State board awards disputed test contract to ETS | EdSource

State board awards disputed test contract to ETS | EdSource:

State board awards disputed test contract to ETS

 The State Board of Education on Wednesday awarded the Educational Testing Service a three-year, $240 million contract to administer the state’s standardized tests, despite a competitor’s call for reopening a bidding process that it called flawed and “arbitrary.”

ETS has run the state’s testing system for 13 years and was the choice of the staff of the state Department of Education and two panels of reviewers. But Pearson School, the lowest of the three bidders with a $206 million bid, protested after the state board in March gave ETS tentative approval on the condition that ETS revise its bid to replicate aspects of Pearson’s plan involving teacher training. Board members called for the involvement, “to the greatest extent possible,” of teachers in scoring the next generation of tests, at no additional cost.

A series of recent breakdowns and technical snafus with online tests in other states (see here, here and here) underscore the importance of contracting with a reliable, experienced testing company. Along with providing the software to deliver the state’s tests, the contractor responds to problems from more than a thousand districts and charter schools, oversees test scoring and delivers the results to districts and schools.

The state was not required to take the lowest bid under the form of bidding that was used, and it had authority to negotiate contract changes with a preferred bidder. That’s what a team of negotiators did over three days last month, said Keric Ashley, state deputy superintendent of the District, School, and Innovation division of the Department of Education. The result was a number of changes that improved the contract, including better test security, a quicker reporting time of test results to districts, and parent guides in five languages, he told the state board. Based on Pearson’s approach, there also will be more extensive training and better hourly rates for scorers who are California teachers, he said.

But copying a significant part of another bidder’s proposal is “unprecedented in public procurements at virtually any level – federal or state,” wrote Douglas Kubach, president of Pearson School, a Minnesota-based division of Pearson, the world’s largest education publishing and consulting company, in a March 30 letter to the state board. Kubach called on the state board to begin the bidding again. Reviewers gave ETS a higher score, yet the state board instructed negotiators to adopt Pearson’s model – “unavoidably an admission (by the state board) that its scoring was significantly flawed,” he wrote.

ETS will continue to handle the administration and scoring of the new online tests, including the Smarter Balanced English language arts and math tests in the Common Core State Standards, which debuted this spring, and the yet-to-be developed Next Generation Science Standards. The tests feature more sophisticated performance tasks, requiring students to write essays and show their work. Individual scorers will grade these portions of the test.

Pearson’s proposal promised professional development for California teachers in these tasks through county offices of education. It said it would hire WestEd, the San Francisco-based nonprofit research and development organization that is developing Common Core and new science curricula, to lead the trainings. The proposal said it would increase the number of California teachers as test scorers by paying them $17 to $19 per hour.

Patricia Rucker, who works as a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, called $20 per hour “insufficient” and predicted that fewer than half of the scorers will end up being teachers.

For this year’s initial Smarter Balanced tests, ETS is paying only $13 per hour to scorers. The state reports that only 10 percent of the scorers will be California educators, and not all of those will be certificated teachers.

In its revised bid, ETS said it will hold summer institutes and weekend trainings for teachers and would pay California certificated teachers $20 per hour to be trained in and score the tests. Ashley acknowledged that’s less than teachers earn per hour, but the primary benefit, he said, would be the knowledge that teachers would gain in both the end-of-the-year tests and the interim assessments that teachers would give during the year.

However, board member Patricia Rucker, who works as a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, called $20 per hour “insufficient” and predicted that fewer than half of the scorers will end up being teachers. Teachers “carry the greatest burden to see that students are State board awards disputed test contract to ETS | EdSource:

CTU files labor complaint against school board - Chicago Tribune

CTU files labor complaint against school board - Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Teachers Union files labor complaint against school board

The Chicago Teachers Union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint accusing the city's school board of bad-faith bargaining and refusing to engage in mediation toward a new contract.

Union officials said little progress has been made over eight formal bargaining sessions and numerous informal meetings since November. The complaint filed Wednesday with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board follows the union's rejection earlier this week of the board's proposal that teachers take on a greater share of pension payments.

Jesse Ruiz, the district's interim chief, said CPS hadn't reviewed the complaint but looked forward to continuing contract talks.

