Who's Behind the High Achievement NY Curtain?

Education reform group High Achievement NY is at it again, spending hundreds of thousands on a media campaign that includes robocalls to New York State parents, advising them that state assessments are "crucial" for their children's future. They are pushing for "consistent assessments and unified standards." I will move past the distorted facts in their sales pitch, except to mention that they believe tests "fix" the fact that "two-thirds of our students graduate from high school without being ready for college or a career." Really? Two-thirds. Explain to us then please, HANY, why in 2010 nearly 70% of NYS high school graduates went straight into college. Hmm. Add to that the number who take a year off and go to college at a later time. Add to that students like my own son, who got a job straight out of high school but are now going to school nights to get that degree. NY also had four out of the top ten high schools with the highest SAT/ACT scores in the nation. But I diverge...

The purpose of this post is to pull back the curtain and let you know who is funding this massive campaign that aims to fix our "broken" system. Because, you know, it's all for the children. Let's start with their coalition members, beginning with Arva Rice, President and CEO of the New York Urban League, who previously was affiliated with Paul Tudor Jones (yes the hedge fund guy) and his Robin Hood Foundation. 

Then there is New York Campaign for Achievement Now (NYCAN), part of the larger 50-state education reform group. The funding stream for 50CAN includes Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bush Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, and the Walton Foundation, among others. A veritable who's-who of big money in the education reform game. The NY chapter adds more money from Gates, along with Bloomberg Philanthrophies, Kenneth M. Hirsch and William E. Simon. 

Include Association for a Better New York, founded by real estate tycoon Bill Rudin. Their self-stated goal is to "promote neighborhood revitalization." AKA gentrification. AKA keeping their fingers on the real estate prize in NY.

Coalition member Parents for Excellence in Bethlehem has bought the Common Core Gates funded spin. Co-President Kim Namkoong is a parent, also a mathematician and computer programmer. She is a face for the "How is My Kid Doing?" campaign that is funded by - you guessed it - the Council for a Strong America folks and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bethlehem Parents for Excellence has a lackluster website (a surprise considering Namkoong's stated occupation) that does not list its donors. They advocate for common core and testing.

Membership includes reformy groups Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. Educators4Excellence, also funded by the Gates Foundation, is comprised of anti-union young teachers, many of whom are alumni of Teach For America.  See ed blogger Jonathan Pelto's research on the group here. StudentsFirstNY is that pro-charter, pro-voucher group that shares its physical address with New York Charter queen Eva Moskowitz' organization. NYS Families for Excellent Schools also shares that same address and is a hedge-funded PAC for education reforms. See Mercedes Schneider's detailed analysis of other HANY funding here.

HANY would not disclose specific information about their finances (shhh) but in 2014 said the bulk of the campaign money was going to come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. Gates and Helmsley have both donated millions to promoting the core. 

All this leaves me asking, why are so many corporate, business, hedge fund, pro-charter groups spending mega-money on a media campaign to promote the Core and the tests? Why do they care "so much" about other people's children? The business and money aspect, the fact that they are investors and market manipulators, gives us a clue. They want a share of the education market, the golden apple of opportunity that our children give them. Mega-money to be made by investing in charter schools, testing corporations, and publishers. Mega-money to be made by data-mining our children and manipulating their desires. Does that sound Orwellian to you? Why yes,yes it does. We cannot let big money have our children. Education policy should be promoted and created by educators, not businessmen. Spread the word.

Testimony on Common Core

It has taken me a while to post my testimony to the NYS Common Core Forums last summer. Life gets busy sometimes. Better late than never, so here it is:

I am a retired teacher, also a grandparent.  I am an education activist, committed to ending the disastrous Common Core that threatens the future of our children.

When I first began teaching, we helped students discover the joy of learning, so they would become lifelong learners. We kept in mind that the learning styles and development of children were different. Now all students are expected to learn at the same time and at the same pace. Now we have scripted lessons, dry Engage NY modules, and a de-emphasis of individualized, creative teaching. Common Core, high stakes tests, and VAM have been proven to be the real failure. Yet there is nothing done by those in power to address this failure. This leads me to the conclusion that our education policy is being railroaded to advance the political agenda of hedge fund investors and charter operators. Our children are the pawns, the “sacrifice zone” for the projected profits that can be made.  

Common core standards for young children ask them to use abstract reasoning that does not develop until about the age of 11. Kindergarten children like my grandson are forced to sit and write, complete worksheets, and learn by rote memorization.Young children learn best by play and through instruction that connects to their background knowledge and has real-world connections to their lives. It takes time to develop background knowledge in children. It takes time to let a mind discover, to engage in Socratic dialogue. But today, humanities, music, art, and yes even science are crowded out to make room for English and Math, the only two subjects that matter on the almighty tests. We are not developing thinkers who understand and appreciate their world.

Tests are impossibly hard, with cut scores calibrated to a 1630 on the SAT. Even our governor acknowledged this, and put a moratorium on using the scores for students, but not for our teachers. We face the prospect of losing a large percentage of our teaching force within the next two years. When Michelle Rhee instituted a similar weight of testing into teacher evaluations, DC lost 83% of its teachers. If we lose even a quarter of that percentage we are in trouble, because student enrollments at teacher preparation programs in NYS are down 20-50%. So where are our teachers going to come from to replace those we lose to a faulty evaluation system?

I ask for a return to state standards that were developed by educators, to state testing in (only) grades 4 and 8, to tests that were transparent and informed instruction. I ask for an end to test and VAM-based APPR. I ask that you provide resources and help for schools that are struggling, instead of receivership and criteria that does not allow them to demonstrate success. I ask for respect for all of our students, including special needs and ELL students. I ask for you to return the joyful learning that best provides a successful future for our children.

The Troublesome Record of MaryEllen Elia

Most of the time, it is not the people who come in with arguments blazing that you have to worry about.  It is the sweet-talkers, those who say they "are listening," who do more damage to opposition because by making "nice," they deflate the ire from which protest is born. From the press conferences that MaryEllen Elia has given since she accepted the job as New York State Education Commissioner, she could be pegged as a sweet-talker who nonetheless rigidly adheres to a "reformer" (or some would say deformer) dogma.

Once word leaked out that MaryEllen Elia was to be appointed, New York State parents, activists, and educators took to search engines to thoroughly research her background. Already troubled by the lack of transparency and stakeholder input in the search for a state education leader, what they found out about her work record proved even more disconcerting. Elia was paid a million dollars so that the school board could let her go "without cause" from her superintendent job in Hillsborough School District in Tampa, Florida.  For a district to be willing to pay that much in a "parachute payment," one might guess there had to have been some valid concerns and not just political angst.  Elia was a pro-Common Core, pro-high-stakes testing, pro-ranking/stacking/firing teachers, pro-voucher and pro-school choice kind of super who was also cozy with Jeb Bush.  As superintendent, she managed a 100 million dollar grant to Hillsborough from the Gates Foundation, intended to improve teacher evaluations and link them to testing. She also advocated for and used merit pay.

Elia's evaluations by Hillsborough Board members refer to her intimidating leadership style which created a "culture of fear," her lack of communication and transparency, and her lack of investigation and follow-through after the deaths of four students.  In her plus column, she was willing to go head to head to fight against expansion of a for-profit charter company with a questionable record, so she is apparently not a pushover for moneyed charter interests.  Let's further investigate her record.

1.  Elia's Record on School Choice
Pro-choice policies that Elia supported during her years at Hillsborough contributed to some district schools becoming "sacrifice zones" with high violence and crime rates, disproportionate suspension rates for minority students, and a lack of connection between schools and communities. The result was that the school district failed to provide a sound education for thousands of their students, and has one of the worst black graduation rates in the state.  

Prior to her 2005 appointment as superintendent at Hillsborough, Elia was head of the district's magnet school office.  Problems began in 2001, when a federal order requiring busing to integrate schools was lifted, in favor of the district's position that racial segregation had been eliminated.  The district then decided to move ahead with a "controlled choice" plan that would encourage racial diversity through magnet schools that would supposedly bring middle-class students to inner city schools, and inner-city kids to the largely white and more suburban schools. 

The district rapidly converted middle schools into specialty magnet schools for science/technology, criminal justice, and performing arts.  They chose students through a lottery system that was weighted based on zip code, income, and other diversity factors. Elia and her supervisors, however, overestimated how many parents from high-poverty neighborhoods would sign their children up for the magnets in other areas of the district. Poorer parents often do not have transportation, and they work long hours. They therefore chose to keep their children in schools in their neighborhoods, even when they were labeled as "failing schools."  By the time it became clear that this was a problem, thousands of middle school students had been displaced and were without a neighborhood school to attend, because those schools had already been converted to magnets. Elia and other district leadership were slow to respond to the problem. They tried to "take back" some of the magnets and return them to neighborhood schools, but were met with resistance by parents who were looking forward to the opportunity for a magnet experience for their children.  Unwilling to oppose the parents, the district backed down.

Two schools were converted to K-8 schools, but they were severely overcrowded and did not have enough resources to accommodate the students.  When that failed, the district bused students to other schools, like East Tampa's McLane Middle School, Mann Middle in Brandon, and Madison and Monroe Middle Schools in South Tampa.  At McLane, the high-poverty student body felt alienated, had to endure long bus rides (where violence often began and ended their day), and became immersed in a school culture that was gang-influenced to the point that students were "arming themselves out of fear."  The school had scant resources to deal with homelessness and learning disabilities, classroom fights and attacks on teachers, and "flash mob fights" at arrival and dismissal times.  The "school-to-prison pipeline" became firmly entrenched, with an average of one student a week leaving the school in handcuffs.  Administration enforced punitive discipline measures that fell disproportionately on black students.  While black students made up 52% of the student body, they accounted for 90% of the expulsions.  

In spite of the severity of the problems caused by the school choice plan she had enthusiastically embraced, Elia was promoted to Superintendent of the district in 2005.  In 2014, nearly ten years later, inequity issues at schools like McLane remained largely unsolved and a complaint with the USDOE Office for Civil Rights was filed by Marilyn Williams, a community activist.  She states, "Without a doubt, this district has built one of the worst school-to-prison pipelines in the state of Florida."  The complaint cited the discriminatory harsher penalties and disproportionate suspension rates for black students, and the fact that high-poverty students were denied access to experienced teachers.  Elia's response to the latter was a pay incentive plan that gave teachers who volunteered to relocate a 2% pay raise the first year, and 5% after that. Those in the highest-poverty schools got a $1,000 recruitment bonus and a $2,000 retention bonus after the first year.  The school climate improved somewhat with a new principal - but the large-scale busing which is the root cause was never addressed.

It is clear from the magnet school fiasco that Elia and other district leadership did not have a firm grasp on the logistics of the community in the district.  As superintendent, Elia did little to address the worst of the concerns, until forced to do so by a federal civil rights complaint. 

2.  Those Heartbreaking Deaths on Elia's Watch
No administrator, teacher, or community member should have to go through the death of a student, especially when that death happens during school hours.  When that death may have been prevented, it is a tragedy of outstanding proportions.  During Elia's reign as superintendent at Hillsborough, four students died in her district.  

In January 2012, a seven year old special needs child died on a schoolbus.  The seven year old had a neuromuscular disorder and could not control her neck and head.  An IEP required the school district to stabilize her head, especially during transportation.  School personnel on the bus failed to do that, and when her head tilted forward it cut off her airway. At the time, a 21-year old district policy required the driver to call dispatchers instead of 911. It is possible that if 911 were called immediately, the little girl may have been resuscitated. In spite of the horrible circumstances, Elia did not thoroughly investigate the incident to assess whether the district should change or reform conditions that may have contributed to the death.  She relied on an investigation from the sheriff's office that stated there was no wrongdoing.  Worse yet, she failed to inform the school board of the tragedy.  The family filed a lawsuit against the district, finally bringing the matter to the attention of the board and the public.  There are those who called for a task force to examine the policies about calling 911, but there was also a call for an investigation into why it took a lawsuit to bring attention to the death.

On January 17, 2014 yet another child died in the district, this time at Seminole Heights Elementary School, leading to another lawsuit.  Stephen Maher, lawyer for the family, stated "Another child has died because of the failure of the school district to call 911 and perform CPR and other life-saving measures."  The child complained of a severe headache and was sent to the back of the room to lie down.  When he started vomiting, the school nurse was called.  The nurse then called the parents and left a voicemail telling them to come pick up their son. By the time they arrived, his lips were blue and he was unresponsive.  Only then was 911 called.  He was operated on for a brain hemorrhage, but he had been without oxygen for too long and did not survive.

School policy seems to have been complicit in the death.  In the fall of 2013, teachers in the district had been shown a videotape with instructions to either call the front office first in a medical emergency, or call 911 if they had access to a cell phone.  If those instructions had warned them to call 911 immediately, the child may have been saved.  This is especially troublesome in light of the fact that this incident occurred TWO YEARS after the 2012 death, and the district still had not adequately addressed their procedures for medical emergencies.  It was not until March of 2014 that a policy to first call 911 was instituted, with additional requirements training bus drivers and aides in how to handle students with disabilities.

Two more children died at Hillsborough while Elia was superintendent.  In September 2012, an autistic sophomore at a public charter school in the district drowned at a back to school pool party. The following month, a Downs Syndrome child ran off from gym class and drowned in a pond that was on school property.  While there is not a legal claim that school policies could have prevented these two accidental deaths, questions linger as to why special needs children in the district were not more thoroughly supervised.

The most troubling aspect to many, aside from the deaths themselves, is that the district, led by Elia, failed to act in an expedited way to investigate the circumstances around these deaths, and propose or institute reforms that would make the chances of other deaths far less likely.

New York State has a deep schism between the "have" and the "have-not" schools. Equitable funding and the establishment of meaningful community-based policies are crucial to address the issues that poverty presents to many of our schools.  To solve these problems is going to take a massive effort and the collaboration of many diverse groups.  In light of Elia's record, I fear she may not have what it takes to lead our state in a productive, and not punitive, course of action.  So far, her soundbytes repeat a mantra of testing and Common Core, and not the need to solve the real problems that impoverished districts face.

Refuse the Tests Robocall Campaign

Over the last ten days, I worked with four very dedicated education activists and teachers to crowdsource funds for a robocall to all NYS parents.  We were successful, and believe it has had an impact on the number of last-minute test refusals that came into schools on April 13th as well as those that came in on the day of the ELA test, April 14.  The following is the campaign's final press release.  For more about our process, visit our guest blog on Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue.

A small grassroots committee of education activists, teachers, retirees, parents and grandparents raised nearly $17,000 in only ten days to pay for a robocall that informed parents that they have the constitutional right to refuse Grades 3-8 state tests.  Two different versions of the robocall were delivered on Sunday, April 12th.  State English Language Arts tests begin on April 14, and math tests that will begin April 22.   

Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor and candidate against Andrew Cuomo in the last gubernatorial primary, recorded the message in English.  In order to reach the large Hispanic and Latino population of the state, Aixa Rodriguez, an educational activist and high school teacher, recorded the message in Spanish. The results of a poll taken at the conclusion of the call indicated that more than 50% of parents who responded intend to refuse the tests.

Last year, more than 60,000 parents across New York State “refused” their children out of testing.  This year, tens of thousands across the state have expressed their concern about the increasing emphasis on tests that are ruining the education of their children, but many parents do not know they have the right to refuse testing.  Supreme Court cases have upheld this right that is based on the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, stating in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska that parents possess the “fundamental right” to “direct the upbringing and education of their children.”  

Some school districts respond to parents with confusing information that can be interpreted as threatening and punitive, as well as intentionally misleading. Letters to parents often claim that if the school does not achieve 95% student participation on the test, their school district will incur loss of funding. Ken Wagner, Senior Deputy Commissioner of NYSED, admitted in a television interview that those penalties would not occur for “several years.”  Parents in many districts are given inconsistent information on the effect test refusal has on selection for alternative instruction services (AIS) or other programming.  NY State Part 100.2 regulations allow individual school districts to “develop and maintain on file a uniform process by which the district determines whether to offer AIS…,” and these procedures can be different in every school district. State regulations do not discuss test refusals resulting in the mandated provision of AIS, or the elimination of students from other programming.   

Many districts mislead with semantics, telling parents that there is no “opt-out” provision for the tests in NYS.  In reality, parents always have the right to refuse the tests for their children.  A test refusal is scored as a “No Score - Code 999” on the test, and has no repercussion on the student, the teacher, or the school.  Though school districts like to be informed ahead of time so that they can make alternate arrangements for students, test refusals can be made right up to the day of the test.  

The tests themselves are designed for failure, calibrated to an SAT score of 1630, with “passing” cut scores adjusted after the tests are scored.  Literary analysis indicates that test reading passages and questions are often three grades beyond the age of the children.  “Equally plausible” answer choices (favored by the Pearson tests), require abstract thinking, a cognitive skill that usually does not develop until age 12.  70% of New York State children fail these tests.  Only 5% of students with identified cognitive disabilities, and 3% of English language learners, achieve proficiency on the tests. Test scores are negatively correlated with zip codes, with impoverished communities having higher failure rates. The result is that teachers lose their jobs, and schools are wrongly declared failures, while the real issue confronting schools in trouble is poverty and lack of funding.  The ultimate goal of the Governor’s “reforms” appears to be the replacement of public schools with for-profit charter schools.  

Children are the pawns in this political game, and their education is short-changed.  In his zeal to “break the monopoly” of public education, Cuomo’s education “reforms” double down on testing by weighting test results more heavily in teacher evaluations.  This will surely force even more test preparation as teachers fight to keep the careers they worked hard to establish.  As creative and authentic types of instruction are lost to testing, our children lose their self-confidence along with their enthusiasm for learning.  More class time is now devoted to practice for testing with workbooks and worksheets, instead of authentic learning through projects, experimentation, and constructive inquiry.  Music, art, social studies, enrichment, and science is crowded out to make more time for language arts and math, the only two subjects that matter on the tests.

Eric Mihelbergel of the New York Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) believes that test refusals may double or triple this year.  A large increase in refusal numbers will send a powerful political message to New York State, as well as to our federal government, that parents will no longer allow their children to be used as a profit market for testing corporations, politicians, and government bureaucracies.  For more information on refusing tests, visit www.facebook.com/NYSmorethanatestscore or www.nysape.org.

Yet Another...Letter to Obama

I have written to President Obama a number of times about education.  He has never replied.  I guess I must be an eternal optimist, or maybe it's therapy for me to write down what is happening.  Regardless, here's the latest one.

Dear President Obama:

This is not the first time I’ve written you about education.  But I am an eternal optimist, and I believe in the possibility of your greatness as a President.  I cheer you on when it comes to health care and immigration, and when I hear your words about equality, they vibrate within me.  So somewhere deep inside, I have to believe that you will listen if we call out loudly enough. There are some who think that it is your intent to privatize public education.  I am starting to agree with that as well, because you have been so resistant to seeing what this obsession with testing is all doing to public schools and our children.

  

Maybe you thought you were doing a good thing by instituting Race to the Top, taking NCLB to the next level.  Maybe you thought you were helping inequality in education between states, encouraging states to up their game, and believing that if teachers worked harder they could achieve miracles.  I am a retired teacher.  I have seen miracles worked in classrooms, even worked some myself.  But the thing is, those miracles have nothing to do with the results of a test.  It has everything to do with building student self-confidence as learners, with helping them to discover the innate thirst for knowledge and the rewards of pursuing something that is at what we educators call “that sweet spot” of learning.  The spot where the task is just a little bit hard, but not so hard that it defeats the student and makes them stop trying.

President Obama, Common Core and Rttt has hit impossibly above that sweet spot.  It has actually smashed the sweet spot.  Our children today are no longer finding joy in their learning.  They are being forced, more and more, to do test preparation out of workbooks and worksheets instead of enjoying the thrill of discovering by experimentation and constructive inquiry.  It takes time to let a mind discover, to engage in Socratic dialogue.  And classrooms no longer have that time because they have to prepare for a test that may well determine the career fate of the teacher.  What this means, is that there is no time for growth, for joy, for creativity.  Humanities, music, art, and yes even science is crowded out to make room for English and Math, the only two subjects that matter on the almighty tests.  Field trips and special all-day events like Medieval Fair or Career Day, are gone.  Imagination is wilting.  Dreams are dying.  This is what you have created.  This is what you must bear responsibility for.  This will be your educational legacy and it clouds all the other things that you have accomplished.

Here in New York, we have it especially hard.  We have a governor hell-bent on using test results to bludgeon our teaching force and declare our schools, even the high-quality schools of excellence, failures.  For what end I can only speculate, based on the fact that he gathers millions from hedge fund contributors and speaks at $1,250 a plate fundraisers for charter schools, it’s not hard to make that assumption. 

Teachers in NY face the prospect of 50% of their evaluation being based on Value Added Method that does not make any sense and has been criticized in respected places (American Statistical Association, for example), and test scores that have failed 70% of our students.  The tests are impossibly hard, written grade levels beyond the student’s age, with cut scores set by some undisclosed secret. The proficiency rate is calibrated to a 1630 on the SAT.  Tests are so hard that even our governor acknowledged this, and put a moratorium on using the scores for students.  But no such moratorium for teachers.  We face the prospect of losing a large percentage of our teaching force within the next two years, because if teachers can’t “show growth” on scores they cannot get an effective rating no matter what else they do.  After two years, they will lose their careers.  When Michelle Rhee instituted a similar weight of testing into teacher evaluations, DC lost 83% of its teachers.  If we lose even a quarter of that percentage we are in trouble, because student enrollments at teacher preparation programs at universities and colleges in NYS are down 20-50%.  There are some programs that have zero enrollment, some that have single digit enrollment.  So where are our teachers going to come from to replace those we lose to a faulty evaluation system?

Especially hurt by your programs are students with identified disabilities and their teachers.  A 1% waiver is not enough, and even some of the most severely handicapped students end up having to take a test that is grade levels beyond their intellectual capacity.  I once administered an 8th grade test to a student who could not speak or write his name.  He cried during the test.  The teachers for this population are our unsung heroes.  They selflessly give of themselves every day to our neediest children – sometimes being physically hit, handling tantrums with the patience of Job, or listening compassionately and with interest and a smile to the most halting of young voices.  Yet, their students will not show the growth required, and they will soon lose their jobs.  Who will want to take their place?  And in whose twisted mind does it make sense to punish our special needs students in this way?   And how does it make sense to give a test written in English, to English Language Learners?  Only 3% of ELLs achieve proficiency.  Do you wonder why?

I place this at your feet because that is where it belongs.  If not for your hammering the states with Rttt money, AYP and APPR, high stakes testing and Common Core, we would not be in this mess.  Our children would not be going home crying because rigor has turned their minds to stone.  We would not have children pulling out their hair and eyelashes, crying and vomiting during tests.

Do you care President Obama?  Do you really?  Then listen to some of the voices that are crying out.  Meet with someone like Diane Ravitch (or read Reign of Errors) and really hear what they are saying.  Talk to some teachers, not just our unions. 

Please restore my faith in you.

Refuse the Test

When I was in third grade, I took the Iowa standardized tests.  Within a short amount of time, we received the results in a teacher-parent conference.  Because my mom was told that I needed "a challenge," she immediately bought me the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  I read them for hours, lingering on zoology, nature, and history entries.  When my interest started to wane, a set of Greek Mythology books appeared.  I spent hours curled up in a chair, reading and pondering each myth.  Then, a set of classics – Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Little Women, Treasure Island, and others…all books that broadened my world and my background knowledge.  I was given access to a typewriter so I could write my own newspaper.  My zest for learning, reading, and writing exists to this day.  My guess is that little of that would have happened at home without the feedback that was received because of a standardized test.  It quite possibly changed my life.

Fast forward to today, because the tests our children take in school are nothing like the Iowa’s.  Here are my best reasons (there are lots more) why refusing the test is the right thing to do, for your student, for your schools, and for the teachers in our state.  

#1.  Analysis of the text and questions on the Pearson-created exams show that reading lexile levels are sometimes three, four, or five grades beyond the student's age.  Kevin Glynn, a former test developer with Pearson and NYSED, does an outstanding assessment of third grade ELA tests here.  Russ Walsh, a literacy expert, has found similar reading levels on the PARCC ELA and math tests.

#2.  According to a teacher test instruction manual on the EngageNY website, questions for the third-grade ELA test are written with "equally plausible" answer choices.  What that means, is that students have to use abstract reasoning skills to discern between answers to pick the "one best choice."  Cognitive research based on the work of Jean Piaget states that abstract reasoning does not develop until age 12.  Simply, these type of questions are not developmentally appropriate for those under 12.

#3.  Even if the tests were written fairly and on grade level, which they are not, there is the huge matter of cut scores being manipulated.  According to a letter written by 500 New York State principals, "New York State Education Department used SAT scores of 560 in Reading, 540 in Writing and 530 in mathematics, as the college readiness benchmarks to help set the “passing” cut scores on the 3-8 New York State exams. These NYSED scores, totaling 1630, are far higher than the College Board’s own college readiness benchmark score of 1550. By doing this, NYSED has carelessly inflated the 'college readiness' proficiency cut scores for students as young as nine years of age."

As if that were not enough, cut scores are manipulated after the tests are scored to give the state the results they want.  John King announced in 2012 that 70% of students would fail the test, and after cut scores were set, that's what he got.  Last year, cut scores were adjusted downward very slightly in order to show a small amount of "improvement" from Common Core reforms.  The bell curve that they use to set these scores means that NO MATTER HOW WELL STUDENTS DO, there will be a bottom standard deviation, a middle (which is the average), and a top.  Even if all students scored above 90 on the tests, they would still rank them with a bottom 16%.  And NYSED adjusts that bell - to get the deviations they want.  The main point, is that scores are worked by NYSED to prove whatever they want them to prove.  And right now we seem to have a governor and a State Education Department, that want to prove public schools are failing, so they can privatize and push their charter school agenda.  

#4.  There is no transparency.  Pearson protects the questions to maximize their profit, even though NYS has paid for the questions.  A test cannot be valid without transparency.  A test cannot "inform or assist instruction,” if the item analysis is never given to teachers.  Test creators cannot be held accountable for poorly written questions and misleading answer choices if we never see the questions.   Anyone who tells you that these tests are to help your teachers teach students better, is blowing hot air.  It is simply not true.

#5. Pearson embeds product placement within the tests.  New York State Ed claimed this was because they were “authentic text.”  Not true.  I did research on the 2012 exams that proved a financial interest between Pearson and the companies that were mentioned.  The product mentions are disjointed and do not flow with the text.  Have you ever read a children’s story where the waiter dropped MUGS Root Beer?  No. 

#6.  According to the NYSED ELA Educator Guide, provocative and "emotionally charged" passages are used in the tests.  Normally, a teacher would have a class discussion around such passages and help students to analyze various perspectives and come to an understanding about the meaning of such literature. Our State Ed Department, however, has a gag order preventing teachers from discussing questions, even after the test is completed.  What this means, is that students never get to ask questions about this content and therefore never get a chance to pursue full understanding.  This has the potential for skewing student opinion and could potentially be manipulated for a political purpose.  We have a right to know what our students, the captive audience, are being led to believe.

#7.  Students are being data mined by the tests.  As students complete the tests, personal information, and each click during the time they are online, records data points on the student.   In OH in 2013, the state contracted with PARCC and that contract allowed PARCC to ask personal noneducational questions about the lives of students.  Questions like, “Does anyone smoke in your house?”  Or “Do your parents get along?”  True this is an extreme case, but federal FERPA laws are being weakened to allow data collection on children, and the sharing of that confidential information to “third parties."  Pearson also apparently monitors the social networks of students before, during, and after the test to check for “test breaches” or “brand mentions,” as apparent during a recent event in NJ. This is not okay. 

#8.  The tests are too long.  NY Reading and Math tests in 2014 took about 7 hours.  In comparison, the GRE and SAT takes less than 4 hours, and the MCAT for medical school – about five hours.  Test fatigue becomes a factor in student performance.  The length of the exams also leads to greater student stress.

#9.  Teachers are unfairly assessed using test results, and according to Cuomo's education reform proposals, may lose their jobs if rated "ineffective" for two years in a row.  These assessments are produced using what is called VAM - Value-Added Measurement.  VAM has been called "junk science," and has been criticized by the American Statistical Association and in a joint statement by the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education.  Fully one-third of teachers vacillate from one effectiveness rating to another, from year to year.  There is no rhyme or reason to the outcomes, and it does not do the job of giving verifiable feedback regarding a teacher's aptitude for their job.  Our best knowledge tells us that teachers have at most, only a 1-14% influence on standardized test results of their students.  VAM results are highly correlated with the poverty of the district, with teachers in impoverished communities receiving the lowest evaluations. Teachers most at risk of being fired based on faulty test scores, are those who are most needed - special education, teachers of English Language Learners, and of course, teachers in impoverished communities.  What new teacher will want to go into these jobs, knowing they have absolutely no job security.

#10.  Schools are labeled failures and targeted for takeover by the state, absolving locally elected boards.  School districts that have been taken over in other states have been doled out to for-profit charter investors, with little oversight or accountability.  There are many cases of charter fraud nationwide.  Cuomo's plans for "receivership," will eliminate local control.

#11.  As teachers strive to retain their jobs, more and more emphasis will go to test prep, reducing the amount of time that students can be engaged in projects, authentic assessment, and creative activities.  What do you remember most about school?  Taking a test, or perhaps a medieval fair your class acted out?  Sadly, there is little time left in the schedule for the all-day learning and enrichment experiences that my own now-grown children have as memories.  Test prep is crowding out the humanities and arts - social studies and even science are relegated to second or third fiddle status, with classes usurped for the almighty test prep.  Life is more than just ELA and Math.  So much more. And our children are missing out.

#11.  Perhaps the most compelling reason in my mind – and I think about my grandchildren – is the emotional/psychological component.  What does it do to our youngest learners to sit and take a test that is much too difficult for them?  Children know when they “don’t get” something.  Do they feel like failures?  Do they feel like they are letting their teacher or the school down?  Do they blame themselves and believe they “aren’t smart enough?”  These are questions that I know are first in the minds of parents and grandparents, because we want our children to grow up as confident learners who know they can grow, and who have the motivation to try.

For all these reasons and many more, REFUSE THE TESTS.  Starve the beast.   It may be our one best hope for our public schools and our children.  Write a letter, and/or send a note in with your child stating that they refuse the test and their test should be scored as a "999" refusal.  For more information, and forms, visit NYSAPE.

Follow the Money in Pearson Tests

This blog was originally written on my personal blog in December 2014.

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects (there are many) related to Pearson testing is the product placement that happens within exam questions.  On the 2013 NYS English Language Arts exam, for example, products mentioned included Mugs Root Beer (Pepsico), Melmac dinnerware, Lego/Mindstorms, IBM and FIFA.  I was curious about why these particular brand names showed up so I did a little digging.

After complaints occurred about the very conspicuous and seemingly unrelated-to-text product placement, Antonia Valentine at the New York State Department of Education stated that the product names occurred because of the fact that "authentic texts" were used by Pearson.  She was quoted as stating that "Any brand names that occurred (in them) were incidental..." See here for full article.  Actually, quick research on google reveals that the products mentioned were not so incidental.  Pearson itself, or a Pearson executive, had at least a cursory financial interest that can be tied to every mention.

1.  Mugs Root Beer - It turns out that Rona A. Fairhead, who at the time the 2013 tests were published was the Executive Officer of the Financial Times Group division of Pearson, and had previously been their Chief Financial Officer, was elected to the Board of Directors at Pepsico in February, 2014. New Century Beverage Company, manufacturer of Mugs, is a subsidiary of Pepsico. This means that Ms. Fairhead would have had direct and continuing business dealings with Pepsico at least as early as 2013.  Did the product placement improve her standing with the company, and if so, did she pull strings at her workplace to make that happen?  Granted, this is a weak link - why not just mention Pepsi?  But perhaps they were hoping a product a bit removed would not connect back so easily to her work at Pepsico.

2.  IBM - There is a stronger link between IBM and Pearson.  The companies have had a business relationship since at least 2007, when they announced a five year $128 million IT agreement between the two companies.  See the article here.  In 2014, after the product placement, IBM dumped Prometrics, the company that administered IBM professional certification exams.  Who did they give that business to?  Pearson.

3.  Lego/Mindstorms - In 2013, Pearson already had an agreement with LEGO that allowed them to publish curriculum on how to build and program Mindstorms robots.  In June of 2014, Lego and Pearson gleefully announced a partnership that would produce and sell lesson plans and manipulatives (the LEGOEducation StoryTales) for enhancing ELA curriculum. See article here.

4.  FIFA - Even the World Cups Games are not immune to Pearson's reach.  It turns out that Pearson franchises e-learning centers in Brazil and has helped to teach English to over 500,000 Brazilian students.  In December 2013, Pearson announced that they had made a major acquisition of a Brazilian English Language Training (ELT) company named GrupoMulti.  Their press release boasts that the demand for ELT services will accelerate in the future, due to the FIFA World Cup.  (See article here.)

So though we have been assured by our New York State Education Department, that no money changed hands in return for the product placements on the tests, it does seem that there was at least a tit-for-tat going on and that the placements were, at the very least, beneficial to Pearson financial interests.  In the meantime, our children were subjected to nothing less than shameful brand advertising during mandatory standardized tests, all paid for courtesy of the New York State taxpayers.