Almost Everything Recently Done in the Name of Education Reform Has Backfired

Here is an article informing us that the reduction of recess time so that children could spend more time being drilled for the almighty standardized tests has actually resulted in lower test performance! How can that be? Why isn't constant drilling on test taking skills at the expense of recess, PE, art, music, vocational education, and other "less important" instruction producing higher test scores? Maybe because the current trend to ignore fundamental child development principle's is harmful in every way, including killing the joy of schooling for both children and teachers! Teachers in Finland, whose students perform at the top of the rankings on international achievement tests, routinely take young children outdoors where they can play, investigate nature and develop normally as they are programmed by their genes to do. Why do American reformers insist on counteracting nature and instead have transformed our education system to motivation killing test drudgery?

Here is another new article challenging the removal of teachers from the decision making process of what kids really need in school. This outrageous trampling on the rights and critical input of the teaching profession in education decisions has actually resulted in the opposite of what our non-educator reformers said they wanted to do. Do you think our government can stop the Corona virus by ignoring the recommendations of the highly trained experts in disease prevention? The same is true of refusing to listen to real teachers about education reform. Do you believe, as the reformers would have you believe, that education reform in Louisiana is really working in preparing students for college and careers? Are you willing to ignore the most recent devastating revelation by our own Board of Regents that after all the reforms imposed on K-12 education in Louisiana, only 18 out of one hundred of our students will attain a college degree of any kind. Not even a two year associate's degree! These are the worst results I have ever seen! Don't blame the teachers. Teachers attended the legislative committee proposing these changes by the thousands to protest these untested ideas, only to be scolded for having the nerve to come to Baton Rouge on a school day (but that was the only time the Education committee was meeting!). Now the chickens are coming home to roost and thousands of our most dedicated teachers have left the profession.

The stranglehold over control of public education by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry promises even more failure with the upcoming appointment of John White's replacement.
Make no mistake about it, LABI has had almost total control over K-12 education for over 4 years since they used Michael Bloomburg's  and Walton family contributions to totally purchase all the BESE elected positions. They have made nothing but bad decisions with all this power. The school privatization they pushed has been almost a total failure with data showing that students who stay in their public schools do significantly better than they do when they move to a voucher or charter school.

Now LABI intends to hand pick John White's replacement.  If they select Jessica Baghian as the next Superintendent, Lousiana education will continue to be crippled by uninformed and ineffective leadership. Bagahian has been the right hand assistant to White in putting over the hoax of progress of our current reforms.

Let's look at some of the real results of LABI supported reforms. On their web site, LABI claims that Louisiana is closing the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students.  Data demonstrates instead that the exact opposite is true. They are also dead wrong claiming that ACT scores are improving. LABI is now down to apparently basing its education policies on wishful thinking rather than evidence.

The same is true of teacher evaluations based on student test scores using our defective state tests. LABI  has insisted that Louisiana evaluate its teachers partially on student test scores. But all the data proves that the VAM system used is unstable and inaccurate. So a couple of years ago I got thrown off of a state committee studying changes to VAM because I had the nerve to state on my blog that LABI was like the dog that caught the truck with this whole VAM fiasco. They don't have any idea what to do with VAM but they will never admit they were wrong. Meanwhile some very competent and dedicated teachers have had their careers ruined by VAM and thousands of great teachers have left the profession.

My most recent public records requests for actual data are showing a totally different picture from the propaganda-type announcements of great strides in producing better results for our students. Here are just a few revelations that have so far been kept hidden from the voters and parents of our students.