As she did in the months before the 2012 teachers strike, CTU President Karen Lewis sought to make Mayor Rahm Emanuel the focus of the union's displeasure with talks to replace a contract that expires June 30. The union again accused the city of using the talks to get back at the CTU for its support of Jesus "Chuy" Garcia in the mayoral election.

"We feel this is reactionary and retaliatory," Lewis said at a news conference Wednesday. "I guess the fuzzy sweater's gone," she said, referring to Emanuel's wearing a sweater in campaign commercials to indicate a softer personality.

The district, which says it is wrestling with a $1.1 billion deficit weighted with pension payments, wants to save millions of dollars by having teachers pay more into their pension fund. The district wants to end a long-standing agreement that limits teacher paycheck deductions for pensions, the union said.

That CTU said the result would be a 7 percent cut in take-home pay for members. The union also says health care premiums could take another 3 percent under a district proposal.

"One of the reasons we're upset about this is despite the difficulty of the last negotiations, they never went so far as to suggest a 7 percent cut in teacher compensation," CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said. "This is a new low, and frankly one that we're fairly convinced that they're serious about."

CTU members covered by the contract are required to forward 9 percent of their pay to pensions but contribute 2 percent of their salaries. The district agreed in 1981 to indefinitely pick up the bulk of the union workers' tab — in addition to the pension contributions it already must pay — in exchange for lower pay raises.

According to district records, the 9 percent employee contribution totaled nearly $164 million in the 2014 fiscal year. CPS, according to its records, picked up about $127 million of that amount.

That same year, CPS paid $613 million for its own contributions to the pension fund.

The union said that under the district's proposal, a teacher who earns a base salary of roughly $70,000 would have to pay an additional $4,900 each year toward the pension fund. Under the current system, the teacher would have about $1,400 deducted annually for pension costs.

CPS officials say the district faces an upcoming pension payment totaling roughly $700 million.CTU files labor complaint against school board - Chicago Tribune:

Research and the pursuit of equity under ESEA | Brookings Institution

Research and the pursuit of equity under ESEA | Brookings Institution:

Research and the pursuit of equity under ESEA

Current drafts of the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) fall short of a commitment to use research to improve education. The bills—the “Student Success Act” in the House and the “Every Child Achieves Act” in the Senate—no doubt represent compromises and tradeoffs as any major legislation would. But who is arguing for less research and innovation in education?

Much of what is debated about No Child Left Behind is its accountability structure—annual tests, “annual yearly progress,” and the goal of moving every student to proficiency by 2014. But another important theme in NCLB was using “scientifically-based research.” Its steady drumbeat of “use research, use evidence, use scientific methods,” represented an embrace of education research and especially the practice of using causal methods to study program effectiveness. NCLB did not go as far as requiring research evidence as a basis for program funding, and in 2002 not much evidence would have met that standard. Related legislationthat year created the Institute of Education Sciences, which followed through on the vision of building and using evidence to improve education.

Evidence from studies showed that some of what had been thought did not prove to be true. For example, after-school programs did not improve outcomes; using education software to support teaching did not raise test scores; teacher professional development did not raise test scores; voucher programs did not raise test scores; a range of programs to promote social and emotional learning had little effect on outcomes. It seems like a list of negatives, but evidence is useful one way or the other. And, as Tom Kane has argued, more than 80 percent of clinical trials fail to show effectiveness. Why would education be different? And some things that were not known became evident: for example, parents and students attending charter schools were more satisfied with the schools but the schools themselvesranged widely in their effectiveness; math textbooks can affect math skills differently, and NCLB itself raised test scores.

Research is included in the current ESEA drafts, but to no greater extent than it was for NCLB, and in some ways, it’s to a lesser extent. The House bill substitutes a new term, “evidence based,” for NCLB’s “scientifically based.” The substitution seems innocuous, but could prove problematic because the bill does not further define “evidence.” (NCLB defined “scientifically based” in Title IX.) If a state conducts a survey and finds that many students participating in a program think it is effective, is that evidence the program is effective? Under some definitions, yes. Under others, not so much. Opinions about effects are not the same as measures of effects.

