Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update: this post from retired teacher/blogger Fred Klonsky puts it all in perspective. end of update And I'm talking about public education. There was much discussion about the platform's stand on public ed issues early on.  With Hillary Clinton waffling about charter schools (only "high-quality" ones), it was hard to say what would happen. But now wording has been tightened and it looks like the Democratic party has somewhat split the baby (but landed to the side of ed reform not controlled by corporate/philanthropic groups.) From the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet (blue is platform language):

N.J. school gave students the wrong PARCC test Students in the gifted program knew they do well in math but thought this test was way too easy. That's because the algebra test they were supposed to take wasn't what they got.  Among the other tidbits of info from this story. Christiana said he doesn't think it's fair to the students that they wasted an afternoon on the wrong test. "Now they are told their test was nonsense and they have to take another one," Christiana said. "I am frustrated, and they are not giving us any answers." Less than a week earlier, students were locked out of PARCC testing because of an error by an employee at Pearson, the company that provides the exams. Teachers are instructed not to look at student's computer screens during PARCC testing, even if a student has a question, said Matthew Stagliano, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. So the kids can tell s...

Comments are now pouring in on both tests.  Here are comments from the PARCC assessment in NY state and the SBAC here in Seattle. One from The Answer Sheet at the Washington Post stands out: An elementary principal of a well-regarded elementary school in an affluent, “gold-coast” district wrote the following:  These three days of ELA have been torture – I had only 23 students opt out and I had at least 3 times that number in tears. If we were permitted to talk about the content, it would be over so fast. Folks would be horrified at the vocabulary, the reading levels and the ambiguity of the questions. I was unable to answer at least 25 percent of them.

At her blog, Diane Ravitch brings together three stories about the recent convictions and sentencing of 11 Atlanta educators who cheated to raise their students' test scores.  The eleven people were lead away in shackles, some to sentences up to 20 years.  Let's just all agree that what they did was wrong.  But they were tried and convicted under the RICO Act.  You remember that one - it's the one the Feds like to use for racketeering.  So let's compare and contrast. One was by Richard Rothstein . In this brilliant article, Rothstein argued that the 11 convicted educators were “taking the fall” for a thoroughly corrupt testing regime that set impossible goals and punished those who can’t meet them: Rothstein writes: Eleven Atlanta educators, convicted and imprisoned, have taken the fall for systematic cheating on standardized tests in American education. Such cheating is widespread, as is similar corruption in any institution—whether health care...

It has come to my attention that just submitting a signed, date form requesting your child to opt out of SBAC testing may not suffice at some schools. The SBAC page at SPS says this: Families who refuse to allow their children to participate in assessments, including Smarter Balanced, must submit the refusal in writing, signed and dated, to go in the student's permanent record file. Parents or guardians must submit this refusal annually. Families may use THIS FORM or submit a clear written and signed document. That's rather interesting wording in red as I might perceive they mean it has to be hand-written, not typed.  Why that would be, I don't know. Here's the SBAC page at SPS.   I note that when you hit the spot for the form to refuse, it does NOT take you to the form.  It takes you to yet another page.  Here's the link to the SBAC form. In the SBAC form, I'm supposing they want you to realize, in humiliating detail, how you are failing your child...

Vermont says no .  From the Vermont government website, an op-ed by a member of their Board of Education: On Tuesday, March 17, 2015, the Vermont State Board of Education unanimously voted to suspend the use of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) scores for the 2014-2015 school year for the purpose of annual school evaluation determinations. These English Language Arts and Mathematics assessments were developed to measure student mastery of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which were adopted in 2010. Until students' education has been guided by the new standards and schools have practiced administering and interpreting SBAC, the results will not support reliable and valid inferences about student performance and should not be used as the basis for any consequential purpose. Unless empirical studies confirm a sound relationship between performance on the SBAC and critical and valued life outcomes ("college and career-ready"), test res...

