RI Commissioner Wagner Stands Firm on Automated Scoring for the PARCC | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

RI Commissioner Wagner Stands Firm on Automated Scoring for the PARCC | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy:

RI COMMISSIONER WAGNER STANDS FIRM ON AUTOMATED SCORING FOR THE PARCC

Sheila Resseger, a retired teacher, education activist, and  a member of the PCSP, wrote the post below.  Her new blog is at https://resseger.wordpress.com/

On  April 5,  the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, FairTest, Network for Public Education and other parent and teacher activistssent a letter to the State Education Commissioners from the PARCC and SBAC states.  I signed the letter as well.  We demanded these Commissioners inform us as to whether they plan to use computer scoring for the writing sections of these exams.

As research has shown, computers are unable to distinguish nonsense from coherent prose, and instead grade mostly on an essay’s length and how much arcane vocabulary is used.  Employing computers to score the Common Core exams is completely contrary to the supposed goal of these standards: to encourage critical thinking and writing skills; an article about this issue is here.

Later that day, Rhode Island Commissioner Ken Wagner met with our Council on Elementary and Secondary Education.  He was enthusiastic about the prospect of computer scoring of the PARCC constructed responses, and made many astonishing claims, including that research showed that computers scored writing as well or better than expert trained teachers.

(You can see the video, watch from about 11 minutes.)

He also falsely claimed that the SAT and Graduate Record Exam (GRE) used computer scoring. Yet on the GRE, every writing sample is scored by both a computer and a human being, and the College Board uses only human scorers on the SAT.

On May 17, 2016 the RI Board of Education met. Only two people commented during the Open Forum part of the meeting. A retired Providence high school English teacher spoke about her disapproval of the proposed revised regulations for high school graduation, with several diplomas offered of differing value, which would be discriminatory.  I spoke to critique Wagner’s enthusiastic endorsement of automated scoring of the PARCC constructed responses:

At the April 5, 2016 meeting of the RI Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, Commissioner Wagner was enthusiastic about the prospect of computer scoring of the RI Commissioner Wagner Stands Firm on Automated Scoring for the PARCC | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy:

English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) - Testing (CA Dept of Education)

English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) - Testing (CA Dept of Education):

English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC)

The ELPAC will be the successor to the California English Language Development Test (CELDT). The CELDT is the current required state test for English language proficiency that must be given to students whose primary language is other than English.

 State and federal law require that local educational agencies administer a state test of English language proficiency (ELP) to eligible students in kindergarten through grade twelve. The California Department of Education (CDE) is transitioning from the CELDT to the ELPAC as the state ELP assessment by 2018. The ELPAC will be aligned with the 2012 California English Language Development Standards. It will be comprised of two separate ELP assessments: one for the initial identification of students as English learners (ELs), and a second for the annual summative assessment to measure a student’s progress in learning English and to identify the student's level of ELP.

The links and information below were developed for educators and others who are directly involved with the ELPAC.

ELPAC Updates

To receive updates on the latest information about the ELPAC, join the CDE’s ELPAC e-mail list by sending a blank e-mail to: subscribe-elpac@mlist.cde.ca.gov.

Educator Opportunities

There are four educator opportunities available during the 2016–17 school year. See the online application at the link below for more specific details. All meetings will be held in Sacramento.

Meeting (Location: Sacramento)	Date	Time Commitment	Application Deadline
Speaking Range Finding	October 2016	3–4 days	July 6, 2016
Speaking Range Finding	April/May 2017	3–4 days	January 6, 2017
Writing Range Finding	May/June 2017	3 days	January 6, 2017
Standard Setting	September/October 2017	4 days	March 10, 2017

The online application can be accessed here: ELPAC Educator Opportunities Application .

Transition to the ELPAC Information

Comparison Chart – This chart compares the current CELDT to its successor, ELPAC, as the state ELP assessment in 2018.

Transition Timeline – This timeline shows the transition from the CELDT to the ELPAC from 2015–16 to 2018–19.

ELPAC Blueprints

The task types (PDF) in the ELPAC blueprints (PDF) are designed to be aligned with California’s 2012 English Language Development Standards which were developed to correspond to the 2010 California Common Core State Standards. The task types and blueprints were approved and adopted by the State Board of Education on November 4, 2015.

Education Code

The administration of an ELP assessment is required by law. The current state test is the CELDT.

• English Language Proficiency Assessment, Section 313 
  
• Assessment of Language Development, Section 60810 

English Language Development Standards

• 2012 California English Language Development Standards
• Correspondence Study Report (PDF)
• Integrating the CA ELD Standards into K-12 Mathematics and Science Teaching and Learning: A Supplementary Resource for Educators Implementing the California English Language Development Standards, the California Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, and the Next Generation Science Standards for California Public Schools (DOC; New; 16-Dec-2015)

Regulations

Contact the English Language Proficiency Assessments (ELPA) Office at elpac@cde.ca.gov for the most up-to-date information regarding the ELPAC regulations and the rulemaking process.

General Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs)

On January 13, 2016, the State Board of Education (SBE) approved the General Performance Level Descriptors which will be used to guide the development of domain and grade/grade span-specific PLDs in summer 2016. General PLDs (sometimes called policy definitions) provide generic descriptions of student performance level expectations, and are used to guide the development of the specific PLDs.

Contact Information

California Department of Education
Assessment Development and Administration Division
English Language Proficiency Assessments Office
Telephone: 916-319-0784
E-mail: elpac@cde.ca.gov

Questions:   English Language Proficiency Assessments Office | elpac@cde.ca.gov | 916-319-0784

Last Reviewed: Friday, May 27, 2016

Ohio: State Investigates Online Charter Schools: Better Late than Never | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: State Investigates Online Charter Schools: Better Late than Never | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Ohio: State Investigates Online Charter Schools: Better Late than Never

 The Ohio Department of Education under John Kasich has not been known for vigilance when it comes to the virtual charter school industry. However, increased media attention to Ohio’s pockmarked charter sector has caused the state to look into its underperforming and highly profitable virtual charters.

What they discovered was ugly. Inflated enrollments. Lack of evidence that students participate in instruction for the required 5 hours a day. An industry that profits while students fail.

The investigation focused on the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), owned by one of the state’s major contributors to Republican campaigns. William Lager has received nearly $1 billion in public funds since 2002. The money to pay for a failing online school was taken from Ohio’s public schools.

The New York Times wrote about ECOT a few days ago and pointed out that the online school has the largest proportion of students who fail to graduate of any high school in the nation. Only 20% finish on time.

Actually, it is worse than it appears. Stephen Dyer noted that ECOT accounts for 5% of the graduates in the state, but it accounts for more of the students who fail to graduate from high school than all the state’s districts combined!

This is a failing school! It should be closed.

The state may revise a regulation or two. Don’t expect anything dramatic, like shutting down the state’s lowest performing school, or basing pay on performance. That’s for public schools, not Ponzi schemes that contribute to Kasich and friends.Ohio: State Investigates Online Charter Schools: Better Late than Never | Diane Ravitch's blog:

How To Fix A Graduation Rate Of 1 In 10? Ask The Dropouts : NPR Ed : NPR

How To Fix A Graduation Rate Of 1 In 10? Ask The Dropouts : NPR Ed : NPR:

How To Fix A Graduation Rate Of 1 In 10? Ask The Dropouts

On San Jose State University's lush inner-city campus, students in their graduation gowns pose with their families in front of ivy-covered buildings.

They're the lucky ones.

Just 10 percent of students graduate from this public university in four years. After six years, it's only a bit more than half.

Think about that — of 100 students who enrolled four years ago, only 10 will walk across the stage this year.

That sounds low, but you can find these kind of numbers at lots of universities in the U.S.

What's not typical is how San Jose State is tackling the problem.

Beyond Excuses

Up on the north side of campus, you'll find Marcos Pizarro on the second floor of Clark Hall. At 6 feet 2, he's nearly as tall as his tiny office is wide.

A professor of Mexican-American Studies, Pizarro has been at San Jose State for 17 years.

All that time, he says, he's heard the same explanation about why the graduation rate is so low. It goes like this: "Well, they're not as well prepared, and they have a lot of other commitments."

It's true, he adds, many students here do come from under-performing schools. Pizarro knows because he has taught in those schools.

And a lot of them work full-time jobs — both to pay for college and contribute to their families.

Yet, Pizarro adds, something else is true too: "They're amazing. They're really phenomenal." In class, he says, these students are some of the most engaged, motivated and insightful people he's worked with.

So, why aren't they graduating?

When Pizarro started looking at the data, he found that San Jose State's graduation rate is bad for all students. But for Latinos it's really bad. Just 4.5 percent graduate in four years. African-Americans do only slightly better.

Pizarro couldn't let this go. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he needed to talk to those students. Not the graduates. But the ones who left.

"We don't do exit interviews," Pizarro said. "It's not just us. Nobody does exit interviews with students."

Pizarro and a few colleagues got a grant, and they started calling up hundreds of San Jose State dropouts, with a focus on Latino and African-American students.

'I Was Depressed'

"A lot of times their first response is, 'Oh well, I kinda gave up.' Or, 'I didn'tHow To Fix A Graduation Rate Of 1 In 10? Ask The Dropouts : NPR Ed : NPR:

She Says: It's Time To Disrupt Substitute Teaching - Forbes

She Says: It's Time To Disrupt Substitute Teaching - Forbes:

She Says: It's Time To Disrupt Substitute Teaching

Substitute teaching. Admit it, when you see those words, your mind goes to spitballs, pranks and all sorts of disruption.

Well, social entrepreneur Jill Vialet has a very different type of disruption in mind for substitutes: She wants to disrupt the whole ideaof substitute teaching. She calls it “a big problem hiding in plain sight.” And she wants your help.

“If you described the way we do substitute teaching to an alien, they wouldn’t believe it,” says Vialet, whom Forbes named in 2011 as one of the top 30 leading social entrepreneurs.

A Field With an Image Problem

I heard Vialet speak a few months ago at the Encore.org annual conference in San Francisco, where she conceded that she’s up against a field with a serious image problem.

(More: Teaching as a Second Career)

“Most people have negative memories about substitutes and bad jokes flooding their brain about them,” she said at the time, pitching attendees what has since evolved into Substantial, her new nonprofit initiative “redesigning how we recruit, train and support substitute teachers in order to maximize their time for teaching and learning.”

And, she insists, “we can’t afford to let substitute teaching continue as a bad joke.”

Here’s the enormity of the problem: Ten percent of teachers are substitutes at any given time, schools spend $4 billion a year on subs (1% of the K-12 budget) and school systems across the country face severe shortages of substitute teachers. Roughly 15% of sub openings aren’t being filled.

Who Can Be a Sub

One reason: The job of a substitute as it is today often isn’t highly valued. The pay is typically about $100 a day and to become a substitute, generally speaking, “you just need to have a B.A., pass a standardized test and not have TB or any felonies,” Vialet says. “Then, they send you right into a classroom.”

So what? “If we send people into classrooms unprepared and unsupported or can’t find people to do the jobs, we’re sending a message to kids that we don’t value them,” says Vialet.

But, she wondered, what if subs were brought in to convey their particular expertise and interest to the kids, rather than just assign busywork and wait for the bell to (thankfully) ring? In other words: turn substitute teaching into an She Says: It's Time To Disrupt Substitute Teaching - Forbes:

If NAEP “Proficient” Means “Grade Level Proficiency,” Then America’s Private Schools Are in Trouble | deutsch29

If NAEP “Proficient” Means “Grade Level Proficiency,” Then America’s Private Schools Are in Trouble | deutsch29:

If NAEP “Proficient” Means “Grade Level Proficiency,” Then America’s Private Schools Are in Trouble

Former TV anchor and current, privatizing reform conduit Campbell Brown believes that a student’s achieving the level “proficient” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) equates with that student being “at grade level” or (more precisely, according to her) having achieved “grade level proficiency.”

In a May 16, 2016, Slate interview, Brown said the following:

Two out of three eighth graders in this country cannot read or do math at grade level. We are not preparing our kids for what the future holds.

As she introduces an article written by Carol Burris, Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss sums up the social media upheaval that ensued over Brown’s equating NAEP “proficient” with being “at grade level”:

Another day, another fight in the education world. This one is worth delving into because it is really not about who said what but about fundamental understandings — and misunderstandings — of standardized testing data and how it drives policy.

This one started when education activist Campbell Brown said that two-thirds of U.S. eighth graders are below grade level in reading and math. Tom Loveless, a former Harvard professor and teacher who researches student achievement, then tweeted that he has never seen data showing that, and asked Brown to explain her sourcing. She said that she was referring to proficiency rates on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

NAEP, as the test is known, is sometimes referred to as “the nation’s report card” because it is seen as the most consistent measure of U.S. student achievement since the 1990s. It is administered every two years to groups of U.S. students in the fourth and eighth grades, and less frequently to high school students. When Loveless told her that NAEP proficiency scores do not refer to grade level, a social media fight ensued between Campbell and her critics.

In this post, Carol Burris, a former award-winning high school principal who got involved in the Twitter exchange, explains why the substance of this debate matters.

I asked Brown to comment about her statement that two out of three eighth graders cannot read or do math at grade level and why she thinks NAEP proficiency means grade level. She said in an emailed response, which you can see in full below, that “if I were trying to be completely and utterly precise then I would have specified ‘grade-level proficiency,’ instead of ‘grade level’ in the context of NAEP score,” and that “any reasonable person or parent” would understand what she meant.

The achievement level preceding “proficient” is “basic,” and it is “at or above basic” that the bulk of students’ scores tend to fall.

What Brown erroneously proposes is that NAEP “proficient” equals “grade level proficiency” and that not achieving NAEP “proficient”  equals “not at grade-level proficiency.”

If the above were true, then it is not only America’s public schools that one must If NAEP “Proficient” Means “Grade Level Proficiency,” Then America’s Private Schools Are in Trouble | deutsch29:

Will Democrats Sacrifice Public Education for the Sake of Party Unity? - Living in Dialogue

Will Democrats Sacrifice Public Education for the Sake of Party Unity? - Living in Dialogue:

Will Democrats Sacrifice Public Education for the Sake of Party Unity?

By Anthony Cody.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon on some progressive web sites over the past week or two. Even with the California and New Jersey primaries still looming a couple of weeks from now, the focus has shifted to supporting Clinton, and news of Sanders has been put on the back burner. A look at the front page of Crooks and Liars reveals a dozen stories about Trump, and a couple favorable to Clinton, including this breathless report of Bill Clinton “debating” a young Sanders supporter for thirty minutes. But no major stories about Sanders — not even the news of a possible Trump/Sanders debate. This web site has apparently decided that the election will be between Clinton and Trump, and no further coverage of the Sanders campaign is needed.

Politics is a team sport, and some have decided the time has come for the team to unite behind Clinton. So Sanders is not to be mentioned. Instead we focus on the issues both “teams” can all agree to disagree about. Transgender bathrooms. Guns. Gay marriage. Abortion. Voting rights. Immigration reform. Bashing Trump. These are ON the table for debate.

But what other issues are off the table because the Democratic Party “team” does not have a unified stance?

One of the things I have appreciated about the Sanders campaign has been the space it has opened up to question some “progressive” orthodoxies. We have seen moving videos of Berta Caceres, made prior to her tragic assassination, calling out Clinton’s support of a military coup in Honduras. In my view “progressives” should not support military coups in Latin America – but this issue will not be mentioned if Clinton becomes the nominee. We have heard questions raised about uncritical support for Israel – again, this will be off the table. Even the fracking that is destroying groundwater across the country and the world will be swept under the rug.

Of course the hallmark of the Sanders campaign has been his calling out Wall Street financiers and hedge funders, and if we get down to a Clinton/Trump race that will be greatly muted as well. The progressive focus will be on how scared we all should be of a Trump presidency.

This “progressive” team unity has left some other huge issues off the table. As I wrote last year, K-12 education has been largely ignored by progressives – even “bold” ones. Republicans regularly assail public Will Democrats Sacrifice Public Education for the Sake of Party Unity? - Living in Dialogue:

Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers

Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers:

Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers

I’ve enjoyed the last months where I pushed away from the computer when tempted to blog on the education reform dispute of the day and focused on coalition-building in Oklahoma City, as well as big picture analyses such as Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal. But the open conflict among reformers prompted by Robert Pondiscio is too valuable to waste.

I’ve communicated with enough reformers to know that their coalition is fraying. They’ve pushed an edu-politics of destruction based on the punitive use of test results in order to keep score in their competition-driven movement. Now, it is obvious that value-added teacher evaluations and their one-size-fits-all micromanaging have failed. Many or most, however, are still committed to high-stakes testing in order to speed up their rushed effort to close schools in mass.

Other corporate reformers seem to believe they can use their (admittedly brilliant) high-dollar public relations campaigns to drive the expansion of charters. They’ve finally realized that parents are preoccupied with what’s best for their own children, not education policy. They are marketing to parents who can’t stop the damage that the extreme proliferation of choice does to children left behind in weakened neighborhood schools, but who ignore test scores and seek safe and orderly schools for their own kids.

(By the way, teachers have been forced to do the same thing. Reform imposed an irresolvable dilemma. We can’t just refuse to commit education malpractice and simply place our education values over the needs of our students to pass primitive high-stakes tests in order to graduate. So, to greater or lesser extents, we give into demands for nonstop remediation and try to minimize the amount of soul-killing, bubble-in malpractice that is required to keep our kids from ending up on the streets without a diploma.)

Being a classroom teacher, I always appreciated the way that my job forced me to make an extra effort to not judge patrons and other stakeholders who have different beliefs about education policy and other issues. Being a liberal in a conservative state, I’ve always sought compromise and incrementalism. And, that explains much of the reason why I feel more comfortable around conservative reformers as opposed to liberal and neo-liberal corporate reformers who demand that we progressives must all be “on the same page” in pushing “transformative” reform.

What I can’t grasp, however, is liberals who assail other liberals because we won’t use the stress of high stakes testing to overcome the stress produced by generational poverty. I still can’t understand civil rights advocates who condemn other civil rights advocates because we oppose school segregation as a means of reversing the legacies of segregation.

Had the technocrats spent more time in the inner city classroom, and in the homes, hospital rooms, the streets and, yes, the funerals of our kids, they’d have known we needed more “disruptive” innovation like we need another gang war. Had they shared the joy of teaching and learning for mastery that builds on the strengths of our kids, they would not have dumped reductionist behaviorism on children. But, because teachers saw things differently, we were condemned as the “status quo,” which accepted “Excuses!,” and renounced “High Expectations!”

School reform has always been as anger-driven as it has been output-driven and market-driven. Even so, Pondiscio’s hate-filled response to his erstwhile allies was shocking. It prompted a reply by Justin Cohen, who I believe has supported egregious policy errors, but who has belatedly acknowledged the nature of the Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers:

BREAKING NEWS - Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure - Wait What?

BREAKING NEWS - Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure - Wait What?:

BREAKING NEWS – Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure

Stunning assessment of the data reveals Common Core test not a successful predictor of college success.

What does this mean for Connecticut and other SBAC states?

Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure – By Wendy Lecker and Jonathan Pelto

The entire premise behind the Common Core and the related Common Core PARCC and SBAC testing programs was that it would provide a clear cut assessment of whether children were “college and career ready.”

In the most significant academic study to date, the answer appears to be that the PARCC version the massive and expensive test is that it is an utter failure.

William Mathis, Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and member of the Vermont State Board of Education, has just published an astonishing piece in the Washington Post. (Alice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid? In it, Mathis demonstrates that the PARCC test, one of two national common core tests (the other being the SBAC), cannot predict college readiness; and that a study commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Education demonstrated the PARCC’s lack of validity.

This revelation is huge and needs to be repeated. PARCC, the common core standardized test sold as predicting college-readiness, cannot predict college readiness. The foundation upon which the Common Core and its standardized tests were imposed on this nation has just been revealed to be an artifice.

As Mathis wrote, the Massachusetts study found the following: the correlations between PARCC ELA tests and freshman GPA ranges from 0.13-0.26, and for PARCC Math tests, the range is between 0.37 and 0.40. Mathis explains that the correlation coefficients “run from zero (no relationship) to 1.0 (perfect relationship). How much one measure predicts another is the square of the correlation coefficient. For instance, taking the highest coefficient (0.40), and squaring it gives us .16. “

This means the variance in PARCC test scores, at their best, predicts only 16% of the BREAKING NEWS - Common Core PARCC tests gets an “F” for Failure - Wait What?:

ESSA Accountability Proposal a Departure From Punitive Past, Secretary King Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week

ESSA Accountability Proposal a Departure From Punitive Past, Secretary King Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

ESSA Accountability Proposal a Departure From Punitive Past, Secretary King Says

Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said Thursday that the department's proposedaccountability regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act represent an attempt to move away from the "overprescriptive and to some extent punitive" approach to accountability that proliferated under ESSA's predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act. 

During a visit to the J.C. Nalle Elementary School, King visited a classroom here and discussed the new rules with reporters. He emphasized that the new regulations were based on "a lot of listening" by department staffers to a variety of groups.  

King also participated in a roundtable discussion  at J.C. Nalle with education advocates, teachers, and others in a bid to  highlight how ESSA and the draft rules the department released on it Wednesday try to broaden the definition of student success and give schools new ways to excel.

"We've tried to balance state and local flexibility with strong civil rights guardrails," King told reporters.

The much-anticipated rules deal with a number of complicated and often controversial topics such as school ratings, test participation, school turnaround reuqirements.

Among other hot-button issues: The rules don't require states to give indicators like test scores a specific weight. But they are required to give academic factors more weight. And when it comes to identifying schools for turnarounds, academic indicators would essentially carry more weight.

Schools would also have to publish comprehensive, summative ratings for schools. And states would have to choose from a menu of options of what to do about low test-participation rates in schools, or come up with their own strategies. In early reactions to the rules, there have been concerns about how states would have to address low participation in state exams, and how exactly states would and would not have to define "consistently underperforming" groups of students for school improvement purposes. 

Once the draft rules are published in the Federal Register (slated to occur May 31), the public will have 60 days to provide comments on them. The public-comment window will close Aug. 1.

Broad Issues Discussed

While ESSA itself was the product of consensus and bipartisan compromise, when it comes to the law and the proposed rules, "Our purpose here is to make sure that we are doing our best for every single student at every single school," said Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, who was also at the discussion.

The panel included a discussion of issues such as dual-language instruction, equitable funding for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and access to advanced coursework. These are all issues that King and the Education Department have emphasized when discussing ESSA and education more broadly in recent months. 

Laurent Rigal, a physics teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Washington, recalled that when he taught at a different school, there was no instruction in physics and 900 students were graduating without having taken any classes in the subject. Initially, he had been asked to teach biology, even though he had been trained as a physics teacher. He built up Advanced Placement physics instruction at his previous school, but when he left, that instruction came to a halt, he recalled. (Students taking and successfuly completing advanced coursework is one way schools could satisfy the requirement to have a school quality or student success accountability indicator under ESSA.) 

"No one there was able to teach the class," Rigal said of his former school when he left. 

And Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, noted that schools have played an important role historically as a "leveler of societal injustices." Among other things, he wants teachers with the most training to teach the disadvantaged students who need such quality instruction the most. He said he hopes that under ESSA, "Teachers and students are matched better." 

But Kristen Amundson, the executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, did register one concern she had with the draft rules: the requirement for each school to have a single, summative rating under ESSA. But she didn't get into details about why she was worried. 

Photo: Education Secretary John B. King Jr., third from left, listen to a panel of educators, civil rights activists, and others during a discussion of the Every Student Succeeds Act at J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Washington, D.C. ESSA Accountability Proposal a Departure From Punitive Past, Secretary King Says - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

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Alice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid? - The Washington Post

Alice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid? - The Washington Post:

Alice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid?

The Massachusetts state Education Department last year commissioned Mathematica Policy Research to do a validity study comparing the Common Core test known as PARCC, created by a federally funded consortium of states, and the MCAS, or the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, which has been in use for years and is also aligned to the Common Core standards. At the time, state officials were considering whether to adopt the PARCC assessments or to keep using the MCAS, and allowed districts to choose which test to give to students for “accountability” purposes. The study was released in the fall, and shortly after that state education authorities voted to create a hybrid test that would incorporate elements of PARCC into the MCAS.

The study is titled “Predictive Validity of MCAS and PARCC: Comparing 10th Grade MCAS Tests to PARCC Integrated Math II, Algebra II, and 10th Grade English Language Arts Tests,” and the authors discussed their work in an article in the newest edition of the Education Nextjournal. The article says:

Ultimately, we found that the PARCC and MCAS 10th-grade exams do equally well at predicting students’ college success, as measured by first-year grades and by the probability that a student needs remediation after entering college. Scores on both tests, in both math and English language arts (ELA), are positively correlated with students’ college outcomes, and the differences between the predictive validity of PARCC and MCAS scores are modest. However, we found one important difference between the two exams: PARCC’s cutoff scores for college-and career-readiness in math are set at a higher level than the MCAS proficiency cutoff and are better aligned with what it takes to earn “B” grades in college math. That is, while more students fail to meet the PARCC cutoff, those who do meet PARCC’s college-readiness standard have better college grades than students who meet the MCAS proficiency standard.

Here’s a post challenging the results of the study, by William J. Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, a member of the Vermont Board of Education and a former Vermont superintendent. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of any group with which he is associated. Following the post is a response from Mathematica.

By William J. Mathis

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” — “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll

The PARCC tests have been criticized for being administered in high-stakes circumstancesbefore they were validated. PARCC’s rejoinder is they had content validity, meaning that the test was built according to their committee reviewed specifications. But what is missing isAlice in PARCCland: Does ‘validity study’ really prove the Common Core test is valid? - The Washington Post:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #9 of 9): Amidst the “Blooming Buzzing Confusion” | VAMboozled!

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #9 of 9): Amidst the “Blooming Buzzing Confusion” | VAMboozled!:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #9 of 9): Amidst the “Blooming Buzzing Confusion”

Recall that the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) – published a “Special Issue” including nine articles examining value-added measures (VAMs). I have reviewed the last of nine articles (#9 of 9), which is actually a commentary titled “Value Added: A Case Study in the Mismatch Between Education Research and Policy.” This commentary is authored by Stephen Raudenbush – Professor of Sociology and Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.

Like with the last two commentaries reviewed here and here, Raudenbush writes of the “Special Issue” that, in this topical area, “[r]esearchers want their work to be used, so we flirt with the idea that value-added research tells us how to improve schooling…[Luckily, perhaps] this volume has some potential to subdue this flirtation” (p. 138).

Raudenbush positions the research covered in this “Special Issue,” as well as the research on teacher evaluation and education in general, as being conducted amidst the “blooming buzzing confusion” (p. 138) surrounding the messy world through which we negotiate life. This is why “specific studies don’t tell us what to do, even if they sometimes have large potential for informing expert judgment” (p. 138).

With that being said, “[t]he hard question is how to integrate the new research on teachers with other important strands of research [e.g., effective schools research] in order to inform rather than distort practical judgment” (p. 138). Echoing Susan Moore Johnson’s sentiments, reviewed as article #6 here, this is appropriately hard if we are to augment versus undermine “our capacity to mobilize the “social capital” of the school to strengthen the human capital of the teacher” (p. 138).

On this note, and “[i]n sum, recent research on value added tells us that, by using data from student perceptions, classroom observations, and test score growth, we can obtain credible evidence [albeit weakly related evidence, referring to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s MET studies] of the relative effectiveness of a set of teachers who teach Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #9 of 9): Amidst the “Blooming Buzzing Confusion” | VAMboozled!: