NJ State Board of Ed Ignores Public Testimony

If the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) and the New Jersey State Board of Ed (NJSBOE) are not listening to the public, who are they listening to? What is their reaction to all of our testimony? NJDOE provided responses to testimony when they released the August 3rd agenda and this is what stood out for me.

In some cases they simply disagreed and said so. In other cases, they had some interesting citations to back up their claims related to validity. And, for the special education-related comments, clarification of just who is in control of the graduation requirements for students with IEPs.

One comment, in particular, stuck out (besides the ones that were aimed at me) because the testimony belonged to Dr. Eric Milou, a Rowan University professor, recipient of the Max Sobel Outstanding Mathematics Educator Award, former president of Association of Mathematics Teachers of New Jersey (AMTNJ) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. This is exactly the kind of education professional this board should have been listening to, but this is their response:

40. COMMENT: The commenter stated there is no evidence the PARCC assessment is an improvement over previous standardized tests, raises student performance, provides useful diagnostic information, or indicates career or college readiness.  The commenter also stated only rigorous curriculum, instruction, and the use of formative assessments will have a significant impact on student educational success. (99)

RESPONSE: Several studies (e.g., National Network of State Teachers of the Year, 2015; Massachusetts Executive Office of Education, 2015; Center for American Progress, 2016; Fordham/Human Resources Research Organization, 2016; American Institutes for Research, 2016) have supported PARCC as an accurate measure of college and career readiness and endorsed PARCC as an improvement over previous assessments.

Dr. Milou got right to the heart of what's wrong with standardized tests in general and what's wrong with PARCC specifically. It doesn't actually provide the information that's being claimed. As we pour millions of tax dollars into a highly flawed testing system, shouldn't it, at the very least, do what NJDOE claims? Shouldn't someone, somewhere, define what college and career ready means?

Also relevant is how you go about determining validity and whom you choose to document those claims. Isn't that what we're allegedly trying to help our kids navigate? Knowing who is behind the research supporting your arguments, so you understand and account for undo influence? That's really important stuff, right?

Well, in this case, NJDOE is relying on information from sources that I would consider to be questionable because of where their funding comes from. I'm not going to tip-toe around that because when the same very deep pockets are quietly funding organizations that people trust, we all need to know where those organizations are coming from. I want data, information, opinions, from places where a particular and singular influence can be accounted for. In this case, NJDOE is clearly very happy with anything funded by the Gates Foundation. An entity with a very singular focus on the privatization of US public schools, on Common Core State Standards, and on the associated testing, like PARCC. Nothing the Gates Foundation does or supports is friendly to PUBLIC education. 

Let's look at who NJDOE and NJSBOE are listening to:

National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) From the Gates Foundation website: in 2015, NNSTOY was awarded a $1,000,000 grant "to improve student learning across the nation by defining, sharing and advocating for effective teaching practices and policies." 

NJDOE didn't bother to name any of the studies to which they refer, but I'll presume they are talking about "The Right Trajectory" study released earlier this year. Twenty-three Teachers of the Year took a look at PARCC, SBAC, NJASK, NECAP, DCAS, and ISAT at the 5th grade level. They applied Webb's DOK, along with other tools of assessing the level of challenge in each of the tests. The problem is, given how the questions were asked, they didn't appear to actually apply what they found. It reads more like an opinion questionnaire - which would be fine if you weren't trotting it out as evidence of validity. The study does not demonstrate PARCC as "an accurate measure of college and career readiness."

I was not familiar with this particular study and it's interesting to see what these teachers thought of the construct of these tests and, possibly, their usefulness. That said, there is nothing in the study that speaks to the validity of using PARCC to assess college and career readiness as a high school exit exam. I would argue the simple fact that they only looked a 5th grade, and they specifically left out consideration of students with disabilities, means the scope of the study doesn't include anything that supports college and career ready at the high school level. The study's conclusion is that PARCC is more challenging than NJASK. Ok. I'm good with that. NJASK was never written as "deep skills and knowledge" test, so I wouldn't expect them to find it was. 