A lot of this uproar is about technology, I'll admit that.  But it further confirms that schools and districts are - not - ready.  I have no idea is SPS is truly ready. It's funny because at last night's Board meeting, Director McLaren asked what kind of message it would send to kids to entertain discussion about SBAC.  (She also said kids would be "proud" to have taken the test.  Are kids supposed to feel proud of getting thru a slogfest of a test?) But if I were a kid, siting and waiting and sitting and waiting, I think my range of emotions probably would not add a lot to the actual taking of the test.  If I were a teacher, I would feel a lot of frustration and some despair for my students.  And, as a parent, I would just not take any test result seriously. Maybe SBAC will do better than PARCC.   So let's see what's happening around the nation.  (all bold mine)

This blog is behind on important national news about several topics in public education today.  (But we've had a lot going on in our district.) To correct that, here's some reading I put aside. Please understand - opting out of testing is your right (and many Supreme Court cases validate that).  Certainly there could be consequences as the district may use testing to gatekeep for some programs.  But consider that our district does not listen to parents in any real way.  (In fact, Director Peaslee has been complaining about the "angry parents" or "angry public" without considering why parents might be upset.) Several things happen when you opt your child out of testing. You certainly will get the attention of the district and your school's principal.  They are very worried you will tell other parents and then more people opt their children out.  It is a direct signal of parent unhappiness. You also help starve the data beast.   Don't like the ...

Garfield teacher (and activist) Jesse Hagopian has edited a new book on student testing called More Than a Score: the New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing (with a foreword by Diane Ravitch).  The book is a call to action but more than that, a good book for those who want to action but wonder if they can really make a difference.  The answer is, you can.  Hagopian calls those willing to stand up for opting out, testdefyers.  More Than a Score brings together stories of the fight, poems and interviews with leaders about what testing does to students and how to fight for the right assessments and testing. What I really liked were the voices of students because like most of us when we are young, we don't know enough to be scared. 

From Diane Ravitch's blog via the group, FairTest : Today’s technical problems, which disrupted computerized testing in many Florida districts, are far from unusual. Many other states have experienced similar failures, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which monitors standardized exams across the country. Earlier this month, the statewide testing systems in Kansas and Oklahoma both crashed. Last year, technical problems disrupted computerized exams in Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio and Oklahoma. In the recent past, new, automated testing programs collapsed in Oregon and Wyoming, requiring administration of replacement, pencil-and-paper versions. After root cause investigations, both Wyoming and Oklahoma levied multi-million dollar fines against Pearson, the same testing vendor Florida uses. Wyoming labeled the company in “complete default of the contract” and replaced it. Oklahoma let its contract with Pearson ...

I had heard about this vote this past weekend but couldn't find info on it at the WEA website.  From KUOW : The state’s largest teachers’ union has passed a motion to support parents and students who opt out of statewide standardized tests. The union also promotes opting out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium state test coming next school year to align with the new Common Core State Standards.

I'll have to ask SPS just what happens if a student opts out of a school-wide test.  But here is what is happening in other parts of the country (and it's just wrong). From the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet , the policy of "sit and stare."  Districts and schools are allowing students to opt out but only if they sit still for the entire duration of the test.  No reading, no homework, no headphones.  I'm surprised they don't make them just sit in a corner and face the wall. “Sit and stare” policies are being considered or adopted in schools from New York to California as a reaction to the growing “opt out” movement in which parents have decided that they do not want their children to have to take high-stakes standardized tests. Each state has its own policy about opting out, but they don’t generally provide districts with guidance about how to enforce it, so administrators come up with their own policies. As the number of parents opting out...

After Inslee caved to Duncan's demand that Washington State law reflect a "must" use test scores for teacher evaluation, rather than "can" as it currently does, the Legislature is moving a bill around. I'm going on the record - I don't have a problem with using test scores for teacher evaluation (even though there is virtually no proof they really show anything about how well a teacher teaches) but I know there is no way that their use will be reasonable.  The powers that be want them at 50% or more and that is unacceptable to me.  I also note that hey! guess what's embedded in the House bill - that the use of "student input may also be used."  Well now, that's interesting.  SPS is "piloting" a student survey that is being pushed by Teachers United and student input just happens to show up in the bill.  Go figure. I urge you to weigh in on this issue to your legislator (see bill numbers below). Here's what the WEA...

