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.

What If Our Schools Looked Like This?

In New Jersey, we are currently in the midst of our "testing season." Opting Out (refusals) is the story of the day. Parents are pushing back on a system that has become largely impersonal and very standardized. 

While opting out is one way of expressing extreme displeasure of what our schools have become, the reason is because we have to have a new conversation -- one that includes teachers and parents and students -- about what schools should be like. 

I have no doubt if you asked a hundred people what they think it should be, you'd get a hundred different answers. However, I think you'd also find some very basic common threads in those answers. Fully funding all public schools. High quality pre-school for all children. Student-centered learning. Teachers who are well trained and can continue to hone their craft as their careers progress. Clean and safe physical environments. Field trips. Hands-on learning experiences. Unique learning experiences. Opportunities for students to demonstrate what they've learned. Authentic, teacher-driven assessments. Parent and community participation. Transparency. And, all of these attributes are for everyone. 

The Willow School would be a great example for many of these qualities. 

✔ Well-funded
✔ High quality pre-school
✔ Student-centered learning
✔ Well-trained teachers
✔ Clean and safe environment
✔ Field trips
✔ Hands-on learning experiences
✔ Students demonstrate what they’ve learned
✔ Authentic, teacher driven (not standardized) assessments
✔ Parent and community involvement

What is The Willow school? Well, it's a private independent school here in New Jersey, located on a 34 acre campus. Its founder is the New Jersey State Board of Education President, Mark Biedron. 

"At The Willow School, children discover who they are, the joy of learning, and the wonder of the environment around them." 

Sounds pretty great, right? 

The Head of School has this to say about student experience:  

"At Willow, our shared dedication to academic excellence thrives on the constant development of the intellectual capacities of our students. Academic preparation, without the intellectual muscle to think independently, deprives students from fully engaging in the challenging future awaiting them. Academic excellence at Willow means that our learning objectives not only include the mastery of content needed for the next level of academic challenge, but also includes conceptual understanding in the broader world, and the rich connections to our school culture." (emphasis mine)

This is from the overview of the school's curriculum:

"The integrated curriculum allows students to learn material in great depth as well as to see the connections that naturally exist among subject areas. The primary device for integration of the curriculum is the development of communication skills using the English language. Parallel to that usage is the study of French or Spanish from kindergarten through eighth grade, with Latin introduced in sixth through eighth grades. While the disciplines of mathematics and science, and of language and social studies, are often connected at The Willow School, it is also important for children to learn, for instance, how scientific and technological advances have shaped the ways humans relate to each other or how the use of mathematics determines the design of music and architecture. All learning is spiral; the child returns to skills and subject matter that becomes increasingly complex and challenging." (emphasis mine)

Ok, sign me up. I want to go this school. 

The teachers. What about the teachers? Who are the people guiding these students as they develop "intellectual muscle?" Take a browse through the teacher profiles. Mark, I have to give you mad props for your team. Masters degrees. Many years of both teaching and heading up similar schools. Not a TFA member in sight. 

One of the teachers answered a short, get-to-know-you Q&A on his profile page. I highlight these two questions and answers because every parent wants this, and I am sure every teacher does as well. 

What do you love about being a teacher at Willow?

I feel as though Willow affords me the opportunity to be flexible with my curriculum to create something new with my students every year.  Learning doesn’t happen in the same way for all children and Willow allows for changes to be made that benefit all types of learners in each class.  Willow inspires me to make learning come to life because I’m allowed to teach and learn with students among various themes/topics with a curriculum that I am truly passionate about.

What satisfies you the most about your work at Willow?

Being able to see examples of student actions and work that reflect deep and connected learning is the pinnacle of my teaching experience at Willow.

What about the physical environment? The Willow School has a long list of accolades. You can read all about them here. They have been recognized for their green buildings, earning the highest awards for USGBC LEEDS-certified buildings. I'm going to make a wild guess here and say you won't find lead in their drinking water, mold or peeling paint, rodents, or broken heating/cooling systems in those buildings. 

As you would expect, the price tag is pretty steep, like college tuition steep. The middle school grades are just shy of $30k a year. It is interesting though, that their pre-k program demonstrates what "choice" ought to be. You can send your 4-year-old to school for five half days, or five full days, or a combo of half and full days. 