Center for American Progress (CAP) is a heavily Gates Foundation-funded entity. From the Gates Foundation website: Since 2008, up to June 2016, they have been awarded $8,998,810 for everything from "to support Common Core implementation" to "enhance degree completion for low-income young adults through the publishing of new policy papers, stakeholder engagement, and media outreach" to "continue researching, understanding and promoting better human capital policies to benefit all public school students and to tackle the implications of developing education reforms".   

I have no idea which study NJDOE refers to in their response. CAP has many "reports" on their website, but nothing that either compares PARCC to anything or demonstrates value in a high school exit exam. If anyone knows or has the study, please send it to me.

Fordham/Human Resources Research Organization (Thomas B. Fordham Institute and HUMRO). This was an interesting way to cite two different studies that worked in parallel. The studies looked at PARCC, 2014 MCAS, ACT Aspire, and SBAC. From the HUMRO study summary, "A parallel study was conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (hereafter referred to as Fordham), which implemented the [The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment] Center’s methodology for grades 5 and 8 summative mathematics and ELA/literacy assessments. Taken together, HumRRO and Fordham were first to implement the Center’s evaluation methodology. HumRRO and Fordham conducted their studies separately; however, the two organizations communicated often about the evaluation methodology and collaborated on the steps to implement it." 

HumRRO also acknowledges who made their study possible: "This important work was possible from funding by the High Quality Assessment Project (HQAP), which supports state-based advocacy, communications, and policy work to help ensure successful transitions to new assessments that measure K–12 college- and career readiness standards. HQAP’s work is funded by a coalition of national foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Helmsley Trust."  

I haven't poked into just how much money that is, but Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been awarded $5,214,650 between 2006 and 2015, "to support the activities of an emerging network of state level education advocacy organizations in support of a convening around strategic issues" and "for general operating support" and "to track state progress towards implementation of standards and to understand how what students read changes in response to the standards."  

Interesting to note the Fordham study looked at grades 5-8. Arguably, that has nothing to do with the validity of a high school exit exam for either math or English.

And, the HumRRO study looked at PARCC's PBA and EOY. New Jersey doesn't use their PBA (only the first year, after which they dropped it) and the EOY, starting this year, was allegedly some combo of the PBA and EOY. So what exactly has NJDOE extracted from a study that doesn't talk about PARCC in the form it actually uses?

American Institutes for Research (AIR) is also Gates Foundation-funded, although they are primarily focused on post-secondary education. Since 2009 they have been awarded $9,296,140 in grants. Since NJDOE didn't bother to name which AIR study they were referring to, I'll guess that it's the National Benchmarks for State Achievement Standards 2016 study. The purpose was to look at the quality of college and career ready standards in the test using grades 4 and 8.

From their "key findings," the standards for PARCC ELA are equivalent to NAEP "basic" and PARCC math is equivalent to NAEP "proficient."

Go to page 19 of the study and read the list of "caveats." My favorites?

"Second, in some states, some of the grade 8 mathematics students took an end-of-course test, such as Algebra 1. In this benchmarking study, this factor could have had the effect of making the state grade 8 mathematics standards appear higher."

"This should not be interpreted to mean that NAEP’s Proficient levels in grades 4 and 8 are the gold standards for deciding whether our students are on track to be ready for college. No evidence has been presented by NAEP that the proficient standard in grades 4 and 8 predicts college success."  

"Fifth, this report does not, in any way, address or evaluate the quality of the CCSS. The CCSS are content standards, while this report deals only with achievement standards. Content standards represent the curriculum that teachers should teach, and the scope and sequence of what students should learn in school. Achievement standards are cut-scores on the state test that represent performance expectations." Here's what Drs. Tienken, Sforza, and Kim found on the "quality" of CCSS. 

Again, grades 4 and 8 were used, not any of the high school grades. There is nothing to support the validity of college and career ready at high school level or as an exit exam. 

Massachusetts Executive Office of Education (MEOE) They are, presumably referring to the Mathematica study done last year, comparing MCAS and PARCC for MEOE. Why they didn't just say that, I have no idea. At this point, I have no idea why NJDOE does anything. Anyway, I saved this one for last because I've written about it and provided testimony that is contrary to how NJDOE has framed this study in their support of PARCC. You can read my whole piece here, but I will just share these two particular points in this post:

1. 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. 

2. 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.” 

You could probably write a book about how much these studies do NOT support using PARCC as a college and career high school exit exam. I think NJDOE and NJSBOE need a lesson in how to read studies like these and how to properly draw conclusions from them. 

I will say, again, that having public ed policy so constrained by standardization is nothing but lazy. It does not serve our children. It does not serve our society. I am furious that we all have to wait in hope of a Governor who will have much higher expectations of public education in New Jersey. And who understands that test scores are incredibly limited in their usefulness. Our kids deserve nothing less.

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. 

NJDOE + NJ Chamber of Commerce = Act of Incredible Desperation

A few weeks ago I attended a presentation in Clifton. The presenter, Dana Egreczky, was there on behalf of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce (NJCC). Ostensibly, the purpose was to help parents understand the importance of standardized tests and their children's future in the business world. 

Anyone who pays attention to what's happening in Trenton, and, frankly, in DC, knows that the Chamber is a regular attendee at legislative education committee meetings. They often provide testimony and it's always on the side of the so-called education reform movement. I would even go so far as to say they, and the NJ Business and Industry Association, have more influence on what happens in our schools than parents and teachers. 

So, when the NJCC steps out into the daylight to weigh in on standardized testing, you bet I wanted to hear what they had to say. Two organizations that I am a part of are members of our local Chamber of Commerce. If NJCC is going around spreading misinformation on my behalf, I want to know about it.

The Clifton presentation was appalling. I haven't been able to get a copy of the presentation given to parents, but here is a link to the presentation she gave to Clifton students. A dad who was at the parent presentation audio taped it. He also blogged about it. You can read and listen to it here. The presentation was delivered in an angry tone, she made incredible claim after claim in an attempt to scare parents into letting their children take the PARCC tests. When asked for citations to back up her claims, parents were chided for having "opinions" and that in the 50 times she had delivered this particular presentation (no citation for that claim either), no one had ever asked for citation. Basically, her answer to any question was to bugger off. 

The next day, a parent sent an email to the president of NJCC asking for an explanation. The president wrote back and claimed no responsibility for Dana, saying she did not work for NJCC, even though she had identified herself as a Sr VP at the Chamber and President and CEO of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Here is part of his response:

“thank you for the feedback....Ms. Egreczky is a consultant on a grant regarding CORE curriculum issues, not an employee of the Chamber....she is just beginning her presentations so your feedback is greatly appreciated as the intent is to be educational, not confrontational...we will make sure to modify her presentations to achieve our goal in a more user friendly style....please understand that she is not speaking for the Chamber and the issues you expressed concern about are not advocated by the Chamber....if you would like to discuss further, please contact me...thank you again"

Fast forward a couple of weeks and she was in another town delivering her message of despair. Parents reported that her presentation was toned down from what they heard happened in Clifton. NJCC likely had a conversation with her and I hoped the rhetoric had been brought down to the usual Kool-Aid level you hear at PARCC-in-the-Box presentations. I decided to wait until she came into my area to see it again. 

Last night, a friend sent me the presentation given in Deptford. Well, it is different than the one she gave in Clifton. Still no citations, still claims from crazyland, only now the presentation is on behalf of We Raise NJ, a coalition of Gates-funded reform groups. NJCC is still listed in the presentation, but now in a much less conspicuous way. 

The reason for the backstory and purpose of this post is to let everyone know what We Raise NJ is spewing. Their "coalition" is the NJ Chamber of Commerce, NJ Charter Schools Association, National Council of La Raza, NJ School Boards Association, Garden State Coalition of Schools, NJ Black Alliance for Educational Options, NJ Council of County Colleges, NJCAN, NJASCD, NJ Business & Industry Association, and New Jersey PTA. And, yes, lots of Gates Foundation money in exchange for pushing Common Core State Standards and the aligned testing in this group. 

The Clifton presentation ignored students with disabilities. The new one does not. This gem is on slide 63 and looks like it was thrown in as an afterthought. I hope you are all as appalled as I am with this 50+ year old line of thinking. Keep in mind We Raise NJ is telling parents that taking a test is the answer to everything, but for students with disabilities - meh, they are just a blight on society and should be forced to take the test too, just because.

Following this line of logic, We Raise NJ thinks that a single, not yet validated, test based on low level standards is going to the address how we take care of (nothing here about actually lifting up students and individuals with disabilities) our most vulnerable population. This is disgusting. And then to suggest that the parents and teachers of these students don't know how they are doing and that this test, which is NOT DIAGNOSTIC in any way shape or form, is going to enlighten them? Seriously? 

Just so parents of gen ed students are not left out. These are directed at you. God forbid you want a manicure, you've just put your child's future at risk.

The purpose of all this is: 

Got that? By taking PARCC, your child will not be living with you 30 years from now. 

If you're wondering WHY Dana is making the rounds to schools all over the state to deliver this garbage to you. Well, probably a good idea to ask to see your district's Corrective Action Plan (technically, the ESEA Accountability Action Plan). This show counts as an approved "action" by NJDOE. 

Have you had enough yet? I sure as hell have. Our kids deserve better than this! 

The ESSA Negotiated Rulemaking Committee - update

This afternoon, the US Department of Education announced the participants (voting and non-voting) for the ESSA Title 1 negotiated rulemaking committee. I, and presumably everyone who had provided testimony to USDOE on January 11th, was invited to apply/be nominated. I wrote about the January 11th experience here and here. 

The parameters for the committee participants can be found on the Federal Register here. I found it odd that they asked for parents and students, but they also required you demonstrate your representation of others. Presumably, that meant USDOE would not be interested in a parent who was not connected to any large group in some way. 

Of course, I put my name in. I approached Save Our Schools New Jersey, for whom I am a volunteer organizer and Montclair Cares About Schools, an organization for whom I have a lot of respect. Both organizations came through with tremendous support. I also sought and received support from Dr. Chris Tienken, Assistant Professor of Education Administration at Seton Hall University and Dr. Mark Naison, Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University.

I was not selected for the "Parents and students, including historically underserved students" slots.  Nor for the "Civil rights community, including representatives of students with disabilities, English learners, and other historically underserved students" slots. 

Who was? Well, let's just simply say that The Gates Foundation certainly spends its money well. The two parent slots went to the Immediate Past President of PTA Ohio and to the Director of Education Policy at the South East Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC) - she also used to work for the Campaign for High School Equity Coalition project, another Gates-funded initiative. 

It's disappointing to see that the parents selected are affiliated with groups that are deeply involved with The Gates Foundation to the tune of several million dollars. That money, according to The Gates Foundation website went specifically for Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation, education and training of their constituents on CCSS and the aligned testing, and for developing plans for increasing awareness of CCSS. 

In the second category, the two voting members are the Migration Policy Institute and National Disability Rights Network (NDRN). Thankfully, NDRN does not take funding from The Gates Foundation. However, one of the non-voting participants in that category does, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. They are actually the reason why I started this blog. You can read what I had to say about them here. As of the end of 2014, they had about $2.9 million in Gates grants (I wrote about that here). Unfortunately, NDRN is a member of The Leadership Conference, and they have signed press releases and letters to Congress in support of mandatory testing. 

Is it too much to ask? To have representation that actually reflects what is happening right now, on the ground, to our kids? Between SEARAC, PTA, and The Leadership Conference we are looking at a $10 million Gates investment for a seat at the table. They have the "historically underserved and disabled students" buttoned up. 

Parents, I hope you are all in for one heck of fight. 


ETA: ExxonMobil has a seat at this table too. Just a friendly reminder of what CEO Rex Tillerson thinks of your children. 

ETA2: Oh goodie, one of the teachers is a Teach Plus fellow and currently, an inclusion teacher. That's another $17 million in Gates grants. 

So, how do you all feel about $27 million or so of Bill's bucks at the table? Think our kids get a fair shake out of this? You know what I think. 

New Jersey's Former Standards Are Better Than Common Core State Standards

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 here. 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.” 

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the development of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and why we and many other states bothered to adopt them has been written about by many people. Among the most in-depth research has been from Louisiana teacher and education researcher, Mercedes Schneider. Read here, here, here, here, and here.   

The basics of the Why are simple. Under NCLB, all students (yes, really, ALL) were required to be proficient in grade level reading and math by 2014. Of course, that’s not possible. It never should have been put into law. Congress should have fixed that long before the looming deadline for compliance. Epic failures all around. 

Essentially circumventing federal requirements, USDOE introduced waivers to NCLB. In exchange for adopting the Common Core State Standards, having testing aligned to those standards, and development of teacher evaluations based on those standardized test scores, states could avoid NCLB penalties. New Jersey signed on, sight unseen. Feeling sick yet?  

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

If you take a look at the composition of the work groups who developed the standards, you’ll find only five K-12 teachers out of 101 participants. You will find NOT ONE early childhood development or special education specialist either. You will find lots of people who worked for testing and publishing companies. The final insult was when Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, both, served on the Validation Committee and are content experts in ELA and math respectively, refused to sign off on the final product. Read about them and their objections here, and listen here.

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 November 2014, hosted by The League of Women Voters. See the entire panel discussion here, 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 wrote about the composition of the task force here. I still have not gotten an 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. Link to their article, again, is here.

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? Hope the reformy cheerleaders are sitting down. Keep in mind, they only compared the high school level standards: CCSSe vs. NJCCCS. Are you ready? 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:

	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%

Hmmm...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.

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.

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 then, what are you going to do about it? 

Those will be difficult questions for some. I can help with the second question. That one is easy. Opt Out of standardized testing. Stop feeding the machine. Force our legislators and departments of education, and our local districts, to truly create environments where our children can thrive. Please. Our children deserve so much better than this.

Big Biz Gets It Wrong

I am always fascinated by education articles in business publications. Today's article in Fortune was no less fascinating in its naivete and because of a particularly stupid (yes, stupid) statement by ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. 

Let me backtrack and share with you where I'm coming from when I read articles like this. I have a business degree from a private university in New York City, that produced some of the most sought after accountant and finance grads by the Big 8. We lived and breathed finance, asset management, accounting, international trade and marketing. 

I am also the granddaughter of an economist. If you had the great fortune to go to NYU in the 1960's and 1970's, he was the professor of banking and finance and the chair of banking and finance department for many years. He was a division chief for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was a director for the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. Wall Street titans would spend their Saturday afternoon picking Pop's brain about what he thought was going to happen long term - no one was particularly interested in short term. I was a kid who grew up talking about and learning economics, banking, and markets on the knee of a guru. 

So I'll just say, in my less than humble opinion, that Rex Tillerson is a fool. While this thought process is not new, and he is not the first to utter such nonsense, the timing is interesting. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are finally under serious scrutiny. Here's Tillerson's statement.

“I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer,” said Tillerson during the panel discussion. “What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation.”

Just. No. 

No, Rex. You are not their customer. America's children are not products that are meant to go in one end a human being and out the other a product for corporate America to do with what they will.

