How did the PARCC go for your child today?
Venture Capitalists Are Poised to ‘Disrupt’ Everything About the Education Market
Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education. What does this mean for public school students?
http://www.thenation.com/article/181762/venture-capitalists-are-poised-disrupt-everything-about-education-market#
Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education. What does this mean for public school students?
http://www.thenation.com/article/181762/venture-capitalists-are-poised-disrupt-everything-about-education-market#
5 Lessons Education Research Taught Us In 2014
"2) The Effectiveness Of Alignment
When a teacher's curriculum is perfectly aligned with a set of standards, meaning they're teaching exactly what they're told to, will students' test scores rise? That's the question a group of researchers set out to answer in "Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality."
Finding an answer to this is critical since better instructional alignment is a driving component of the Common Core.
Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania looked at 324 teachers in six large school districts (New York City; Dallas; Denver; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Hillsborough County, Fla.) in 2010.
Once the researchers created a measure for how closely aligned a teacher's curriculum was with standards, they examined the correlation of that alignment with teachers' ability to raise test scores (as measured by value-added models, which granted, have their own complications).
The results did not show a meaningful relationship between the two. Meaning, perfectly aligned curriculum is no more likely to be associated with gains in tests scores than perfectly unaligned curriculum."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/02/26/387471969/5-lessons-education-research-taught-us-in-2014?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150226
"2) The Effectiveness Of Alignment
When a teacher's curriculum is perfectly aligned with a set of standards, meaning they're teaching exactly what they're told to, will students' test scores rise? That's the question a group of researchers set out to answer in "Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality."
Finding an answer to this is critical since better instructional alignment is a driving component of the Common Core.
Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania looked at 324 teachers in six large school districts (New York City; Dallas; Denver; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Hillsborough County, Fla.) in 2010.
Once the researchers created a measure for how closely aligned a teacher's curriculum was with standards, they examined the correlation of that alignment with teachers' ability to raise test scores (as measured by value-added models, which granted, have their own complications).
The results did not show a meaningful relationship between the two. Meaning, perfectly aligned curriculum is no more likely to be associated with gains in tests scores than perfectly unaligned curriculum."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/02/26/387471969/5-lessons-education-research-taught-us-in-2014?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150226
No profit left behind
In the high-stakes world of American education, Pearson makes money even when its results don’t measure up.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html#ixzz3TSIEUBbG
In the high-stakes world of American education, Pearson makes money even when its results don’t measure up.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html#ixzz3TSIEUBbG
Pearson 'Education' -- Who Are These People?
"According to a recent article on Reuters, an international news service based in Great Britain, "investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education. The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html
"According to a recent article on Reuters, an international news service based in Great Britain, "investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education. The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html
@cdub can I give you a hug and a high five?
Your beautifully, well thought out statement is one of the reasons why we chose to opt out. Even if our son was continuing a public school education, we still would have opted him out. To us, it's a waste of time. And yes, when students hear loud and clear that it doesn't count then many of them fudge their answers and choose to do poorly. If this is happening, how are they to clearly gauge next years stats for when it does count? Are teachers to say, "Look students! This one is the REAL ONE, the one that COUNTS so please take this one seriously"?
And yes, to your point, if standardized tests solved what ails us, the favorable results would have been made clear decades ago and our students would be the beneficiaries of those results.
The only two standardized tests I want my boys to take are the SAT and ACT because those really do count.
Your beautifully, well thought out statement is one of the reasons why we chose to opt out. Even if our son was continuing a public school education, we still would have opted him out. To us, it's a waste of time. And yes, when students hear loud and clear that it doesn't count then many of them fudge their answers and choose to do poorly. If this is happening, how are they to clearly gauge next years stats for when it does count? Are teachers to say, "Look students! This one is the REAL ONE, the one that COUNTS so please take this one seriously"?
And yes, to your point, if standardized tests solved what ails us, the favorable results would have been made clear decades ago and our students would be the beneficiaries of those results.
The only two standardized tests I want my boys to take are the SAT and ACT because those really do count.
