Go to the last paragraph of this post to see why the pro-reform news media no longer reports Louisiana's national ranking of school performance
This article explains that according to BESE policy, charter school directors do not even need a high school diploma to operate their schools! This is how high our state education authorities have “raised the bar” for charter school operations. Thankfully our regular school principals are still required to adhere to the “status quo” which requires at least a Master’s degree along with many other qualifications. Maybe that’s why we seldom see state investigations and school closings based on ethical violations by the real public school administrators.
Here’s an interesting related matter: Betsey Dovos, the U.S. Secretary of Education, considers frequent closings of fcharter schools a good thing because it allows their replacement by better charters. The only problem is that there is no evidence that the new schools perform better.
This article describes legislation being considered in California that would limit the use of TFA teachers with only 5 weeks of training who end up in the schools with the most "at-risk" students. In Louisiana, routinely using uncertified teachers and unqualified operators is how we address the needs of our most at risk students.
Here's another example of Louisiana "raising the bar". I testified before the Senate education committee on Thursday, April 17 in favor of SB 128, which would have allowed local school systems, based on a vote of their citizens, to set their own standards and testing for the purposes of accountability. My testimony included the fact that our state standards for a passing grade on state LEAP tests average 30% correct answers for a passing score. I also pointed out that it takes only 14.7% correct answers to pass the BESE mandated Algebra I End of Course test. Even with these "high standards" about one-third of Louisiana students fail their state tests and are promoted anyway. How could any local school system setting their own standards possibly do worse?
The Advocate reporter, Will Sentell, was in attendance at the hearing on SB 128 but chose not to report anything about the bill or the testimony. This is how our pro eduction reform news media at The Advocate, in cahoots with big business lobbyists representing LABI and CABLE, avoid telling the public the truth about our true state standards. They just never report the failures of education reform under John White. The Advocate (before White) used to love to report about Louisiana's low ranking on national tests. This time Sentell neglected to report that Senator Milkovich cited the fact that after 6 years of the new Common Core based standards, Louisiana is now tied for last place in the rankings of the states on the NAEP test. Our lowest ranking ever!
Friday, April 19, 2019
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Local School Systems Should be Able to Choose their own Academic Content Standards and Tests
This bill, by Senator Milkovich which will be debated in the Senate Education Committee this week, would allow each school system to opt out of the state content standards and accountability tests and to choose their own set of content standards for the students in their district. The process would allow the parents of each school district, when a petition is signed by at least 10% of the voters to hold an election to choose the academic standards and tests that would apply to their students.
Senate Bill 128 will be heard at 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 17 in the Hainkel committee room. Any interested citizen is allowed to attend and comment on the legislation.
The present Louisiana content standards and state LEAP and End of Course tests are based primarily on the Common Core standards. These standards were never tested by using field trials or any other means before they were adopted by BESE. The Common Core standards were a set of academic mandates for ELA and math for each grade that were arbitrarily written by a set of self appointed academic elites mostly representing testing companies and other college related persons. A huge campaign financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the Federal government got many states such as Louisiana to adopt the standards and their accompanying tests sight unseen.
The Common Core standards are not appropriate for our students and have resulted in a decline in academic achievement and readiness of our students for life and careers. Louisiana has now dropped to its lowest achievement ranking ever compared to other states.
Please read the following posts, here, here, and here, on the Louisiana Educator blog that give you all the data you need to determine that the common core standards are not appropriate or effective as the best curriculum for our students. You will also see how state education officials have watered down promotion standards and basically abandoned all academic requirements in an effort to justify the use of these ineffective standards and tests.
Please consider attending this hearing and voice your support for Senate Bill 128!
Senate Bill 128 will be heard at 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 17 in the Hainkel committee room. Any interested citizen is allowed to attend and comment on the legislation.
The present Louisiana content standards and state LEAP and End of Course tests are based primarily on the Common Core standards. These standards were never tested by using field trials or any other means before they were adopted by BESE. The Common Core standards were a set of academic mandates for ELA and math for each grade that were arbitrarily written by a set of self appointed academic elites mostly representing testing companies and other college related persons. A huge campaign financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the Federal government got many states such as Louisiana to adopt the standards and their accompanying tests sight unseen.
The Common Core standards are not appropriate for our students and have resulted in a decline in academic achievement and readiness of our students for life and careers. Louisiana has now dropped to its lowest achievement ranking ever compared to other states.
Please read the following posts, here, here, and here, on the Louisiana Educator blog that give you all the data you need to determine that the common core standards are not appropriate or effective as the best curriculum for our students. You will also see how state education officials have watered down promotion standards and basically abandoned all academic requirements in an effort to justify the use of these ineffective standards and tests.
Please consider attending this hearing and voice your support for Senate Bill 128!
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
A National Study Confirms Our Worst Fears About Our School Standards and Tests
In my opinion, the Common Core based tests such as the Louisiana LEAP tests and our high school end of course tests (EOC) are just not valid for any purpose, and I now have data to back that up. Right now the LEAP and EOC tests are used for measuring the achievement levels of our students, the effectiveness of our teachers and the ratings of our schools. The evidence is building that our tests are not good for any of those purposes.
My most recent post on this blog describes how the State Department of Education has lowered the standard for passing LEAP and EOC to appallingly low levels. This was done primarily to show false progress in improving student achievement in ELA and math. My post showed that this so called progress is contradicted by the NAEP tests. But it was also done because the tests are much too difficult for our students. Now a study just released by NEPE (The National Education Policy Center) provides more than adequate cause why these tests should be trashed before they do more damage.
The NEPE study titled "A Consumer’s Guide to Testing under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): What Can the Common Core and Other ESSA Assessments Tell Us?" is a long technical report that would be extremely difficult for any lay person to comprehend. In addition, it was obviously written in such a way as to avoid offending the powers that keep our school systems chained to the Common Core standards. But buried in the report are some shocking findings, if you look hard enough to find them.