Adding a definition of evidence will clarify what meets it and what does not. There is language in the House bill that says programs that receive funding under Title II to prepare new teachers need to “reflect evidence-based research, or in the absence of a strong research base, reflect effective strategies in the field, that provide evidence that the program or activity will improve student academic achievement.” So, what are “effective strategies in the field?” How is it determined that they improve academic achievement? Would it not be “evidence-based research” that shows the practices led to improvement?

The House and Senate bills also call for evaluations. The Senate bill calls for a national evaluation of its new literacy program, an evaluation of a program that serves students in foster care, and a demonstration program of innovative assessment systems that states can pilot. That demonstration is likely to be evaluated so it is mentioned here. The House bill calls for an evaluation of the charter school program and the magnet schools program, neither of which is new. It would be the third evaluation of magnet schools.

Of course, ESEA does not have to be directive about what should be studied. It can set aside money that can be used for studies, and allow their topics and focus to emerge elsewhere. Both bills include the key clause that funds research and evaluation. It states that the Secretary of Education can set aside to use for evaluation up to 0.5 percent of funds for all except the first title. Using 2014 appropriations, the set-aside amount is roughly $35 million. IES also receives funding to carry out the National Assessment of Education Progress, to support state development of their data bases, and for other purposes such as studies of special education. The $33 million is to support studies that relate to ESEA.

This is not a lot of money for research, for three reasons. One is that research is a uniquely federal responsibility, not just for education but generally. Fiscal federalism assigns the federal government responsibility for research because states and localities have incentives to underinvest in research. Its costs accrue to them and its benefits accrue to everybody. When the federal government invests in research, costs and benefits align.

A second perspective for viewing the education-research investment as paltry is to compare it with the federal investment in the National Institutes of Health. In 2014, that investment was about $30 billion. It’s hard to argue that there is “too much” investment in health research. It’s vital to the nation’s population. But it’s also hard to argue that it is hundreds of times more important to invest in health research than education research for America’s low-income students. Education is vital to the nation’s population too. There is much more federal spending on health than on education, through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, particularly, but that is not a basis for why federal spending for health research is so much larger than education research. The federal role in supporting research is primary regardless of which level of government spends on services.

A third perspective on research funding also points to enlarging it. On its own, the K-12 public education system is static. It wants to do the same thing. Taxes flow in, students and teachers come to school in the morning, there are classes and graduation ceremonies and sports events, and it is repeated next year. The system wants to be in equilibrium, and when it is pushed out of equilibrium, it wants to get back to it.

For example, in the past decade, how states and districts evaluate the performance of their teachers has seen rapid changes. Many teachers are now being evaluated partly based on how their students score on tests. But has anything really changed? The new systems replaced previous systems believed to rate teachers too positively. Nearly all teachers were “effective.” After putting new systems in place, Rhode Island reported that 98 percent of its teachers were effective; Florida, 97 percent, New York, 96 percent. The system returned to where it was.

The point is not about teacher evaluation per se. It is that research has the potential to put energy into the system. What is thought to be best practice for teaching reading, or math, or any subject, might change if research shows that new methods improve on current methods. Or a program of social and emotional development might prove effective in reducing student behavior problems. Or an approach to teaching English to non-English speakers might prove effective in promoting their language acquisition and academic achievement. The list is nearly endless.

Of course, research needs to be conducted and disseminated, and its timeframes can seem slow to policymakers. But here is a margin for bringing innovation to a system that does not have much incentive to innovate. It seems at least as useful to push on this margin as it is to study how education is delivered in Finland and Singapore, which happened after those two countries had the top scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment. Their systems might have some attractive features, but generalizing them to a vast country with a heterogeneous population and a highly decentralized education system is problematic. (Tom Loveless has warned of the perils of “edu-tourism.”) 

America is entering a new phase in which the majority of its public school students are from low-income households. That’s about 25 million students. Suppose that for each of these students, ESEA set aside $10 a year—a dollar for each month they are in school—for federal research to improve education. That’s $250 million. It sounds like a lot of money, but the scale of the K-12 enterprise is vast and seemingly large numbers can be misleading. Comparing it to the more than $600 billion we are spending each year for K-12 education, it’s four-tenths of a percent. 

The draft ESEA legislation will be modified as it moves to the floor of the respective chambers and then to conference. Increasing funds for research could be done two ways. One would be simply to have the set-aside apply to all spending under the bill. It then would include Title I, which is larger than all the other titles combined. For the president’s 2015 budget request, the change would increase the amount set aside for research to $90 million. Or the set aside itself could be increased, to, say, three percent. It’s not getting to the one-dollar-a-month set-aside, but it’s something.

In the 13 years since NCLB was passed, we’ve seen more clearly that research is essential to improve education, just as clinical trials are essential to improve health care. A commitment to equity lies at the heart of ESEA, and spending $10 a year on research for each of America’s low-income students will help meet that commitment.Research and the pursuit of equity under ESEA | Brookings Institution:

Nanu Nanu: An Alien Evaluation | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

Nanu Nanu: An Alien Evaluation | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

Nanu Nanu: An Alien Evaluation

By Mork the Orkan



 I bet you didn’t think I was still around. I guess I “egged” you all on to believe I left Earth in 1982, but I have been here all these many years masquerading as a series of your loser presidential hopefuls. I thought I was rather funny as Michael Dukakis. The tank looked so much like a rove ranger on my native planet, Ork.

My apologies for being elected president in 2000. Who knew Chad could be so important. I thought it was a nation in Africa.

I have to admit I still actually read print newspapers like the New York Times. It makes me a bit anachronistic, but I like having multiple ways of accessing information. I was trained to learn foreign languages to save my life, so I can say I am multi-lingual, and now I can also say I am “multi-medial”.

The past few days I read three articles that taken together add to my frustration understanding of some issues I have noticed you attempting to deal with the past few years. Unlike many of you, I try to read pieces from all sides of the ideology spectrum so I have a wider range of ideas and facts to form my own opinions. I know to some humans (what I would label myself here, I suppose, if one must be labeled) that might be anathema, but it is what I was taught in Orkan schools.

Richard Atkinson and Saul Geyser’s The Big Problem With the New SAT, David Brooks’ What Is Your Purpose?, and Eduardo Porter’s What Debate On Inequality Is Missing and my observations of your society for the past 37 Earth years have led me to some rather dramatic conclusions.

Says Porter, “Over the last four decades the debate in Washington about poverty and inequality has been bogged down in a somewhat pointless, often surreal debate about the size of government and the amount spent on behalf of the poor.”

Says Brooks, “Public debate is now under moralized and over politicized. We have many shows (I guess TV?) where people argue about fiscal policy but not so many on how to find a vocation or how to measure the worth of your life. Intellectual prestige has drifted away from theologians, poets and philosophers and toward neuroscientists, economists, evolutionary biologists and big data analysts. These scholars have a lot of knowledge to bring, but they’re not in the business of offering wisdom on the ultimate questions.”

Practical wisdom should always rule knowledge, not the other way around.

Finally, says Atkinson and Geiser, “Norm-referenced” exams [are] designed primarily to rank students rather than measure what they actually know. Such exams compare students to other test takers, rather than measure their performance against a fixed standard. They are designed to produce a “bell curve” distribution among examinees, with most scoring in the middle and with sharply descending numbers at the top and bottom.”

“Shazbot.” Is that a test or a roller coaster?

“Test designers accomplish this, among other ways, by using plausible-sounding “distractors” to make multiple-choice items more difficult, requiring students to respond to a large number of items in a short space of time, and by dropping questions that too many students can answer correctly.”

That is “Namnulicy”. (Idiocy.)

Remember, I was sent here by the BIG GIANT HEAD to evaluate you. What did Nanu Nanu: An Alien Evaluation | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

12 Civil Rights Groups Oppose Opting Out. It Could Have Been 28. | deutsch29

12 Civil Rights Groups Oppose Opting Out. It Could Have Been 28. | deutsch29:

12 Civil Rights Groups Oppose Opting Out. It Could Have Been 28

On May 5, 2015, twelve civil rights groups led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights issued a statement “opposing anti-testing efforts.” In short, these groups are confronting the growing strength of the Opt Out/Resist the Test movement.