• Louisiana's ranking in comparison to all other states has only gotten worse for both ACT performance and NAEP averages if you compare the results for 2019 to our results in 2011 (Before John White took over). The recent blip highlighted here by White's spin-masters indicating improvement in 8th grade math is extremely misleading. There was actually a decline in 8th grade math over the term of office of John White. My most recent research  reveals that about 50% of our students on free lunch which make up almost 70% of our students, flunked the 8th grade NAEP test in 2019! The parents of our students deserve to get the facts, not propaganda!
• The achievement gap between economically underprivileged and other students has widened on every NAEP test given. We are definitely not closing the achievement gap. In fact my public records findings indicate that free lunch students are mostly failing all their state tests in math and ELA year after year and BESE policy is now allowing the promotion and graduation of students who are functional illiterates.
• Analysis of our state LEAP tests reveal that the secret lowering of cut scores have made it appear that our students are achieving a much higher proficiency than that indicated by NAEP. This artificial inflation of our proficiency rate is in violation of state law.
• My most recent public records requests reveal that some of our End-of-Course tests have had cut scores secretly manipulated by the LDOE and the testing companies to allow many students to get a passing score by just making random guesses on multiple choice questions instead of demonstrating any knowledge whatsoever!
• It is clear that the boring test and retest culture forced on our schools by the LDOE has caused a huge proportion of our students to simply turn off to what they are being forced to do in our reformed classrooms and are not learning any academic material at all. I mean zero learning! That's what the raw data is showing. Don't believe anything you see relative to so called "scale scores". My public records findings show that the reported scores for our students are pure propaganda, not fact.
• Teachers who have really studied the results of our state tests will tell you that the state LEAP tests and the standards upon which they are based are not age appropriate, are discriminatory against underprivileged students because they assume a vocabulary and academic sophistication totally unfamiliar to many of our students. Our state tests demonstrate the epitome of socio-economic bias! We have kids who miss many of the math questions simply because the questions are poorly designed.
• Because of the VAM component of teacher evaluation, some teachers are losing their tenure and even the latest pay raise passed last year based upon invalid tests. This is an atrocity!

Look, I've been studying K-12 education in Louisiana for my entire professional career, and my best judgement tells me that the methods teachers are being forced to use with our children are just about the worst approach I could have ever have imagined. Our kids could learn so much more if teachers would be freed of mandated test prep and allowed to use their creativity to inspire children to love reading, to love science, to look forward to going to school every day. Most teachers instinctively know what works in the classroom and it's not what they are being forced to do. We need to have the courage to take back our schools for the sake of our children and for the future of our state.

Some of Our Graduates Don't Even Know How to Tighten a Nut

Are schools neglecting practical knowledge and skills?
Many of our students are graduating from high school with extremely limited practical knowledge essential to success in most jobs and everyday life. A good example is demonstrated by one large Louisiana company, which asks the following question to its job applicants: "In what direction would you turn an ordinary screw or nut to tighten it (clockwise or counterclockwise)?" Amazingly, a rather large proportion of applicants don't know that the correct answer is "clockwise". This begs the question: With all our emphasis on college prep for all students, are we neglecting practical knowledge needed for students to function effectively in all careers and in everyday life?

Before the shift to college prep for all, students in Louisiana in grades as early as 7 and 8 were required to take courses often labeled as "industrial arts" and "home economics". Such courses provided introduction to basic tools used in homes and work, budgeting, cooking, and introduction to various crafts and trades. All students, whether destined for college or careers were taught practical life skills. Our education reformers seem to have forgotten that young adults need practical knowledge as well as preparation for college.

Vocational/technical training along with practical math skills could really help to close the wealth gap.
We are now trying to teach students the solution of quadratic equations that most of them will never use, not even once in their lifetimes. The new college prep curriculum requires a technique called  "close reading" of various texts without reference to background knowledge. Many experts in reading question this requirement for elementary students.  But we are not teaching students how to avoid the entrapment of payday loan sharks that are now gobbling up much of the income of many young workers. Almost none of our students today are taught the power of compound interest for example, in utilizing a Roth IRA for retirement planning.  Such practical knowledge for all students could help close the wealth gap.

Reformist minded charitable foundation managers who contribute millions to the current school reforms have pushed college prep for all as the way to close the achievement gap.  But it's not working!  Nationwide, indications are that fewer students are now prepared for college, nor can they afford college. The most recent statistics from our Board of Regents show that Louisiana is leading the downward spiral. Less than 40% of our students who start college actually get a degree of any kind. Our Department of Education keeps pumping out propaganda about improvements in our high school graduation rate and the higher number of students registering for college. But the Board of Regents report shows that the key factor should be the percentage who actually get a college degree. Another major problem in pushing college for all is that students who drop out still have to pay off their college loans, often putting a debt burden on them for several decades.

The education reformers would have done better by supporting a broad modern curriculum that could actually teach kids how to overcome the wealth gap using practical knowledge and training for a variety of careers. We wonder why the curriculum in our schools today, despite the valiant efforts of our teachers, does not motivate most of our students to learn more and improve their state test scores. The answer is simple: there is very little in our current curriculum that will be useful to the majority of our students' lives and careers, and they have figured this out!

