.

Star Brown

Yesterday, at the Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., I had the great opportunity to share the story of four-year-old Star Brown from Minneapolis. In her short life, she and her family have faced enormous challenges, and she could easily have ended up behind, before she ever started school.

With the help of teachers at the Northside Achievement Zone, however, Star is overcoming her challenges and is on track to start kindergarten next year. Her story is one of opportunity made real.

It’s easy to say that every child deserves opportunity—regardless of race, disability, zip code or family income. And it’s easy to say that we expect excellence from all our children. But it takes work to make opportunity real. Star, and the millions more students like her, deserve all the support and opportunity this country has to offer. Our work is to make sure that opportunity is not just a possibility, but a promise. Now is not the time to turn back the clock.

 Arne Duncan is U.S. Secretary of EducationA Bipartisan Proposal to Fix No Child Left Behind: A Good First Step; Further to Go | ED.gov Blog:

LAUSD must change how it allocates space at charter schools - MyNewsLA.com

LAUSD must change how it allocates space at charter schools - MyNewsLA.com:

LAUSD must change how it allocates space at charter schools

 The California Supreme Court has unanimously decided that the Los Angeles school district’s method for allocating space to charter schools may shortchange them out of classrooms.

In a decision written by Justice Goodwin Liu, the state’s highest court said the district’s formula may “undercount” the number of classrooms that charter schools are entitled to and should be replaced with a different method.

But whether the new method would lead to expansions for L.A. charter schools was unclear, , the Los Angeles Times reported. The guidelines laid down by the court contained plenty of room for interpretation, according to The Times. Charter advocates predicted that at least some schools would get additional space, but an attorney for LAUSD said no new charter school classrooms would be required.

The case was based on Proposition 39, which voters passed in 2000. It requires school districts to give charters facilities that are reasonably equivalent to those provided to students in traditional public schools. Charter schools are publicly funded and independently run. Most are nonunion.

The court said Thursday L.A. Unified violated a state regulation by allocating space to charters based on the number of classrooms staffed by teachers across the district, according to The Times. The law requires other space — including rooms used for study halls or libraries — to be part of the equation, the court said.

“Counting only those classrooms staffed by an assigned teacher would effectively impute to charter schools the same staffing decisions made by the District,” Liu wrote, according to The Times. “But there is no reason to think a charter school would necessarily use classrooms in the same way that the District does.”LAUSD must change how it allocates space at charter schools - MyNewsLA.com:

Delaware charter school audits under scrutiny

Delaware charter school audits under scrutiny:

Delaware charter school audits under scrutiny

In the wake of bombshell allegations that the co-leaders of a charter school made thousands of dollars in personal purchases on school credit cards, some lawmakers want the state auditor's office to run charter audits to make sure taxpayer money isn't being misused.

Charters are required to have audits done, but now the schools decide who audits them. Rep. Kim Williams, sponsor of House Bill 53, says having the state auditor, who already audits district and vo-tech schools, perform the work is the best way to monitor spending.

Williams said the legislation was spurred by revelations late last year that the co-leaders of Family Foundations Academy, a charter school in New Castle, had used school credit cards to make more than $94,000 in personal purchases for things like car payments, furniture, flowers and fine watches.

Though the school was aware of the accusations for almost a year, the Department of Education found out only shortly before the school's charter was up for renewal. Family Foundations fired the two leaders and replaced its board, bringing in the leadership of Eastside Charter School to convince state officials to renew the charter.

"There are lots of charter schools that are operating under the rules and doing a good job, but when these kinds of things happen, it gives them all a bad name," Williams said. "What this is about is making sure that everybody is playing by the same rules."

The state Auditor's Office would not directly audit the schools, but would select the firms that do the audits and set the rules for what the firms should be looking for.

Charter school advocates say they simply need more clarity on what is expected of them and worry that the bill would limit their flexibility and autonomy if it becomes law.

Kendall Massett, executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network (Photo: .)

"We're all about transparency, and we are fine with having an audit. In fact, it's required under state law," said Kendall Massett, executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network. "I do not believe that using a pass-through that will raise the cost and take money out of the classroom is the right solution. I think the solution they're proposing is bigger than the problem that there is."

