Doug Ward Refuses to Admninister NC Test

Susan Ohanian has the story here.

"ruining children's futures and leaving them unprepared for the world of work"

From The Independent on a new report of results from the British testocracy, which is a few years ahead of where we are headed:

Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Teaching to national curriculum tests is ruining pupils' futures and leaving them unprepared for the world of work, says a report released today by a group of MPs.

The Labour-dominated Commons Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families warns that the "inappropriate focus" by teachers on test results could rob pupils of a well-balanced education.

"We received substantial evidence that teaching to the test, to an extent which narrows the curriculum and puts sustained learning at risk, is widespread," the MPs state. "The way that many teachers have responded to the Government's approach to accountability has meant that test results are pursued at the expense of a rounded education for children.

"One serious consequence of teaching to the test is that it tends to lead to shallow learning and short-term retention of knowledge." The report adds: "In the worst cases, teachers may resort to dull and boring methods of teaching, using the looming threat of examinations to motivate pupils rather than inspiring them to learn."

The result of this has been a "disproportionate focus" on the core subjects of English, maths and science and "those aspects of these subjects which are likely to be tested in an examination" than all others.

The MPs, however, stop short of calling for an end to national curriculum tests – taken by all pupils at the ages of seven, 11 and 14 – saying that they find the arguments in favour of a system of national testing to be "persuasive". Instead, they say, it is the uses to which the test results are put – such as drawing up league tables of primary schools' test results and the targets set for individual schools' performance – that need a drastic revision.

"The drive to meet government targets has too often become the goal rather than the means to the end of providing the best possible education for all children," they argue.

It calls for further incentives for schools to acknowledge pupils' achievements in other aspects of the curriculum.

On league tables, the report advocates publishing them with a "health warning", telling parents not just to consider the raw results but coupling the publication of the tables with relevant comments from the latest report on the school by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog.

Opposition MPs and teachers' leaders claimed, however, that the report's evidence meant the test regime – shown by the MPs to be the most rigorous in the Western world – should be pruned.

Paul Holmes, Liberal Democrat MP for Chesterfield and a member of the Select Committee, said: "This report is a scathing indictment of the highly negative effects of the Government's high stakes testing regime coupled with league tables. It highlights the destructive effects of teaching to the test in order to hit prescribed Government targets."

The Schools minister, Jim Knight, said that the tests were "evolving" and a national pilot of new testing arrangements for 11-year-olds, whereby they could sit them when their teachers believed they were ready to take them rather than face "sudden death" end-of-year tests, had been launched.

The committee warned that these new "single level" tests would still hamper schools in their attempts to introduce a broader curriculum if they were going to be held accountable for the results.

Australian Psychologist: "It's a crazy thing we're doing to kids, really."

While most psychologists hide behind their association statements on the ethical use of testing that the testing maniacs simply ignore, here is one Australian shrink willing to speak out. From the Herald-Sun:

A CHILD psychologist has hit out at this week's national literacy and numeracy tests, calling them crazy and a waste of time.

Melbourne psychologist Andrew Fuller said the national tests did not adequately measure a child's skills and should not be used to compare them with other children.

"Parents shouldn't be getting hot under the collar, these are very poor and rough measures of basic skills," he said.

"They are very bad at predicting individual achievements . . . they're a complete waste of time."

The National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (Naplan) tests for all year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students will be held over three days from tomorrow.

More than one million students from 9000 schools across Australia will participate in the three-day tests.

Education Minister Julia Gillard yesterday defended the tests.

"You will be in the situation to know how your child is going, not only in their own school, but in a national test," Ms Gillard said.

"That is very important information for parents, and it's also important information for government to see how the education system is going and who might need extra assistance."

But Mr Fuller said that a recent doctoral thesis into national testing found the tests were invalid.

"It's a crazy thing that we're doing to kids, really," he said.

"These don't measure what they're supposed to measure. We're actually wasting everyone's time by taking valuable teaching time and using it for assessment that has no purpose really."

Mr Fuller was concerned that parents being told their child performed below a national standard would be too harsh, and that children would become stressed during the testing.

"Parents need to portray to these kids that they're not something to worry about, they're not something that's going to affect our view of you, they're not going to tell us how well or badly you're going to do in life, so don't get too fussed basically," he said.