Other school boards are doing this:
http://www.livingston.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=1&ModuleInstanceID=3007&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=59277&PageID=1
http://www.livingston.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=1&ModuleInstanceID=3007&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=59277&PageID=1
Publishing Giant Pearson Hauls in Billions in Education Dollars, But Do Students Benefit?
An expose of the publishing giant underscores the failure of our current education reform agenda.
"High-stakes testing is just one piece of a larger education reform agenda built on accountability, all of which demands to be revisited. For just as investing in high-stakes tests has profited Pearson while failing to improve student achievement and educational equity, charter schools are no more effective than public schools, merit pay and value-added methods of evaluating and retaining teachers do not improve teaching, and the presence or quality of standards (including Common Core) does not correlate with higher student achievement. These policies are not just misguided; they also keep the focus off the real problems, the ones related to inequity in the lives and education of children, especially among racial minorities, impoverished children, special needs students, and non-native speakers of English. These are the problems that actually deserve our attention."
http://www.alternet.org/education/publishing-giant-pearson-hauls-billions-education-dollars-do-students-benefit
An expose of the publishing giant underscores the failure of our current education reform agenda.
"High-stakes testing is just one piece of a larger education reform agenda built on accountability, all of which demands to be revisited. For just as investing in high-stakes tests has profited Pearson while failing to improve student achievement and educational equity, charter schools are no more effective than public schools, merit pay and value-added methods of evaluating and retaining teachers do not improve teaching, and the presence or quality of standards (including Common Core) does not correlate with higher student achievement. These policies are not just misguided; they also keep the focus off the real problems, the ones related to inequity in the lives and education of children, especially among racial minorities, impoverished children, special needs students, and non-native speakers of English. These are the problems that actually deserve our attention."
http://www.alternet.org/education/publishing-giant-pearson-hauls-billions-education-dollars-do-students-benefit
About 1100 students in Livingston have chosen (or their parents have) not to participate in PARCC. I do not know what we have in SOMSD but it appears that numbers in the low hundreds have officially opted out but word of mouth seems to indicate more students are just randomly entering answers. How many? I have no clue.
I tend to agree with the teacher from another district. The amount of money and time in this is depressing and it most likely will not result in anything useful for education. Pearson, who has done at best an extremely mediocre job in designing the management end of the test (the interface is abysmal, sort of a late 1980s crappy software approach; it is, after all, 35+ years into the digital revolution and 20+ years of the Internet and there is no excuse for such a poorly designed system which encourages errors of administration), will certainly make some money.
We could standardized test every week if that's what people want, or every month. Everyone should listen carefully here: if PARCC is what everyone in the political arena wants, then what everyone will get is a curriculum designed to the test....teachers will teach to the test. There is NO way around that. [On your own job if your performance is set to doing 28 things which can be measured in rote fashion, and you don't do them, well you are gone. Why would that be different for education if the criteria for good performance is measured via standardized tests. And all the capitalists out there, what kind of "thinker" would you get if after 16 years in education they simply became great test takers, but were seldom asked to think creatively. Is that who you want to hire? Really? Is that who Google and Apple want, drones?]
So all the discussion in education about how kids learn and how to motivate kids is a waste of time...just teach to the test. Then, since the test is standardized nationally, just have on-line courses which track that stuff in mechanically rote fashion and sooner or later, that's what education could become when we fixate on these tests, which it seems to be where we are heading. Pearson and Khan and others could form an alliance or buy each other -- learn via Khan, test via Pearson. Might be cheaper.
I tend to agree with the teacher from another district. The amount of money and time in this is depressing and it most likely will not result in anything useful for education. Pearson, who has done at best an extremely mediocre job in designing the management end of the test (the interface is abysmal, sort of a late 1980s crappy software approach; it is, after all, 35+ years into the digital revolution and 20+ years of the Internet and there is no excuse for such a poorly designed system which encourages errors of administration), will certainly make some money.
We could standardized test every week if that's what people want, or every month. Everyone should listen carefully here: if PARCC is what everyone in the political arena wants, then what everyone will get is a curriculum designed to the test....teachers will teach to the test. There is NO way around that. [On your own job if your performance is set to doing 28 things which can be measured in rote fashion, and you don't do them, well you are gone. Why would that be different for education if the criteria for good performance is measured via standardized tests. And all the capitalists out there, what kind of "thinker" would you get if after 16 years in education they simply became great test takers, but were seldom asked to think creatively. Is that who you want to hire? Really? Is that who Google and Apple want, drones?]
