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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Testing Resistance & Reform News: April 18 - 21, 2015 | FairTest

Testing Resistance & Reform News: April 18 - 21, 2015 | FairTest:

Testing Resistance & Reform News: April 18 - 21, 2015

Submitted by fairtest on April 21, 2015 - 1:15pm 

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  • PLEASE JOIN
    FairTest
    IN HONORING
    Karen Lewis and Leon Botstein

     
     PRESENTATION OF
    THE DEBORAH W. MEIER HEROES
    IN EDUCATION AWARD


    Thursday, June 4, 2015, 6 - 8:30 PM

    Julia Richman Education Complex, 317 East 67th Street, New York, NY

    Beverages and hors d'oeuvres will be served


    Karen G.J. Lewis is President of the Chicago Teachers Union.
    As part of its school improvement campaign, the 30,000 member CTU has strongly supported fundamental reforms in testing, and in 2014 backed a test boycott by teachers, parents and students. Mrs. Lewis, a 22-year high school teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, has been a national inspiration in leading the union's successful efforts to build powerful grassroots alliances on behalf of equity and quality in teaching and learning. She is a Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers and the Executive Vice President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

    Leon Botstein is President of Bard College. Bard stands at the forefront of the test-optional college admissions movement, whereby students are not required to submit SAT or ACT scores. A longtime advocate for education reform and improved access for the under-served at both the K-12 and college levels, Dr. Botstein has spoken and written eloquently on how the testing mania undermines educational quality. He has led Bard in revitalizing the high school experience through its high school early colleges and in becoming an international leader in liberal arts education. Dr. Botstein is also the Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Bard, a noted author on a wide range of subjects, and an accomplished musician and conductor.  

    For more information and to order your tickets, please go tohttp://www.fairtest.org/fairtest-to-honor-karen-lewis-and-leon-botstein

    If you cannot attend, please make a donation in their honor.  

    Honorary Chairs (in formation):
    Fred Bay, Linda Darling-Hammond, Michelle Fine, Diane Ravitch,
    Jesse Sharkey   

    Host Committee (in formation):
    Clara Botstein, Ann Cook, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Audrey L. May, Sophie Sa (chair)
This week's update is being sent from the Education Writers Association National Seminar where hundreds of reporters, editors and columnists are talking about the opt-out movement and other forms of testing resistance as well as proposals for real assessment reform at the local, state and national levels.
Opt-Out Movement Accelerates Nationally Amid Common Core Testing

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/opt-movement-accelerates-amid-c...

Parents All Over U.S. Opting Out of Standardized Exams

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/17/living/parents-movement-opt-out-of-testing...
U.S. Senate Fresh Battle Looms When Full Membership Takes Up "No Child" Rewrite

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/22/fresh-battles-loom-when-ful...
Arkansas New School Grades Offer Confusing Snapshot of Educational Quality

http://swtimes.com/news/new-school-grading-system-offers-fuzzy-snapshot-...
California Corporate Titans Fight Over State Testing Contract

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/22/testing-titans-pearson-ets-...
Florida Statewide Computer Testing System Collapses Again

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/fsa-server-issue-leaves-students-...

Florida's Quiet Assessment Reform Victory

http://contextflorida.com/julie-delegal-silent-victory-for-floridas-educ...
Georgia Parents Say "No" to State Milestones Test

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/109197/

Atlanta Cheating Scandal Revealed Standardized Test Misuse is the Real "Crime"

http://thegrio.com/2015/04/17/atlanta-cheating-scandal-standardized-test...
Illinois Teachers Association Endorses Parental Opt Out

http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-iea-adopted...
Indiana Students Vexed by Glitches in Online Practice Tests

http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-istep-pra...
Massachusetts Testing Mania Has Kept Us From Teaching the Whole Child

http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/testing_mania_has_kept...
Minnesota Testing: Where Political Theater Meets Commercial Reality

http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2015/04/student-testing-where-pol...
Nevada Common Core Test Crashes Again on First Day Back

http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2015/apr/21/nevada-common-core-test-crashe...
New Jersey PARCC Testing Takes Toll on Daily Learning

http://www.nj.com/education/2015/04/parcc_testing_takes_toll_on_daily_le...
New York Revolt Over Standardized Testing Continues

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/opinion/the-revolt-over-standardized-t...

