Some Educators Claim Standard's Review Rigged to Rebrand Common Core

This post on the blog Block the Agenda blog contains a letter of resignation by Brenda DeFelice. She is the third member of the Standards Review Committee to resign recently in protest of the management of this committee which was created by an act of the Legislature last legislative session. The Standards Review Committee was set up to revise the controversal Common Core standards. There was also a piece of legislation that greatly modified and limited the PARCC-like testing that is to be done in math and English Language arts to no more than 49.9% of the weight of each such test. The teacher who most recently resigned is from Calcasieu and particularly objected to the heavy handed tactics of the Louisiana Department of Education in providing so called experts to "guide" the work of the Review Committee.

I am not an expert in curriculum standards for math and ELA, but I sure have received numerous emails and complaints from parents and educators who object to the developmental inappropriateness of both the math and ELA standards and the convoluted and nonproductive instruction methods required by these standards.  I learned my reading the old fashoned way without being forced to read boring instructional manuels and without being straightjacketed into "close reading", so I don't get the value of some of these top-down mandates to reading teachers. My wife who was a 4th grade teacher got a lot of kids hooked on the love of reading by reading Charlott's Web to her classes in sort of a serial schedule that teachers have no time to do in today's classrooms.

But I do know a little about tests and measurments, and I can tell you that there was a lot of screwy and highly questionable stuff that happened with our math and ELA testing last Spring.

I wonder how many of the parents of our students know that the average passing score on the PARCC -like tests were set at approximately 30%? Would they think that these passing scores represent a high bar?

One of my concerns is that Louisiana obviously gave a different test than was given by the other PARCC states. At first J.W. said that the test was exactly the same as other states, with the same questions and the same everything, but later he said our questions were really Louisiana designed questions. So how can we compare ourselves to other states if our questions are Louisiana specific? The official statements describing our state tests keep changing to fit the particular situation.

If you read this excellent analysis of our recent PARCC-like tests by Herb Bassett, you will see that the tests we gave did not meet any of the stated design objectives. Our tests are not comparable to NAEP and cannot be compared to other states. Bassett's analysis shows that the Louisiana  PARCC-like test for 8th grade ELA produces almost twice the proficiency rate as does the NAEP test which was given at approximately the same time. Our cut scores are totally different from Ohio and other PARCC states. No one other than the LDOE testing staff and the testing company executives know how our passing scores were set. John White just takes the position that we are supposed to trust his decisions on testing and rating our students and of course on rating our schools and educators based on these tests. No other industry I know allows it's business decisions to be made by a person with no experience or expertise in the enterprise.

White Still Pushing the Same Old Failed Reforms

I have previously characterized Superintendent John White as a one trick pony. I was referring to his efforts to base all education reform on a system of test and punish with all accountability falling on the shoulders of professional educators. But White is actually a two trick pony. He apparently also believes that the right "high performance" charter schools, run by TFA types or non-educator entrepreneurs with high expectations can educate students better than a traditional public school run by real educators. He has stuck with those two tricks even in the face of overwhelming evidence that his simplistic education reforms are not working.

At this last meeting of our present super PAC controlled BESE, White was once again able to ram through approval of two more type two charters that had been previously rejected by the East Baton Rouge school board. Speaking against the override were parents, local school board members, and White's former employee, EBR superintendent Warren Drake. It does not matter that as Drake pointed out, there is nothing innovative in the design of these charters, just more of the same type of blind faith and inexperience that has caused all but one of the 11 takeover schools in the EBR area to fail in recent years.

The image of John White, as the miracle worker from New York with no education credentials is wearing thin in Louisiana.  The problem is that instead of supporting the difficult work of bringing incremental improvement to schools that serve a high proportion of at-risk students, White has continued to push phony ideological solutions that are supposed to produce immediate dramatic improvements in schools.

White has not learned yet that there are no miracle solutions to basic socio-economic obstacles to student performance. Just like another fallen TFA miracle worker for Washington D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee, White has continued to over-promise based on flawed ideology that had no scientific basis. Take a look at the just released PARCC results to Washington D.C. schools. This was also another model of test and punish and portfolio charter schools. The article points out that the only component of data for D.C. that keeps the overall scores from going down the toilet are the scores from two highly selective magnet schools in the district.

White and the reformers have one more trick up their sleeve planned for the new Super Duper PAC controlled BESE sometime early next year. Now they want to ram through the approval of two new charter authorizers that will be able to approve new charters without going to BESE or the local school boards. The idea is to skip the democratic process altogether. The Baton Rouge Area Chamber and New Schools for Baton Rouge have supported all the failed school takeovers in recent years, but now they think they have a real winner. The new high performing charter they plan to push through without any input from the voting public is a darling of charter schools movement. The BASIC charter schools group has announced that it is ready to expand to Baton Rouge as soon as the charter advocates can cut through the bureaucratic red tape. That will be especially easy once New Schools for Baton Rouge is approved as a charter school authorizer. Then there will be no need for messy public appeals to BESE with all those pesky local taxpayers complaining that they never asked for another predatory charter school. Please see this letter in The Lafayette Advertiser by Kathleen Espinoza.

Educators and Parents Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Many educators and parents I have spoken to recently are very thankful that we have a chance to restore sanity, dignity, professionalism, and a positive balanced curriculum in our public schools. 

The election of John Bel Edwards as our governor gives us a great opportunity to truly improve Louisiana public education

Edwards won't be able to do it alone. He will be faced with a Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that is mostly occupied by persons elected by a fanatic group of privatizers and public education haters. Many legislators have also received their bribe contributions from the out-of-state billionaires and LABI bosses who want to take over education. Our new governor will need the help of the real educators and the many parents who support public education to change the course and to put the emphasis on positive change instead of falsely claiming to be fixing "a broken system".

Public education is not broken, but it has been severely damaged by the attempt by misguided billionaires, greedy privatizers, and big business to blindly test and punish our students and our educators. Amazingly the schools and educators and students who needed the most support have been the most victimized by these so called education reforms and our true public schools have been bilked of needed school tax dollars.  After all this abuse, it is amazing that we still have so many educators and parents who have not ever given up on public education.

Governor elect Edwards has already demonstrated by his previous work in the legislature and by his very practical positions on key education issues that he will be just the kind of leader we need to help us put education back on the right path.

We should be thankful for this type of leadership, but we should also be willing to do our part to move education forward!