To: NJ State BOE: I Can't Believe We Still Have to Protest This Crap

Tomorrow, the New Jersey State of Education is taking its last public testimony on the use of PARCC as the graduation requirement. It took a long time to decide what to write about. What more can possibly be said that has not already been said by me and many, many others? A friend joked that he would simply state, "Please refer to my previous few testimonies" and then icily stare them down for the rest of the allotted speaking time. I was thinking along those lines, but this came out instead. 

1 June 2016New Jersey State Board of Education 
Testimony on PARCC for graduation requirement: I can’t believe we still have to protest this crap.

The title of this testimony is not meant to be disrespectful to this Board, merely a demonstration of my frustration with having to continually appear before this Board and provide testimony that will only fall on deaf ears. Whether that testimony is heartfelt, stemming from personal experiences that none of you currently sitting on this Board would have any first-hand knowledge of, because (1) you don’t have children in public school, and/or (2) you aren’t the parent of a student with a disability. There is barely a hint of recognition on your part that you are missing a great deal by not listening to and engaging with the actual stakeholders in this mess, namely, parents and their children. 

It also hasn’t mattered when testimony has been presented with hard facts and figures. Unbelievably, there appears to be no curiosity at all about why there is so much pushback on Common Core and PARCC testing. This isn’t just some little hiccup. This is a monumental policy failure that will impact schools, teachers, and students, actual people, for a very long time. Your response? Do more of the same. It is remarkably lazy policy.

So here it is. PARCC is a failure. All of that time and money for a failure. Last October, Mathematica released the results of a study comparing PARCC to MCAS, the Massachusetts state standardized test, and their predictive validity for college and career readiness. This is highly relevant since you are about to make PARCC the gatekeeper for a high school diploma in this state. The education policy that you endorse is only about that insipidly narrow focus on the yet undefined term “college and career ready” as determined by a score on PARCC.

The Mathematica study looked at Grade 10 Math II, Algebra II, and ELA. (Let me remind you here, that Drs. Tienken, Kim, and Sforza took a look at that grade in a study and found the Common Core Standards to be well below the former NJ standards. See my testimony from 10 February 2016. note: I wrote about it here.) The result, from “key findings” on page ix of the report, “Both the MCAS and PARCC predict college readiness. Scores on the assessments explain about 5 to 18 percent of the variation in first-year college grades…” What does this mean exactly? It means that 82 to 95 percent CANNOT be explained by the results of the PARCC test. So how can that possibly, validly, predict “college and career readiness”???  Answer: It can’t. It doesn’t. 

Dr. William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the state of New Jersey, Director of its Educational Assessment program, a design consultant for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and for six states, had this to say about the Mathematica report in a Washington Post article on 27 May 2016, “A tour through the literature shows that predictive validity coefficients are quite low in general and commonly run in the 0.30’s. One conclusion is that the PARCC is just about as good as any other test — which is the report’s finding in regard to the MCAS. On the contrary, the more correct conclusion is that standardized tests can predict scores on other standardized tests (which this report confirms) but it cannot validly predict college readiness at any meaningful level.” 

He also said, “With such low predictability, you have huge numbers of false positives and false negatives. When connected to consequences, these misses have a human price. This goes further than being a validity question. It misleads young adults, wastes resources and misjudges schools.  It’s not just a technical issue, it is a moral question. Until proven to be valid for the intended purpose, using these tests in a high stakes context should not be done.”

The response to Dr. Mathis, from the creators of the Mathematica study, “Mr. Mathis is also correct that the correlations are low enough that many students (and parents, and colleges) would overestimate or underestimate their true college readiness—if they relied only on the test score to make the judgment. Fortunately, students have lots of other information available to inform their judgments alongside the test scores (most importantly, their high school grades). We wouldn’t recommend that anyone rely exclusively on the test score for high-stakes decisions.”

So, why would this Board consider, even for minute, further wasting time and tax-payer money on PARCC? Let alone use such a faulty measure as an obstacle for the students in this state? It is your obligation to the public to not allow PARCC to be used as a graduation requirement. 

Thanks, Mike Simpson, for the picture.

The End of Special Education - Part I

This is a post I've put off writing this because the topic is incredibly depressing. Now I've procrastinated to the point where there are several topics to touch upon and will probably split this mess up into a few posts. 

I feel like I'm standing still and the world of education, especially special education and ELLs, is being swept away in whirlwind of incredibly poor policy decisions. (Yes, I know, it's been happening for a long time. I've only been really clued in for the last 5 years or so. Bare with me.) Those decisions have nothing to do with teachers. Nothing to do with students.  

Let's start with the US SecEd Arne Duncan and the changes to regulations that became effective on 21 September 2015. "In order to make conforming changes to ensure coordinated administration of programs under title I of the ESEA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Secretary is also amending the regulations for Part B of the IDEA."  I wrote tiny bit about it here. 

What he really meant by that was a fundamental change in how special education will be approached: "[ESEA to] no longer authorize a State to define modified academic achievement standards and develop alternate assessments based on those modified academic achievement standards for eligible students with disabilities." In other words, unless the student is severely disabled, students will be able to perform the same as their neurotypical peers with  "High standards and high expectations for all students and an accountability system that provides teachers, parents, students, and the public with information about students' academic progress are essential to ensure that students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers in the 21st century." Add in some unicorn glitter and a miracle, and voila! Instant student with a disability success! Gee, wish I had thought of that. <insert biggest teenager-inspired eyeroll you can muster>

As galling as the basic premise of these changes are, perhaps the worst is the alleged research cited in support of this garbage that is passing for education policy. Fortunately, someone has already taken a very close look at the cited research and published a paper annihilating those citations, Primum Non Nocere: First, Do No Harm. Read it. It is is nothing less than jawdropping in its findings. Remember, the SecEd just removed states' ability to modify standards and testing for students with disabilities. His justification? A meta-analysis done in 2010, based on 70 studies done between 1984-2006. You can read the abstract here. 

The gist of this is that meta-analysis included students in grades 6-12. No K-5 students were included. The students were receiving interventions in science, social studies, or English. The studies looked at seven types of interventions in both an inclusion setting and in a separate classroom. However, "The authors note that only a small number of the studies took place in inclusive classrooms and that previous studies of coteaching in inclusive classrooms have found that the effective strategies investigated in this study are rarely implemented in inclusive settings."  

In other words, the SecEd just changed the basics of special education based on a meta-analysis which the authors specifically say they did not look at special education interventions in a separate classroom and very few were done in an inclusion setting. It does NOT support abandoning alternative standards or assessment. It didn't look at interventions for K-5. Nor at interventions for math. Remember this as Duncan will surely go down in history as the worst SecEd ever. 

P.S. I have to include this gem from the meta-analysis abstract. Understand that meta-analysis is only as good as the research it's based on. So, in 2010, when this analysis was published, this seems wildly inappropriate: "Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI). The seven studies on CAI programs found computer-based instruction to be moderately effective. However, most studies on CAI were conducted during the 1980s and 1990s; it is not known whether the same results would be found with current CAI programs."  Is it just me? Why the heck would you include seven studies done at least 10 YEARS before, on technology that is changing annually? What is the point of this? Mark Weber? Any thoughts on this? 

P.P.S. The rest of the citations either didn't exist, were paid for by USED, weren't peer reviewed, or the conclusions of the research were limited in scope (even though SecEd cited in support of broader scope).

USED's Latest Nonsense

The statement on testing was embargoed and held until 12pm on a Saturday. What's with that? The US is out picking out pumpkins and Halloween costumes so let's release it then and maybe no one will notice? 

Well, of course, we noticed. We also noticed that major news outlets like the New York Times wrote an entire article without bothering to talk to a single teacher. What's with that? Afraid of what a teacher might tell you about this release? 

I'm not a teacher, but here's what I got out of that release. 

First, and this a biggie. Reducing test time to 2% of the number of hours students are in school per school year. For those of you who grew up without Common Core math, that's roughly 23 hours. TWENTY THREE HOURS. 

Second, "the assessments must be worth taking." Excuse me while I laugh so hard I snort. That's great. Presumably every teacher on the planet would agree. So why has USED forced the adoption of standardized tests? And more to the point, ones that do not do what they claim they do. Why are states, like New Jersey, having committees look at "assessment" with the aim of doing away with tests created by teachers, for the students they are currently teaching, and will be able to immediately use the results to inform their teaching? (hint: no one makes any money on that) How many of your kids no longer have midterms or finals? Mine doesn't. 

Third, and this one cannot be typed with a straight face,  "No standardized test should ever be given solely for educator evaluation." USED offers this up now? When all states that took the NCLB waiver were coerced into creating a teacher evaluation in which standardized test scores are required??? Really?? I'm pretty sure teachers would have a lot to say about that.

Fourth, the babble about students with disabilities and English language learners is the usual trite language about leveling the playing field. If anyone was interested in actually doing that, you wouldn't require these populations to take standardized tests, you would make sure IDEA was fully funded, and you would come down like a ton of bricks on districts that didn't provide appropriate services for their students. 

My take away was not one of a victory in any sense of the word. Yes, I fight like mad to get rid of the crazy testing and, more importantly, the ridiculous high stakes that go with them. Yes, I'm glad that someone in Washington is at least willing to give a nod to the infatuation with testing, but this statement did not make clear which "assessments" they really mean, nor did they back off from the high stakes that go with them.