Parents, educators nationwide object to new Common Core assessments (links) | OregonLive com

Parents, educators nationwide object to new Common Core assessments (links) | OregonLive.com:

Parents, educators nationwide object to new Common Core assessments (links)

Tests linked to new Common Core State Standards made headlines across the nation last week. 

Starting this spring students will take new and more rigorous exams aligned with Common Core State Standards, adopted by Oregon in 2010. The exams have sparked a debate about standardized testing and parent's right to opt their student out. 

Here are a few headlines we found: 

Principal: 'There comes a time when rules must be broken.... That time is now.'- The Washington Post published a submission by an award-winning high school principal that called for parents to opt their children out of taking standardized tests. 

About 100,000 Ohio kids have tried the new Common Core exams this week, with mixed reviews- Last week Ohio became the first state to give students a Common Core test. Ohio administers the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or PARCC exam, and districts reported some technical issues. Some students took the tests with pencil and paper. 

Portland teachers union resolution objects to new Smarter Balanced test- The Portland Association of Teachers approved a resolution opposing plans to conduct the Smarter Balanced exam in Oregon schools this spring. The resolution followed a demonstration at a school board meeting that encouraged parents to opt out. 

NJEA launches ad campaign against PARCC, Common Core- The New Jersey Education Association released four videos criticizing standardized tests. The campaign will run on network television in New York and Philadelphia and on cable networks in New Jersey. 

States start responding to backlash against standardized testing in public schools- The Associated Press has coverage of objections in multiple states, including Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

If you'd like to check out the Smarter Balanced assessment yourself, try our sample test. 

--Laura Frazier

lfrazier@oregonian.com
503-294-4035
@frazier_laura

Parents, educators nationwide object to new Common Core assessments (links) | OregonLive.com:

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

SO YOU SAY: No Child Left Behind and testing help hold schools accountable - LA Times

No Child Left Behind and testing help hold schools accountable - LA Times:



Op-Ed No Child Left Behind and testing help hold schools accountable

Tell Congress: Vote NO on H.R. 5 – The Student Success Act

The controversial education law known as No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization, and amid the nuances under debate one question stands out: Will pressures from the left and right force the federal government to abandon its annual, statewide testing requirements?

When enacted into law in 2002, NCLB had widespread, bipartisan backing including support from President George W. Bush and Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy . Nonetheless, it had numerous creaky provisions, not least of which were the testing provisions that held schools accountable for student achievement.

Its measure of whether a school was failing was too bizarre for most people to understand and placed schools with the most challenged students at a disadvantage. Other mandates were equally meaningless. Giving students at failing schools a choice among other schools in their district simply shuffled children around the city. Requiring after-school programs did nothing to improve the school day itself.

All such provisions were potentially up for revision in 2007, but Congress couldn't agree on how to bring the law up to date. As a fix, Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, waived for most states the law's most onerous provisions. Still, the administration continues to support testing every student in math and reading in grades three through eight and again in high school.

Now, the new Republican Congress is making another effort to revise NCLB,and tests are in the crosshairs. Unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, oppose them for fear the data will be used to evaluate teachers. Conservatives fear tests will be used to impose "progressive" Common Core standards, which are backed by the White House and 

 

Tell Congress: Vote NO on H.R. 5 – The Student Success Act

Bronx Principal Jamaal Bowman Debunks Common Charter School Myths- With A Brooklyn Accent

With A Brooklyn Accent: Bronx Principal Jamaal Bowman Debunks Common Charter School Myths:

Bronx Principal Jamaal Bowman Debunks Common Charter School Myths

Please allow me to indulge for a moment. First, good schools are good schools. I don't care what we call them. The most important thing in a child's life after a parent is a good teacher, coach, or mentor. When I say good schools, I don't mean schools that simply have good test scores. I'm speaking of schools that get good scores, as well as develop the character and passions of their students toward self actualization.