Massett argues charters will have to pay a management fee to the state and that the state-negotiated audit contracts will likely cost some schools more.

But Williams says charters will have to pay more only if they aren't keeping the right records or otherwise not handling their business correctly. For schools that are already doing everything they are supposed to, she says costs will not significantly rise.

State Rep. Michael Ramone (Photo: .)

Rep. Michael Ramone says a change is necessary, but handing duties over to the auditor might not be the right one.

"Everybody looks bad if any of our schools aren't being fiscally responsible," Ramone said. "However, as a business guy, the approach I think we should take is to give these schools a clear expectation of what is required of their schools as far as their fiscal responsibility and reporting criteria, and I don't think we've provided that yet."

Ramone said the state should establish a specific, detailed list of everything they expect charters to cover with an audit, so charters can be sure they are hiring Delaware charter school audits under scrutiny:

CHANCELLOR TISCH: DO YOU EXPECT ANYONE TO TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY ANY MORE? | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

CHANCELLOR TISCH: DO YOU EXPECT ANYONE TO TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY ANY MORE? | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

CHANCELLOR TISCH: DO YOU EXPECT ANYONE TO TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY ANY MORE?

Please ” Stop This Madness!”

This morning I read two different points of view about teachers. One was Diane Ravitch’s look at a Pasi Sahlberg, the great Finnish educator’s, piece about how Finnish universities select future teachers. The second was a short front page article in my local newspaper about NYS DOE Chancellor Merryl Tisch’s take on which teachers should and shouldn’t have to be evaluated.

Ravitch tells us:

“Finnish universities are famously selective, accepting only 10% of the high school graduates who want to become teachers. But how do they select? Sahlberg’s very bright niece was turned down when she first applied.”

Hey, what about legacy?

 “What Finland shows is that rather than get the “best and the brightest” into teaching, it is better to design initial teacher education in a way that will get the best from young people who have a natural passion to teach for life.”

Sahlberg tells us that those who got in ahead of his niece had to take a two part entrance exam comprised of a national written test with the best performers going on to the second phase, a specific aptitude test.

 “Last spring, 1,650 students took the national written test to compete for 120 places at the University of Helsinki. Applicants received between one and 100 points for the subject exams taken to earn upper-secondary school leaving diplomas.”

“A quarter of the accepted students came from the top 20% in academic ability and another quarter came from the bottom half. This means that half of the first-year students came from the 51 to 80 point range of measured academic ability. You could call them academically average.”

“The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so.”

“A good step forward would be to admit that academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers. But they don’t do this because they know that teaching potential is hidden more evenly across the range of different people. Young athletes, musicians and youth leaders, for example, often have the emerging characteristics of great teachers without having the best academic record.”

“What Finland shows is that rather than get “best and the brightest” into teaching, it is better to design initial teacher education in a way that will get the best from young people who have natural passion to teach for life.”

Sahlberg made me wonder. I went to NYC public schools. After taking an entrance exam I was enrolled at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science (at the time high school in NYC was grades 10-12), where I floundered as a sophomore and junior, finally maturing and learning how to learn as a senior.

I barely got into college. At the time City College of New York was incredibly difficult to get into. As a poor kid from the Bronx, the city university system was all my single mom could afford. However, Fordham University took a chance on me with recommendations from teachers and my guidance counselor. I received enough aid to attend the School of Education to which I was accepted.

It took that circumstance for me to figure out that I also I wanted to teach. What I learned I had was a passion for teaching. I had always worked with younger kids in camps, coaching and teaching them skills and how to get the best of themselves. I was inspired by my great teachers, most importantly my second grade teacher, Ms. Rita Stafford, who eventually became a world renown professor, researcher, and leader in individual learning styles. I also inspired myself by telling myself that I probably could do a better job than many of the teachers I had at Bx Science.

I went on to successfully teach for 38 years at three different high schools with three very different populations.