Burgeoning Opt-Out Movement Builds Pressure to Change Standardized Testing

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/burgeoning-opt-out-movement-builds-pr...

New York Opt-Outs Top 184,000 --- Track the Movement Here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/t2_8Bg3h8mqx6Ax8rwGG5Mw/htmlview?...
Oklahoma Demoralizing Test Score Concerns Addressed by State Education Dept.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/demoralizing-test-score-concern...
Oregon Needs Students with Know-How, Not Higher Test Scores

http://registerguard.com/rg/opinion/32984969-78/we-need-know-how-not-hig...
Pennsylvania Why I Opted My Child Out of the PSSA Exams

http://www.theintell.com/news/communities/doylestown/why-i-opted-out-of-...
South Carolina Too Much High-Stakes Testing

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150419/PC1002/150419299/1021/

South Carolina Parents Rally Against Exam Overkill

http://www.counton2.com/story/28852351/parents-rally-in-columbia-against...
Texas Parents Joining Movement to Opt Out of Standardized Exams

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article18761976.html

Texas School Board Calls for End to High-Stakes Testing Mandates, Locally Controlled Assessments

http://www.aisd.net/FrntNews_single.aspx?Article_ID=1853
Washington State Parents Opting Kids Out of Standardized Tests

http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/28835061/parents-opting-students-out-of...

Common Core Testing Meltdown in Seattle

http://iamaneducator.com/2015/04/18/common-core-testing-meltdown-in-seat...
West Virginia Student Testing Opt-Out Movement Provokes Legal Debate

http://www.charlestondailymail.com/article/20150419/DM01/150419223/1276
Wisconsin Badger Exam Mired in Political Controversy

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/badger-exam-...

Nearly 5% of Madison Students Opt Out of New Common Core Test



Testing Resistance & Reform News: April 18 - 21, 2015 | FairTest:
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Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out Responds to the New York Times’ Article | Diane Ravitch's blog

Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out Responds to the New York Times’ Article | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out Responds to the New York Times’ Article 










 This comment was posted on the blog by Peggy Robertson, founder of United Opt Out, in response to the New York Times’ article implying that the Opt Out movement is led by the teachers’ unions.

Peggy Robertson writes:
Opt out is led by parents, teachers, students and citizens. When United Opt Out National began over four years ago we were simply a facebook page with a file for each state. Within hours our FB group page was flooded with opt out requests and now we have opt out leaders all over the country and grassroots opt out groups popping up everywhere. I think Florida has 25 at this point – probably more since I last checked – and mind you they did this all on their own. UOO has simply been a catalyst and a support. What is even more fascinating, and sad, is that UOO has reached out to the unions many times, and never received a response. You will notice that United Opt Out National is rarely mentioned in recent articles. I think that’s because we represent the people. The power of the people. UOO has no funding (heck I paid for our website for the first two years pretty much on my own). When our website was destroyed last year guess who helped UOO fund/rebuild it? The people. No corporations. No unions. The people – the citizens of this country – for free – and with truth and heart – have helped us to create fifty state opt out guides. The citizens have helped us to continually update and alert folks to opt out situations across the country. The people have helped us create essential guides, opt out letters, and social media campaigns. The fact that this is happening by the people, for the people, with no funding, is true democracy and is a dangerous thing. Folks would much prefer that we are sheeple and that we are incapable of strategically planning a nationwide opt out movement. Guess what? We did it. All of us. That makes us dangerous. That makes the media/corporations want to co-opt and shut down our work. A mass movement of civil disobedience that is running through our country like a tidal wave in an attempt to save our democracy is indeed a powerful force that no corporation can shut down. Let’s keep pushing forward. Solidarity to all of you.Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out Responds to the New York Times’ Article | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Tim Slekar

 Wisconsin 3 hours ago
If you really want to know about the origins of United Opt Out take 40 minutes and listen to this interview.http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bustedpencils/2015/04/19/united-opt-out-ast...