Allow me to debunk a few charter school myths. I don't know if this applies to all charter schools but definitely the ones I have some experience with. First let me say that studies show if a parent is savvy and passionate about education, regardless of race, class, or educational background, their child is more likely to graduate high school and college. Charters (at least the ones I have experience with), make sure that parents prove how serious they are before even giving their child a chance of getting in. For example, one charter that I know, mandates (not using this word lightly), that parents attend 5-6 meetings before even entertaining the possibility of the child making it to the lottery. These are obviously parents that value education in the home. If parents miss one meeting, no lottery. On the other hand, district schools have to take everyone. The savvy parent AND the struggling parent without meeting mandates. A parent can go through an entire school year without attending a meeting and the child is guaranteed a spot in a district school.
Further, in case you didn't know, parents also sign contracts in many charters to ensure homework is done, meetings are attended, and certain behavioral execrations are met. If the parent or child breaks the contract, the child can be kicked out of school. I know. I've seen it done while "interning" at a charter school.

Lastly, charters can fire teachers and have extremely high turnover rates. From my conversations and observations of charter schools, I've heard many of the policies and procedures be called "inhumane." This could be why so many teachers can't last anymore than two or three years in many charters. Ironically, these charters serve as a perfect pipeline for TFA --mocking two year commitment.

Based on what I know, as they are currently constituted, charters, TFA, and yearly standardized testing are wrong for our high need communities. We should stop funding them all unless they agree to make major adjustments to how they do business. Why? Because that money can be spent on giving all students a quality holistic education. Charters, TFA, and yearly testing infuse anxiety, disunity, and even worst, standardization into the psyche of society. They are trying to recreate a 21st century idea of "empire." Keep the masses, and "lower class" under control while the elite continue to rule. A standardized mindset will always be controlled. Whereas in schools like Riverdale Country School, there are not state standardized assessment, no TFA With A Brooklyn Accent: Bronx Principal Jamaal Bowman Debunks Common Charter School Myths:

Anti-democratic Emergency Manager? Check! State takeover of schools? Check! New Jersey adopts the Michigan GOP model. | Eclectablog

Anti-democratic Emergency Manager? Check! State takeover of schools? Check! New Jersey adopts the Michigan GOP model. | Eclectablog:

Anti-democratic Emergency Manager? Check! State takeover of schools? Check! New Jersey adopts the Michigan GOP model.

by Eclectablog on FEBRUARY 23, 2015 in EMERGENCY MANAGER LAW, EMERGENCY MANAGERS

10

In the spring of 2011 when I first began sounding the alarm bells at Eclectablog about the undemocratic Emergency Manager legislation that was quickly passed by the newly-elected, Republican-controlled state legislature, I warned that this was not a “Michigan only” problem. I have said repeatedly that Michigan is only the beta testing ground for an agenda and a way of governing that will be spread to other states if it is not stopped.

In Michigan, despite plurality of voters rejecting emergency management at the ballot box in 2012, we failed to stop it. And now, as predicted, the show is going on the road. It first got started in Indiana where in 2012, their legislature passed House Bill 1192 – an Emergency Management bill – which was signed into law by their Republican governor.

Then, last month, New Jersey governorChris Christie appointed an Emergency Manager for Atlantic City saying, “I can’t wait any longer. We need more aggressive action, and that’s the action I’m taking today.” He even brought in former Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr as a paid consultant.

Atlantic City has seen its tax base implode with the closing of several large casinos. As in Detroit, the resulting financial catastrophe has been used as an excuse for the state to take over the city, bypassing the locally elected officials.

This past week, Gov. Christie went a step farther down the anti-democratic pathway by assigning a “fiscal monitor” to the cash-strapped Atlantic City school system. Rather than finding new ways to fund education in Atlantic City, like in Michigan the answer is to simply cut spending:

The Christie administration yesterday announced it would send Gary McCartney, a retired superintendent from South Brunswick, to lead a team of financial experts to start scouring the district’s budget for savings in the face of a drastic drop in local tax revenues, largely due to the collapse of casinos in the city.