Some academic skills requiring college are a cheap commodity.
Here's the core of my argument: The assumption that training most of our students for academic jobs requiring college degrees is highly questionable. For example, it is extremely likely that the jobs of writing code and software for U. S. companies and providing technical support will more often be farmed out to cheap workers in India than to our college graduates. Just call up tech support for one of your electronic gadgets and see who answers the phone.

A critical job that cannot be farmed out is under our feet. 
So let's look at just one of the many  real jobs of the future. The job of a skilled plumber will require workers who must be here, not in India, to do this vital job.  The plumbing infrastructure of most of our cities is extremely old and deteriorating. Fresh water, sewerage, and natural gas are now leaking out of city utilities in intolerable quantities. The rebuilding of our municipal  infrastructure for the entire nation is an urgent need,  particularly in the area of replacing worn out plumbing. Modern plumbing work is highly sophisticated work requiring extensive training, mostly using apprenticeship methods, which don't leave a young worker with debt. That one job will employ thousands of well paid workers for many years to come. A job that must be done on the ground or more specifically "in the ground" here in America cannot be farmed out to low wage foreign workers. As a bonus, the new cadre of young plumbers who do that work could be taught in our schools to achieve early retirement with the wise investment of their earnings. Very little of this is being taught in our schools today!

What would Einstein say about our school reforms?
State law requires that our students be exposed to career exploration starting in middle school. But this requirement has been neglected as our education leaders have pushed teachers to do mostly preparation for the Common Core tests. Even though the career diploma law has been in effect since 2009, our LDOE forces students to remain in a college prep mode until their junior year. The problem is that our highly touted Core 4 college prep curriculum is simply not working! In Einstein's famous words: "The definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result".

Standards are not high if someone secretly lowers cut scores
The lack of success of the new so called "higher standards" has been purposely covered up by secretly setting the cut scores for a passing grade on the tests to extremely low levels.
 For several mandatory high school courses, the cut scores on the end-of-course tests have been set so low that a third grader could possibly pass the EOC test by just random guessing at the multiple choice questions. So now all students get much less preparation for college than when the standards for those courses were reasonable.  We are not preparing students for college and we are not preparing them for careers. That's why we need to reintroduce modern, relevant, vocational courses early, beginning with career exploration starting in middle school and not make students wait until their junior year to start career courses.

The way Core 4 was sold to BESE was by insisting that all students, even those not choosing college, would greatly benefit from the more rigorous courses. That has not happened. The so called rigorous courses have been watered down so education reformers can falsely claim success. We could make a much better case that a modern, well designed home economics course would be more valuable to all our students than advanced math.

Louisiana's K-12 curriculum is not preparing students for college or for life!

Part I of a two part examination of our failing graduation standards

The Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education announced recently that only 18% of our students are succeeding in college.
At the joint meeting of BESE and the Board of Regents in December 2019, the Commissioner of Higher Education, Kim Hunter Reed, reported on studies that reveal that:
 of 100 ninth-graders, only 45 enter college and 18 will earn a two- or four-year degree.
This is a tacit admission that the big push for college prep by BESE and the Department of Education for the last 20 years has been a dismal failure. But the Advocate report of the joint meeting quotes the education leaders promising to double down on college prep for all by offering more dual enrollment courses. The only positive result of this version of college for all is that now, vo-tech courses will be added to the menu.

During the school years spanning from 2000 to 2015, our state education officials had abandoned almost all support for career and vocational education in our K-12 schools. BESE had shifted to pushing virtually all students to take a college prep curriculum without regard to student aptitude or preferences. At the urging of education reformers, BESE had adopted the Core 4 curriculum for high school graduation which was designed to prepare all students for college. The education reformers and business leaders breathed a sigh of relief that soon almost all students in Louisiana would be prepared for college. The assumption was that even students who chose to seek technical careers that did not require college would benefit from this superior, more rigorous education. But those of us who study the dismal performance of many of our graduates in the classrooms and on state tests know that most students have not benefited from the new standards which are really far from rigorous. This blog has revealed that students can pass some of the supposedly rigorous college prep courses by knowing as little as 10 to 20 percent of the tested material. If the college prep courses of today had the same rigor as 30 to 40 years ago, more than half of our students would not graduate. Here is a link to a blog post I wrote in January of 2010 titled The Wrong Future,  predicting that the Core 4 curriculum would produce the opposite of what was intended. My only mistake was that I thought that the Core 4 courses would maintain a reasonable level of difficulty.