Why am I telling you about this school? Mark Biedron and his cohorts are fully supporting PARCC as the testing requirement for graduation in New Jersey, beginning with the class of 2021. (I say "the," but really it's SIX PARCC tests to graduate.) He fully supports, at least publicly, Common Core State Standards and the aligned testing. Given the tenets of his school, CCSS and the aligned testing are for everyone else's children. Not for his. And not for the students at his school. 

I don't doubt that The Willow School's price tag is commensurate with what those parents are getting for their children. Heck, the 34 acres alone would be expensive to maintain. 
What I want to know is, why isn't Mark fighting like mad to have every school in New Jersey look more like his? He clearly believes very strongly in that kind of an education. It's a spectacular example of opting out of a standardized education. The disconnect is astonishing, and remarkably disappointing. 

On May 4th, the State Board of Education is having their monthly meeting. It's also one of the rare times when open public comment is allowed. I encourage beg you to attend and tell Mark what you want your children's education to look like. Sign up to attend here. 

New Jersey State Board of Education Gets It Very Wrong

The February 10, 2016 NJ State Board of Ed meeting was its usual surreal experience and it was one of the rare times when open public testimony is permitted. As the school experiences of our kids get more and more narrowed, parents are finally showing up in number to speak out against what is happening in their districts and to weigh in on the crazy influence testing has on our schools. 

I regularly provide testimony to the NJ State BOE, to NJ Senate and Assembly Education Committees, and I've even schlepped down to the US Department of Education in Washington DC. I expect that my testimony (anyone's testimony) is listened to fairly and when appropriate, commented on fairly. Here is the link to a summary of testimony provided in February to the NJ State BOE, along with a response from them. I expected it to reflect what I actually said.

I'm more than a little horrified that it does not. I provided two testimonies -- one for myself and one from Save Our Schools NJ (SOSNJ). Mine was completely ignored, and it appears the NJ State BOE summary and response to SOSNJ was too: 

COMMENT: The commenter asked for details on the current graduation requirements and how they differ from the proposed changes. (A)

RESPONSE: Under the former graduation requirements, a student had three opportunities to demonstrate graduation competencies under the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA). If a student was unable to pass all portions of the HSPA, he or she then would take targeted portions of the Alternative High School Assessment (AHSA). Finally, a student who was unable to demonstrate graduation proficiencies through both the HSPA and the AHSA could use the portfolio appeals process. Although the Department is proposing to transition form the HSPA to end-of-course PARCC assessments, and the AHSA to substitute competency tests, the statutory requirement to demonstrate graduation competency through a standardized assessment is maintained, along with the provision of an alternative way to demonstrate proficiency.  

However, nowhere in the SOSNJ testimony is that question asked. Here is the full text: 

February 10, 2016

 Save Our Schools NJ, a 30,000 member grassroots, non-partisan, pro-public education organization strongly opposes the New Jersey Department of Education’s proposed graduation requirements. In short, the proposed regulations make passing two PARCC tests a graduation requirement, and eliminate the alternative high school assessment.  Save Our Schools NJ does not support using the unvalidated PARCC tests for graduation or any other important decisions affecting students, teachers, and schools.  Furthermore, eliminating the alternative assessment will undoubtedly increase the drop-out rate, disproportionately affect certain communities, and must be reconsidered.

The proposed regulations appear to eliminate the right of parents to refuse PARCC by requiring all students to sit for all PARCC exams in order to receive a diploma. Parents in New Jersey have always refused standardized tests, and federal law supports parents’ right to refuse. The State Board should reject this proposal. 

Currently, New Jersey is one of just 13 states that requires exit exams for public school students. In rejecting exit exams, a large majority of states recognize that high school performance is a better indicator of college and career readiness than a standardized test. Rather than revealing new information about the performance of New Jersey’s students, the results of last year’s PARCC exams confirm what we already knew—performance on standardized tests is highly correlated to a family’s and community’s wealth. The new federal ESSA law does not require a high school exit test.  And it requires just one test in ELA and math in high school.  Given all of this, why does New Jersey need three times as many tests in high school?