Today is PISA day (no, not the leaning tower although, having lived there, it's great).  That's the day when the results of the international test (the Program of International Student Assessment) are announced.  (It's given every three years to 15-year olds around the globe and where we get our hair-pulling upset over US students versus students in other countries).  The Answer Sheet has the U.S. breakout stats.  Guess where the U.S. ended up?  In the middle. As Diane Ravitch points out, this has been going on since the U.S. started taking this test in the early '60s.  And, since that time, the U.S. has grown into the strongest, most innovative economy in the world. I'm not saying the scores are great; they aren't.  But the hand-wringing is somewhat overwrought. The U.S. actually did better in science than math which isn't something I would have predicted.   I am surprised that the U.S. doesn't do better in reading where we scores abou...

Called "Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks", a very interesting map of income/rent across the U.S .  Zeroing down to Seattle, you can clearly see the delineation of income in our city. You may have heard that there is work going on around the city for new low-power FM stations for different regions.  One might be coming out of Ballard High via science teacher, Eric Muhs,  (a la the mighty C89.5FM at Nathan Hale High). At one school in NYC, for children K-2, 80% of the parents opted out of testing , effectively shutting it down.  From the New York Daily News : Students at the 36 “early education” schools are too young to take the regular state reading and math exams, so the littlest kids are sitting down for different tests As the Daily News reported earlier this month, such exams, given to kids as young as 4, require students to fill in bubbles to show their answers. In one of the more "let's just stir the pot" columns from Education Week , teacher and...

You may recall my update on Common Core?   I left out the biggest news which is the looming showdown between California Governor Jerry Brown and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The fight is over - what else? - testing .  From EdSource : Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday defended the state’s decision to suspend state standardized tests this year and instead offer students a practice test in the Common Core standards that’s now being developed. And he gave no sign of steering away from a collision with the federal government over this issue. The governor wants to pilot CC assessments for schools that have the necessary equipment.  The issue is that a new California law says this: By requiring that every district capable of administering a computer-based test give students a Common Core field or practice test next spring, the bill will put California out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law.  And that's because California - like m...

The Seattle Times has quite the lengthy article about how Washington State could have a cheating scandal, but doesn't know it, because OSPI doesn't do spot-checks on student tests. I read this article waiting for some evidence to show itself but it didn't. I'm not saying the theory is wrong but apparently, not that many districts or even schools rise to a level of concern in Washington State. The Times seems to think because this is happening in other parts of the country, it might be happening here. To note, there ARE measures in place in Washington state- staff is trained in test security and there are testing proctors. OSPI has strict procedures for everything from how to lock up exams before and after they're given, what teachers can say and do during testing, even what should happen if a students needs to use the bathroom. The state asks school and district staff to report any irregularities - inadvertent mistakes, as well as suspected tampering. It al...

From Seattle Education blog, news of a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, September 17th at 7:30 pm about standardized testing.  It's called To Test or Not to Test ?  It will be a panel discussion with: The panelists will include our very own Wayne Au, PhD who is an Associate Professor at UW Bothell. Dr. Au’s research focuses on educational equity, high-stakes testing, curriculum theory, educational policy studies and social studies education. The panel will also include Jason Mendenhall, of the Northwest Evaluation Association. The NWEA produced and sells the MAP test that will be a part of this discussion. And, "a surprise panelist." Per the event description posted on the Town Hall website, this super special guest will be “a representative from a local nonprofit whose mission is to improve public schools”. Hmmm. Who might that be? Someone from the alphabet soup of Gates backed and or created organizations such as SFC, Stand for Children, LEV, the League ...

From Huffington Post, news that Secretary Duncan wants this to be the last year for alternative tests for special ed students.  He wants them ALL to take the general assessments.  This, of course, is all around the NCLB legislation (which is practically on life-support anyway). 

Remember how I said the scores would low for Common Core assessments?  That we were warned they would be low?  This from Politico . New York released nearly 2,000 pages of data parsing the poor performance of students in third through eighth grade. In Rochester, for instance, just 5 percent of students scored proficient in math. Fewer than 9 percent of students in Syracuse passed the reading test. Statewide, just 19 percent of low-income students made the grade in language arts. From the NY Times : In New York City , 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math , according to the New York State Education Department.  Last year , under an easier test, 47 percent of city students passed in English, and 60 percent in math.   City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures. But when the results were released, many educators respon...