Then came Tisch’s bombshell. For years she has been pushing (partly as a 

Race to the Top: A Metaphor Reconsidered | Arnold Dodge

Race to the Top: A Metaphor Reconsidered | Arnold Dodge:

Race to the Top: A Metaphor Reconsidered

 There's always gonna be another mountain. I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side. It's the climb.

-- Miley Cyrus

Note to presidential candidates: Come up with a more appropriate metaphor for the next federal educational initiative. The current one is ridiculous at best. Just what were the planners and handlers thinking when they came up with the name for the largest national education initiative in history?

Race to the Top? C'mon.

The phenomena of racing and reaching the top couldn't possibly have been the goals set for children's education. Anyone who knows anything about the fragile, unpredictable, erratic, self-conscious development of a youngster couldn't possibly have come up with such a name.

But, let's pause to reconsider the possibilities. Maybe critics of the feds should take a minute to do a close read of the name and give the planners a break. Maybe they had something else in mind. Let's try a thought experiment.

What if the federal education bureaucrats were dog whistling to the rich folks to get them on board with the initiative?

Maybe it's Chase to the Top for the bankers and billionaires who are in thrall with destroying public schools and privatizing education. The unrelenting attacks on teacher unions, the proliferation of charter schools, the imposition of frustrating and impossibly difficult tests (then selling products to help with testing) may seem entirely appropriate to those who reap the rewards from the market approach to schooling. Teachers bashed, children anxious, parents confused. Sounds like a plan.

Maybe it's White Race to the Top. Sounds plausible since the RTTT mandates and the NCLB policies have done little to change the intractable achievement gaps, and even less to address segregated school systems, perhaps the greatest obstacle to school success. At a recent New York State legislative meeting, a meeting to coronate Governor Cuomo as the king of the New York State educational system, a courageous legislator got it right: "High need/low wealth districts get shafted every time." (1) This includes impoverished white communities as well.

Poor people please understand. There's just so much room at the top; privileged white communities occupy the space, and there's no sign they will sub-divide. The notion that the federal and state education plans' foremost objective is to help the inner city schools and the disenfranchised is a convenient lie. Politicians are fond of citing miraculous stories of schools in poor communities improving. But these are outliers, examples of schools with unique circumstances and/or infusions of grant money. These are outliers. The politicians are just plain liars.

Oh for the good ol' days when No Child Left Behind was the lead catch phrase. I pine for the compassionate conservative approach. And, remember, not only does No Child Left Behind have a sweet sound, it promises proficiency for all by 2014. I must have missed the celebration.

Sounds more like No Guile Left Behind, but that's for another day.

For NASCAR enthusiasts, maybe it's Race to the Pit Stop. This version borrows a page from racing's pit crews, experts at refueling, changing tires and making mechanical adjustments with lightning speed so their team car can get back on the track. Sounds eerily like the schoolhouse intervention crews who are called in to remediate the troubled and disabled kids who may not be able to successfully finish the assessment race. With the fear of failure looming over all -- students and teachers alike -- the sidelined kids are oiled, gassed up, adjusted and made ready for the hunger games.

And for the merchants who sell us our goods, an apt term might be Race to the Shop. Take black Friday for example. Customers wait on line all night, rush into the store when it opens, and get 20 percent off on a toaster. Seems like a good comparison to school assessments. Students prepare for tests all year, arrive early to school to be ready, and receive a number for their efforts. They don't even get to take home an appliance.

Parenthetically, the heavy-handed approach to improve achievement through standardized tests -- mainly to compete with countries like Finland -- is breathtaking in its stupidity. A recent article (2) about Finnish schools reports that the Finns are adopting more collaboration, more play, more essential real world questions in their Helsinki schools, readying the approach for all Finnish schools. Not a multiple choice Race to the Top: A Metaphor Reconsidered | Arnold Dodge:

Tisch: Exempt top districts from teacher evaluations

Tisch: Exempt top districts from teacher evaluations:

Teacher eval proposal could divide districts

 A proposal by Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch to exempt some schools from teacher evaluations would create a class-based system, favoring wealthy districts over those with scarcer resources, some educators say.