Mr Fuller, who practises in Blackburn, is a member of the National Coalition Against Bullying and consults on children's television programs and the Federal Government's Resilience Education and Drug Information program.

Tomorrow will be the biggest testing day with two tests - Language Conventions which tests spelling, grammar and punctuation - and Writing being held.

Reading will be held on Wednesday and Numeracy on Thursday.

High School Exit Exams: No Benefit to Passers, Big Harm to Failers

From MyFox9 in Minneapolis:

Created: Monday, 12 May 2008, 11:23 AM CDT
Last Edited: Monday, 12 May 2008, 11:23 AM CDT

MINNEAPOLIS -- State-mandated high school exit exams harm students who fail and provide no benefit to those who pass, according to new research from the University of Minnesota and University of California, Davis.

Approximately three million U.S. high school seniors graduate each year, but tens of thousands of students have their graduation put on hold because they have yet to pass state-mandated high school exit exams.

U of M sociology professor John Robert Warren and Eric Grodsky at the University of California, Davis have challenged the value of state exit exams.

They found state exit exams reduce high school completion rates and neither boost academic achievement nor improve graduates' post-high school labor market prospects.

State high school exit exam policies have been implemented in recent decades to ensure that graduates have the skills required to succeed in college and in the 21st century global economy. The exams in place in 23 states and affect about two of every three students in the class of 2008.

In a study shows no measurable impact on the reading or math achievement levels of 13 to 17-year old students. In another study, Warren and Grodsky found students earning diplomas in states requiring exit exams experienced the same chances of getting a job and the same wage rates as those who were not required to pass exit exams.

“For many people denying diplomas to some students in order to more broadly boost academic achievement is an acceptable trade-off,” Warren said. “But there’s no evidence that exit exams boost the academic achievement or workplace preparedness of U.S. high school students.” . . .

Gary Stager's "The Surge Against First Graders"

From Huffington Post, posted May 8:

by Gary Stager

When overseas colleagues criticize American foreign policy, I've been known to respond, "If you like Iraq, you'll love what the Bush administration has done to public education." Late last week, the US Department of Education proved my point when they released the Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report.

Like the invasion of Iraq or the disastrous Katrina aftermath, Reading First is the latest in a string of colossal failures of the Bush administration. As in the other cases of malfeasance, the White House is spinning news of the Reading First fiasco. This denial of culpability has gone unchallenged by the mainstream media disinterested in matters of education policy. Children and our economic security are the ultimate losers.

Reading First is the centerpiece of the Bush Administration's unprecedented takeover of public education, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Public school teachers and students have endured a half dozen years of terror as NCLB used shame, blame and crackpot theories to turn classrooms into Dickensian test-prep sweatshops devoid of creativity, joy or relevance. Veteran educators were handed scripts to follow, rather than teach.

The recent report concludes, "Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension... The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level." In other words, a $6 billion federal program spending had no positive impact. Additionally, local school districts have made inestimable investments to support Reading First.

The failure of Reading First represents more than a course correction for a well-intentioned attempt to benefit the nation's children. Reading First was rife with politics, contempt for professional educators and conflicts of interest from the outset. It is particularly ironic that an administration insistent that every classroom practice must adhere to "scientifically-based research," to the exclusion of research it did not like, continues to insist that Reading First should be the law of the land, despite its own evidence to the contrary.

How did we get here?

Faulty Intelligence
Like the invasion of Iraq, Reading First was justified with ideological theories and bogus intelligence. NCLB and Reading First were based on the purported success of the "Houston Miracle" from when George W. Bush was Governor of Texas and his first secretary of education, Rod Paige, was the Superintendent of the Houston Schools. Although the "miracle" was quickly exposed as a fraud in which data was cooked in an Enron-like fashion and at-risk students disappeared, Congress decided that what flopped so spectacularly in Houston should be applied to the nation.

Profiteering
Reading First has its own Halliburton and Blackwater-like profiteers. In 2006, I wrote an analysis of the Department of Education Inspector General's report detailing the widespread corruption, cronyism and fraud endemic in Reading First. Untested and obscure strategies, such as Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) reduced reading to a series of one-minute tests of mechanics having nothing to do with students understanding what they read. DIBELS went from obscurity to ubiquity virtually overnight and made millions for its creators.

A handful of textbook publishers were greatly enriched while others were demonized and their books declared ineligible for purchase. Internal Department of Education memos indicate a conscious effort to create winners and losers in the marketplace. Before being forced to resign in 2006, Reading First Director Christopher Doherty called representatives from publishers the program shunned "dirtbags" and "would-be party crashers" and said, "We need to beat the [expletive] out of them."

The Connection to September 11, 2001
Reading First even has connections to 9/11. As the terrorists attacked the United States, President Bush was in a classroom where a teacher read The Pet Goat to a group of young children. The trip was part of a calculated campaign to sell No Child Left Behind and Reading First.

The Pet Goat is an exercise from a "literary classic" titled, Reading Mastery 2, by the father of Direct Instruction, Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann. In the 1960s, Engelmann invented a controversial pedagogical approach that reduces knowledge to bite-sized chunks presented in a prescribed sequence enforced by a scripted lesson the teacher is to recite to a classroom of pupils chanting predetermined responses. Every single word the teacher is to utter, including permissible and prohibited words of encouragement, are provided. There is no room for individuality. The Direct Instruction Web site states, "The popular valuing of teacher creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed instructional practices."

Engelmann also said, "We don't give a damn what the teacher thinks, what the teacher feels."

Engelmann's publisher, textbook giant, McGraw-Hill, has ties to the Bush family dating back to the 1930s. Company namesakes served on George W. Bush's transition team and the board of his mother's literacy foundation. The publishers received honors from both Bush administrations and they in turn bestowed awards on Secretary Rod Paige, who then keynoted their business conference. The company's former executive vice president was the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, National Intelligence Czar and current Assistant Secretary of State, John Negroponte. Direct instruction became synonymous with the "scientifically based methods" required by No Child Left Behind and Reading First.

Direct Instruction appears as effective at teaching reading comprehension as the War in Iraq is at spreading democracy.

Enemies Everywhere
On February 23, 2004, then Education Secretary, Rod Paige called the nation's largest teacher's union, "a terrorist organization" during a meeting with the National Governor's Association. Two years earlier, Reid Lyon, one of the architects of NCLB and Reading first said the following in a government-sponsored forum, "If there was any piece of legislation that I could pass it would be to blow up colleges of education." These are just two examples of the paranoia manifest by the "you're either with us or against us" worldview, even when the declared enemies happen to be your child's teacher.

The Surge
Underlying Reading First is one of the religious right's favorite issues, phonics instruction. Educators have long understood that some students need help sounding out words while learning to read. However, the "reading wars" is an offensive by neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists convinced that every child learns to read in exactly the same way by being taught 43 phonemic sounds in a lockstep sequence. Some suspect that the promotion of "highly structured, systematic sequential explicit phonics" instruction is a Trojan horse for public school privatization while others suggest that phonics is embraced by religious fundamentalists happy to reduce reading to the literal interpretation of text. Either way, Reading First is the federal government's program for mandating uniform phonics instruction. Any parent who has watched a child spontaneously learn to read must question mechanistic theories of human development that oversimplify complex issues.

The Department of Education's attempt to spin the devastating conclusions of their own Reading First evaluation demonstrates how they are fueled by phonics fanaticism and choose failed ideology over science. The Department of Education made the incredulous claim that the Secretary of Education planned to look at the study "to inform our efforts," and would "look forward to reviewing the final report." Then they started spinning.

According to the May 1st edition of USA Today,

"On the plus side, researchers found that Reading First teachers spent more time emphasizing phonics and other aspects of what many experts consider solid instruction -- about 10 minutes more a day, or nearly an hour more a week. "Teachers' behavior was changed," Institute of Education Sciences Director Whitehurst says.

The White House wants us to believe that teachers spending more time executing a failed strategy is cause for celebration. Reading First doesn't work, but the good news is teachers are doing more of it -- all in the name of science. Got it?

Mission accomplished!

Apparently, what our schools really need is a phonics surge against little children, the collateral victims of Reading First.

Corporate Vouchers Victorious in Florida

When state legislators in Florida offer children and parents either a rundown, under-funded, segregated testing factory or a tax-supported corporate voucher to a Christian school, the school choice has already been made--and it hasn't been made by the parent or the child.

Nevertheless, a growing number of legislators in Florida have seen the light at the bottom of their vortex. They have convinced themselves that they are not voting for vouchers--they are voting for scholarships. They are not giving up their civic commitment to provide for citizens in order that corporations may be relieved of their tax burden--they are saving children, even if it from their own legislative and moral failure to provide for them.

The amount of democracy within a society is directly proportionate to the amount of civic space remaining there. Oh, well.

Clips from St. Petersburg Times:

In 2001, Democrats in the Legislature pounded Republican plans to start a private school voucher program for poor and predominantly minority kids. They said it was unconstitutional, a drain on public schools, even un-American. In the end, all but one Democrat voted against it.

Times have changed. This year, a bill to vastly expand the same program passed by large margins.

And this time, a third of the Democratic caucus was on board.

"I'm a strong advocate for public school education, and I'm not necessarily a strong advocate for vouchers," said Rep. Bill Heller, D-St. Petersburg, one of four Tampa Bay-area Democrats to vote yes. But "the bottom line has to be the child. If good things are happening for the child, then you can justify it."

. . . .

The legislation increases the amount of each scholarship to $3,950, up $200 from this year. The average cost per student in public school is about $7,000.

Some Democratic supporters say they back the program because unlike Opportunity Scholarships, the state's first voucher program — which the Florida Supreme Court struck down in 2006 — the money for tax-credit scholarships doesn't come directly out of state coffers. Some offered what critics call a semantic defense.

"I don't think I'm voting for a voucher," said Rep. Betty Reed, a Tampa Democrat who has 13 private schools in her district that accept tax-credit scholarships. "It's a scholarship." . . . .

"Underperforming"

An insightful piece from Australia on the "underperforming" schools there. From The Age:

A RECURRING theme of current educational debate is what should be done about "underperforming" or even "failing" schools. Schemes to pay higher wages to "high-performing" teachers to work in such schools - as well as regular calls by politicians for improved "accountability" - reinforce the view that a number of schools fit this "underperforming" category. The latest State Government blueprint seems to be based on this same assumption.

I have never seen a definition of what constitutes an underperforming school, but those who use the term generally imply that the academic performance of its students, as measured by VCE results or literacy and numeracy testing, is below expected standards, or the standards achieved by schools in different suburbs.

The implication is that teachers at such a school are not doing their jobs well enough - and if they work harder, improve their methods or are replaced by better teachers, the problem will be solved.

The concept of the underperforming or failing school is based on a number of myths. The first is that student performance is entirely dependent on what happens in school, and that it is a consequence solely of the activities of teachers and principals and not of any factors outside the school.

The second myth is that all students come to school equally prepared, with equal ability and with equal levels of motivation, so that all they need is excellent teaching to excel.

At the end of 2006, I retired after 35 years as a teacher and administrator, mostly in schools in the so-called "disadvantaged" northern suburbs. After the school at which I was vice-principal was closed in 1992, I spent the next 11 years attached to the Northern Metropolitan Office of the Education Department, relieving in principal-class vacancies, mostly in the northern suburbs.

In all I worked in almost half the secondary schools in the north, for periods varying from one term to a full year. In that time I did not see one instance of a school I would describe as "underperforming", let alone "failing".

I did see many students who could be described as "underperforming" and as educationally disadvantaged, but this "underperformance" was almost entirely due to factors outside the school. For more than 40 years researchers have identified a variety of socio-economic factors that can influence a child's educational performance. Proponents of the underperforming school fallacy seem to ignore these factors.

Students who start school with the best chances of ultimate success will come from a home where the parents are well educated and where education is highly valued; where the child's imagination and cognitive development have been stimulated and enriched by a wide variety of play and other creative experiences; where English is the first language, and the parents and other adults with whom the child has contact have strong linguistic skills in the English language.

They will come from homes where the child is read to frequently, the parents read and are seen to enjoy reading, and there is a large variety of reading matter; and the child has had at least a year of pre-school experience before starting school.

The absence of any or all of these factors will affect a child's readiness for school. Lower parental levels of education, limited linguistic ability, lack of reading and books in the home, little use of the English language in families of non-English-speaking backgrounds, high levels of family unemployment and non-attendance at kindergarten are all more prevalent in the northern and western suburbs.

It follows that larger numbers of children arrive at school less well prepared than is likely in more affluent areas.

What this means for schools and teachers in the "disadvantaged" parts of Melbourne is that they will encounter a wider range of abilities in their students, and the proportion of students who are starting a long way behind their peers is likely to be much higher.

Many teachers in some of our disadvantaged suburbs first have to teach some children how to hold a book, because they have never seen one in their homes. Teachers attempt to take into account the differences between students when developing their teaching programs, but those starting a long way behind often never really catch up.

Most primary schools employ programs to assist students experiencing literacy difficulties, but such programs have to be attempted within the staffing and resource limitations applied by the department.

The fact that significant numbers of students never really catch up is an indication that insufficient resources have been provided to schools attempting to overcome student disadvantage- not an indication of underperforming teachers and principals. The needs simply exceed the available resources.

Secondary schools also face greater difficulties in the northern and western suburbs. Students who have fallen behind in primary schools will often become negative and disruptive influences as they hit adolescence.

Secondary teachers also design their teaching programs to cater for a wide range of abilities, but even the best teachers will find some students so resistant to any program as to be effectively unteachable in a normal classroom. A small number of alternative settings are provided, but these are too few, with long waiting lists.

Northern-suburban schools have thousands of excellent teachers. They may have smaller numbers of high-achieving students, but those students do as well as students in any other suburb.

The apparent underperformance by many of the students in those schools is a direct result of factors outside the control of the school - the socio-economic, demographic and family factors that children have experienced before they start school, and which they continue to experience in the 17 hours of every school day that they are not at school.

The concept of the underperforming school is simply a tool for politicians to disguise their own unwillingness to provide appropriate resources to the education system to help lessen the impact of social inequality.

Graeme Smithies is a retired teacher and assistant principal who spent about 25 of his 35 years in schools in the northern suburbs.

Attn: California Science Teachers

Dear Jim Horn,

Since you are currently looking for blog submissions, we thought we would send something your way regarding the Exploratorium's mentor teacher training workshops for science teachers.

When a Koosh ball spins, it bulges exactly the way that the spinning Earth bulges out at the equator and flattens at the poles. Such hard won knowledge is manna for a science teacher. That discovery took years for
a veteran physics teacher to make. But it took much less time for him to share and demonstrate the effect with not only his students, but beginning science teachers, as well. The Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute in San Francisco has created a national model for regenerating sorely needed mentors for new secondary, classroom science teachers. The incipient mentor program, which first attracted Congressional attention ten years ago, has now grown the original crop of new educators into today’s mentors. The program has a 90% retention rate of new teachers—far over the national 50% average—and begins again on June 17 – July 11. For more information, follow this link to view the press release. Or call our office at 415-561-0377.

Thank you and have a great day,

Taylor

*Taylor Maurand*
Public Information Department
The Exploratorium
3601 Lyon Street 94123

Telephone Contact:
Leslie Patterson
415-561-0377

Handing Over the High School Curriculum to Corporate Control in New Jersey

NJ MISSTEPS ON SECONDARY REFORM PLAN
NEW TESTS, NO NEW RESOURCES
Stan Karp

On April 25, the New Jersey High School Redesign Steering Committee released its long-awaited recommendations for secondary reform in a report entitled NJ Steps: Re-designing Education in NJ for the 21st Century. In a presentation to a joint meeting of the State Board of Education and the NJ Commission on Higher Education, Governor Jon Corzine and Commissioner Lucille Davy outlined a major increase in state graduation requirements, including six new high stakes end-of-course exams that would be required to earn a high school diploma by 2016.

Although the report urges "a fundamental change in public education in the state that will affect students in all grades," the committee did not propose any new resources to support its recommendations. The absence of new funds in a time of tight budgets and continuing controversy over the state’s new school funding formula raised serious questions about how the committee plans to reach its goal of "preparing every student for success." There is also debate about how that "success" should be defined.

Aside from the costs of implementing the plan, education advocates raised concerns about the impact of the proposed tests and standardization of courses on school programs and student options, and about the top-down process that has so far shaped the HS Redesign effort.

End of Course Exams

The plan offers little direct help to the state’s large urban high schools that are already struggling to meet existing state standards and the escalating benchmarks of the federal No Child Left Behind Law. NJ Steps promises "special consideration" to such schools declaring, "The extra supports required by these students...must be front and center of any efforts to raise expectations." However, these supports are not described in detail in the proposal or backed with committed resources.

By contrast, the new standards and tests are outlined in charts and timelines that leave little room for alternative visions of reform. To receive a high school diploma, students would be required to take and pass end-of-course exams in Language Arts, Algebra I & II, Geometry, Biology and Chemistry. The plan includes references to "individualized attention, more relevant coursework," and "restructured learning experiences." But the heart of the proposal is a largely conventional plan to ramp up traditional academic course work in a "one-size-fits-all" framework that will be difficult to impose and costly to implement.

As a report on exit exams from the Center on Education Policy notes:

"The direct costs of developing and administering the tests themselves make up a tiny fraction of the total costs of implementing an exit exam policy. The bulk of the costs go toward other ‘hidden’ expenses necessary to give students a strong chance of passing the mandatory exams. These include remedial services for students who fail, programs to prevent failure, and professional development to upgrade the skills of teachers who must prepare students for the exams....The true costs of an exit exam policy are often invisible to state policymakers, because the expenses are being borne mostly by local school districts—and often by shifting existing funds away from other educational priorities." (“The Hidden Cost of High School Exit Exams,” Center on Education Policy, May 2004)

Currently only 35% of all NJ districts require Chemistry, less than 45% require Algebra II, and less than 70% require Algebra I, Geometry, and Biology. Moving these numbers up to 100% within eight years, as NJ Steps proposes, would require major increases in educational investment. The report acknowledges that "New Jersey is currently facing a shortage of qualified math, science, and special education teachers" and that "Teacher attrition...is especially acute in low-performing, high poverty schools where experienced, expert teachers are most needed."

Under the plan, freshman entering high school in September 2008 would need to pass tests in Language Arts, Algebra I and Biology to get a diploma. Two years later, Geometry and Chemistry would be added. The following year’s freshman class would also have to pass an Algebra II exam.

Advocates for vocational ed programs are concerned that required courses will squeeze out the applied electives and practical real world training that attract students to such programs. Others are concerned that an expanded system of high-stakes exit tests will negatively affect graduation and dropout rates, especially if they are not matched by dramatic improvements in secondary programs and performance. Currently, New Jersey has the nation’s second highest graduation rate according to Education Week. Neighboring New York state, which adopted a similar series of tests several years ago, is number 40.

American Diploma Project

Although the plan was presented by the New Jersey High School Redesign Committee, its origins lie in the American Diploma Project (ADP) sponsored by Achieve, Inc. Achieve is a national educational consulting group created by business leaders and the nation’s Governors to align K-12 curriculum with the needs and expectations of the business world and higher education. Art Ryan, retiring CEO of Prudential and a national co-chair of Achieve, has been a leader of the NJ effort. Ryan, Corzine and Susan Cole, the president of Montclair State University, are co-chairs of the Redesign Steering Committee. According to NJ Steps, the "ADP benchmarks have become the foundation for change and redesign of high schools in New Jersey."

In August 2006, the HS Redesign Steering Committee was formed with representation from the state’s major professional education organizations, including the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, New Jersey School Boards Association, New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, and the New Jersey Education Association. The Chamber of Commerce and the business-led New Jersey United for Higher School Standards were also represented. Parent and community groups, school-based educators and others were limited to asking questions at a series of public meetings designed to win support for the plan.

Now that the plan has been formulated and endorsed by "New Jersey’s higher education and business communities," it is being submitted to the State Board of Education for approval. The plan also calls for creation of a "P-16 Council" of "key stakeholders to create a seamless, aligned system of public education in New Jersey." The recurring theme of "aligning" the K-12 system from the top-down to meet the needs of higher education and business has sparked concerns that the plan does not represent the full range of interests that public education must serve and could reinforce new types of tracking and other forms of educational inequality.

Secondary Education Initiative

Throughout the process, the concerns of urban "Abbott" advocates been marginalized. A Court-ordered mediation agreement did lead in 2004 to the creation of the Secondary Education Initiative [SEI] which required the 31 "special needs" Abbott districts to develop plans to provide college prep curricula, small learning communities and student/family supports for all middle and high school students. But this effort was consigned to a separate, lesser track in the NJ Department of Education’s since-dissolved "Abbott division" and only belatedly folded into the HS Redesign effort. As it became clear that the Administration was developing a new school funding formula that would eliminate the Abbott framework, hoped-for supports for SEI, including formation of technical assistance teams, inclusion of SEI in district budget planning, and development of a research plan to evaluate the reform, did not materialize.

NJ Steps does pledge to continue SEI and even declares, "with the implementation of the new school funding formula in January 2008, these reforms will be expanded to districts throughout the state." However the substance of these commitments is uncertain and the DOE’s record of sustaining secondary reform, especially in urban districts, is not strong.

NJ Steps says that "with strained local and state budgets, any additional resources will have to be found through strategic reallocations." Yet for nearly 15 years the State has assumed full control of NJ’s three largest urban districts during a period with the highest, Abbott-mandated levels of funding for urban secondary schools in the nation. But little has been accomplished in the way of "reallocation" or sustained investment for secondary reform, particularly in the large comprehensive high schools. When the SEI regulations were first adopted in 2004-2005, four districts were selected as "phase one pilots" to test the assumptions of the plan and apply its lessons to other districts. But only one limited pilot, in Orange, went forward and a systematic evaluation of the results has not been done.

As it retreats from Abbott commitments, the Department is circulating a scaled-back, draft version of the secondary regulations for use under the new School Funding and Reform Act. Where the original SEI regulations required implementation of small learning communities and a defined program of student/family supports, the draft regulations ask districts to pick from a list of "personalization strategies" that include "adult mentoring programs" or "other practices." Substantive elements like a requirement that teacher teams working with cohorts of students over multiple years receive two-three hours per week of common planning time have been removed, (even as NJ Steps declares that: "New Jersey’s schools must design and offer sustained, intensive, job-embedded professional development to enable teachers, superintendents, principals, and supervisors to support high student achievement.")

Unfortunately, these are signs of the recurring pattern of reform failure. New plans drop from the sky without summing up the lessons of previous ones or addressing the real experience of school communities with past reform efforts. Those parts of the plan that can be moved "on paper," such as standards and tests, are adopted by the State, with increasing detail and prescription, in the name of "accountability" and "higher expectations." But the more difficult efforts to build local capacity that can address issues of school climate, improve professional practice and create inclusive, credible process don’t receive the sustained attention and resources needed to put them in place. The rhetoric of "higher expectations" substitutes for the real changes needed to achieve them.

There are too many examples of this in NJ Steps. In proposing that Chemistry, now required by just 33% of all NJ districts, be made mandatory for all students, the report says, "The Steering Committee recognizes that a Lab Chemistry course, as it has been traditionally taught, would require facilities that may not be available in many schools for dramatically increased numbers of students." Yet instead of linking this recommendation to the need for equalizing educational opportunity, the report cites ways "to reorient how Chemistry is taught so that extensive capital investment by districts may not be required." Such approaches raise doubts among educators, parents and equity advocates about the real intent and potential impact of the plan. A plan that relies so heavily on "raising expectations" through high-stakes exams has a special obligation to address the true costs of passing them.

New Jersey is in urgent need of a robust reform effort that promotes multiple pathways to success for an increasingly diverse student population. But such an effort must rely less on state standards and high-stakes exams and more on credible resources, school-based change, and an inclusive, collaborative reform process. Unless the NJDOE and the HS Redesign Committee heed the lessons of past rounds of failed reform, this new plan could do more harm than good or be "dead-on-arrival" in the schools and communities that need reform most.

For more info contact skarp@edlawcenter.org.

Prepared: April 30, 2008

Copyright © 2008 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved.

More dropouts? You bet. What is going to help the tens of thousands of poor kids pass multiple exams, the ones who can't pass the current single high school graduation test? "Thowed away."

One curriculum "choice" for all, no excuses, no ifs, ands, or buts? You bet--that's what the economy of scale demands.

The arts and music and history and constitutional government? If it can't be used to pump consumption in the global economy, who cares?

What's it all based on? Propaganda from the Fordham Foundation and Manhattan Institute. There is not a single refereed source in all of the Report to substantiate any of the proposed actions.

Where is environmental awareness in this Exxon/Mobil science curriculum that ignores the approaching ecological calamity? Nowhere in sight.

Where are the university schools of education in this discussion? Waiting for their marching orders.

Where was the NJEA as all this was unfolding? Right up there in line at the same feeding trough. Ditto for the NJ School Boards Association.
JH

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Published and unpublished commentary or essays from educators, parents, grandparents, students, and even politicians and other bloggers will be considered, too.

Please send your post as a Word attachment, include your name (no pseudonyms, please), return email, and phone number. I will, at your request, post your entry anonymously if you indicate that is what you prefer.

Save the Republic and the Earth,
Jim Horn
ontogenyx@mac.com

ASVAB As a Recruiting Tool

Please print clearly...military recruiters want more than your test scores.

The ASVAB test is given to hundreds of thousands of high schoolers every year. Yet educators are not informed about how this 'Career-test' ties directly into the marketing agendas of military recruiting. It should be clear from the title, ASVAB stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, yet the connection from 'test' to 'war; is often missed. And while teachers and counselors are told that the test is a free career-placement test for teens, many of whom are unsure as to their futures, test givers and test takers may be unaware that the ASVAB places students into pre-assigned categories for today's military infrastructure.

Why is this a problem? There is a need to help direct young adults towards meaningful career choices. While we educators may all work tirelessly we know that all of our students are not going to apply for higher education. Our counselors, often over-burdened with administrative tasks, welcome additional free resources towards this end. And we all suspect that the budget cuts will only make the situation more difficult but ASVAB is free. So what's the problem? Students and teachers need to know where the numbers go.

Let's place it in a hypothetical construct. Say you go into a store. You are shopping for a new chair for your writing desk. You know you want something comfortable, but also something that will encourage you to produce rather than just fall asleep. A salesmen eyes you eying the ergonomic hairs and saunters over clipboard in hand. He hands you a form, telling you it has been scientifically designed to help you choose the chair that best suits your needs. Interested in this novel survey you agree to fill in the colorful user-friendly form. When you have completed the survey you wander the aisles while awaiting the results. A nice harvest-wheat colored chair grabs your eye. You move towards it, noticing the care put into it's design. The salesmen intercepts you and directs you towards another chair. But you don't want that chair. The salesman is confused, pointing to the survey results. Unhappy with the experience you decide to leave and find another, more traditional store. Driving towards the freeway your cell phone lights up. It's a chair salesman. A chair salesman? How did they get your cell number? You ask them firmly to not call back. At a boutique you buy an well-made antique chair that suits your needs fine. But the phone calls continue, and continue, always trying to sell you a chair.

Granted the above example is a bit reaching. But the real events that the ASVAB compel are quite similar. Once a student is assigned a numbered career potential, the information is forwarded to military recruiters, as well as student phone number, home addresses, and demographic information. The student is transformed from someone seeking a fulfilling life-path into a lead for military recruiters using high-pressure sales tactics. And the phone calls begin.

In LAUSD in 2004 ten students could not be fooled. When marshaled with a large group of other students into the auditorium for a career information test they noticed recruiters in military garb standing along the side. The students quickly surmised the real nature of the ASVAB and ten of them refused to take the exam. The site administrator reacted by initially suspending the students. But teacher and union outcry forced the site administrator to back down and the students were reinstated without consequence for refusing to take the 'voluntary' ASVAB.

In negotiations with LAUSD in late autumn 2007 teachers from the Coalition Against Militarism In Our Schools petitioned the District to use an information reporting option within ASVAB to with-hold all student data from the Pentagon and military recruiters. This is known as Option 8 and educators and counselors at schools where the ASVAB is given should push for the choosing of this option. CAMS petitions to LAUSD were granted and LAUSD is now a blanket Option 8 district!

In April 2008 at the 66th CFT Convention in Oakland a resolution was introduced by Local 1021/UTLA and passed by the body encouraging all CFT locals to make Option 8 the standard: "Therefore be it resolved that the California Federation of Teachers encourage and promote all ASVAB testing schools to use Option 8 to protect student privacy and publicize the use of Option 8 in all ASVAB testing scenarios." (CFT Resolution 31, passed April 13, 08)

Finding direction towards making career choices is a complicated and ever-evolving process. It is not one where people should be pushed into an assigned job. And having military recruiters calling and visiting our students at home as a consequence for taking a test, any test, is unacceptable and has no place in the American public education setting. Let's all make Option 8 the standard reporting option wherever ASVAB is administered.

Gregory Sotir
LAUSD Virgil Middle School
Eighth-grade English Teacher
Coalition Against Militarism In Our Schools (CAMS)
http://www.militaryfreeschools.org

Published and unpublished commentary or essays from educators, parents, grandparents, students, and even politicians and other bloggers will be considered, too.

Please send your post as a Word attachment, include your name (no pseudonyms, please), return email, and phone number. I will, at your request, post your entry anonymously if you indicate that is what you prefer.

Save the Republic and the Earth,
Jim Horn
ontogenyx@mac.com