I am blown away by the acute shortsightedness of that statement. Especially for a guy who is sitting at the head of a company that exists only as long as fossil fuels do. Rex. Buddy. You should be clamoring for innovation. TRUE innovation. For creativity. For vision. 

If no one has had the balls to tell you, I will. A standardized education (one which you and I did not have, nor did anyone pre-NCLB) will NOT get you what you should be looking for. And for someone who should be well trained at this point in his career to spot trends, which frankly, in education are as blaring as the lights in Times Square, the narrowing of curriculum is detrimental to all students. We've had 15 years of this crap. More isn't going to make it better. 

As for the rest of the article, I'd say it's worth a read, but be prepared for the usual extremes that have absolutely nothing to do with what's actually wrong with CCSS.

Then, in great contrast, was this article in the Boston Globe. It's not about education, but rather, about what some of the old school Who's Who of Wall Street are seeing as a really big problem. I have to say, I think my grandfather would have liked Morris Pearl - former managing director of BlackRock. He is part of a group called the Patriotic Millionaires. Terrible name, but I suppose it gets to the point. 

Their point is this (in admittedly simplistic terms). Wall Street used to be about raising capital for companies to grow. People could buy shares and therefore share in the wealth earned through that growth. Factories would be built. Wages would rise. People could afford to buy products, and so on. We are talking basics here. Econ 101. Remember macroeconomics? 

Now, companies are sitting on their cash. They are using it to pay dividends and for buybacks, not for reinvestment back into their own infrastructure, not for raising wages. The value of companies is now based (deemed) on their quarterly earnings, not on long term plans. The narrowing of the focus on Wall Street is hurting all of us, except the ones at the very tippy top of the pile. 

So why this article, which you should absolutely read? Simply, that there was a time, as the author put it, "When his father expanded his business by investing his profits in other clothing stores, he and others within the family benefited from the expansion. In the same way, large companies could raise the capital needed for growth on Wall Street and sell shares to the public, enabling anyone to own a piece of corporate America, and enrich countless stockholders.

In 1950, individuals owned 90 percent of all stock shares, and usually held them for the long term. This was the virtuous circle that had attracted Pearl and many others, as growing companies hired new workers, raised wages, and rewarded shareholders." 

The same idea holds true for education. There is a cycle in society, a social contract, of which my grandfather often spoke. We have a fundamental responsibility to those who come behind us. We do have a collective good to maintain and it crosses over into many sectors of American civilized societies. We all pay for public education. It is there for all of us. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, just as those coming up, count on us to maintain public education for all of them. Without it, we have the Tillersons and the Gates of the world thinking that being rich entitles them to destroy the system that has served most of us incredibly well for generations. 

A Good Education Day in New Jersey

It's really great to have something good to write about. Today there are three! Quick. Go but a lottery ticket! 

This morning, Chris Tienken tweeted out a teaser for a report on Common Core Complexity, which will be released in January. The gist of it is this:

"[Webb's] Level 1 and 2 Depth of Knowledge complexity accounted for 72% of the high school English language arts Common Core State Standards. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of the 9-12 CCSS English language arts standards were rated at Level 1. Almost 3/4 of the high school English language arts standards do not require creative or strategic thinking as currently written." 

Pretty damning when Common Core cheerleaders have been selling it as the best thing to happen in public education in, well, forever. Seems that may have a been a bit of a stretch. Anyone surprised? Thought not.

With the NJ Assembly elected and back to business, the governor had to follow suit. Today, Governor Christie signed into law two bills a lot of us have been working very hard to get on the books. S2766/A3079, which limits standardized testing in grades K-2 to diagnostic purposes only. No high-stakes standardized testing for our youngest students. And, S2881/A4485, which prohibits the NJ Department of Education from withholding state aid from school districts for having high opt out/refusal rates. 

Since it seems that New Jersey refusal numbers are around 125,000, that law will come in handy. 

No more excuses, New Jersey. Opt Out!