These groups are the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD), Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc. (COPAA), Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), NAACP, National Council of La Raza (NCLR), National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), National Urban League (NUL), Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), and TASH.

I wrote about their statement in this May 5, 2015, post, entitled, Opting Out Interfering with the “Civil Right” of Testing?

When I first read the May 5, 2015, statement by these 12 civil rights organizations that are defending annual testing even in the face of nationwide standardized-testing overuse and abuse, it put me in mind of another recent statement by civil rights groups in support of annual testing: This one, dated January 11, 2015, and taken from the Education Trust website. In this statement, 28 civil and human rights organizations appealed to Congress not only to retain the annual testing, but also to ask that the US secretary of education serve as the enforcer of state goals, as excerpted below:

For more than five decades, Congress has consistently recognized and acted on the need to promote fair and equal access to public schools for: children of color; children living in poverty; children with disabilities; homeless, foster and migrant children; children in detention; children still learning English; Native children; and girls as well as boys. Much progress has been made, but educational inequality continues to quash dreams, erode our democracy, and hinder economic growth. This federal role must be honored and maintained in a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which must ensure the following: …

VI. States implement and enforce the law.  The Secretary of Education approves plans, ensures state implementation through oversight and enforcement, and takes action when states fail to meet their obligations to close achievement gaps and provide equal educational opportunity for all students.

I will leave those who wish to do so to read the entire January 2015 statement signed by these 28 civil and human rights organizations. However, let me note that in the 12 Civil Rights Groups Oppose Opting Out. It Could Have Been 28. | deutsch29:

Charter school founder, company agree to pay $3 million to settle lawsuit #CharterSchoolsWeek

Charter school founder, company agree to pay $3 million to settle lawsuit - The Washington Post:

Charter school founder, company agree to pay $3 million to settle lawsuit

 Charter school founder Kent Amos and his management company have agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged he used the company to divert taxpayer funds from the school for his personal gain.

A consent agreement was filed in court Friday by the District of Columbia, Amos, the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter Schools, and the management company, of which Amos is president. According to the agreement — which is expected to become effective as soon as a judge signs it — the money will go to the school or to its “successors.”

[Read the settlement agreement here.]

Community Academy, established in 1998, is one of the oldest and largest charter schools in the city. Amos, a former corporate executive, founded the school with a mission of helping children and parents in poor neighborhoods.

Last summer, the D.C. attorney general alleged that millions of dollars had been diverted from the school for personal gain, contrary to the school’s nonprofit status. Amos and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Since 2004, the school paid more than $14 million to the company, according to court records. Management fees rose while costs declined, because the company employed fewer people and duties were shifting to school employees, records show.

Amos profited most in recent years, according to court documents. He received about $1.15 million in income in 2012 from the management company, according to federal tax records. In 2013, he received $1.38 million, including $103,000 paid to his wife, who was also listed as an employee.

In February, the D.C. Public Charter School Board voted unanimously to revoke the s chool’s charter effective July 1, citing a pattern of fiscal mismanagement. Last month, a Superior Court judge upheld that decision.

In a deal brokered by Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer C. Niles, the school’s campuses will be divided up and transferred to other entities starting next school year. One campus will be transferred to D.C. Public Schools, a second campus will go to the DC Bilingual Public Charter School, and a third campus and online school will transfer to Friendship Public Charter Schools.

Some of the proceeds from the settlement could be apportioned to the new schools.Charter school founder, company agree to pay $3 million to settle lawsuit - The Washington Post:

The settlement does not resolve a separate lawsuit filed against two members of the school’s board of trustees, Ernest Green Jr. and Maurice Sykes. The complaint says that the trustees received money or expected to receive money from the school’s management company but that they failed to disclose their business dealings and acted to further the interests of Amos at the expense of the school.

LAUSD college prep rule puts nearly 75% of 10th graders' diplomas at risk - LA Times

LAUSD college prep rule puts nearly 75% of 10th graders' diplomas at risk - LA Times:

LAUSD college prep rule puts nearly 75% of 10th graders' diplomas at risk

As many as three-quarters of Los Angeles 10th-graders are at risk of being denied diplomas by graduation because they are not on track to meet rigorous new college prep class requirements.