Summary of United Opt Out

Just for the record (a lot more people read your record than mine).

United Opt Out formed after the 2011 SOS rally when Peggy Robertson, Ceresta Smith, Laurie Murphy, Morna, McDermott, Shaun Johnson and I met each other during the conference part at American Univ. Although Laurie Murphy and Shaun Johnson are no longer active in the group (new administrators are Rosemarie Jensen, Denisha Jones, Ruth Rodriguez and Michael Pena) we still remain simply a rag tag group of misfits with nothing more than a Facebook page and a website.

We meet every Monday on the free Go To Meeting service and all costs have always come directly from our own pockets. We have never taken money from either union at the national, state and local levels.

With teleconferencing, social media, and a webpage we have organized and pulled off two Occupy the DOEs, two United Opt Out action planning conferences and grown our membership to over 19,000 members (That's not counting all the state affiliates).

I'm not sure how much more grassroots an organization can be.
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Pro-charter group rallies for Cuomo plan | Capital New York

Pro-charter group rallies for Cuomo plan | Capital New York:

Pro-charter group rallies for Cuomo plan








 StudentsFirstNY held a rally in support of Governor Andrew Cuomo's education reform agenda Wednesday evening as the well-organized, well-funded pro-charter sector attempts to respond to criticisms of the governor from teachers unions.

Several hundred parents, largely from district schools around the city and almost exclusively black, attended the rally at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights, where Assemblyman and future Cuomo official Karim Camara and City Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. spoke. 
Cornegy, one of the few Council members to show public support for Cuomo or the charter movement, received a standing ovation from the crowd on Wednesday.
"I'm here because every exceptional teacher deserves a reward," Cornegy said, referring to Cuomo's controversial merit pay proposal. "I'm here because I've seen too many generations pass through failing schools without someone taking responsibility for turning them around," he added, referring to Cuomo's plan for state takeover of failing schools. 

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Cornegy compared the fight for education reform to the Civil Rights movement, saying it was "apropos" that the rally was taking place during Black History Month. 
Camara, who is joining the Cuomo administration as head of the new office of Faith-Based Community Development Services, thanked the governor for his stance on education.
"When you're at that level ... you don't have to fight the tough fights, but he decided to be courageous," Camara said. 
After Cuomo outlined his education proposals in his State of the State address last month, much of the reaction has been provided by the teachers unions and from the United Federation of Teachers in particular, whose president, Michael Mulgrew, has been perhaps Cuomo's lead agitator over the last month. The U.F.T. has organized internal emergency meetings, 11 community forums and a series of protests and rallies in an attempt to show that Cuomo's proposals would hurt teachers.
Now, the pro-charter sector, which has been increasingly focused on failing schools and accountability over the last six months, is debuting a series of its own advocacy efforts, all of which are intended to mobilize parents, rather than teachers, in support of Cuomo's "opportunity agenda." 
Families for Excellent Schools, a group that has collaborated with StudentsFirstNY on rallies in the past, also held a rally in support of Cuomo's proposals on Wednesday afternoon. F.E.S. recently held a rally in support of state takeover of failing schools. The Success Academy charter network is planning a large rally in support of Cuomo's plans, on March 4 in Albany, that will almost certainly be attended by representatives from both StudentsFirstNY and F.E.S. The U.F.T.'s annual Albany lobbying day is also scheduled for March 4. 
StudentsFirstNY has been a reliable supporter of charters and stronger accountability measures in general, and of Cuomo in particular.
Representatives for the group testified in favor of Cuomo's education agenda before the State Joint Committee on Education earlier this month, and praised his "bold blueprint" for education reform after the State of the State address. StudentsFirstNY also launched a six-figure television ad buy in January that featured excerpts from Cuomo's previous education-related addresses. 
The fight over Cuomo's education agenda will resume Thursday morning with a rally attended by Mulgrew, other union advocates and elected officials who will call on the state to fulfill its Campaign for Fiscal Equity obligations. Pro-charter group rallies for Cuomo plan | Capital New York:
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CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance

CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance:

The Culture of Compliance


Last night I attended a school board meeting at a nearby district where they are struggling, like all Pennsylvania school districts, with financial problems.

Culprit #1 is the pension system. For a variety of reasons, school districts must contribute an amount equal to roughly 21% of their payroll this year to the pension fund. Next year it will be 25%. In a few years it will finally top out at 32%.

Culprit #2 is the cyber charter system, which sucks enormous amounts of blood from local districts. At the meeting, the treasurer listed off the monthly payment as well as the year-end total. It would be enough to keep their soon-to-be-closed elementary school open.

As the expense was explained, one board member said, "That's just nuts." Another board member said, "Well, let's just not pay it." And there was a sort of awkward silence.

Now, practically speaking, it would be a fruitless gesture. Presumably the state would simply garnish the district's subsidy payments, perhaps levy a fine. And it can be dicey to go head to head with the state-- a few decades back Philadelphia schools decided to play financial chicken with Harrisburg and lost local control. So withholding charter payments may or may not be a wise idea.

But the moment reminded me once again of how thoroughly the education system is saturated in the culture of compliance.

It is, frankly, one of the worst things about how we sometimes run schools and classrooms. When I was first starting out, it suddenly hit me like a bathtub full of icy water that when some of my colleagues talked about excellent and outstanding students, they were not talking about students who were whip smart or highly curious or uniquely driven or bold thinkers-- they were talking about students who behaved themselves, who did as they were told, who were cheerfully and fully compliant.

In my career, I have occasionally butted heads experienced philosophical differences with colleagues who don't just want their students to learn the material, but to be happy and grateful about it, to have the Right Attitude. I once worked for a man who equated letting students get away with dress code violations with letting students walk around shooting people.

We love rules. I would argue we love them way too much, and our love of the rules permeates the institution from top to bottom.

This is a lesson we could actually learn from the business world. My brother, who comes from the world of manufacturing, served on the school board for years. He would tell versions of the following story: "In the meeting administration would talk about some stupid rule from the state and we would all agree that it was a stupid rule. Then I would say, 'Well, let's just ignore it' and everyone would look at me like I had two heads one of which spoke Greek." But in parts of the business world, rules are not king. If a rule is stupid, you ignore it. And if you're supposed to pay somebody, but they are doing a crappy job or hurting your business, you withhold payment to get their attention and start a conversation.

Sure, too much of that gets you companies violating important rule and doing real damage. But so does doing as your told without thinking about whether that's a good idea or not. The world is filled with folks who live somewhere between the Land of Anarchy and the Culture of Compliance.

Compliance is so hard-wired into schools that most educational regulations do not have any substantial oversight-- they just assume that schools and teachers will do as they're told.

True story. Pennsylvania has a law that says your school year must be done by a particular date, which means a teacher strike can't extend beyond a number of days. When we were on strike over a decade ago, we needed to figure out what that date was, so both the union and the district tried to find somebody in Harrisburg who could tell us for sure when the end date for the strike would have to be and, just for fun, what the penalty would be if we went over. Not only could we not find anybody in Harrisburg who could answer the question, we couldn't even find someone who would admit that their office was supposed to know the answer. We finally picked a final date to agree on-- it was one of the first points of agreement in the whole negotiation. There was no enforcement mechanism to go with the law-- apparently they had just assumed that if there was a law about school stuff, everyone involved would be sure to follow it.

