Bracey Once More Debunks the "Schools Suck" Bloc of Ed Reformers

Even though the achievement levels established for the NAEP have been discredited by the "Government Accountability Office; the National Academy of Sciences; the National Academy of Education; and the Center for Research on Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing," the fear mongerers and privatizers have continued to point to American student scores on NAEP as proof that American schools are going to hell in a handbasket.

Bracey has some new findings that may bring Gates, Broad, and their 60 million dollar gas bag back to earth. From WaPo:

. . . .By comparing the results of foreign students and American students on tests administered in both nations, and then examining the American students' scores on the U.S. NAEP, it is possible to reliably estimate how well foreign students would perform on the NAEP.

And it turns out that only one-third of those high-flying Swedish kids would be considered proficient readers; the NAEP figure for U.S. fourth-graders was 29 percent. The great majority of the remaining countries would have fewer proficient students than the United States. Using the NAEP standard, no country comes close to having a majority of proficient readers.

Under the NAEP standard, Singapore is the only nation in the world to have a majority of its students be proficient in science, and that by a scant 1 percent. Only a handful of countries would have a majority of students proficient in mathematics.

All those august organizations have rejected the NAEP achievement levels because the process is confusing to the people who try to set the levels and because the results are inconsistent: Children can't answer questions they should be able to and can answer questions they shouldn't be able to. The levels also give what the National Academy of Sciences called "unreasonable" results, including the fact that only 29 percent of U.S. fourth-graders were considered proficient or better by NAEP, yet America ranked third among 26 participating nations.

Other evidence is easy to come by. In 2000, 2.7 percent of American high school seniors scored 3 or better -- the score at which colleges begin to grant credit for the course -- on Advanced Placement calculus. Almost 8 percent of seniors (including those who did not take the test) scored above 600 on the math SAT; nearly a quarter (24 percent) of those who took it scored over 600. Yet NAEP said that only 1.5 percent of the nation's seniors reached its "advanced" level.

So why does the government continue to report such misleading information? The "Leaders and Laggards" report illustrates why: The numbers are useful as scare techniques. If you can batter people into believing the schools are in awful shape, you can make them anxious about their future -- and you can control them.

In the 1980s, the "schools suck" bloc used such numbers to make us fearful that Japan, now emerging from a 15-year period of recession and stagnation, was going to take our markets; today, India and China play the role of economic ogres.

Recently, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in The Post that constant references to a "war on terror" "stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of policies they want to pursue." Happens all the time in education. The most recent phony alarm comes from Eli Broad and Bill Gates, who are putting up $60 million hoping to "wake up the American people." If the fear-mongers can scare you sufficiently (how many times have you heard the phrase "failing schools" in the past five years?), you might permit them to do to your public schools things you would otherwise never allow.

FCAT Reading Scores Plunge, Thousands More Left Behind

Florida has to be the poster state for educational reform via oppressive testing, and they are leaders in the preferred Reading First direct instruction and phonics-based reading instruction approach. Last year former Education Commissioner Winn couldn't have made the State's position clearer when he said "we believe that testing well is reading well." As in years past, two-thirds of the of the thousands of 3rd graders who failed the FCAT were held back. This year guarantees that thousands more predominantly poor, black, and brown third-graders will learn failure at an early age. From the Palm Beach Post:

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Hundreds more Palm Beach County third-graders could be held back this year, based on reading scores released Wednesday showing a decline on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after four straight years of improvement.

In some schools, the percentage of students failing the reading test doubled.

Across the state, third-grade reading scores dropped for the first time since the test was administered in 2001. Scores improved in only six of 67 school districts, prompting head-scratching among everyone from classroom teachers to the state commissioner of education.

State officials tried to deflect attention from the one-year dip and focus on the long-term improvement. They characterized the 2006 scores as a "spike" and this year as a return to normalcy.

"We don't think the performance of this year's third-graders is in any way a downturn in our trend," said Cornelia Orr, administrator for the state Office of Assessment and School Performance. "It's clearly on track. It's just that last year's performance was stellar."

No one saw this year's drop coming. Practice FCAT tests administered by many school districts, including Palm Beach County, predicted a different outcome.

Superintendent Art Johnson said he's "not buying" that the test scores reflect a weaker crop of readers in this year's third-grade class. The state must have graded the test wrong this year or last, or the test was more difficult this year, Johnson said.

"It would be a horrible thing if they had made a mistake, for the entire state to be off because of a Department of Education error," he said. "That would be a very embarrassing and bad thing."

Before announcing Wednesday's scores, state officials conducted a study of this year's reading test questions and found that it was no more difficult than previous tests, actingEducation Commissioner Jeanine Blomberg said. They also ruled out other anomalies, such as a large number of students moving during the school year.

State officials plan to look for other clues, including whether schools with reading coaches or other programs bucked the state trend.

In Palm Beach County, only 18 of more than 100 regular public schools saw an increase in the percentage of students reading on grade level. A number of charter schools also saw improvements.

Among all third-graders, 19 percent (2,408 students) failed the 50-question multiple-choice reading test, compared with 15 percent last year.

Math scores offered a positive departure. The percentage of county students scoring on grade level jumped from 73 percent to 76 percent.Scores also improved statewide.But the math scores are not as important.

Students who fail the reading test must repeat third grade, with some exceptions. . . .

The Sanctioned Abuse of Special Education Students

Since passage of NCLB in 2002, about 90% of all special education students have been required to pass the high-stakes tests at the same rate that other students are required to pass. Justified on grounds that no disabled child will be left behind, millions of special education students have suffered the indignity of repeated failures over the past five years. Never mind that there has been no extra help or proposed strategy to make it possible or even likely that the vast majority of these children, emotionally disturbed or cognitively challenged, will ever pass these tests. Cruel and unusual punishment guaranteed to produce failure? Don't get me started.

This year Tweaker-in-Chief Spellngs has grudgingly acknowledged the insanity of her department's policy regarding the impossible demands placed on special populations, so that in the coming year only 70% of special education students must suffer another round of failure. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

. . . . One of the bedrock beliefs of No Child Left Behind is that schools should be held accountable for the academic performance of all students and should test them - in grades 3-8 and at least once during high school - to determine if they are proficient in math and reading.

But since 2004, the law has allowed schools to exclude up to 1 percent of their students with severe mental disabilities from taking the tests their peers take. Some states, such as Ohio, granted additional waivers to districts to exclude more students from regular tests.

The new rule is aimed at "gap kids" - students who are academically below grade level, but are higher-functioning than students with grave mental impairments.

Added together, the two exemptions - the original 1 percent and the new 2 percent - will exclude as many as 30 percent of all special education students from regular testing.

While that percentage scares some advocates, many educators believe it is a modest accommodation for schools and students alike.

"For an urban district, 2 percent isn't high enough," said John Foley, interim superintendent of the Toledo schools and a former special education teacher. "Giving many of these children standardized tests is incongruous to what special education is supposed to be doing."

Federal education officials insist the new 2 percent regulation in no way backs off from the law's commitment to education for all children.

"We will still hold these students to grade-level standards, but give students more time to get there," said Raymond Simon, deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Education. "This is going to make teaching and learning for special education students a whole lot better."

More time to get there? A whole lot better? What does that mean?

Kristof: Out of Africa and Into Fantasyland

Kristof must have decided on the way home from Darfur to solve a less intractable problem, and one that every prep school boy knows the answer to. Posted by Miss Malarkey Wednesday, May 03, 2006--I couldn't have said it better, so here it is:

There was an interesting op-ed piece in the Sunday New York Times titled “Opening Classroom Doors” by Nicholas D. Kristof. He expresses his belief that highly intelligent and talented people who want to become teachers are being discouraged by the barriers to the classroom, namely, having to go through the certification process, which includes student teaching and related coursework. He proposes relaxing the requirements “so people can enter teaching more easily.”

Frankly, I believe that this is the last thing we should be doing. The sad truth, as I’ve witnessed in my ten years as a New York City public school teacher, is that there are enough lazy morons in front of the classroom. Granted, they’ve been the minority, but even one is too many. Making the process of becoming a teacher easier is not the answer.

There is a shortage of teachers; Mr. Kristof is right about that, and the need for teachers will continue to grow. The numbers tell that story. But eliminating or relaxing certification standards isn’t the answer. Mr. Kristof calls the teacher shortage problem “one of the easiest to solve.” I’ve learned that none of the problems that plague education are easy to solve, this one included.

I’m resisting the urge to call former I.B.M. chief Louis Gerstner a corporate hack, since I don’t know the man and I sure his intentions are good. But his so-called “blue-ribbon panel,” the Teaching Commission, cited “confusing and cumbersome procedures to discourage many talented would-be teachers from entering the classroom.” Having jumped through this set of hoops twice, first to get New York State teacher certification, then to get a New York City license, I have to say that while annoying, it wasn’t all that complicated. If a person truly wants to pursue a career as an educator, “confusing and cumbersome procedures,” shouldn’t interfere. And if they can’t figure out the requirements, should they be in the classroom?

I also can’t help but feel a little insulted by this piece. Mr. Kristof gives the impression that he thinks teaching is easy, that any smart person with personality can just do it. For some people, unaware of the depth and breadth of knowledge needed, teaching probably is easy. But I know there are also many others like me, teachers who want to be reflective, who research best practices, who question what they’re doing and why, who have a reason for everything, big and small, that they do in their classrooms. For me, it’s all ongoing, but the process began as a pre-service teacher, before I even set foot in a classroom. Mr. Kristof says there’s no evidence that teacher training courses are of any help, but uses no supporting evidence for that claim.

Admittedly, I am a bit defensive about the choice I made to enter teaching through a conventional route that included a bachelor’s in English, a Master’s in English Education, and a semester of student teaching. But in my first year of teaching, those credentials helped me get through the year. During my toughest times, I took comfort in the fact that the depth and quality of my preparation would help me figure it out. On the worst days, that little scrap of confidence was all I had. Will someone who walks in with a B.A., a piece of chalk and a strong feeling of altruism have that?

Teach for America is lauded here, and in other publications, as an example of an organization that has placed successful teachers in the classroom with minimal training. I worked in a school with a significant number of TFA teachers, and while some of them flourished, almost as many failed, at least initially. Kristof names one study, which cited stronger gains in math when taught by TFA teachers. But that’s one study; I found one study myself which found that students of TFA teachers made 20% less academic growth than students with non-TFA teachers. The last few groups of TFA teachers I worked with were woefully inadequate, with serious classroom management problems. Most of them, however, were better in their second year after having graduate courses under their belts. Their teaching experience taught them a lot as well, but what about their students, who had to spend a year with a teacher who started with little more than a summer-long crash course in teaching? Besides, the majority of them choose not to become career teachers anyway.

I wish I had a workable solution, but I think improving conditions for teachers is critical if we are going to entice more people to become teachers. Today, it only takes a brief spin around the blogosphere to learn the truth about teaching: that classes are overcrowded, parental support is often sorely lacking, many administrators prefer to lead by intimidation, for starters. Why would someone want to become a teacher? How many people have been turned off by those factors? I have never heard someone say that they didn’t want to teach because of the salary; they always cite some combination of the factors I mentioned.

I think the teaching profession needs a major image overhaul. Changes need to be made within the profession to make it more appealing to the right people. And at this time I almost feel like I’m wrong in calling it a “profession.” In NYC we aren’t treated as professionals, and this will not help us attract teachers. Teacher morale in New York City is as low as it’s been since I began in 1996. We have absurd mandates and are expected to adapt the one-size-fits-all approach, or else. We have a Chancellor who looks to every “expert” he can find, experts who largely haven’t taught, to find solutions. But he never thinks to ask those of us in the classrooms, who really know. So why become a teacher, when you can keep your cushy corporate job and still have a chance to make important decisions about education?

Ohanian Reviews Berliner and Nichols

Reviewed by Susan Ohanian

May 2, 2007

In her foreword to Collateral Damage, Nel Noddings forcefully summarizes the book’s contents: “Nichols and Berliner demonstrate that high-stakes testing is wrong—intellectually, morally, and practically. Not only will it ‘not work’ to improve education, it is already doing demonstrable harm.” Bringing together many press accounts of the negative impact of high stakes testing, Nichols and Berliner provide convincing argument that the punitive measures accompanying this testing is destroying America’s greatest invention, its public schools. . . .

Get the rest here at Education Review.

New Report on NCLB Tutoring Sinkhole

A new policy brief from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice finds that the corporate "foot in the door," as Sen. Judd Gregg described the tutoring provision, has turned in a dollar drain for the poorest of schools, who must, as a part of their accountability plan commit 20% of their Title 1 funds to pay corporate tutoring outfits who are entirely unaccountable for results. Sound like a Bush plan?

EAST LANSING, Mich., (May 1, 2007) – Supplemental Education Services, a key component of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, has been adopted and implemented with little evidence to support its effectiveness according to a new policy brief funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The policy brief, “Supplemental Education Services under NCLB: Emerging Evidence and Policy Issues,” is by Patricia Burch, Ph.D of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The brief examines the supplemental education services (SES) provision of NCLB, which requires school districts to pay the cost of after-school tutoring services for eligible students attending schools that have failed to meet mandated Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) benchmarks three years in a row. Those schools must set aside up to 20 percent of their Title I funds to pay for third-party tutoring services provided by state-approved providers. Currently, this field of providers is dominated by private, for-profit companies.

The report finds that SES programs have low participation rates and offer limited services for English Language Learners and special education students. It also finds that states and school districts lack the capacity to offer significant monitoring or accountability for SES programs—in stark contrast to the NCLB law’s strict accountability measures applied to the schools themselves.

The report emphasizes the overwhelming lack of evidence to support (or refute) the wisdom of the SES policy. The report states, “existing research offers little information about specific conditions that support positive outcomes” from supplemental education services provided under the law. “To make well-informed decisions in the future, policy makers will require additional empirical evidence.”

The report recommends policy makers redesign NCLB to commission federally funded studies that assess the effectiveness of SES programs and their accessibility to at-risk students. It also offers concrete recommendations for amending NCLB to assist local school districts and state education agencies in administering SES programs.

The full policy brief is available at http://www.greatlakescenter.org.

Wood on Reading First

Part of George Wood' strong post yesterday:

. . . . The corruption and pseudo-science surrounding Reading First is bad enough. But the real problem with Reading First and similar programs is the assumption as to where decision-making authority and judgment should lie.

Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the case of Madison, WI and that district’s experience with Reading First. As reported on the front page of the New York Times, Madison was experiencing great success with their Balanced Literacy approach—blending some phonics instruction with a Whole Language approach. But consultants hired by the Department of Education pushed Madison to abandon this approach in favor of a phonics-only, commercially-produced program. When Madison refused, and provided documentation of their success, they were told that because “the city’s program lacked uniformity and relied too much on teacher judgment” it could not be recommended for Reading First funding.

The Reading Recovery program has faced a similar fate on a national scale. As a program it was specifically signaled out by DOE as “not scientifically based.” And yet, in March of this year DOE’s own What Works Clearninghouse gave Reading Recovery its highest rating (Education Week, subscription required). Responding to this, Reid Lyons, one of the architects of Reading First said he was not opposed to Reading Recovery. Rather “The question we need to ask is what level of professional development is needed to implement a program with fidelity? Can the district provide that? Can we cover the expense of the program? Is it cost-effective?”

These two cases demonstrate what is really at stake in the latest rendition of the ‘reading wars.’ Do we, on one hand, turn over schools to commercial interests who proscribe teacher behavior, standardize teaching practices, and work to be ‘cost effective’? Or, do we choose to trust teacher/parent/community judgment, invest in developing that judgment, and allow for multiple approaches to helping children learn?

This is the crux of what is wrong with so much of what is done in the name of school improvement. Misunderstanding everything that teaching and learning is about, faceless bureaucrats (until they are called before congressional panels) dictate to teachers they are to teach, to communities what is to taught, and to administrators what programs to buy. The desire is to eliminate teacher, and often parent, judgment and replace it with so-called ‘expert’ or ‘scientific’ direction.

This is a recurring dilemma in democratic societies. As Forum Convener Deborah Meier pointed out in our last newsletter, if we believe in democracy as our most special and effective form of accountability we need more, not less, local decision-making. At the same time we do not always trust each other to make good judgments. The solution, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, is not to usurp authority; rather it is to invest in helping people exercise authority wisely.

That is why we have public schools, to nurture in the young the skills and dispositions of thoughtful democratic citizenship. But they will only learn this when they are in the company of adults who demonstrate such abilities—as opposed to sitting at the feet of someone whose judgment is not to be trusted.

Seeking Views from New York City Parents

The New York Times has a story today about the Mayor's new charade to convince parents that they have some voice in the operations of NYC Schools. For those parents who would rather hold the Prince accountable for his kingdom rather than the subjects, here is a survey that may be copied and sent back to the Castle.

1=Agree 2=Disagree 3=Can't say

1 2 3 Prince Mike makes school parents feel welcome in making decisions that affect public schools.

1 2 3 Prince Mike allows friends and cronies to drain education resources intended to help children.

1 2 3 Prince Mike puts down parents and teachers who disagree with him.

1 2 3 Prince Mike has taken the public out of public schools.

1 2 3 Prince Mike blames poor children and parents for the economic disadvantages that largely determine test scores.

1 2 3 Prince Mike's testing and mandatory retention policy teaches failure to children at an early age.

1 2 3 Prince Mike would like to privatize the public schools.

1 2 3 Prince Mike's test-and-punish assessment policies will encourage dropouts and pushouts.

1 2 3 Prince Mike respects teachers.

1 2 3 Prince Mike respects poor parents.

1 2 3 Prince Mike's business model for schools has turned New York schools into corrupt testing factories.

1 2 3 Prince Mike's education policy supports the continuation of the income gap and the achievement gap.

1 2 3 Prince Mike knows a great deal about running a business.

1 2 3 Prince Mike knows just enough to be dangerous when it comes to operating humane schools that care about children.

ED: "Wholly Owned Subsidiary of the Loan Industry"

Since it has become safe, and even cool, to go after the bare-knuckled crooks and thugs who own the lease on the Executive Branch until 2008, I am delighted to see WaPo and the New York Times once more competing to be the lead newspaper in support of virtuous government. Today's Post digs a little deeper, or at least has read a few more blogs, to expose further details in Loangate.

It seems that the Bushies, in early 2001, quashed a proposal left on the table by Clinton to rein in some of the more dubious practices of the student loan biz. And now they have new proposals they would like to put in place just as they leave office, thu assuring ample opportunity for another 18-20 months of the same kind of Treasury looting that began in 2001. Here is my favorite quote in today's piece:

"The Department of Education has been run as a wholly owned subsidiary of the loan industry under this administration," said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime advocate for industry reform at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "They are running the federal loan program for the profit of their friends and not for the benefit of students and taxpayers."

Teacher Dropout Study in California

(Click image to enlarge.) Here are the highlights from the article in the L. A. Times.