WaPo's Strauss Calls Out Testing Industry Stooge and Colleague, Jay Mathews

How sweet it is.

Corporate Reformers Proclaim NCLB Success in Closing Achievement Gaps: Time to Move on to Focus on the Privileged

In a prominent display of post-partisan propaganda, Mike Petrilli and Tom Loveless have an op-ed in the Times today proclaiming NCLB success in raising the test scores of the downtrodden, while making a case for a new focus of NCLB 2.0: assistance to the privileged children in the leafy suburbs. Here is the heart of the big lie that Gates's boys are pumping today:

. . . . High-achieving students might be making incremental progress — but is this new? If they were making similar gains before 2002, then might recent progress have nothing to do with No Child Left Behind? And how did their progress compare with trends for lower-achieving students?

Thankfully, there is a more suitable tool to help answer such questions: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tracks achievement changes in 4th, 8th and 12th graders across the country. It found relatively little progress among our highest-achieving students (those in the top 10 percent) from 2000 to 2007, while the bottom 10 percent made phenomenal gains. For example, in eighth-grade math, the lowest-achieving students made 13 points of progress on the national-assessment scale from 2000 to 2007 — roughly the equivalent of a whole grade. Top students, however, gained just five points.

Loveless and Petrilli fail to note that most of the big gains of 13 points took place prior to 2004, before NCLB had a chance to work its magic. Also not mentioned is the fact that since 2000, more states have seen the black-white achievement gaps increase, rather than decrease. As the chart from the NYTimes national analysis shows below (click chart to open in separate frame), the shrinking of the black-white achievement gap has been miniscule where it has decreased at all. For 17 year-olds in reading and 9 year-olds in math, the gap has actually increased since NCLB has a chance to take effect. As Sam Dillon notes:

Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”

It is not surprising, however, to see the reform schoolers' focus shift away from the poor. It is obvious that their kind of test-til-you-puke remedy has nothing of use to offer those who aspire to close the achievement gap. In other words, let's change the subject and get it back to helping the privileged. After all, all indications point to the imminent total containment of the poor and the black in corporate charter camps where their scores will be much less important than their attitudes and behaviors.

From the Times:

Rove Continues to Lie With Impunity About NCLB

The oft-repeated bald-faced lie is uttered once more in a saccharine homily to our former Torturer-in-Chief:

Mr. Bush was right to pass No Child Left Behind (NCLB), requiring states to set up tough accountability systems that measure every child's progress at school. As a result, reading and math scores have risen more in the last five years since NCLB than in the prior 28 years.

And, once more, the facts from an October 2008 piece:

With Margaret Spellings getting in a final safari in Africa before she turns in her keys, and as the rest of the incompetent Bush cronies at ED are cleaning out their desks and working on their resumes, the White House has simply side-stepped the Departent of Education and issued its own propaganda response to a recent New York Times piece by Sam Dillon on the impossible testing targets that NCLB uses to undercut the public schools.

In a Letter to the Editor published yesterday, Domestic Policy Director, Karl Zinsmeister, both lied and dissembled in making claims regarding reading scores during the NCLB reign of terror:

Over the last five years, 9-year-olds in the United States have made more progress in reading than in the previous three decades combined. Achievement gaps between white and black students in reading and math are now the narrowest they have ever been.

The first sentence by Zinmeister is simply a bald-faced lie. Here is NAEP's own chart showing average reading scores for 4th grade students. It shows a 2 point gain since 2002. Before NCLB became law, between 2000 and 2002, there was a 6 point gain. (Click to enlarge chart).





And here is the NAEP chart on 8th grade reading averages, and the picture is even worse. It shows scores actually dropping a point since 2002. (Click to enlarge chart).




In terms of the achievement gap being the narrowest it has "ever been," the final chart from NAEP shows the reality. In 2002, there was a thirty point gap in 4th grade reading scale scores. That gap for 4th grade reading has narrowed by 2 points since 2002, even with the draconian full-time test prep chain gang teaching that has replaced caring teachers and balance curriculums in schools with mostly minority and/or poor students. (Click to enlarge chart).

It is long past time that these liars, dissemblers, and epistemological thugs be run out of Washington on a rail.

White House Lies (Again) About Reading Gains

With Margaret Spellings getting in a final safari in Africa before she turns in her keys, and as the rest of the incompetent Bush cronies at ED are cleaning out their desks and working on their resumes, the White House has simply side-stepped the Departent of Education and issued its own propaganda response to a recent New York Times piece by Sam Dillon on the impossible testing targets that NCLB uses to undercut the public schools.

In a Letter to the Editor published yesterday, Domestic Policy Director, Karl Zinsmeister, both lied and dissembled in making claims regarding reading scores during the NCLB reign of terror:

Over the last five years, 9-year-olds in the United States have made more progress in reading than in the previous three decades combined. Achievement gaps between white and black students in reading and math are now the narrowest they have ever been.

The first sentence by Zinmeister is simply a bald-faced lie. Here is NAEP's own chart showing average reading scores for 4th grade students. It shows a 2 point gain since 2002. Before NCLB became law, between 2000 and 2002, there was a 6 point gain. (Click to enlarge chart).





And here is the NAEP chart on 8th grade reading averages, and the picture is even worse. It shows scores actually dropping a point since 2002. (Click to enlarge chart).




In terms of the achievement gap being the narrowest it has "ever been," the final chart from NAEP shows the reality. In 2002, there was a thirty point gap in 4th grade reading scale scores. That gap for 4th grade reading has narrowed by 2 points since 2002, even with the draconian full-time test prep chain gang teaching that has replaced caring teachers and balance curriculums in schools with mostly minority and/or poor students. (Click to enlarge chart).

It is long past time that these liars, dissemblers, and epistemological thugs be run out of Washington on a rail.

New Spellings Propaganda and the Mysterious and Phony PBS Link

Armstrong Williams, eat your heart out. ED is no longer farming out their covert propaganda but, rather, producing it in house as fake newscasts through something called ED TV. The latest effort by Spellings and her the-not-ready-for-4-AM players features a one-hour infomercial for NCLB.

When you go this page from ED's website, you will see PBS listed promimently as an outlet for this most recent fake news program with a NewsHour-looking set, the round interview table, and Doris McMillan (from McMillan Communications) playing the role of newscaster.

After watching this first episode via a webcast, oh my god, I could not believe that PBS could have anything to do with this, even though they are listed on the front end as partner and at the end with the claim of PBS member stations as contributing partners. I called PBS TeacherLine to get details on the broadcast schedule, and as I had a hunch, PBS TeacherLine knows nothing of a relationship with ED to show or produce Education News Parents Can Use.

When I dug a little further, I found out that PBS TeacherLine was created by the generosity of an ED grant in 2000. It remains a mystery which one of ED braintrust came up the bright idea to list PBS as a partner in this most obvious propaganda series.

Armstrong Williams, Rod Paige, and Sinclair Broadcasting

The FCC issued fines on Thursday for the payola scandal involving the Department of Education and Armstrong Williams, "the premier Black political whore in America." No mention of his pimp, Rod Paige. For those with short memories, ED paid Williams $240,000 for undisclosed infomercials promoting NCLB to the black community as a civil rights initiative. From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government on Thursday proposed fines totaling $76,000 against two broadcast companies for failing to tell viewers that programs featuring columnist Armstrong Williams were sponsored by the Education Department.

In 2003, Williams signed a contract with the department for $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. Williams did not reveal the existence of the contract even as he expressed his support for it on the air.

The revelation about Williams led to widespread criticism by lawmakers who said the payments to Armstrong and other contractors amounted to covert propaganda and were an improper use of taxpayer dollars. Williams is a syndicated conservative columnist and TV personality.

The Federal Communications Commission says the stations violated sponsorship identification rules by not revealing Williams' financial relationship.

Williams could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.

According to an FCC document filed Thursday, Sonshine Family Television Inc., licensee of WBPH-TV in Bethlehem, Pa., is liable for a fine of $40,000 for airing five episodes of "The Right Side with Armstrong Williams."

The shows aired on 10 occasions in the first half of 2004 and included Williams speaking about the education law.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. of Baltimore was hit with a proposed fine of $36,000 for airing an episode of "America's Black Forum" in September of 2004, which also included Williams talking about the legislation.

The Sinclair stations involved are WABM-TV in Birmingham, Ala.; KSMO-TV in Kansas City, Mo.; WVTV-TV in Milwaukee, Wis.; WUXP-TV in Nashville, Tenn.; KOCB-TV and WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Fla; WPMY-TV in Pittsburgh; KABB-TV in San Antonio; and WTWC-TV in Tallahassee, Fla.

Sonshine told the FCC its agreement with Williams "called for payment of a nominal fee of $100" for each broadcast, and therefore shouldn't be considered sponsorship. While the fee may have been small, it did not excuse the broadcaster from informing viewers the program was sponsored, the FCC said.

In Sinclair's case, Armstrong appeared on an episode entitled "2004 Election Countdown." While the company was not paid to air the program, the FCC said the fact that the program was political in nature meant it required sponsorship identification.

Sinclair argued that "it simply did not know, and had no reason to know, that the program required any identification."

The investigation took place following a complaint from Free Press, a public interest media watchdog group, and "several thousand other complainants" according to the FCC.

In a joint statement, FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein said the action shows broadcasters have a legal obligation to "alert the public to any payola punditry and places the industry on notice that the commission will act to ensure the public is protected from special interest groups who attempt to trick the public."