The most shocking finding of the NEPE report is not to be found in the summary of the findings even though it should have been included as one of the most significant concerns. This finding is about the validity of the PARCC tests upon which at least 90% of our Louisiana tests are based and it is just casually mentioned on page 44 of the 60 page report. It reads as follows:
My most recent post on this blog describes how the State Department of Education has lowered the standard for passing LEAP and EOC to appallingly low levels. This was done primarily to show false progress in improving student achievement in ELA and math. My post showed that this so called progress is contradicted by the NAEP tests. But it was also done because the tests are much too difficult for our students. Now a study just released by NEPE (The National Education Policy Center) provides more than adequate cause why these tests should be trashed before they do more damage.
The NEPE study titled "A Consumer’s Guide to Testing under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): What Can the Common Core and Other ESSA Assessments Tell Us?" is a long technical report that would be extremely difficult for any lay person to comprehend. In addition, it was obviously written in such a way as to avoid offending the powers that keep our school systems chained to the Common Core standards. But buried in the report are some shocking findings, if you look hard enough to find them.
The most shocking finding of the NEPE report is not to be found in the summary of the findings even though it should have been included as one of the most significant concerns. This finding is about the validity of the PARCC tests upon which at least 90% of our Louisiana tests are based and it is just casually mentioned on page 44 of the 60 page report. It reads as follows:
2. Currently, PARCC’s Items are Prohibitively Difficult
Item analysis results from the first operational testing of PARCC show that test items across grades, subject areas, and modes of testing are extremely difficult for targeted students by grade. On ELA/L items the median proportions of students who were able answer items correctly ranged from 37%- 47% only in 2015-16. On math items those median proportions ranged from 22%-55% only (PARCC-Pearson, 2017, pp 64-65). Users and test-makers should examine the possible causes for this finding, as that report uses data collected five years after reform implementation began. Discussions on how best to align CCSS reform implementation in schools with the testing schedule under ESSA need to occur immediately, so as to optimize results with higher levels of content-based validity.
Notice that this analysis recommends the discussion of immediate changes to the PARCC tests if they are to be brought to some valid level. So why are so many states continuing to use a group of invalid tests? Remember, in Louisiana, these tests are used to grade schools and as a 35% portion of each teacher's evaluation.
What this finding means is that nationwide, the average proportion of questions answered correctly on these tests was less than 40%. This is the generally same conclusion I got when I reviewed the raw scores of our Louisiana students. As I pointed out in the previous post, such low performance and such low cut scores makes outright guessing a major factor in the test results. If students can come close to passing the tests by just making random guesses then the test is measuring very little of the student's real knowledge.
There is another important factor that some teachers have brought to my attention that may be invalidating our state tests. Teachers are observing that a significant number of students are so discouraged by the difficulty of the tests, that they often turn in their test paper with most of the questions left unanswered. Some kids just quit trying after attempting just a few questions. These test results are totally invalid in my opinion. Yet in Louisiana, a student who answers none of the questions on a LEAP test gets a score of 625 out of 850. Such a score is meaningless and extremely misleading.
On page 10 of the report James Harvey, the Executive Director of the National Superintendents Roundtable states the following:
Item analysis results from the first operational testing of PARCC show that test items across grades, subject areas, and modes of testing are extremely difficult for targeted students by grade. On ELA/L items the median proportions of students who were able answer items correctly ranged from 37%- 47% only in 2015-16. On math items those median proportions ranged from 22%-55% only (PARCC-Pearson, 2017, pp 64-65). Users and test-makers should examine the possible causes for this finding, as that report uses data collected five years after reform implementation began. Discussions on how best to align CCSS reform implementation in schools with the testing schedule under ESSA need to occur immediately, so as to optimize results with higher levels of content-based validity.
Notice that this analysis recommends the discussion of immediate changes to the PARCC tests if they are to be brought to some valid level. So why are so many states continuing to use a group of invalid tests? Remember, in Louisiana, these tests are used to grade schools and as a 35% portion of each teacher's evaluation.
What this finding means is that nationwide, the average proportion of questions answered correctly on these tests was less than 40%. This is the generally same conclusion I got when I reviewed the raw scores of our Louisiana students. As I pointed out in the previous post, such low performance and such low cut scores makes outright guessing a major factor in the test results. If students can come close to passing the tests by just making random guesses then the test is measuring very little of the student's real knowledge.
There is another important factor that some teachers have brought to my attention that may be invalidating our state tests. Teachers are observing that a significant number of students are so discouraged by the difficulty of the tests, that they often turn in their test paper with most of the questions left unanswered. Some kids just quit trying after attempting just a few questions. These test results are totally invalid in my opinion. Yet in Louisiana, a student who answers none of the questions on a LEAP test gets a score of 625 out of 850. Such a score is meaningless and extremely misleading.
On page 10 of the report James Harvey, the Executive Director of the National Superintendents Roundtable states the following:
“In education today, measurement experts occupy the exalted status of Irish priests. With their figurative back to the schools, these prelates genuflect at the altar of Item Response Theory and mumble confidently amongst themselves in a language known as psychometrics. No one in the school congregation understands a word of it, but we are assured these mysteries are based on science...”
The entire education community has been bamboozled by the testing companies and our fake state and national education reformers into adopting a set of standards that are totally inappropriate for our students and that allow these "priests" to tell us what it all means since it is assumed we are not qualified to make such interpretations.
The entire education community has been bamboozled by the testing companies and our fake state and national education reformers into adopting a set of standards that are totally inappropriate for our students and that allow these "priests" to tell us what it all means since it is assumed we are not qualified to make such interpretations.
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