"The chancellor seems to be floating a 'yacht' evaluation plan for some communities and non-stop testing pressure for the rest," said Karen Magee, president of the New York State United Teachers union.

Under a plan approved by the state legislature, every teacher in every school statewide is evaluated using the same criteria. But Tisch, in an inteview last week with Capital New York, suggested that "high-performing districts" with a record of strong student performance, including high graduation rates, should be exempted from statewideteacher evaluations. That shift, she said, would let the state Education Department focus on struggling schools while recognizing the achievements of others.

In the Lower Hudson Valley, two districts have state-designated "failing" schools, Yonkers and Mount Vernon. The population of those two schools are primarily black and Hispanic — only 5 percent of students in Mount Vernon and 18 percent in Yonkers are white.

Mount Vernon schools Superintendent Kenneth Hamilton (Photo: TJN File)

The proposal weakens the presumed intent of the new evaluation system — to ensure that all teachers are held to the same high standard, said Mount Vernon schools Superintendent Kenneth Hamilton.

"To exclude some implies that teachers are single-handedly responsible for how well students perform on standardized assessments," Hamilton said. "While it is certainly a major factor, it is not the sole indicator of student success or failure."

In districts such as Mount Vernon, which have struggled with low graduation rates, many students have extraordinary obstacles to success, Hamilton said.

While many educators — mostly from districts with high graduation rates and strong student performance on tests — saw the idea as a positive step and applauded the move, they also worried that differentiation based solely on student performance would create an unequal system by minimizing the impact of poverty on student performance.

Harrison schools Superintendent Louis Wool (Photo: TJN File)

"Districts should be able to work in partnership with the state Education Department to define how each identifies and determines student success," said Harrison schools Superintendent Louis Wool. "Differentiation is far more complex than saying, 'We're going to exempt districts from a particular system based on performance on exams.'"

Ramapo schools Superintendent Douglas S. Adams said the current evaluation system "reflects a troubling pattern of legislative overreach."

"We support strong consideration of proposals that return the decision-making regarding the evaluation of our staff to those who know them best and work with them daily — not politicians in Albany," Adams said.

Buy Photo

Pleasantville schools Superintendent Mary Fox Alter (Photo: File photo by The Journal News)

Pleasantville Superintendent Mary Fox-Alter said while she saw the attempt to "differentiate" as a positive step, there was a lack of clarity on how this could work.

Meanwhile, state Education Department officials said no specifics were available.

"The chancellor raised the possibility of an exemption in order to start a conversation," said spokesman Jonathan Burman. "But she did not specify the precise parameters of what performance measures might qualify a school or district for an exemption, should the Board of Regents choose to consider such a course of action."

State Assemblyman David Buchwald, D-White Plains, whose constituency consists of many high performing schools when it comes to graduation rates and college Tisch: Exempt top districts from teacher evaluations:

Educating children or training circus animals? | Totally Random

Educating children or training circus animals? | Totally Random:

EDUCATING CHILDREN OR TRAINING CIRCUS ANIMALS?

here’s a wonderful line in Michel Foucault’s 1975 masterwork, Discipline and Punish, in which the author asks, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

The question replayed again and again in my mind yesterday as I read The New York Times‘ front-page storyabout the city’s Harlem Success Academy charter chain. The article delineated in excruciating detail the Gradgrindian world of these schools, in which elementary students are known to wet themselves during practice tests (unclear if it’s the result of a no-bathroom policy or just sheer terror over yet another drill whose results will be publicly posted), sit cross-legged in carefully-prescribed postures (a teacher may be instructed to “reset your carpet expectations” when they do not), and public shaming of underperforming students the norm (one teacher reported being scolded by an administrator for failing to tear up a student’s failing paper in front of her).

This is all justified, of course, by the chain’s great success in elevating test scores. According to the article, overall passing rates in the city last year for reading and math tests were 29% and 35%, respectively; the comparable figures for the Success Academy chain were 64% and 94%.

I don’t doubt the numbers.  But the problem is that this “success” is based on the very dubious premise that the end justifies the means.  And, perhaps worse, that these “means” are the only route to a very questionable “end.”

First, a word about the “end.” Raising student achievement and test scores is a laudable enough “end.” But when it becomes the sole goal of education, something is terribly wrong. These are not law school graduates in their 20s preparing for a bar examination. These are young, impressionable children, learning how to navigate their way in the world.  They are learning — or should be — how to be around other people, how to solve problems, how to think critically, and yes, how to master basic skills that will be useful to them later in life. The ultimate goal of any educational enterprise should be to develop a love of lifelong learning that students can take with them when they leave the classroom.  Should a child who fails a test be deprived of the opportunity to learn anything that’s not on the test?  Schools should be places where, as the educational philosopher Nel Noddings puts it, children feel cared for and the individual needs of all children are acknowledged and attended to.  All children deserve a complete education, not a training program that treats them like circus animals who can perform well on standardized tests. It’s hardly news, but there is far more to educational “success” than high test scores.

So the “end” of producing superior test-takers is, at best, questionable.  But even if we accept the goal, how does that justify the “means” Success Academy uses?  Would we accept it if a school used physical punishment to motivate students?  If they hung children out in the stockade when they failed a test?  Even if these methods routinely produced high “achievement” in terms of test scores? Of course not.  So why do we accept such tactics as mandating posture, punishing students if they do not make eye contact with the teacher, posting the names of failing students in a  “red zone” for all to see, merely because the school that employs them has a good track record of producing higher test scores? Is there no thought to the terrible consequences these methods may produce in the hearts and minds of these young children, consequences that may well outlive the results of any one standardized test?  Is breaking a child’s spirit a pre-requisite for academic success?

Like most advocates of this model, Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz blithely dismisses criticism of the chain’s methods with the comment, “Maybe some people prefer chaos. We Educating children or training circus animals? | Totally Random:

CURMUDGUCATION: Charter Laboratory Is Failing

CURMUDGUCATION: Charter Laboratory Is Failing:

Charter Laboratory Is Failing

 President Obama has called charter schools "incubators of innovation" and "laboratories of innovation," and he has done so for several years, despite the fact that, so far, the laboratories have yielded nothing. 


One of the standard justifications for the modern charter movement is that these laboratories of innovation will develop new techniques and programs that will then be transported out to public schools. Each charter school will be Patient Zero in a spreading viral infection of educational excellence.

Yet, after years-- no viral infection. No bouncing baby miracle cure from the incubator. The laboratory has shown us nothing.

Here's my challenge for charter fans-- name one educational technique, one pedagogical breakthrough, that started at a charter school and has since spread throughout the country to all sorts of public schools.

After all these years of getting everything they wanted, modern charter schools have nothing to teach the public schools of the US.

Both this profile from the New York Times and a teacher interview with Diane Ravitch show that the widely-lauded Success Academy model of New York is based on the emotional brutalization of children and tunnel-vision focus on The Test. This is justified by an ugly lie-- that if poor kids can get the same kind of test scores as rich kids, the doors will open to the same kind of success.

Put all that together with a mission to weed out those students who just can't cut it the SA way, and you have a model that cannot, and should not, be exported to public schools. Success Academy demonstrates that charters don't necessarily need to cream for the best and the brightest, but just for the students who can withstand their particular narrow techniques.

But then, most modern charters are fundamentally incompatible with the core mission of public schools, which is to teach every single child. Examination of charters show over and over and over again that they have developed techniques which work-- as long as they get to choose which students to apply them to. New Jersey has been rather fully examined in this light, and the lesson of New Jersey charters is clear-- if you get to pick and choose the students you teach, you can get better results.

This is the equivalent of a laboratory that announces, "We can show you a drug that produces fabulous hair growth, as long as you don't make us demonstrate it on any bald guys."

Modern charters have tried to shift the conversation, to back away from the "laboratory" narrative. Nowadays, they just like to talk about how they have been successful. These "successes" are frequently debatable and often minute, but they all lack one key ingredient for legitimate laboratory work-- replication by independent researchers.

Replication is the backbone of science. Legit scientists do not declare, "This machine will show you CURMUDGUCATION: Charter Laboratory Is Failing: