2012 Medley #7

An 8th Grader Searches for a High School, Double Standards, News Media Reports on Education, Poverty, VAM, Reform Ideas, Technology, Finland vs. Indiana, ALEC.

An Eighth-Grade Sports Encyclopedia Finds Himself Without a High School

This article left me stunned. Where is this child's neighborhood school? Competition destroys public education. Notice the way this is worded...the high schools select the students. This is "choice" at work.

That so many people know Omri became important a few weeks ago when the 69,000 eighth graders across the city learned what high schools they had been selected to attend next year. Of the 127 eighth graders at East Side, only five were not picked by any school, and Omri was one of them.

“Omri was up in homeroom crying hysterically, so we brought him downstairs,” Mr. Goldspiel said. “I found him sobbing, sitting on the floor outside the main office waiting for me.”

“I was speechless,” Omri recalled. “Everyone else was saying, ‘I got in, I got in,’ and I just felt dumb and stupid. I had anger in me I never really felt before. I didn’t know how to react.”

...started preparing for the next round in the high school lottery.

Is There Really a Point to Advocating Both Standardization and Choice?

A Double Standard: The public schools have to reform or be replaced by charters...but then, why don't the charters have to meet the same requirements?

...what we have here is a massive effort on the one hand, to require traditional public school districts to adopt a common curriculum and ultimately to adopt common assessments for evaluating student success on that curriculum and then force those districts to evaluate, retain and/or dismiss their teachers based on student assessment data, while on the other hand, expanding publicly financed subsidies for more children to attend schools that would not be required to do these things (in many cases, for example, relieving charter schools from teacher evaluation requirements).

Flunking the Test

The American education system has never been better, several important measures show. But you’d never know that from reading overheated media reports about “failing” schools and enthusiastic pieces on unproven “reform” efforts...

"The idea that we have a crisis in American education, that there is pervasive failure, starts with policy makers," says Pedro Noguera, the eminent education researcher and New York University professor. "This is the line we hear in D.C. and in state capitals. There are certainly areas in which we're lacking, but when you report it that way, it doesn't at all acknowledge the complexity of the situation [and] where we're doing quite well. The discussion is quite simplistic. I'm not sure why exactly. My suspicion is that the media has trouble with complexity."

Stephen Krashen Pulls the Rug Out From Under the Standards Movement

Poverty is, in fact, the issue. While American students' scores on international tests are not as bad as critics say they are, they are even better when we control for the effects of poverty: Middle-class students in well-funded schools, in fact, score at or near the top of world. Our average scores are respectable but unspectacular because, as Farhi notes, we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty, the highest of all industrialized countries. Only four percent of children in high-scoring Finland, for example, live in poverty. Our rate of poverty is over 21%.

Now I Understand Why Bill Gates Didn’t Want The Value-Added Data Made Public

Being a Billionaire doesn't qualify you as an expert in the education of children.

Nor do these educational Deformers think that value-added mysticism is nonsense. They think it’s wonderful and that teachers’ ability to retain their jobs and earn bonuses or warnings should largely depend on it.

The problem, for them, is that they don’t want the public to see for themselves that it’s a complete and utter crock. Nor to see the little man behind the curtain.

Krash Course #5: Reform We Need

Each time I publish or post a critique of the education reform insanity coming from the Corporate Reformers, I receive badgering responses asking what I would do instead. So here is a list of Reform We Need...

• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan needs to resign...
• Federal and state policies must address the lives of children...health coverage...Food security...
• All aspects of the accountability era, including standards-based testing, must be dismantled...
• ...[end] all aspects of perpetuating inequity found in schools—testing, tracking, teacher assignments, "no excuses" practices.
• Teacher and schools must be afforded autonomy...

Testing Our Limits and Failing Our Students

Technology for the sake of technology (as opposed to technology as a tool for learning in and out of the classroom) is stealing time from real education.

Unless we stand together, erroneous computer data and educational officials detached from the realities of teaching will continue to determine our students’ futures.

Lesson from Finland: Everything Indiana is doing is wrong

There's an assumption that policymakers and "reformers" are well meaning and want to improve education. I don't believe that any more. The current debate about public education is not about education at all, but about who will control the pursestrings...the public, or the private sector. The same people who brought us the banking debacle and the economic collapse are working hard to take over public education -- the students, parents and teachers be damned. How much do Arne Duncan, Rahm Emmanuel, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad really know about how children learn?

You want to know why other countries score higher on average than we do? It's because they care about all their children. There's more to educating a child than standards and tests.

Finland’s system, he said, could not work in the U.S. Factors of societal, economic and cultural differences must be considered and will always shape a country’s education system to make it unique....In short, he argued that several of the fundamental beliefs of reformers here — reformers like [Indiana's Tony] Bennett — were just flat wrong.

Who's Really Behind Education Reform?

Julie Underwood, the Dean of the UW-Madison School of Education, discusses ALEC's school privatization agenda.

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It's True -- Research Doesn't Matter

In the corporate quest to privatize public education the truth doesn't matter. Research doesn't matter. Experience doesn't matter.

NEW YORK

Public education is under mayoral control in America's largest cities and the corporate quest for more charters and privatization depends on devaluing public school teachers and demonizing their unions. In New York, teachers have been evaluated using student test scores and then had the results plastered across newspaper headlines without regard for the fact that the method of evaluation yields invalid and unreliable results.

Nearly a year earlier the NY State Regents received a letter from 10 testing experts who, in May, 2011, wrote,

...the research literature includes many cautions about the problems of basing teacher evaluations on student test scores. These include problems of attributing student gains to specific teachers; concerns about overemphasis on “teaching to the test” at the expense of other kinds of learning; and disincentives for teachers to serve high-need students, for example, those who do not yet speak English and those who have special education needs.

Standardized tests are not developed to evaluate teachers. It's invalid to use them for that purpose. The experts continue...

Teachers’ ratings are affected by differences in the students who are assigned to them. Students are not randomly assigned to teachers – and statistical models cannot fully adjust for the fact that some teachers will have a disproportionate number of students who may be exceptionally difficult to teach (students with poor attendance, who are homeless, who have severe problems at home, etc.) and whose scores on traditional tests have unacceptably low validity (e.g. those who have special education needs or who are English language learners). All of these factors can create both misestimates of teachers’ effectiveness and disincentives for teachers to want to teach the neediest students, creating incentives for teachers to seek to teach those students those expected to make the most rapid gains and to avoid schools and classrooms serving struggling students.

Anyone who has ever worked in a public school knows that out of school factors such as access to medical care, access to appropriate reading material, and poverty in general, have a serious effect on student achievement no matter how expert the teacher. Unfortunately, most "reformers" have never worked in public schools.

Improvements in instruction must be accompanied by improvements in the lives of children, more than 21% of whom live in poverty in America. Politicians and corporate "reformers" excuse our society's lack of equity by placing the entire burden of change on public schools.

The NY Regents ignored the letter from assessment experts.

CHICAGO

Fast forward to March of 2012. The same thing is happening in Chicago. The city is planning to evaluate teachers using student test scores. In response, 88 educational researchers from universities and colleges throughout the Chicago area have written a letter to Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Chicago School Board.

Like the writers to the NY Regents, the Chicago writers inform the recipients that the evaluation of teachers by student test scores is invalid and has unintended consequences.

The new evaluation system for teachers and principals centers on misconceptions about student growth, with potentially negative impact on the education of Chicago’s children. We believe it is our ethical obligation to raise awareness about how the proposed changes not only lack a sound research basis, but in some instances, have already proven to be harmful.

The writers urge caution, suggesting that the city pilot the evaluation program first and minimize how much of the evaluation is actually based on student test scores.

They also suggest that the city use actual experts in testing and testing research to help develop the evaluation procedure.

According to the writers there are three main problems with implementing the procedure...

• Concern #1: CPS is not ready to implement a teacher-evaluation system that is based on significant use of “student growth.”
• Concern #2: Educational research and researchers strongly caution against teacher-evaluation approaches that use Value-Added Models (VAMs).
• Concern #3: Students will be adversely affected by the implementation of this new teacher-evaluation system.

Do the "reformers" leading this charge against public schools in Chicago care about the schools and students? Or are they going to do what they want despite the input from knowledgeable professionals?

This is one more example of how people knowledgeable in education are ignored when it comes to implementing educational policy. From the classroom teacher, to the educational researcher and higher education professor, people who have actual experience and expertise in the education of children are simply ignored.

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Scrap IREAD

Here's some information about IREAD, the high stakes third grade test in Indiana. Students who fail have to repeat third grade. You can find information at the blog of A Huntington Teacher and Change.org.

Why This Is Important

IREAD-3 is a forty-question test that will determine whether public school students in Indiana may advance to fourth grade. It channels education dollars toward redundant assessment, not instruction, and favors retention over remediation; it is therefore a misuse of public funds.

No major decision about a child's future should be made on the basis of a single test score. Retaining students has been shown to increase the risk that they drop out of school and to have a null or negative effect on their academic achievement in the long run.

Like other high-stakes standardized tests, IREAD-3 will disproportionately punish low-income children and families. Indiana students' reading skills are already assessed continually by their teachers as well as through ISTEP+ and NWEA or Acuity. Money allocated for this test directly reduces funds available for remediation. Our tax dollars should go to local schools for literacy programs and teachers rather than to assessment overhead and testing companies.

Here's a sample letter to send to legislators...

Dear Legislators in the Indiana General Assembly,

We have grave concerns about IREAD-3, a forty-question test that now determines whether Indiana's public school third-graders may advance to fourth grade.

Retention increases the risk that a student will drop out, and the vast majority of studies show that it has a null or negative effect on academic achievement (1). Boys are particularly vulnerable to its effects (2). In addition, standardized tests disproportionately punish low-income and minority children and families (3). Florida's third-grade retention policy has impacted black and Hispanic children at much higher levels than white children despite their lower numbers in the school population (4).

Standardized test results are too inaccurate for promotion or retention decisions. The IREAD-3 plan absurdly assumes that 72 minutes of data gathering is more valid than teachers' year-long data gathering and assessment. The younger the child, the greater the unreliability of the test. Researchers know that young children vary greatly from day to day in performance depending on environmental factors. Poor sleep, nervousness, illness, or family stress could mean the difference between passing and failing. For these and other reasons, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing state that a major decision about a student should not be made on the basis of a single test score (AERA, 2000).

IREAD-3 will impoverish Indiana's schools, in terms of instruction, relationships, and funding.

• IREAD-3 will likely cause school administrators and teachers to focus third grade reading instruction on test preparation for IREAD-3 and may limit time for more meaningful literacy activities.
• IREAD-3 disregards what is known about the cognitive development of children: there is a great deal of normal variation in the individual paces and paths of learning. It assumes that children have been taught to read in a particular manner, and will impose that manner of teaching upon our schools.
• Since children with disabilities may receive an exemption from IREAD-3 (but only after failing the assessment), it may result in more parents seeking a disability designation for their children. Not only does this have psychological ramifications for families, it will further burden the special education system and divert resources from those who have a more serious need for them.
• Schools must concentrate on helping parents and families understand the high-stakes nature of third grade reading. It seems unlikely that a context of anxiety will lead to children taking greater pleasure in reading and learning.
• Since “testing and remediation” is one line item in the state education budget, the cost of developing and administering IREAD-3 must be subtracted from the money available for remediation. A reduction of funding for remediation undermines the supposed intent of this law.

Lastly, IREAD-3 is an unnecessary test and a waste of public money. Teachers assess their students' reading skills frequently. In addition, most schools require third graders to take NWEA twice a year or ACUITY four times a year, and ISTEP+ in reading and math.

When you passed House Enrolled Act 1367, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) chose to interpret the act as authorization for IREAD-3. By declaring this test the only factor for determining students' readiness for fourth grade, the IDOE has overstepped its mandate. HEA 1367 specifies that retention may be included as a last resort but that "appropriate consultation with parents or guardians must be part of the plan." We believe that strong literacy experiences in early elementary school are vital to students becoming readers and writers. Our tax dollars should go to local schools for literacy programs and teachers rather than to testing companies and the apparatus of assessment. Our legislature is ultimately responsible for the well-being of Indiana's educational system. We call on you to insist that the IDOE eliminate IREAD-3 before it further damages our children and our schools.

References:

1. Jimerson, S. R. (2001a). Meta-analysis of grade retention research: Implications for practice in the 21st century. School Psychology Review, 30, 420-437.

2. Pagani, L., Tremblay, R.E., Vitaro, F., Boulerice, B., McDuff, P. Effects of grade retention on academic performance and behavioral development. Developmental Psychopathology. 2001 Spring;13(2):297-315.

3. Heilig, J.V., and Darling-Hammond, L. Accountability Texas-style: the progress and learning of urban minority students in a high-stakes testing context. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. June 2008; 30(2):75-110.

4. Florida Association of School Psychologists. Position statement on Florida's third-grade retention mandate (PP3rdGrdRet.pdf, available at www.fasp.org). Cites data provided by the Florida Department of Education for the 2002-2003 school year.
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Sincerely,

[Your name]

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Reading Instruction Children Need and Deserve

The national testing obsession continues to grow unchecked. Corporate "reformers" and their collaborators in state legislatures, governor's mansions, state departments of education as well as their counterparts in the federal government, continue to do everything in their power to privatize public education and de-professionalize the job of educators.

Educators are told what to teach and how to teach by people who have no experience in education. Unqualified politicians and pundits demand more money for charter schools, evaluations based on student test scores and cuts to public education. Then they hold teachers, administrators and schools accountable for their ignorance.

Yet, while the dismantling of public education continues, America's classrooms are filled with educators who are striving to do what's best for children. Millions of teachers are working each day fighting against the forces of corporate "reform" pressuring them to teach in ways which they know are ineffective and, in fact, damaging to their students. Millions of teachers are making ways to find the time to actually teach amid all the demands for testing, testing and more testing.

Professor of education and reading Hall of Fame member Richard Allington (University of Tennessee), along with his colleague, Rachael E. Gabriel (University of Connecticut), have provided support for those teachers in an article in the March, 2012, Educational Leadership. Every Child, Every Day, provides teachers with a list of 6 "must-do" elements of reading instruction which need to occur for each child, every day, complete with an extensive list of references.

It used to be that 'reformers' and state departments of education demanded that teachers use "research based" teaching techniques. Now there's a push for more and more charter schools, test-based evaluations of teachers, allowing untrained and unlicensed graduates to hire on as teachers in schools with the most needy students, and using high stakes tests to determine which students are passed on to the next grade, none of which have a strong, if any, basis in research.

Allington and Gabriel, on the other hand, have explored current research in education and use it to help teachers isolate what really counts in reading instruction...and the six elements they list in their article are not only effective, but they are free.

The six elements of effective reading instruction don't require much time or money—just educators' decision to put them in place.

Here they are. Read the entire article at Every Child, Every Day. The rationale for each element is much expanded in the original article.

1. Every child reads something he or she chooses.

The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read...the two most powerful instructional design factors for improving reading motivation and comprehension were (1) student access to many books and (2) personal choice of what to read.

We're not saying that students should never read teacher- or district-selected texts. But at some time every day, they should be able to choose what they read.

2. Every child reads accurately.

Good readers read with accuracy almost all the time. The last 60 years of research...demonstrates the importance of having students read texts they can read accurately and understand. In fact, research shows that reading at 98 percent or higher accuracy is essential for reading acceleration. Anything less slows the rate of improvement, and anything below 90 percent accuracy doesn't improve reading ability at all...Sadly, struggling readers typically encounter a steady diet of too-challenging texts throughout the school day as they make their way through classes that present grade-level material hour after hour. In essence, traditional instructional practices widen the gap between readers.

3. Every child reads something he or she understands.

Understanding what you've read is the goal of reading. But too often, struggling readers get interventions that focus on basic skills in isolation, rather than on reading connected text for meaning. This common misuse of intervention time often arises from a grave misinterpretation of what we know about reading difficulties.

4. Every child writes about something personally meaningful.

As adults, we rarely if ever write to a prompt, and we almost never write about something we don't know about. Writing is called composition for a good reason: We actually compose (construct something unique) when we write. The opportunity to compose continuous text about something meaningful is not just something nice to have when there's free time after a test or at the end of the school year. Writing provides a different modality within which to practice the skills and strategies of reading for an authentic purpose.

5. Every child talks with peers about reading and writing.

Research has demonstrated that conversation with peers improves comprehension and engagement with texts in a variety of settings. Such literary conversation does not focus on recalling or retelling what students read. Rather, it asks students to analyze, comment, and compare—in short, to think about what they've read. [Researchers] found better outcomes when kids simply talked with a peer about what they read than when they spent the same amount of class time highlighting important information after reading.

6. Every child listens to a fluent adult read aloud.

Listening to an adult model fluent reading increases students' own fluency and comprehension skills, as well as expanding their vocabulary, background knowledge, sense of story, awareness of genre and text structure, and comprehension of the texts read.

Yet few teachers above 1st grade read aloud to their students every day. This high-impact, low-input strategy is another underused component of the kind of instruction that supports readers. We categorize it as low-input because, once again, it does not require special materials or training; it simply requires a decision to use class time more effectively. Rather than conducting whole-class reading of a single text that fits few readers, teachers should choose to spend a few minutes a day reading to their students.

These 6 things, then, are essential to developing efficient, proficient and life-long readers. These are the things which really matter, not tests, not DIBELS, not test prep, and not drill and kill worksheets.

Most of the classroom instruction we have observed lacks these six research-based elements. Yet it's not difficult to find the time and resources to implement them. Here are a few suggestions.

First, eliminate almost all worksheets and workbooks. Use the money saved to purchase books for classroom libraries; use the time saved for self-selected reading, self-selected writing, literary conversations, and read-alouds.

Second, ban test-preparation activities and materials from the school day...there are no studies demonstrating that engaging students in test prep ever improved their reading proficiency—or even their test performance...eliminating test preparation provides time and money to spend on the things that really matter in developing readers.

It's time for the elements of effective instruction described here to be offered more consistently to every child, in every school, every day. Remember, adults have the power to make these decisions; kids don't. Let's decide to give them the kind of instruction they need.

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