In this one respect, the creators of Common Core actually read the room pretty well. "Once we put this out there as the Official Approved Standards," they must have thought, "teachers will pretty much fall in line, because they always follow the rules no matter what."

Meanwhile, we've been taking these crappy high stakes tests for years because that's what we were told we were supposed to do. In the face of the opt out movement, we still have education folks CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance:





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Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:



Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization



by Tom Chorneau

(District of Columbia) Despite signs of growing bipartisan support for legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 52 percent of Washington’s education stakeholder community says it won’t happen while President Barack Obama is in office.
In an unscientific survey of between 50 and 75 Washington, D.C. education insiders, Whiteboard Advisors also found that Congress is likely to approve a proposal from the administration this year to restrict commercial use of student data.
Whiteboard Advisors, a nationally recognized capital consulting group, includes as part of its pool of participants White House and administration officials along with congressional staffers, state education representatives and leaders of key private education associations, think tanks and other influential groups.
The poll results come as members of the U.S. Senate Education Committee approved without dissent last week an initial set of amendments to the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, jointly authored by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash.
As currently drafted, the bill would make a number of changes to the nation’s primary public education law, including elimination of the requirement that K-12 schools meet Annual Yearly Progress benchmarks.
Also not included in the bill – which might raise some opposition from the Obama administration – is any mention of teacher evaluations.
Although there are a number of issues that could sidetrack the legislation, many in and around the Capitol are giving Alexander and  Murray high marks for herding the diverse membership of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions – a panel that includes GOP firebrandRand Paul and polarizing Democrats Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren.
The bill now moves to the Senate floor.
The Whiteboard survey, which is published monthly, found 54 percent of respondents believed a student data privacy bill will be enacted under Obama’s watch.
The president’s student data legislation – dubbed the Student Digital Privacy Act – would prohibit companies from selling student data to third parties, which might use the information for targeted advertising.
A version of the proposal had been expected from Rep. Jared Polis, D-CO, and Rep. Luke Messer R-IN, but so far that has not happened.
The poll found most policy insiders believe that the Common Core State Standards are here to stay, with 61 percent giving high marks to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness and 65 percent saying the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is “on the right track.”
Although there are efforts to repeal the Common Core in 19 states, the Whiteboard survey found 70 percent of respondents believe that at least 20 states will continue to use the testing systems of one of the two consortia.
Whiteboard published a number of comments in connection to the ESEA poll question that reflected a wide range of opinions. Here is a sample:
  • “I think Obama and (U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan) will be starved for a late term accomplishment, which could lead them to nudge a Democratic coalition to join more moderate Republicans around a proposal that Alexander and (House Education Committee chair John Kline, R-Minn.) put together.”
  • “Just hard to see how both Houses can come together in a time when compromise is a dirty word.”
  • “Alexander is showing how to lead and Murray is a good partner for him. They'll get major things done.”
  • “The difficulty is getting a bill that Congress will approve that the Administration will sign into law.”Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
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Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger

Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch





 New Jersey universities and colleges that offer graduate education programs are the next targets of what Gov. Chris Christie and Newark schools superintendent Cami Anderson call educational “reform.” But what they are doing to block Newark teachers from earning credits at these traditional institutions looks–and smells–like insiders using their power to help old friends make money in the good old Christie ExxonMobil sort of way.

According to the  Newark Teachers Union (NTU), Anderson–at least for the moment– is insisting that stipends to teachers for taking graduate education programs be limited to those attending courses at an institution known as Relay-GSE, a free-standing operation with roots in Teach for America and the KIPP schools. Relay-GSE announced Anderson’s “approval” of the school in a press release March 3.
Anderson was, of course, an executive with Teach for America–and the KIPP charter people who operate TEAM Academy charter schools  are such good friends with Anderson that she sold them a public school at a discount.
Not too many people in the Newark schools have ever heard of  Relay-GSE (the GSE stands for graduate school of education although it’s not so much a school as a, well, adjunct to privatized “reform”), but Cami Anderson has been sending some of her favored administrators there for years–for example, Wayne Dennis, the principal she fired at Barringer, had to sit through Relay GSE courses in New York, apparently paid for by the taxpayer.
It is headquartered–and accredited and licensed–in New York. It is not listed in  New Jersey’s official list of colleges and universities offering teacher education programs but, of course, any student can attend an out-of-state school. In any event, Relay-GSE now lists a Newark branch  at 10 Washington Place which just happens to be the location of North Star Academy and the Newark Charter School Fund.
Cozy.
This is how the Newark campus of Relay-GSE describes itself:
“Relay Newark is the graduate school for teachers who want to close opportunity gaps and fight for social justice. By combining in-person practice, performance-based assessments and rich online learning, we help teachers become more effective for their students in some of New Jersey’s most challenging urban areas.”
This suggests that any teacher who would rather take graduate education courses at Rutgers, Seton Hall, Montclair State, Kean, or any of the other established schools of education is not a fighter “for social justice” and therefore does not deserve to be subsidized.
Whether Anderson can grant a monopoly to Relay-GSE for providing subsidized graduate education to Newark teachers isn’t known, but the NTU clearly is trying to Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger:
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New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ

New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ:

New York State Tests for Fourth-Graders Included Passages Taken from Books Meant for Older Students

Excerpts came from ‘The Green Dog: A Mostly True Story,’ ‘Hattie Big Sky,’ and ‘The Clay Marble.’










 By  LESLIE BRODY and MELANIE GRAYCE WEST

Some fourth-graders tackling New York state tests in language arts last week examined passages that were taken from books deemed by several independent rating systems to be at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level, according to a person who saw the exam.
For the past three years of new state exams aligned to the Common Core learning standards, a set of guidelines for skills children should master in each grade, critics have said some questions are too difficult and confusing for many children.
A person who saw one of the four versions of the fourth-grade language-arts test spotted excerpts from three books that are considered at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level by several widely used rating systems of children’s literature.

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The books featured on the test included: “The Green Dog: A Mostly True Story,” “Hattie Big Sky,” and “The Clay Marble.”
“ ‘Hattie Big Sky’ is not for fourth-graders,” said Pat Scales, a retired librarian living in Greenville, S.C., who wrote a teachers’ reading guide for the book, which she described as appropriate for middle-school students.
“Just because a fourth-grader can probably read that book as far as calling the words, they don’t have enough life experience or are mature enough to deal with ‘Hattie Big Sky,’ ” Ms. Scales said.
State education officials declined to confirm which excerpts were used on the exams, but they said teachers were involved in developing and reviewing questions.
“There are, of course, challenging questions on every test,” said Dennis Tompkins, a spokesman for the New York State Education Department.
Mr. Tompkins also pointed out that a specific excerpt used as part of the test could be rated at a different grade level than the book overall.
“Ratings of a whole book are not going to match the text complexity of a selected passage,” he said. “To compare the complexity of an excerpt to an entire book would be akin to saying Bill Buckner was a terrible baseball player based on one play in the 1986 World Series.”
A spokesman for Pearson PLC, the test vendor, said the company works with state officials to write the tests, and all tests meet the standards set by the state Education Department.
“We take steps, in line with these standards, to ensure that the testing material is right for the students taking the test,” the spokesman said.
State rules bar educators and students from disclosing what is on the state tests, but some questions have been leaked at a time of mounting opposition to standardized testing.
Parents and teachers pushing for boycotts of state tests hope airing questions will help discredit the tests. Officials at teachers unions have protested using student gains on these tests as part of teacher evaluations, especially when they believe the tests are poorly designed.
But state officials have said it is crucial for children to take the tests to show how their skills compare to their peers’, identify achievement gaps and guide instruction. The tests are mandated by federal rules.
Lucy Calkins, director of the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project at Columbia University, has reviewed previously released test questions. Having difficult reading passages, she said, wasn't the main concern.
“The biggest problem is the obscurity of the questions and the fact that well educated adults can’t agree on the answers,” she said.
Ms. Calkins said the new tests should have debuted as a pilot project before being used as part of teacher evaluations.
Carl Korn, a spokesman for the New York State United Teachers, a union, said some test questions this year, as in the past, were too hard and complicated, with overly lengthy reading passages.
The third-grade test, for example, had an allusion to the Aurora Borealis, a pattern of different colored lights sometimes seen in the night sky in the northern part of the world, without a definition of the term, he said.
Further, Mr. Korn said, one language-arts question was used on both the third-grade exam and the fifth-grade one.
“Many test questions were inappropriate and served no purpose but to confuse and frustrate students,” he said.
Ryan Bourke, principal at Manhattan’s P.S. 212, said he heard of children crying after the language-arts tests last week. He couldn’t discuss the content of the test or its questions, he said, because the test is “veiled in secrecy.”
In the months and weeks preceding these exams, the anxiety builds in third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students and their parents, who go through lengths to pay for tutors and test prep, said Mr. Bourke.
“To put this kind of burden on kids as young as third grade is a form of child abuse,” he said. “The test is hard and it’s long.”
In August, the department released half of the 2014 test questions to the public, up from 25% the previous year, to help teachers understand the questions and how they aligned to New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ:
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Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post

Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post:



Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says








A new book is being released on Tuesday titled “The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter.” If you doubt the title, read this post — and then the book.
It was written by Greg Toppo, USA Today’s national K-12 education writer, who spent eight years as a teacher in public and private schools before becoming a journalist. He worked for the Associated Press as its national K-12 education writer, moving to USA Today in 2002. In 2010, Toppo was a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the next year, he co-led a team of USA Today  reporters that investigated educators cheating on standardized tests, prompting the inspector general in Washington D.C. to launch a probe into high erasure rates on test forms.
Now Toppo has taken his  special interest in technology and how video games help students learn and put it in his new book — and in the following post.
By Greg Toppo
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -– Samuel Beckett
This spring marks an important milestone in U.S. public schools: For the first time, millions of students are taking new Common Core exams in math and reading. The test results serve as a kind of audit of our kids’ education and, the theory goes, will push schools to improve their basic product. Supporters and detractors of the Common Core have spent years debating the new standards’ merits, but one fact is inescapable: by the time the tests roll around each spring, students nationwide have spent weeks preparing for them.
In 2013, the American Federation of Teachers found that most students in one Midwestern school district spent the equivalent of 16 school days preparing for tests. Throw in the actual testing and it expanded to 19 days – nearly a full month of school on test prep and testing. In another district, AFT found, students in middle school and high school spent six weeks on prep and testing.
Understandably, resistance is growing. Thousands of students now simply refuse to sit for the tests, part of a defiant “opt-out movement” that last month included student walkouts across New Mexico. Meanwhile, districts across the country are having second thoughts about the tests’ costs and effectiveness – and educators are concerned that the tests are narrowing schools’ once broad curricula.
Into this fray has entered a small group of educators and researchers who are pushing for a new approach, one that doesn’t back away from testing but embeds it into everything students do. Long ago, these folks realized that millions of kids – the same kids, in fact, who sit for tests each spring – already enjoy access to a powerful tool that tests them constantly without actual tests or test prep. They are thinking, of course, about video games.
The idea is simple: the game is the test. It lays out the content and tests the player on the spot. It invites the player to celebrate a job well done or, more likely, to redo a job not so well done. Every level of every game asks a player to assess what went wrong and come back next time with a better plan. In other words, try again.
Linguist and games researcher James Paul Gee has written that games actually make players think like scientists. Game play is built on a cycle of “hypothesize, probe the world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, reprobe to get better results.” Game studios have created assessment systems that can tell players exactly how well they’ve done on thousands of variables, how their performance has improved and, if played online, how they stack up against millions of players – all without subjecting anyone to a multiple-choice test.
“Think about it,” Gee once said. “If I make it through every level of Halo, do you really need to give me a test to see if I know everything it takes to get through every level of Halo?”
In the process, a good game naturally invites a kind of complexity that schools can only imagine. It was only a matter of time before game designers began hacking standardized testing, but it has happened in an unexpected way: In 2012, the Educational Testing Service, the folks who bring you the SAT, formed a partnership with, among others, the video game giant Electronic Arts, the folks who bring you Madden NFL, Mass Effect, and Battlefield 3. The result is an experimental nonprofit dubbed the Games, Learning and Assessment Lab, or GlassLab.
Based at Electronic Arts’ Silicon Valley headquarters, GlassLab is bristling with PhD-level learning scientists and assessment experts who are experimenting with ways to combine game mechanics with academic content. The effort’s ultimate aim is essentially to do away with standardized testing as we know it.
The project is part of a larger effort across academia looking for alternatives to standardized testing. Researcher Daniel Schwartz at Stanford University, for instance, is leading an effort to find “new ways to capture compelling forms of learning” that existing tests can’t measure. Florida State University researcher Valerie Shute has pushed for what she calls “stealth assessment” in educational games, saying such assessments could get at-risk students interested in school again.
The idea for GlassLab came in 2011, during an informal get-together of game designers and testing experts at the University of Southern Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post:
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State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight

State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight:



STATE TEACHERS UNION CHALLENGES LEGALITY OF CAMDEN CHARTER TAKEOVER

 | APRIL 21, 2015


Complaint alleges plans to convert five schools are attempt to circumvent state’s Urban Hope Act


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As expected, the state-operated Camden school district’s controversial plan to transfer five of its schools to charter school operators is now facing a formal legal challenge.
A little less expected: The New Jersey Education Association is filing the complaint.

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The NJEA yesterday announced it is formally challenging the plans announced last month to turn five Camden public schools into “renaissance schools,” a hybrid charter school model operated by large charter organizations.
The teachers union specifically challenged the district’s method for accomplishing the switch -- technically closing four of the schools outright and then either selling or leasing their operation to the charter organizations.
“The school district is attempting to circumvent the terms and spirit of the Urban Hope Act to allow the corporate takeover of Camden Public Schools,” NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer said in a statement announcing the legal challenge.
“The district is merely waiting until the end of the school year to do superficial renovations, at which time it will simply call these schools Renaissance Schools so they can be turned over to private management companies,” Steinhauer added.
Some kind of legal challenge was hardly unexpected, as the Newark-based Education Law Center sent the first shot across the bow last week when it questioned the legitimacy of the move.
The fact that the formal challenge comes from the NJEA is not entirely surprising, either, given it is its members whose jobs could be at stake in the closings.
However, leaders of the local Camden Education Association had taken part in announcements of the plans for the five schools. And that local teachers union recently approved a new contract that called for an early retirement plan to soften the impact the charter-school conversion will have on jobs.
The NJEA’s complaint specifically targets the school-closing proposal currently before state Education Commissioner David Hespe.
The challenge asserts that the schools, already targeted for interventions under both federal and state law, can’t legally be closed or transferred to charter networks.
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The NJEA challenge also notes that the planned closures were announced without any formal public hearings.
Still, how much the legal action will affect the closings is uncertain.
The district is proceeding with its plans for the five schools. And a spokesman for Camden Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard challenged the claim there was no public input, citing several public meetings held before the announcement of the closings, adding that the moves would only benefit city families.
“The NJEA is mischaracterizing the law and diverting attention from the real issue, which is the need to improve our children’s education,” said spokesman Brendan Lowe.
“These improvements are focused on increasing student learning and renovating dilapidated buildings in a city that is sincerely in need of change. Through our continued community engagement, we’ve heard hundreds of students, educators, parents, and community members demand change in our most-struggling schools.State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight:
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