The Department claims that a test taken on a computer better measures a student’s abilities as compared to a pencil and paper “bubble” test and commenced an initiative to force school districts to administer the test online, ignoring warnings about how students with little or no experience with computers would fare. The DOE touted its ‘best in the nation’ number of students who took PARCC on a computer. Yet, last week, PARCC officials acknowledged discrepancies in scores across different formats. PARCCs Chief of Assessment Jeffrey Nellhaus said “There is some evidence that, in part, the score differences we’re seeing may be explained by students’ familiarity with the computer-delivery system.” According to EdWeek, "The advantage for paper-and-pencil test-takers appears to be substantial, based on independent analyses conducted by one prominent PARCC state and a high-profile school district that administered the exams."  This serious matter further calls into question the validity of PARCC results and their use as a requirement for graduation.

Save Our Schools NJ supports assessing skills and knowledge as a component of high-quality education using tools that are reliable, valid, and appropriate to the educator's need. We do not support the use of high stakes standardized testing for graduation, student placement, or teacher evaluation.

Save Our Schools NJ urges the State Board of Education and the Department of Education to explore alternatives to high stakes standardized testing. Rather than enrich the coffers of the edu-tech industry, please consider assessments that support the type of instruction NJ students and educators need and deserve.

Submitted by Julie Borst, Organizer, Save Our Schools NJ

I will leave you with the full text of my testimony -- which I was not allowed to finish. I was made to provide both within a strict 5-minute slot, even though there were many people who did not show up and there would have been plenty of time for the few people in the room to speak. Later on I learned that people were allowed extra time in the other rooms. (It's not unusual to for them to split people up and have 1 or 2 Board members listen to testimony in each room.) It is not even addressed. Pretty scary since this is really the crux of the issue. We have been sold the idea that we need high standards above all else. What we were given are not "higher" than the old standards. The testing, and the narrowing of curriculum for the purpose of doing well on a test that is based on the new and inferior standards is big problem. 

10 February 2016 NJ State Board of Education

Drs. Chris Tienken and Eunyoung Kim from Seton Hall University and Dr. Dario Sforza, a high school principal in East Rutherford, NJ, recently published, “A Comparison of Higher-Order Thinking Between the Common Core State Standards and the 2009 New Jersey Content Standards in High School”. You can read their article in AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice. There has been "no qualitative analytical research…done to test the assumption that the CCSS are superior to previous state standards in the development of higher order thinking and creativity at the high school level.” 

	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
CCSS ELA	37%	35%	26%	2%
NJCCCS ELA	22%	40%	33%	5%
CCSS Math	19%	71%	10%	Zero
NJCCCS Math	8%	54%	38%	10%

In March 2014, Kevin Welner from the National Education Policy Center, had this to say about the adoption of CCSS in an article, The Lost Opportunity of the Common Core State Standards: 

"But the unfortunate reality is that whatever its potential benefits, the actual Common Core package will almost certainly exacerbate the policy failures of the past decade. Further, the linking of the Common Core to accountability regimes is a feature, not a bug. It is what was intended from the outset.

Our children deserve so much better than this.

Let's be really clear about this. The development of the standards was NOT driven by educational need. It was driven by political need. 

NJDOE has invested a lot of time and money into pushing CCSS. They have made incredible claims about their value and how much it would propel the children of New Jersey to “college and career readiness,” a term that is still without definition. PARCC, the CCSS-aligned test, was allegedly so good, that when Dr. Tienken asked Bari Erlichson from NJDOE, "Is the test worth teaching to?" Ms. Erlichson replied, "Yes...How many days does it take to get ready for the PARCC exam? 180. That is the length of the school year." This exchange happened at an event in Ridgewood, NJ, in October 2014, hosted by The League of Women Voters. See the entire panel discussion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9QdDuBm5sk, their exchange begins at 1:18:34.  

That was incredibly high praise for the assumption of good curricula based on standards that still hadn't been vetted and for a test that NO ONE had seen. 

Last year, Governor Christie announced the creation of a task force to study the Common Core State Standards. They were given a very short period of time to take public input, review each standard, and return recommendations for change. The end result was, as expected, a sham. It’s not a reflection of the time parents and teachers on the task force spent reviewing and revising the standards. It certainly was not a reflection of the testimony provided to the task force, but rather the insufficient time frame for producing standards, a report, and the Commissioner's insistence that it would likely be a just a "tweak." The task force came back with a 15% change in the standards, which, magically, coincides with the requirements of PARCC…anything more than a 15% change in standards would require dropping PARCC assessments. 

I still have not gotten answer to my question regarding PTO participation, in spite of help from State Board of Education President, Mark Biedron. So much for transparency from NJDOE.

So, how did Tienken, Kim, and Sforza evaluate and compare the standards? They used Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) and you can find an in-depth description of their methodology beginning on page 14, and a description of the four levels of DOK on page 10.

DOK levels are described in the article as:

Level 1 Recall: requires “recall a simple definition, term, or fact, or replicate procedure, or algorithm. 

Level 2 Skill/Concepts: students develop some mental connections and make decisions about how to set up to approach a problem or activity to produce a response, apply a recalled skill, or engage in literal comprehension.

Level 3 Strategic Thinking: engage in planning, reasoning, constructing arguments, making conjectures, and/or providing evidence when producing a response and require students to do some original concepts or draw conclusions. 

Level 4 Extended Thinking: engage in complex planning, reasoning, and conjecturing, and to develop lines of argumentation. Items at this level require students to make multiple connections between several different key and complex concepts, inferencing, or connecting the dots to create a big picture generalization. 

What did the study show? From page 18:

"Overall, the high school Common Core State Standards in ELA and M contained fewer standards rated at DOK Levels 3 and 4 than the 2009 New Jersey high school standards in ELA and math. That is, the standards that NJ had in place prior to adopting the Common Core provided more of the Level 3 and 4 higher order skills cited in mainstream business and education publication as necessary capabilities for competing in a global economy."

To summarize their findings, pages 18-23:

Those numbers hardly suggest the far superior product we've been sold. Perhaps most damning in the article is this paragraph on page 26. 

"The results suggest that the previous versions of the NJ high school ELA and math standards included more complex, higher-order thinking and provided more opportunities to practice the types of thinking valued in the mainstream education reform literature as necessary to compete in the global economy. Although some have noted the CCSS as being more difficult than some previous states’ standards, difficulty is not a proxy for creativity and strategic thinking (e.g. Porter, McMaken, & Hwang, 2011). Convoluted prompts and questions and unclear portions of some standards do nothing to foster creative or strategic thinking (Wiggins, 2014)." 

Hard to say where I feel most disappointed. At the local level, I'm really tired of the Kool-Aid laden pep talks from supposed "experts" and "coaches". At the state level, NJDOE and State Board of Education, I'm tired of the gerbil wheel of spin that constantly comes out of their building. I'm tired of them having no accountability. I'm tired of parents and students having no voice. At the federal level, I'm tired of pretty much the same thing as the local and state levels. At state and federal levels I'm appalled at the amount of "philanthropic" money being tossed around and its influence on public policy, none of which addresses the most basic needs of many students. 

Importantly, the status quo approach involves a choice of one set of policies to the exclusion of another. When politicians opt for accountability and market-based privatization policies, they supersede policies that are grounded in best practices — evidence-based reforms that have succeeded in enhancing opportunities to learn. 

In doing so, politicians seem willfully ignorant of the direct connection between opportunity and achievement. Our national opportunity gaps lead inexorably to our achievement gaps. Yet the test-based accountability policies still advocated by politicians disregard the opportunity side of the equation. Capacity building and supports are relegated to a small footnote within a long diatribe about mandated performance. The Marie Antoinettes of today proclaim, “Let them take tests,” callously brushing aside the needs of our children for intellectual nourishment." 

The machine that churns out the This Is The Best Thing Ever! has to be stopped. Some really basic questions have to be answered. Maybe most important for parents is, at what point did you cede your voice and reason to the snake oil salesmen of college and career readiness? And to the State Board of Education, who do you work for? It sure doesn’t look like it’s for the children of New Jersey.

Julie Borst

Attached: Full article: “A Comparison of Higher-Order Thinking Between the Common Core State Standards and the 2009 New Jersey Content Standards in High School” Dr. Chris Tienken Dr. Eunyoung Kim, and Dr. Dario Sforza