As a result of the heavy emphasis on enrolling almost all students in the Core 4 curriculum, the Vo-Tech departments of most high schools were decimated and hundreds of highly experienced vo-tech teachers were laid off. By focusing on college prep for all the education reformers had just about strangled vo-tech out of existence.

But starting about 2015, Superintendent John White and his staff realized that a large number of students were falling though the cracks created by Core 4. Someone pointed out to Superintendent White that there was a provision in state law called the Career Diploma that was designed to provide a good alternative to students that could not, or would not attend college. The only problem is that the Career Diploma had been denounced by reformers as a watering down of standards. White realized that if he somehow renamed or rebranded the program as part of his school reform campaign, maybe by calling it something new like "Jump Start program", it may become acceptable to his puppet masters at LABI and across the reform community.

 So the Career diploma was rebranded as the Jump Start initiative. The career diploma law had been passed by the legislature at the request of many local superintendents in the 2009 legislative session. Unfortunately the career diploma had been sabotaged by the previous State Superintendent, Paul Pastorek, who wanted to promote only college prep . But even White's recent efforts have fallen far short of what was contemplated by the authors of the career diploma law. The Jump Start courses are designed only for high school juniors and seniors, severely restricting vo-tech courses in earlier grades. Under John White, the career diploma is intentionally regarded as a second class diploma, which does not bring schools the recognition or credit they get from offering college prep courses such as AP. White's administration has refused to provide the  career exploration activities for middle school students that have been in state law since before 1998. As teachers spent more and more time in the school year drilling students for the college prep Common Core based state tests, there was no time in middle school to implement any vo-tech exploration courses.

In addition to the short changing and stigmatizing of vo-tech training,  instruction in the arts, physical education, health, social studies, and civics, have all been neglected so that students could be drilled incessantly in preparation for state tests that were expected to insure success in college. The most useful education to most students for future careers was all but abandoned and sacrificed in the push to prepare all students for college. Unfortunately this sacrifice was in vain, as is demonstrated by Louisiana being ranked second to last among the states in ACT performance and by having only 18 percent of students succeeding in college.

Note: Soon after I posted this blog, one of my readers texted me asking for an explanation of the poor college performance of our students after a much larger number started taking the college prep curriculum. Here is my best guess:

Soon after the adoption of the Core 4 curriculum for high school, several other changes were made. (1) The state started awarding high schools credit on the school grading system for a better graduation rate. Pressure increased on principals and teachers to pass almost all students even in the so called college prep courses. (2) The state stopped requiring that students pass their 8th grade LEAP tests in order to enter high school and BESE stopped requiring most remediation for students who failed. (3) Louisiana shifted to the Common Core standards (4) The cut scores for passing the high school end-of-course tests were lowered to extremely low levels. All of these factors resulted in more students graduating high school (some of them as functional illiterates). That's why so many students can't handle college. Its all about the law of unintended consequences. Unfortunately, our education leaders don't have a clue about the real results of their "reforms". Even with the new changes proposed by BESE and the Board of Regents to add more dual enrollment, we can expect further declines in college success because the full effects of the decrease in standards have yet to be observed.

Vocational and technical education is a most vital need that has been neglected nationwide
This excellent article in Forbes magazine makes the case for bringing back modern vocational training to our K-12  curriculum. I strongly recommend that all persons interested in improving our school curriculum read the entire article.

The Forbes article points out the following "Yet despite the growing evidence that four-year college programs serve fewer and fewer of our students, states continue to cut vocational programs." 

I would add that pressuring virtually all of our students to take a college prep curriculum in K-12 education, leaves literally no time for teaching modern vocational skills or even vital life skills including proper nutrition,  physical education, and money management. Medical researchers know that many of our graduates will live a life shortened drastically by the onset of diabetes and heart disease directly caused by a cheap fast food diet. Louisiana has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation (35%) but our schools have no time to educate children about healthy diets, nor is anyone teaching them how to cook! (remember home economics?)  These critical needs of our students are being neglected so that our education reformers can continue to chase the illusive "college for all" dream. 

Watch for Part II of this post titled:
Some of our graduates don't even know how to tighten a nut!