This has prompted some in the L.A. Unified School District, including Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, to suggest reconsidering the requirements, which were approved a decade ago to better prepare students for college. The plan came after years of complaints that the nation's second-largest school system was failing to help underprivileged students become eligible for and succeed in college.

In an interview, Cortines said the effort is laudable, but that it would be unfair to penalize students who otherwise could graduate.

"I do believe the goal is a good one, but we need to be realistic," Cortines said. Enforcing the plan is "not practical, realistic or fair to the students of 2017. I don't think we've provided the supports to the schools."

But the college prep requirements still have significant backing within the district and among community activists, who say L.A. Unified must do a better job helping students pass the challenging classes.

L.A. Unified received national attention with its college prep goals, which were approved in 2005. The district allotted 12 years to get there — the entire education of a child who entered the system at that time.

Students in the class of 2017 must earn a C grade or better in a set of courses aimed at making all seniors eligible to apply to the University of California and California State systems. These include four years of English and three years of math, including geometry and intermediate algebra.

Overall, officials said, students have been better served because of the mandate. For one thing, the full set of college preparatory classes has become available at all high schools.

Moreover, the percentage of students completing the minimum college prep curriculum has increased from 15% to 28%, said activists who reviewed district data.

And graduation rates have increased. Last year, the four-year graduation rate for 9th graders was 67% — the latest in a string of improving statistics.

Fewer than half of these graduates, however, would have met the 2017 standard.

Among about 37,000 students remaining in the class of 2017, only 26% are on track to graduate and 17% are repeating 9th grade, according to district research.

The success of students varies widely. At Washington Preparatory High School, for example, 29% of the class of 2017 are on track. At Mendez High School, by contrast, 77% are on schedule.

The push for mandatory college-prep courses was based on the apparent success of San Jose Unified, which had adopted a similar policy. But its gains in college-prep rates were later determined to be inflated by an accounting error. A 2013 Times review of the data showed that most San Jose students never qualified to apply to a state college.

L.A. Unified immediately fell behind in its efforts but stuck to its timeline. Former Supt. John Deasy, who resigned in October, repeatedly insisted that requiring students to get a C or better in these classes was necessary for a diploma to beLAUSD college prep rule puts nearly 75% of 10th graders' diplomas at risk - LA Times:

NEA - Social Justice Activist Award

NEA - Social Justice Activist Award:

Social Justice Activist Award

        Boyd Bosma                    Jose Lara                             Jose Vilson

Members of the National Education Association have a long and proud history of social justice activism. Education advocacy and social justice advocacy go hand in hand, as an increasingly diverse kaleidoscope of students and educators must feel welcome in our public schools. Every day educators take extraordinary action to show leadership on social justice issues in and out of the classroom.

The social justice activist award will be presented to one exceptional member who demonstrates the ability to lead, organize and engage educators, parents, and the community to advocate on social justice issues that impact the lives of students, fellow educators and the communities they serve.

Read the biographies of the nominees below. Then cast your vote. Only one vote per member will be counted.

Nominees for the 2015 Social Justice Activist Award 

Boyd BosmaFrom his days as a Michigan classroom teacher and civil rights pioneer to the present, Boyd Bosma has maintained his commitment to social justice.Dr. Boyd Bosma was a teacher leader in Michigan prior to serving much of his professional career with the National Education Association in the NEA Human Relations Center, an early precursor to the Department of Human and Civil Rights.  He was a social justice change maker—a courageous pioneer of NEA policies and programs supporting civil and human rights in education at a time of enormous resistance to changing the status quo.

Dr. Boyd’s most notable accomplishments include leading efforts to end segregated membership requirements in NEA-affiliated state associations and the merger of black and white NEA affiliates; organizing the National Committee of Educators for Civil Rights; and writing and leading the adoption of the NEA Resolution 12 amendment requiring the merger and integration of NEA local and state affiliates. 