Commissioner of Education David C. Hespe said in a statement, “It became clear that the best way for Atlantic City and the state to collaboratively address the school’s fiscal woes would be for the state to establish an ongoing presence in the district itself. It’s a commitment that we’re proud to make.”

This is a classic application of what author Naomi Klein calls “The Shock Doctrine” where calamities are exploited for political gain by those in power:Anti-democratic Emergency Manager? Check! State takeover of schools? Check! New Jersey adopts the Michigan GOP model. | Eclectablog:

Sample Size And Volatility In School Accountability Systems | Shanker Institute

Sample Size And Volatility In School Accountability Systems | Shanker Institute:

Sample Size And Volatility In School Accountability Systems

by Matthew Di Carlo -- February 24, 2015

It is generally well-known that sample size has an important effect on measurement and, therefore, incentives in test-based school accountability systems.

Within a given class or school, for example, there may be students who are sick on testing day, or get distracted by a noisy peer, or just have a bad day. Larger samples attenuate the degree to which unusual results among individual students (or classes) can influence results overall. In addition, schools draw their students from a population (e.g., a neighborhood). Even if the characteristics of the neighborhood from which the students come stay relatively stable, the pool of students entering the school (or tested sample) can vary substantially from one year to the next, particularly when that pool is small.

Classes and schools tend to be quite small, and test scores vary far more between- than within-student (i.e., over time). As a result, testing results often exhibit a great deal of nonpersistent variation (Kane and Staiger 2002). In other words, much of the differences in test scores between schools, and over time, is fleeting, and this problem is particularly pronounced in smaller schools. One very simple, though not original, way to illustrate this relationship is to compare the results for smaller and larger schools.

Schools vary widely in size. Some are large, with hundreds or thousands of tested students, while others serve just a few dozen students or less. As a rule, test results for smaller schools will be more volatile over time. That is, smaller schools will exhibit larger increases or decreases, positive or negative.

In the scatterplot below, each dot is a New York City school. The vertical axis is schools’ change in their overall proficiency rates (positive or negative) between 2013 and 2014. The horizontal axis is the number of tested students (i.e., sample size) at each school (averaged across both years).

The “sideways cone” shape of the dots indicates that the changes among larger schools – i.e., the dots further to the right of the plot – are considerably more modest than those of smaller schools. Just to give a better idea of these differences, consider that roughly one in four schools in this sample have sample sizes of fewer than 200 students, while almost one in five (17 percent) of schools have samples of 500 or more students. The mean absolute change (positive or negative) for the former schools (fewer than 200 tested students) is  6.7 percentage points, which is almost 50 percent larger than the average absolute change (4.5 percentage points) among the latter schools ( samples of 500 or more students).*

In other words, again, smaller schools exhibit much larger year-to-year changes, whether positive or Sample Size And Volatility In School Accountability Systems | Shanker Institute:

School spending per student drops for the second year in a row - The Hechinger Report

School spending per student drops for the second year in a row - The Hechinger Report:

School spending per student drops for the second year in a row

Big Education Ape: #STOPHR5 US Representatives on Twitter
 Find your Member Hit them with a Vote No on HR5 Tweet
http://bit.ly/17s6O1b

Despite occasional taxpayer revolts, the United States has a history of spending more and more each year on public education. From 1996 to 2008, spending per student, on average, steadily climbed at least 1 percent a year, after adjusting for inflation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). But newer data is showing that this seemingly inexorable upward climb hit a plateau with the 2008 recession, and then began declining in 2010.

The most recent data, from the 2011-12 school year, released by NCES on Jan. 29, 2015, show that average per-pupil spending fell 2.8 percent, to $10,667, from the previous school year. That’s the second year in a row that per-student spending fell. In the previous year, 2010-11, per-pupil spending fell 1.6 percent from a year earlier — the first time that spending growth reversed and began declining. (These annual spending figures don’t include capital expenditures on buildings and renovations, which can spike from year to year.)

Per-pupil school spending fell by 1 percent or more in 37 states in the 2011-12 school year from 2010-11

(Use arrows to navigate and click on any state to see student spending data. Interactive map created by Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report. Source data: Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 2011-12, NCES)

This $10,667 is an average figure that includes all public elementary, middle and high schools across the country. Some places, such as Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston, spent more than $19,000 per student in 2011-12. By contrast, average per-student spending in the state of Utah was just $6,441. The figures aren’t adjusted for cost-of-living differences. So you’d expect higher costs in pricier cities.

Not all states saw a decline in spending. Vermont boosted its education spending per student by 10 percent in 2011-12 from 2010-11. Both Delaware and New Jersey raised their spending per student, too. Among the 37 states that saw at least a 1 percent decline in School spending per student drops for the second year in a row - The Hechinger Report:

Virtual Preschool: Yes, That's Now a Real Option - Digital Education - Education Week

Virtual Preschool: Yes, That's Now a Real Option - Digital Education - Education Week:

Virtual Preschool: Yes, That's Now a Real Option

By Benjamin Herold on February 2, 2015 4:32 PM

Now an option for parents of young children: a "virtual" preschool with digital learning materials, activity guides, learning analytics, and "homeroom teachers," all accessible online through your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Really. This is not satire (as was the case when The Onion lampooned the notion in an eerily prescient story a few months ago.)

"We call it a virtual school, because we deliver the curriculum and the content and everything else through online tools," said Dan Yang, the female founder of VINCI Education, a four-year old company with headquarters in Ottawa, Canada; North Andover, Mass.; and Hong Kong. "To be honest, we haven't had anybody who has said, 'That's a bad idea.'" 

Early-childhood education experts consulted by Education Week offered a different take.

"My first reaction was concern," said Kyle Snow, the research director for the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a Washington-based nonprofit.  

"There are some red flags for me," said Seeta Pai, the vice president of research at Common Sense Media, a San Francisco nonprofit.

"Honestly, my first reaction is this preys on anxious parents with money to burn," said Lisa Guernsey, the director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Here's how the virtual preschool, known as ClassVINCI Home, is supposed to work:

Parents sign up for a subscription service ranging from $80 to $645 annually. All packages include weekly electronic delivery of digital books, songs, and games, as well as an activity guide for parents. Children are expected to use the digital learning games about 30 minutes per week. Parents are expected to do about 30 minutes worth of activities per week with their child, plus read the book together with their child every day. The child's work is tracked through the company's online learning management system. Parents who purchase the more expensive packages receive up to 90 minutes per month of time to interact online with a "trained and specialized" teacher who will discuss the child's progress, answer the parent's questions, and offer advice and customized activities and suggestions.

The company's marketing materials stress skill development and readiness for kindergarten and the Common Core State Standards (From the website: "Let's face it. You are not sure about how well your child will be doing in school. Now you can gain that confidence by preparing early.")

But Yang said the company's actual practice is heavily grounded in Montessori methods, which focus on fostering each individual child's interests and natural inclination to learn, often in the context of practical life skills and hands-on play. In addition to a digital game, she said, suggested activities might include using a bucket of water and scooping tools, to promote fine motor skills, or putting strawberries on different plates to help teach one-to-one numerical correspondence.

"It's not really about making a math genius at two years old, but to show parents what sequential learning can look like," Yang said. "The purpose is to provide parents with guidance on how to interact with their children."

VINCI also operates an international chain of brick-and-mortar early childhood centers, including three franchises in North America and more than 50 in China. Yang said those centers blend Virtual Preschool: Yes, That's Now a Real Option - Digital Education - Education Week:

at play

Governors Rick Scott and Bruce Rauner: Sociopaths | Reclaim Reform

Governors Rick Scott and Bruce Rauner: Sociopaths | Reclaim Reform:

Governors Rick Scott and Bruce Rauner: Sociopaths

Posted on February 23, 2015by Ken Previti

“They are not my problem. …(programs) exist to save those few who can be saved, not to serve all kinds of kids.” (Read both Diane Ravitch and today’s Daily Kos.)

Gov, Rick Scott of Florida said the same thing as Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois. With ALEC writing legislation financed by some of the wealthiest people and corporations in America, this doesn’t at first seem surprising, but…

Both men were condemning young children as being undeserving and unworthy of receiving either a decent education or basic healthcare. By definition, these men aresociopaths.

Governors Chris Christie, John Kasich, Governors Rick Scott and Bruce Rauner: Sociopaths | Reclaim Reform:

Dear Governor Cuomo - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

Dear Governor Cuomo

By:  Veronica Gaboury

Originally posted on her blog here -http://vsstuff.blogspot.com/2015/02/dear-governor-cuomo.html?m=1

While this might be too long of a letter to actually send, not sure he reads what he receives anyway, I think it is something that needs to be said. Or at least I need to say it.  

To Governor Cuomo,   

What can I say that others more eloquent and knowledgeable haven't already said?

My story.

I am the mother of 4 children. Chris is 27. He graduated from NY public schools and attended Bennington College in Vermont. He now works in Washington DC at a job he loves. Nick is 25, almost 26. He graduated from NY public schools. He attended the University of Rochester. Alexandra is 10 years-old, she is in 5th grade and she has gone to Miller Hill Elementary School her entire education career except that year in our local pre-school. Katharina is 8 and she has spent more time in educational programs than any of my other children had at this point in their lives. Her path has been different.

My first 3 children have always been full of curiosity, they loved to learn and had wonderful educators who helped bring them along to their next level of education. Many times that level was ahead of their peers and ahead of grade level, but these teachers were not concerned with keeping students "on the same page" or on "test prep," nor were they concerned with a formal formula curriculum, so these educators helped to feed my children's curiosity and allowed them to keep growing at their own paces, which further encouraged them to have curiosity and love of learning. It's a great natural cycle.

And these educators did it for all of their students. They met the students where they were and brought them as far they could. Not everyone reached the same end points...but they learned as much as they each were capable of. They had individualized instruction 

Badass Teachers Association:

ON EXCELLENT SHEEP: OUR NEW RULING CLASS | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

ON EXCELLENT SHEEP: OUR NEW RULING CLASS | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:



ON EXCELLENT SHEEP: OUR NEW RULING CLASS

I taught for a long time in three very different high schools, one of them a highly prestigious public school in a highly prestigious community. I met very different kinds of students from all walks of life, economic conditions, and various ethnic groups. However, there was always one group of students that always intrigued me, but not necessarily for positive reasons. Most of these particular students came from, surprise, that highly prestigious and competitive high school from that highly prestigious and competitive community. I called them “excellent sheep”.

They took as many AP courses as they could accumulate without any love of the subjects. They did all the same extracurriculars. They were tutored to get the highest SAT scores possible. They either had coaches or had “ghost”writers help them write their college essays They had all figured out how to play the academic game of success without taking risks but many couldn’t do simple tasks like get on a commuter train to NYC. These students were the epitome of a saying one of my “regular kids” put on a  t-shirt we made up one year: “Be Different. Just Like Everyone Else.” They followed the script to get the highest grades, the highest SAT scores, and to get them into the most elite universities in the country. And get in they did.

Then, while working as a Fordham University mentor with 19 TFA corps members for four years I discovered the same thing. Although more diverse than most think, several of my corps members also fit this description. From Ivies or other Ivy like colleges, they had always been top students because they had played the game by the rules, gotten top scores, and thought of themselves as “ the best and brightest”. I always asked best and brightest what? They were often the ones who had the most trouble adapting to the far less than perfect conditions in the schools to which they were assigned, and were the most rigid in following the TFA line and had the hardest time in following the more practical wisdom I was providing them based on real experience.

In fact, in one of my earliest blogs I claimed that there were many corps members who, in the spirit of extracurricular activities accumulation, saw TFA membership as a similar escapade to many of the things they did while in HS (pay to be in a program that built a school in Costa Rica) to get them into the elite college of their choice. However this time it was to get them into the graduate program or job of choice. I said of them, “They would have gone to the Peace Corps in Africa, except their mothers didn’t let them.”

Last week, I read William Deresiewicz’s, Xcellent Sheep: The Miseducation of The American Elite. The title certainly sounded familiar. It was a phrase I had used years ago. Deresiewicz taught for years at Yale, one of the top Universities in the country. I taught for 18 years at Scarsdale High School, one of the top public high schools and Yale feeder schools in the country. He wrote about the same type of students I had taught and some of the TFA corps members I had worked with who did not stay in teaching, but have put ON EXCELLENT SHEEP: OUR NEW RULING CLASS | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing:

Kentucky Education Report | A Kentucky Teacher Talks Poverty and Testing

Kentucky Education Report | A Kentucky Teacher Talks Poverty and Testing:

A KENTUCKY TEACHER TALKS POVERTY AND TESTING

by ANDY SPEARS

ntucky Education Report is always looking to highlight teacher voices on education policy issues. Too often, education debates leave out input from the frontline players: The teachers.

Today, teacher Tiffany Dunn shares with us her thoughts on two key issues: Poverty and testing.

About Tiffany Dunn:

I am a parent whose child (3rd grade) attends one of the highest performing elementary schools in the state (Kenwood Station – OCPS) and a teacher in one of the lowest performing middle schools in the state (Lassiter Middle – JCPS).  I am in my 6th year of teaching and this is my 2nd year as an ESL teacher at Lassiter, a “low performing” school.

How she became an education activist:

I became involved in education activism after starting my first year at Lassiter.  Going into the position (after seeing their KPREP scores – oh my!), I thought “great, I’ll stay here one year and get the heck out as soon as I can apply for a transfer!” BUT I soon found out that Lassiter is an amazing school with so many wonderful kids…poor kids.  I found out that Lassiter has many great teachers, that the reason for the “low performance” wasn’t the teachers, it was the socioeconomic status of our students.  Who knew all the bad teachers didn’t just congregate at all the “low performing” schools?!?!  Now I’m telling anyone who will listen about the real crisis in education, poverty.

How poverty impacts the kids Tiffany teaches:
Lassiter is over 85% free and reduced lunch.  We have a large ESL/LEP population.  These kids are at a disadvantage.  Most of them started school behind and they will stay behind because of the conditions they live in.  They worry.  They worry about food.  They worry about utility bills.  They worry about clothing.  No child thinking Kentucky Education Report | A Kentucky Teacher Talks Poverty and Testing:

The Great Equity Test | EduShyster

The Great Equity Test | EduShyster:



The Great Equity Test

  

Xian Franzinger Barrett argues that accountability without equity means more inequity…

CHICAGO TEACHER XIAN BARRETT.

EduShyster: OK—I need you to set me straight here. Is ensuring that we continue to test kids in high-needs schools the civil rights issue of our time? Or is striking a blow against too much testing in high needs schools the civil rights issue of our time? Or is civil rights actually the civil rights issue of our time?

Xian Franzinger Barrett: The people who are talking about this genuinely on both sides are talking about the same thing, it’s just that the problem they’re trying to address is pervasive and terrible. This idea that we’re unseen and unheard unless we’re measured has a basis in history and reality, so I think it’s important that we don’t lose that. But anyone who says *you’re not going to be acknowledged unless you’re tested* is either too pessimistic or they’re racist. We also have to acknowledge that the very fact that people aren’t being supported or treated equitably unless they’re measured is racism. No one would ever say: *the rich kids in this private school—we don’t have a good measurement of them so we’re just not going to give them an education.* That’s just ridiculous.

EduShyster: That was only my first question and I’m pretty sure that already you have caused a number of heads to explode. So let’s keep going. You argue that accountability without equity actually ends up deepening inequity. Explain.

Franzinger Barrett: You think of that old expression about how when one person gets a cold, the other folks get pneumonia. If you mandate testing, it’s going to cause a mild disruption in most privileged communities, and it’s going to utterly decimate The Great Equity Test | EduShyster: