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Monday, March 23, 2015

Messer/Polis Student Privacy Bill Protects Commercial Interests of Vendors not Kids | Student Privacy Matters

Messer/Polis Student Privacy Bill Protects Commercial Interests of Vendors not Kids | Student Privacy Matters:



MESSER/POLIS STUDENT PRIVACY BILL PROTECTS COMMERCIAL INTERESTS OF VENDORS NOT KIDS


Contact: Rachael Stickland, 303-204-1272, info@studentprivacymatters.org
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Messer/Polis Student Privacy Bill Protects
Commercial Interests of Vendors not Kids
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The bill just introduced by Representatives Messer and Polis addresses few if any of the concerns that parents have concerning the way their children’s privacy and safety have been put at risk by the widespread disclosure of their personal data by schools, districts and vendors. 
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Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy said, “The bill doesn’t require any parental notification or consent before schools share personal data with third parties, or address any of the current weaknesses in FERPA.  It wouldn’t stop the surveillance of students by Pearson or other companies, or the collection and sharing of huge amounts of highly sensitive student information, as inBloom was designed to do.” 
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“All the bill does is ban online services utilized by schools from targeting ads to kids – or selling their personal information, though companies could still advertise to kids through their services and or sell their products to parents, as long as this did not result from the personal information gathered through their services.   Even that narrow prohibition is incomplete, as vendors would still be allowed to target ads to students as long as the ads were selected based on information gathered via student’s single online session or visit – with the information not retained over time.”
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Rachael Stickland, Colorado co-chair of the Parent Coalition: “The bill doesn’t bar many uses of personal information that parents are most concerned about, including vendor redisclosures to other third parties, or data-mining to improve their products or create profiles that could severely limit student’s success by stereotyping them and limiting their opportunities.”
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Other critical weaknesses of the bill:
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  • Parents would not be able to delete any of the personal information obtained by a vendor from their children, even upon request, unless the data resulted from an “optional” feature of the service chosen by the parent and not the district or school.
  • The bill creates a huge loophole that actually could weaken existing privacy law by allowing vendors to collect, use or disclose personal student information in a manner contrary to their own privacy policy or their contract with the school or district, as long as the company obtains consent from the school or district.  It is not clear in what form that consent could be given, whether in an email or phone call, but even if a parent was able to obtain the school’s contract or see the vendor’s privacy policy, it could provide false reassurance if it turns out the school or district had secretly given permission to the company to ignore it.
  • Vendors would be able to redisclose students’ personal information to an unlimited number of additional third parties, as long as these disclosures were made for undefined “K12 purposes.”
  • Vendors would be able to redisclose individual student’s de-identified or aggregate information for any reason or to anyone, without restrictions or safeguards to ensure that the child’s information could not be easily re-identified through widely available methods.
Rachael Stickland concludes: “This bill reads as though it was written to suit the purposes of for-profit vendors, and not in the interests of children.  It should be rejected by anyone committed to the goal of protecting student privacy from commercial gain and exploitation.”

Privacy bill wouldn't stop data mining of kids

When President Barack Obama called earlier this year for a new federal law to protect student privacy in an era when children increasingly learn online, he called the concept “pretty straightforward.”
But the bipartisan bill to be introduced Monday — which was drafted in close collaboration with the White House — has proved anything but.

The bill lets education technology companies continue to collect huge amounts of intimate information on students, compile it into profiles of their aptitudes and attitudes — and then mine that data for commercial gain. It permits the companies to sell personal information about students to colleges and employers, and potentially to military recruiters as well.
And it empowers schools to authorize even wider disclosure of student data, without notifying parents or seeking their consent, according to a near-final draft reviewed by POLITICO.
At least one education technology company, Microsoft, already has endorsed the bill. And the chief sponsors, Reps. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.), said they’re confident it will quickly earn bipartisan support in both chambers; Polis said he believed it would sail through the House under a suspension vote, with limited debate and no amendments.
Privacy advocates and parent activists, however, are crushed.
“This bill doesn’t fulfill President Obama’s stated commitment to ensure that data collected in the educational context is used only for educational purposes,” said Khaliah Barnes, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s student privacy project.
Barnes said “huge loopholes” and “escape clauses” sprinkled throughout the 18-page draft undermine the positive elements of the bill.
Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, went further: “This bill reads as though it was written to suit the interests of for-profit vendors and not the interests of children,” she said.
The bill comes at a time of increasing anxiety among parents, teachers and school administrators about the proliferation of classroom technology — and the lack of transparency as to how student data is being used.
The market for educational technology for preschool through high school is huge; last year, it hit nearly $8 billion. And every time a student clicks through an online textbook, watches tutorials, plays games or takes quizzes online, he sheds an enormous amount of data, not just about what he knows but also about how he learns, thinks and perseveres in the face of challenge. Top ed-tech companies boast of collecting millions of unique data points on each child each day. That’s orders of magnitude more than Facebook or Google gather on their customers.
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Most Important Election of 2015: Chuy Garcia's People's Campaign Versus Rahm Emanuel's Big Money ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Most Important Election of 2015: Chuy Garcia's People's Campaign Versus Rahm Emanuel's Big Money | Mike Lux:



Most Important Election of 2015: Chuy Garcia's People's Campaign Versus Rahm Emanuel's Big Money






 Every so often, a local election comes along that has enormous implications in terms of the national political narrative. Back in the 1980s, Harold Washington's stunning upset of the Daley machine in Chicago was one of those moments. Bill de Blasio's surprising come from behind win in NYC a couple of years ago was the most recent example -- his win created months of discussion about the rising progressive populist movement in the Democratic party.

If Garcia wins, it will be an even bigger deal than either the Harold Washington or Bill de Blasio races, for the following reasons.
The first is that Rahm is an outsized national political figure, beloved by the national Democratic establishment for his tough talking swagger and his ability to raise money from Wall Street and big business -- an example of the latter being the $750,000 hedge fund speculator and major Republican giver Ken Griffin has already invested in re-electing Rahm. If a major national figure known so well by the national media like Rahm went down in spite of all the money he has raised and spent, it would probably be the number one political story of the year. A thousand political obituaries would be written; a hundred stunned DC pundits would be asking themselves how this could have possibly happened. And in all this conversation, a major underlying narrative would be about the rising progressive tide shaking up Democratic politics.
Secondly, electing a Hispanic mayor to a city like Chicago would be a huge political moment all by itself. Chicago is a city with an outsized place in America's imagination. It is a sort of capitol of the heartland, which is the most important swing region in American politics. And to have a Hispanic mayor in a city whose Hispanic population is not as big as either the white or African-American populations, and whose history has been dominated by black-white political conflict, would create a different level of conversation in America about the rising importance of Hispanics in America. 
Third, Garcia winning would profoundly impact the presidential race. Even with Hillary Clinton so far ahead and with no strong challenger yet to emerge, the loss of the ultimate Clintonite, Rahm Emanuel, would change the discussion about presidential election dynamics and force a serious rethink of Clinton's strategy.
So this is a very big deal. Is it really winnable for Garcia? With Rahm being backed by all this corporate big money like the Ken Griffin 750K, he outspent Chuy 12-1 in the first round of the primary, and has had the airwaves to himself for a while in the runoff campaign, so he has a small lead -- although certainly not as big as the ridiculous Chicago Tribune poll several days ago that gave Chuy only 50 percent in the Hispanic vote when every other poll has him over 70 percent. But Chuy is going up with ads this week, and that will cut the margin. More importantly, the underlying dynamics in this race are in his favor: Rahm's unfavorable ratings are still through the roof; Chuy has picked up some very big African-American endorsements since the first vote, including Jesse Jackson, former IL Senate leader Emil Jones, Con. Danny Davis, and a group of influential black ministers; all the grassroots energy and the GOTV operations of most of the Democratic base organizations (including AFT, NEA SEIU, CWA, Moveon, DFA, and PCCC) are on the side of Garcia.


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Why Are We Facing So Many "Under-the-Radar" Corporate Attacks on Oklahoma Public Schools? | John Thompson

Why Are We Facing So Many "Under-the-Radar" Corporate Attacks on Oklahoma Public Schools? | John Thompson:



Why Are We Facing So Many "Under-the-Radar" Corporate Attacks on Oklahoma Public Schools?



The previous blockbuster discovery for Oklahoma City and Tulsa schools was SB 68, the "under-the-radar" bill to authorize cities to compete with school systems in sponsoring charter schools. The Tulsa World's Andrea Eger, in "Change in State Law Sought for Tulsa Public Schools Would Allow Outsourcing of Instruction," reports that another charter bill, HB 1691, "has flown largely beneath the public's radar during a legislative session that has seen high-profile clashes over bills seeking private school vouchers and the expansion of charter schools into rural areas."
Eger reports that the Tulsa Public School System is moving ahead with plans to locate its three newest charters inside traditional public school facilities. Lunch and bus service would be provided for students. All three contract-charters would be run by an out of state charter management organization.
Linda Hampton, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, opposes HB 1691, "Because the bill is so broad in scope, it could open the door to total privatization of public schools. ... We also want to be sure we are not turning over our public school students to organizations that are looking to make a profit."
Outgoing Superintendent Keith Ballard, who will be succeeded by Chief for Change Deborah Gist, says that already established charters "have expressed interest in moving to the charter-contract arrangement if HB 1691 passes."
I wonder if Tulsans knew what they were getting when they accepted a Gates Foundation district-charter school compact. This new revelation sounds like an escalation in the campaign against teachers unions. Nonprofit and for-profit charter management organizations would gain these new benefits, as they retained their old advantages of being able to "cream" the easier-to-educate students. Of course, it would also increase segregation - adding to the sorting of students within buildings.
Ballard praised the district's relationship with existing charters (who will also take advantage of the new law). He said "They attend our administrator meetings, and we track their data constantly. We are intertwined with them, and that is the true spirit of what charters are for -- we've learned things from our charters and they say they've learned things from us."
But, what about a spirit of collaboration with teachers in neighborhood schools?
After praising his ongoing communication with charters, "Ballard said he hopes to discuss the matter with the leadership of the statewide teachers union soon. ...'This is a bit of a deviation from what they might support, but we probably need to do a better job of communicating with them about what we're trying to do here.'"
This is one more reason why Oklahoma school reform holds lessons for the entire Why Are We Facing So Many "Under-the-Radar" Corporate Attacks on Oklahoma Public Schools? | John Thompson:
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New student data privacy bill in Congress does little to protect privacy — analysis - The Washington Post

New student data privacy bill in Congress does little to protect privacy — analysis - The Washington Post:
New student data privacy bill in Congress does little to protect privacy — analysis



 Two U.S. legislators just introduced a bill in the House that they say is aimed at limiting the way education technology companies can use data that they collect about students from kindergarten through the 12th grade. It’s called the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act, and its sponsors say it is meant to address a growing concern among students, parents and educators about the use of the oceans of data being collected about America’s young people. But a new analysis of the legislation, which you can read below, concludes that it doesn’t do much to protect the privacy of student data — and that it doesn’t stop the actual collection and mining of data by companies, which can use it to make money.

Student data privacy has become a big issue in the era of standardized testing, with education companies collecting a seemingly endless amount of information on public school students, some of it incredibly detailed.
Last year, a controversial $100 million student data collection project funded by the Gates Foundation and operated by a specially created nonprofit organization called InBloom shut down after concerns about privacy led states to withdraw. The information was to be stored in a data cloud that would hold incredibly detailed data points on millions of schoolchildren with the stated mission of allowing education officials to use the information to target educational support. Activists led by New York’sLeonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, raised alarms that InBloom could not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the data could be stored securely.
The House sponsors of the bill are Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), and Rep.Luke Messer (R-Ind.); Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also is expected to introduce student privacy legislation. In February, the White Houseissued a statement about its efforts to improve data privacy that said it was working with these legislators on advancing student data privacy.
The Polis-Messer bill is called the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act. But Haimson said in a piece on the Student Privacy Matters Web site that the bill addresses virtually none of the concerns that parents have about what is being done with data about their children. She said:
“The bill doesn’t require any parental notification or consent before schools share personal data with third parties, or address any of the current weaknesses in FERPA.  It wouldn’t stop the surveillance of students by Pearson or other companies, or the collection and sharing of huge amounts of highly sensitive student information, as inBloom was designed to do.”
“All the bill does is ban online services utilized by schools from targeting ads to kids – or selling their personal information, though companies could still advertise to kids through their services and or sell their products to parents, as long as this did not result from the personal information gathered through their services. Even that narrow prohibition is incomplete, as vendors would still be allowed to target ads to students as long as the ads were selected based on information gathered via student’s single online session or visit – with the information not retained over time.”
Rachael Stickland, Colorado co-chair of the Parent Coalition, said:
“The bill doesn’t bar many uses of personal information that parents are most concerned about, including vendor redisclosures to other third parties, or data-mining to improve their products or create profiles that could severely limit student’s success by stereotyping them and limiting their opportunities.”
Here are other weaknesses of the bill, as identified by Haimson and Stickland:
  • Parents would not be able to delete any of the personal information obtained by a vendor from their children, even upon request, unless the data resulted from an “optional” feature of the service chosen by the parent and not the district or school.
  • The bill creates a huge loophole that actually could weaken existing privacy law by allowing vendors to collect, use or disclose personal student information in a manner contrary to their own privacy policy or their contract with the school or district, as long as the company obtains consent from the school or district.  It is not clear in what form that consent could be given, whether in an email or phone call, New student data privacy bill in Congress does little to protect privacy — analysis - The Washington Post:

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Pearson Priority 1 Alert: Maryland students accused of using Twitter to cheat on test - Yahoo News

Maryland students accused of using Twitter to cheat on test - Yahoo News:

Maryland students accused of using Twitter to cheat on test




(Reuters) - Two Maryland high school students have been accused of using Twitter to cheat on Common Core state standardized tests, officials said on Monday.
A security firm hired by the test company to search social media including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook found two instances of cheating by 10th-grade students, said Maryland State Department of Education spokesman William Reinhard.
He did not identify the school or the students.
"This is the modern version of copying off your neighbor," he said.
The posts included materials from a statewide English test. They were discovered in the past two weeks and were quickly taken down from Twitter, he said.
Students in Maryland, the District of Columbia and 10 other states that have adopted the Common Core standards are taking the new online tests this spring over the course of a month.
Pearson PLC [PSOND.UL], the company that administers the test, said it had found 76 instances in six states where students posted test materials online in this testing cycle, said spokesman Jesse Comart.

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Are we really at a ‘new low in the teacher wars’? - The Washington Post

Are we really at a ‘new low in the teacher wars’? - The Washington Post:

Are we really at a ‘new low in the teacher wars’?




Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, recently wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post blasting critics of a multimillion-dollar initiative by the Obama administration to rate colleges of education. Serving as a cheerleader for the Education Department’s effort, he accuses colleges of education of seeking to escape evaluation of their programs, and he questions whether critics have read the proposed standards. He wrote in part:
As a scholar who works in areas related to the assessment and improvement of teaching, as an educator and as a dean of a school of education with a teacher preparation program, I worry that, rather than recognizing an opportunity for real leadership, my profession has reached a new low in the teacher wars.
A new low in the teacher wars? Really?
The administration’s plans have indeed generated a great deal of concern among many  educators and researchers — and not only at education colleges — for a number of sensible reasons. One reason is the possibility that one of the “outcome” metrics in the ratings system will be how much graduates earn when they hit the work world, which would give an advantage to schools that graduate a lot of investment bankers and successful entrepreneurs. Another concern is the department’s plan to use as a rating metric the standardized test scores of students of education school graduates, and then possibly to link those scores to federal funding to the colleges of education.
Many in the world of education have written thoughtful comments to the Education Department (which you can see here) about problems they see with the proposals, including this one from 50 college presidents in Virginia — including the leaders of the University of Virginia, College of William & Mary and George Mason  University — and this one from education researchers which says in part, “The proposed regulations do not reflect current research or up-to-date knowledge of teacher preparation, teacher and student assessment, or the purposes of education.”
Here is a post taking direct issue with Pianta’s op-ed. It was written by Michael Feuer, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University in Washington D.C.  I am publishing this post, which appeared on Feuer’s blog, with permission. You can read Pianta’s piece here.

By Michael Feuer
The dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia recently wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post that was well meaning but misleading.  It was surprising and disappointing to see a distinguished educator miss an opportunity to dispel conventional myths and clarify for the general public what is really going on in the world of teacher preparation and its evaluation.
For those who may have missed Robert Pianta’s short article, here is a summary and rebuttal.
With reference to reactions that have been voiced to proposed new federalAre we really at a ‘new low in the teacher wars’? - The Washington Post:
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Common Core and White Privilege: The Claim With a Long Internet Life - State EdWatch - Education Week

Common Core and White Privilege: The Claim With a Long Internet Life - State EdWatch - Education Week:



Common Core and White Privilege: The Claim With a Long Internet Life

By Andrew Ujifusa on March 23, 2015 7:57 AM


As recent polling about misperceptions surrounding the Common Core State Standards has revealed, there's a lot of heated rhetoric on offer in the discussion about the standards, as there is about many public policy issues. An illustrative example of the extent to which debate about the standards has become part of the country's broader political debate is how remarks by one of the common core's authors, David Pook, have been interpreted, and spread, and then spread again around the Internet.
Last year, at an event hosted by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Pook, a teacher at the private Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H., discussed his motivations for helping to write the common core's English/language arts standards. Here is what he said (Pook's remarks begin at about the 30-second mark):
In case the video doesn't work for you, here's the key portion of what Pook said: "The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that, as a white male in society, I'm given a lot of privilege that I didn't earn. I think it's really important that all kids get an equal opportunity to learn how to read. And I think I had decided advantages as a result of of who I was."
After the first sentence, there were several negative exclamations from the audience.
Pook went on to stress the importance of creating equal educational opportunities for all students, and that he was reminded of this idea when he visited Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School in Chicago, an International Baccalaureate school that is 24 percent black and 73 percent Hispanic. 
Life Cycle of a Common-Core Headline
The video was posted on YouTube on May 22, 2014 by Campus Reform, an organization that says it exposes "bias and abuse" in U.S. higher education, and often highlights what it perceives as liberal bias at colleges and universities. As of March 20, it had been viewed roughly 278,000 times on YouTube.
The same day the video was posted, Fox News picked up the video and an accompanying blurb by Common Core and White Privilege: The Claim With a Long Internet Life - State EdWatch - Education Week:

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Cameras in the Classroom: Is Big Brother Evaluating You? - NEA Today

Cameras in the Classroom: Is Big Brother Evaluating You? - NEA Today:

Cameras in the Classroom: Is Big Brother Evaluating You?

Video technology can improve safety and classroom practice, but using it to spy and find 'bad teachers' should be a non-starter.

— JANUARY 23, 2015 • BY TIM WALKER —

In January 2014, sixteen video cameras were delivered to the Washington County School District in Tennessee, one for each school and one for the central office. The district didn’t purchase the equipment as part of a school security improvement plan. Washington County, it turned out, had been selected as one of 20 districts across the state to pilot a new program to record classroom interactions and use the clips to help determine teacher effectiveness.
The mobile cameras, however, barely made it out of their boxes before the project was suspended indefinitely.
So what happened? A little transparency might have gone a long way, but it was in short supply in Washington County. District administrators approved the project without notifying school staff or parents. Curious and persistent educators were able to pry some information out of the district, but details remained scarce. Questions piled up quickly. Who paid for the cameras? What are these videos being used for specifically? Who would have control over the cameras? Where are these clips being stored and who is going to see them?
“Once we found out about the plan to put these cameras in the classrooms, we had major concerns that we brought to the attention of the district,” recalls LaDawn Hudgins, president of the Washington County Education Association (WCEA). “So did many parents. A camera was going to record their kids in the classroom and no one bothered to tell them.”
Whether they are planted in a classroom, scattered throughout the school or both, video cameras provoke wildly polarized reactions. One group envisions a safe and secure school and a happy teaching staff using video to improve practice and excitedly sharing “eureka” moments with their colleagues. The other is horrified at the thought of schools being transformed into invasive, zero privacy zones, staffed by suspicious educators, intimidated by the judging and unforgiving eye of a video camera in their classroom.
Most educators probably sit somewhere in the middle. While they recognize the role video cameras play in school security, they have serious and valid concerns over privacy and the impact an excess of surveillance can have on school climate. And although teachers can benefit from the observation and reflection that a sensible use of cameras can cultivate, the situation gets dicey if clips are used to evaluate performance and cameras are there to merely snoop.
Sarah Brown Wessling, a high school English teacher in Johnston, Iowa, and the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, is a keen advocate of video’s potential to help enrich a teacher’s practice.
“I’ve always used video, but only as a tool,” Wessling explains. “I use it to challenge myself and to see more clearly what is going on in my classroom and how my students are learning.”
Whether video cameras are a constructive addition to a classroom depends in large part how and why they were brought into the classroom in the first place.
It was the ‘how’ and ‘why’ (and the ‘who’ ) that unnerved educators and parents in Washington County. LaDawn Hudgins agrees that, under the right circumstances, cameras in the classroom can be useful, especially for newer teachers, but districts must be more proactive in consulting with educators and parents.
“We wanted more information. We wanted transparency,” Hudgins says. “When you hear words like ‘uploaded’ and ‘downloaded,” you want to know: Who’s uploading it, who’s downloading it and for what purpose?”
Consider the Belleville school board in Belleville, New Jersey. In the Fall of 2013, it embarked on a breathtakingly clumsy but audacious effort when it contracted with Clarity Systems to install $2 million worth of state-of-the-art video and audio surveillance technology to monitor virtually every corner of the district’s eight schools –  including classrooms, hallways, and staff rooms.
“This equipment is unbelievable. The cameras can zoom into what book you’re holding or how much money you’re paying the cafeteria lady,” explains Mike Mignone, a math teacher at Belleville Middle School and president of the Belleville Education Association. “And the audio capabilities can pick up any conversation you have with a colleague. Staff were walking around school like zombies, afraid to say or do anything!”
District officials insisted the equipment was installed to merely improve student safety, but staff and parents didn’t buy it. The cameras were just another salvo, educators insisted, from a school board and superintendent bent on intimidation, which was on full-display when they filed trumped up tenure charges against Mignone after he denounced the Cameras in the Classroom: Is Big Brother Evaluating You? - NEA Today:




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History and logic to the rescue in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind | TheHill

History and logic to the rescue in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind | TheHill:



History and logic to the rescue in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind






 More than a dozen years after it was reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is under hot debate.  Why the heat?  Although the act has boosted student achievement (a major goal), not all students demonstrated proficiency on state tests by 2014 (the real endgame). Nor has the act’s aim of making sure all students have access to an effective teacher been met.

The idea floating around Washington right now, with some support from both parties, is that educational accountability ought to be scaled down and passed back from the federal government to the states. This idea sounds good at first blush, but the catch is that many states will likely return to the state of play the law was created to fix—one in which there is little accountability for student achievement and little information about student and school performance.
The current gripe is that federally required testing and accountability are hopelessly flawed endeavors. Many blame the law for narrowing curriculum, punishing schools for factors outside their control, and even outright cheating.
And there is some truth to these concerns.
But the more fundamental truth is that these unintended consequences were anticipated immediately after the law passed in 2001—and help explain why the majority of states were granted Department of Education waivers to implement accountability systems of their own devising. More important, even though little has been done to remedy these flaws in the decade since, straightforward fixes that Congress could apply are on hand.  
Some fixes are easy. For instance, one beef is that the law punishes schools for factors they can’t control—most notably, the types of students they serve. The way around that valid objection is to use growth in student achievement as the primary test-based measure of school performance, not rates of student proficiency. A few states’ waivers for accountability systems do this, but only a few.
Another fear is that the law’s high-stakes atmosphere invites such bad behaviors as focusing too narrowly on what’s likely to pop up on a test or, even worse, outright cheating. Here the answer is broadening the array of indicators used to evaluate schools.
Of course, some fixes are tougher. Much of the pushback on NCLB relates to the quantity and quality of standardized tests. (Full disclosure: separate divisions of AIR, where one of us works, provide student assessment services.) Unfortunately, it’s hard to fix both quantity and quality at the same time.  Measuring more advanced skills naturally takes more testing time than simple multiple-choice exams do. Taking a hatchet to testing time will likely leave us with low-quality tests--a problem nailed by the old saying that “we should measure what we value because we will value only what we measure. “
Examples like these don’t suggest that the federal government must create a one-size-fits-all-states accountability policy. But they do suggest that Washington should lay out some general but essential elements for new policy, including measuring student growth (not status) on tests, assessing a broad array of indicators, and employing high-quality assessments. Once some boundaries are set up, states and consortia of districts would still have plenty of flexibility to experiment with alternatives based on local desires.
As Congress takes up reauthorization, the swallow-hard moment may be realizing that any version will be flawed and have some unintended consequences. These are complicated issues. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on making our public schools accountable for student learning. Rather, whatever law passes needs built-in opportunities for tweaks and revisions as the law is put into practice. This way, states won’t have to wait a dozen years if they see something is not working well to help students.
If Congress wants to avoid the kind of missteps that were made 13 years ago when No Child Left Behind passed, it should pass a nimble, thoughtful law that draws on lessons learned since then, especially the documented fact that accountability can help improve outcomes for kids.
Goldhaber directs the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, and the Center for Education Data & Research at the University of Washington. Polikoff is an assistant professor of K-12 Policy and Leadership at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.History and logic to the rescue in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind | TheHill:
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Defending public education. — “The Chicago Public Education Blues”

Defending public education. — “The Chicago Public Education Blues”:






 “The Chicago Public Education Blues” <7 links>

Steve Horn, “Chicago School Closings and the Joyce Foundation: The Obama Connection”, Mint Press News, July 9, 2013

http://www.mintpressnews.com/a-closer-look-at-the-joyce-foundation-shows-obamas-ties-to-chicago-school-privatizations/164972/

Carol Caref, et.al., “The Black & White of Education in Chicago’s Public Schools”, Chicago Teachers Union Report, Nov. 2012

http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/position-papers/privatization-the-black-white-of-education-in-chicagos-public-schools
Christopher Chase, “Are Chicago’s School Closings Really a Land Grab?”, Creative by Nature, April 6, 2014

http://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/are-chicagos-school-closings-really-a-land-grab/”
Brother Fred & Glenn Brown, “Rahm’s Civic Committee Pals Pushed Moody’s and S & P to Lower Illinois Bond Raing”, Schooling In the Ownership Society, July 2013

http://schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com/2013/07/rahms-civic-committee-pals-pushed.html?spref=fb
Alexandria Fisher, “Whittier Field House Demolished, Protestors Arrested”, NBC Chicago, August 2013

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Pilsen-Parents-Protest-Demolition-of-Dilapidated-Field-House-220040171.html
Henry A. Giroux, “In the the Dead Zone of Capitalism: Lessons from Chicago On the Violence of Inequality”, Truthout, June 2013

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lessons_from_chicago_on_the_violence_of_inequality_20130607/


Photo: FSA Collection (1935-42), Library of Congress


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Sunday, March 22, 2015

PARCC exams: Following the money behind N.J.'s costliest test | NJ.com

PARCC exams: Following the money behind N.J.'s costliest test | NJ.com:



PARCC exams: Following the money behind N.J.'s costliest test





 Question: How much will New Jersey taxpayers spend to implement the new PARCC standardized tests in the state's public schools?

(A) $25 per student
(B) $22 million
(C) $108 million
(D) No one knows
The answer, according to state officials, is all of the above. New Jersey is spending about $25.50 per student, or about $22 million on the new exam this year. Within four years, the price tag could go as high as $108 million.
But, as New Jersey school children sit this month for the new exams, there are still big questions about how much the controversial tests will eventually cost.
The debut of PARCC - short for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers - ushers in a new era for New Jersey's public schools. For the first time, the state is using computers to test all students in grades 3 through 11 with an exam that is also being used by nearly a dozen other states.
PARCC has also ushered in a new level of vitriol in the state's schools. Some parents are waging war on standardized testing by refusing to let their kids take the exams with the open support of the state's largest teachers union.
RELATED: PARCC exams: How Pearson landed the deal to produce N.J.'s biggest test
Behind all of the strife is an unprecedented and unusual deal with Pearson Education, a for-profit testing company that landed the contract to provide the exams in New Jersey without a traditional competitive bidding process.
NJ Advance Media examined thousands of pages of contracts, pricing agreements and legal documents to track how taxpayer funds are being spent on PARCC. The documents show a complex deal with more than 60 price variables that make it almost impossible to determine how much New Jersey will eventually spend on PARCC testing over the next few years.
New Jersey education officials say they got a good deal. Their early estimates indicate the PARCC tests will cost $25.50 per student this year, about $3 less than previous standardized tests used in New Jersey.
However, the overall bill will be about $3 million higher than last year because more New Jersey students are required to take the PARCC compared to previous exams.

"This is a higher quality assessment and we'll get much deeper information out of it, I think that for me is a huge selling point," said David Hespe, New Jersey's education commissioner. "We're basically getting a better assessment at just about the same amount of money we're spending per pupil as we are now. I think that really is a value."
Critics question whether New Jersey is spending too much time and money on standardized testing. They also question whether New Jersey's agreement with Pearson, the world's largest testing company, is in the best interest of the state's taxpayers and school children.
"I don't want to paint a picture of a sinister corporate giant out there. They are looking after their interests," said Daniel Katz, director of secondary and secondary-special education at Seton Hall University. "I am concerned that PARCC did not go through sufficient bidding before they landed that contract."
PARCC did not respond to questions about the bidding process.
Pearson declined to comment for the story.

The New Mexico deal

Standardized tests are nothing new in New Jersey, which began using annual statewide exams in the 1970s to gauge what students were learning.
Over the last few years, New Jersey has been using the NJ ASK and HSPA tests to measure students. Measurement Inc., a North Carolina testing company, has the PARCC exams: Following the money behind N.J.'s costliest test | NJ.com:
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