So all the discussion in education about how kids learn and how to motivate kids is a waste of time...just teach to the test. Then, since the test is standardized nationally, just have on-line courses which track that stuff in mechanically rote fashion and sooner or later, that's what education could become when we fixate on these tests, which it seems to be where we are heading. Pearson and Khan and others could form an alliance or buy each other -- learn via Khan, test via Pearson. Might be cheaper.
"Might be cheaper."
BINGO!
Why pay teachers salaries commensurate with their training and experience when you can pay someone in Cambodia or Thailand help desk salaries? The tax dollars we spend on schools drops and everyone has extra money to buy a new car.
It's all about the money.
BINGO!
Why pay teachers salaries commensurate with their training and experience when you can pay someone in Cambodia or Thailand help desk salaries? The tax dollars we spend on schools drops and everyone has extra money to buy a new car.
It's all about the money.
algebra2 said:
He will take the test. If he could use the time to get work done I would opt out but that would be the only reason. Thanks for the info.
The reasoning behind your decision makes perfect sense--and that is precisely what the district (taking their cue from Trenton once again) is counting on when they decided to:
1. Have the opt-out students stay in the same room as test-taking students;
2. They can only bring a book--not pen, pencil, paper, magazines, worksheets, anything else--to the classroom.
As BOE member Wright repeatedly suggested during the last Board meeting, this decision makes little sense. Following their initial misinformation campaign ("Can you opt out of PARCC?" "NO.", etc.) the district is still being disingenuous in trying to subtly coerce the families to go along with this crap. Frankly, I'm disgusted.
Jude said:
About 1100 students in Livingston have chosen (or their parents have) not to participate in PARCC. I do not know what we have in SOMSD but it appears that numbers in the low hundreds have officially opted out but word of mouth seems to indicate more students are just randomly entering answers. How many? I have no clue.
I tend to agree with the teacher from another district. The amount of money and time in this is depressing and it most likely will not result in anything useful for education. Pearson, who has done at best an extremely mediocre job in designing the management end of the test (the interface is abysmal, sort of a late 1980s crappy software approach; it is, after all, 35+ years into the digital revolution and 20+ years of the Internet and there is no excuse for such a poorly designed system which encourages errors of administration), will certainly make some money.
We could standardized test every week if that's what people want, or every month. Everyone should listen carefully here: if PARCC is what everyone in the political arena wants, then what everyone will get is a curriculum designed to the test....teachers will teach to the test. There is NO way around that. [On your own job if your performance is set to doing 28 things which can be measured in rote fashion, and you don't do them, well you are gone. Why would that be different for education if the criteria for good performance is measured via standardized tests. And all the capitalists out there, what kind of "thinker" would you get if after 16 years in education they simply became great test takers, but were seldom asked to think creatively. Is that who you want to hire? Really? Is that who Google and Apple want, drones?]
So all the discussion in education about how kids learn and how to motivate kids is a waste of time...just teach to the test. Then, since the test is standardized nationally, just have on-line courses which track that stuff in mechanically rote fashion and sooner or later, that's what education could become when we fixate on these tests, which it seems to be where we are heading. Pearson and Khan and others could form an alliance or buy each other -- learn via Khan, test via Pearson. Might be cheaper.
You're being hysterical. Besides, you're just a teacher--what you really know about what's good for student learning?
Seriously, thank you for this post.
Well, few accuse me of being hysterical. Boring perhaps. Definitely old. :-(( 
Thank you so much cdub. That's really helpful for me and my high schooler.
Did I hear correctly that every school must have 87% participation rate or they no longer qualify for state aid??
I suppose that calls to eliminate the Department of Education in the federal government will start to enjoy bipartisan support. I think each state can handle their own education.
Just got an email stating that SOMS kids will take both halves of the math Parcc tomorrow since schools were closed today. That's five hours of testing all at once. Sounds pretty mind-numbing for a bunch of 13-14 year olds. Wouldn't this have a negative impact on their scores?
Some districts have choose to do it this way. Mine has chosen to just push back testing by a day for everyone so they don't have to have long periods of testing time.
The math tomorrow will not total 5 hours. It will be 80 or 90 minutes and then 70 or 75, depending on which math level your kid is in. Either way it is a lot of testing, but I, for one, will be glad to have this done.
Did I understand the letter correctly that next week's testing at the high school has been clumped together too so that there is only one day of math and 2 days of Language Arts?
tjohn said:
I suppose that calls to eliminate the Department of Education in the federal government will start to enjoy bipartisan support. I think each state can handle their own education.
Don't stand on one leg.
dg64 said:
Did I understand the letter correctly that next week's testing at the high school has been clumped together too so that there is only one day of math and 2 days of Language Arts?
Yes.
One fall out of the scheduled testing (at least at the middle school) is that all the related arts teachers seem to have been reassigned to test proctoring duties so that related arts classes have not been very productive or not happening at all some days(PE). And for whatever reason after school conference time has not been available with these teachers. My kid has been stressing about projects due in two related arts classes and teachers have not been available to ask questions of or go to after school. Wish there would have been a heads up to parents and students about this.
My child is in day 4 of PARCC testing, and all is going just fine.
Interestingly, after all the hype, only about 3% of eligible SOMA students ended up opting out according to an article in the News Record.
I have to say I'm happy to see that most folks were sensible and willing to participate in this dry run to help work out the kinks for when it means something. Well done, SOMA!
Interestingly, after all the hype, only about 3% of eligible SOMA students ended up opting out according to an article in the News Record.
I have to say I'm happy to see that most folks were sensible and willing to participate in this dry run to help work out the kinks for when it means something. Well done, SOMA!
Yesterday my 9th grader got electronically kicked out of the test 4 times - causing him to have to start over and over. He found that no one seemed to know what to do about this. At the end when he pressed enter (or whatever) he was brought back to the beginning and was told he would need to start from the beginning again today. Who should I reach out to - I don't want him to miss actual class time due to problems with the system...
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"Figuring out how to measure original thought isn’t the only challenge test manufacturers need to address. Their tests:
- Provide minimal to no useful feedback to classroom teachers
- Are keyed to a deeply flawed curriculum adopted in 1893
- Lead to neglect of physical conditioning, music, art, and other, non-verbal ways of learning
- Unfairly advantage those who can afford test prep
- Hide problems created by margin-of-error computations in scoring
- Penalize test-takers who think in non-standard ways (which the young frequently do)
- Radically limit teacher ability to adapt to learner differences
- Give control of the curriculum to test manufacturers
- Encourage use of threats, bribes, and other extrinsic motivators
- Use arbitrary, subjectively set pass-fail cut scores
- Produce scores which can be (and sometimes are) manipulated for political purposes
- Assume that what the young will need to know in the future is already known
- Emphasize minimum achievement to the neglect of maximum performance
- Create unreasonable pressures to cheat
- Reduce teacher creativity and the appeal of teaching as a profession
- Are unavoidably biased by social-class, ethnic, regional, and other cultural differences
- Lessen concern for and use of continuous evaluation
- Have no “success in life” predictive power
- Unfairly channel instructional resources to learners at or near the pass-fail “cut score”
- Are open to massive scoring errors with life-changing consequences
- Are at odds with deep-seated American values about individuality and worth
- Create unnecessary stress and negative attitudes toward learning
- Perpetuate the artificial compartmentalization of knowledge by field
- Channel increasing amounts of tax money into corporate coffers instead of classrooms
- Waste the vast, creative potential of human variability
- Block instructional innovations that can’t be evaluated by machine
- Unduly reward mere ability to retrieve secondhand information from memory
- Subtract from available instructional time
- Lend themselves to “gaming”—use of strategies to improve the success-rate of guessing
- Make time—a parameter largely unrelated to ability—a factor in scoring
- Create test fatigue, aversion, and an eventual refusal to take tests seriously
- Undermine the fact that those closest to the work are best-positioned to evaluate it
- Don’t work.
The National Academy of Sciences, 2011 report to Congress: The use of standardized tests “has not increased student achievement.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/01/the-important-things-standardized-tests-dont-measure/