Jose Lara

Social studies teacher Jose Lara’s successful campaign to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in Los Angeles schools has inspired school districts across the nation.Jose Lara is a social studies teacher, vice president of the El Rancho Unified School Board, Dean at Santee Education Center (an LA Unified high school), and a member of the United Teachers Los Angeles board. A dedicated social justice activist, Lara has organized parents, educators, and students around issues of educational justice in our public schools.

Most recently, Lara formed the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition and led the campaign to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in the Los Angeles Unified School District—the nation’s second largest—last fall. After a successful vote, school districts and states across the country are beginning to pass similar resolutions.

Jose Vilson

A New York City math teacher and innovative online activist for social justice, Vilson has been a tireless advocate for public school students and communities of color.José Luis Vilson is a math educator for a middle school in the Inwood / Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, New York. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in mathematics education from the City College of New York. He is a committed writer, web designer, and father and an outstanding activist and leader in the area of social justice and education.

Vilson’s efforts to raise the voices of people of color in education-related matters via online activism has resulted in the formation of the influential group #educolor. Vilson’s book, This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class and Education, has been instrumental in broadening the scope of discourse in education.

Nominations Closed.

Voting Ends May 18, 2015

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us atHCRActivists@nea.org

Cast your vote for NEA’s Social Justice Activist AwardNEA - Social Justice Activist Award:

NPE Response to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Statement on Opting Out

PRESS RELEASE: Network for Public Education Response to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Statement on Opting Out – The Network For Public Education:

Network for Public Education Response to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Statement on Opting Out

Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights led 11 civil rights groups into a national disagreement with students who have exercised their constitutional political free speech rights and chosen to opt-out of high-stakes testing.

The Network for Public Education supports those who choose to opt out, because we believe these tests are now causing harm to students, and to the cause of educational equity. Seattle teacher Jesse Hagopian has written a response to The Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights’ statement, which the Network for Public Education shares here. He states, “High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish students of color.”

We support opting out of high stakes tests because:

• There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap”.
• These tests, particularly those associated with the Common Core, have become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
• These tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
• Instead the Common Core exams are being used as a political weapon to claim huge numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.

Thus, the notion that subjecting students to high-stakes tests is a “civil right” is inherently misguided.

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and NPE board member stated, “The alleged benefit of No Child Left Behind and national required annual high stakes testing was to unveil the achievement gaps, and by doing so, close them. After more than a decade of high-stakes testing this never happened. Instead, thousands of neighborhood schools— the anchors of communities, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods — were closed and their students sent to another low performing and poorly resourced school much further away from their home.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights argued that data obtained through standardized tests are “the only available, consistent, and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes.” This statement is completely false. There is reliable disaggregated national data available from NAEP. There are a number of student outcomes available to consider the success of students, schools, districts, states and the nation. More importantly, we must pay closer attention to data that demonstrate the differences in opportunity between schools.

While persisting inequality between schools is our real challenge, the political framing supported by testing is instead a focus on the failure of our students and teachers in our public system. This rhetoric is then linked to school “reform” policies that have made the real agenda very clear—continuing to underfund schools and replace our locally controlled public school systems with privately controlled schools. Private control allows the opportunity to profit from equally under resourced and poor-performing charters, for-profit on-line schools, and vouchers for private schools (which opt-out of testing). Without democratic control, these schools are free to create a constant churn of temporary teachers whose work is largely reduced to worksheets and canned software programs for test preparation.

The Seattle NAACP recently urged parents to opt out of the SBAC test, and stated:

Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants as lesser—while systematically underfunding their schools—has a long and ugly history.

It is true we need accountability measures, but that should start with politicians be accountable to fully funding education and ending the opportunity gap. The costs tied to the test this year will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. If the State really wants students to achieve academic performance at higher levels these dollars should be put in our classrooms and used for our children’s academic achievement, instead of putting dollars in the pockets of test developers.

The use of high-stakes tests has become part of the problem, rather than a solution. We reiterate our support for parents and students who choose to exercise their political free speech and opt out of high stakes tests, and call on our nation’s leaders to shift policies away from these tests.PRESS RELEASE: Network for Public Education Response to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Statement on Opting Out – The Network For Public Education: