Lack of minorities seen in STEM classes

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Lack of minorities seen in STEM classes Written by KYOTO WALKER (Special to South Florida Times)    Thursday, 07 February 2013 WEST PALM BEACH   – Motivation and passion are the key to success, according to Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak. The Silicon Valley icon was the guest of honor at Palm Beach State College’s STEAM Initiative launch Jan. 31 at the Kravis Center in downtown West Palm Beach. During the event titled “A Conversation With Steve Wozniak,” Wozniak fielded pre-selected questions from the capacity audience of more than 650 ranging from the future of technology and advice for young people to his thoughts on the death of his best friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Palm Beach State College President Dennis Gallon said Wozniak was the perfect person to help kick off the five-year STEAM Initiative which focuses on STEM fields or studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, adding arts to the core, because technology is growing at such a rate that the need to fill jobs in those areas will exceed the available trained professionals. College spokeswoman Grace Truman said the arts were added because they accentuate the other areas of study. “STEM is certainly a very critical area but the arts contribute so much to technology, to engineering,” she said. “The arts kind of infuse all of the other disciplines. So we really felt it was important to include the arts in this initiative.” Wozniak seemed to support that theory, crediting Jobs with packaging and marketing strategies that helped make Apple a leading competitor in computer technology worldwide. Wozniak also acknowledged a cultural evolution has taken place in technological studies. “When I went to college, the people from the Far East were brought up with strong mathematical training,” he said. “The students in the computer engineering classes were three-fourths from the Asian countries and they were 50/50 female-male (ratio).” Almost all the American students were white males, he added. College Dean Leonard Bruton said certain programs are geared for minority students who study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “There are initiatives and scholarships that are available to minorities in these STEM areas,” he said. Wozniak said diversity – people getting along and understanding each other – is a wonderful thing in life. “Everywhere I go I see people of many ethnic backgrounds, males and females, making the same good use of our technology as others,” the technology pioneer said. “The only place where I see a divergence is maybe in who runs companies or engineers (who) are more likely to be males.” Provost Bernadette Russell, from the college’s Boca Raton campus, said she is working to recruit minorities and women for STEM studies so they can be connected with businesses for internships to help further their careers. “Some businesses look for students who are good in mathematics, strong in the sciences, more at a level where they can develop their skills professionally, therefore knowing what they will major in by having the (hands-on) experience,” she said. Wozniak said diversity is a viable component of high-tech businesses today. “I’ve seen some of the people at the very top of Silicon Valley companies totally open to African-American women and any (diverse group),” he said. “It’s almost an advantage sometimes to find someone who you didn’t think would be a ‘geek’ is and understands this stuff.”

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

Says Texas high school "graduation rates are at an all-time high—the third-highest in the nation—which represents a significant turnaround from just a few short years ago."

Rick Perry on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 in his State of the State address.

Rick Perry says Texas has third-highest high school graduation rates, a "significant turnaround"

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Gov. Rick Perry said state leaders have worked hard to improve Texas public schools over the past decade, with more students faring well.

Perry told lawmakers in his Jan. 29, 2013, State-of-the-State address: "According to the U.S. Department of Education, our graduation rates are at an all-time high—the third-highest in the nation—which represents a significant turnaround from just a few short years ago."

His claim rang a bell.

In a Nov. 27, 2012, press release, the Texas Education Agency said that according to preliminary data from its federal counterpart, Texas tied for the nation’s third-highest high school graduation rate in the 2010-11 school year, based on tracking individual students through high school.

The agency said Texas was tied with Tennessee, New Hampshire, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota, all with 86 percent rates. Iowa, Vermont and Wisconsin had higher graduation rates by one to two percentage points, the agency said.

News accounts diverged at the time on whether Texas placed third or should be considered tied for fourth, considering three states had better graduation rates. A Nov. 27, 2012, Dallas Morning News story said Texas was "tied with five other states for the fourth-highest graduation rate in the country." The San Antonio Business Journal published a similar summary. In contrast, the Nov. 28, 2013, Associated Press news story said Texas and five other states had tied for "America’s third-best high school graduation."

The education agency said Texas ranked No. 1 in graduation rates for Asian and white students and tied for No. 1 with Montana for graduation rates for African American students, and No. 2 for Hispanic students, behind Maine.

Perry spokeswoman Josh Havens told us the governor based his claim on that data released in November. That 2011 graduation rate was 5 percentage points better than the 2009 rate, he said, and there were more than 26,000 additional graduates. There were 11,100 more seniors in 2011, a 4 percent difference, according to a July 2012 report by the Texas Education Agency.

Two ways of counting

From past fact checks, we recognize another method often used to gauge graduation successes. In this vein, we rated as True a 2010 claim by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White that Texas then ranked 43rd nationally for its 61.3 percent graduation rate in 2008-09.

That conclusion was based on comparing the year’s number of graduates to the number of ninth graders four years earlier, an indicator often called "attrition." The intent is to get a snapshot of how many students graduate in four years.

Applying the same kind of approach, just a week before Perry’s speech, a federal report placed Texas’ 2009-10 graduation rate in the middle of the states. An Associated Press news story said the cited rate of 78.9 percent was just above the national average of 78.2 percent, in itself the highest since 1976.

The AP story also noted the difference between the sets of graduation data. The state education agency said the reason for the difference was that the January 2013 report, from the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the federal Department of Education, estimated high school attrition rates among ninth-graders over four years, while the state tracks actual cases that can be adjusted for things like students moving away before finishing high school.

"We're basically counting noses, and they're doing an estimate," Debbie Ratcliffe, a Texas Education Agency spokeswoman, told the AP. "The good news is the trend lines for graduates are the same. There're a million different ways to count graduation rates" and "as long as they're showing similar trend lines, that's positive."

By phone, Ratcliffe told us that at the direction of lawmakers, the state started calculating its graduation rates by the method behind its third-place ranking, starting in the 2008-09 school year, when the rate was 80.6 percent. She said the comparable Texas rate for 2009-10 was 84.3 percent.

"It’s slow, steady growth," she said.

An outside view

For another take, we consulted Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education.

Whitehurst testified on behalf of the state in the court battle launched by school districts challenging the Texas school funding system. A Travis County state district judge, John Dietz, ruled in the districts’ favor, though appeals are expected.

In the trial, a lawyer questioned Whitehurst about his interpretation of the declared 86 percent Texas graduation rate. According to a Dec. 6, 2012, pool report by Will Weissert of the Associated Press, Whitehurst testified that there likely were flaws in the new system used to create the federal data. He said, for instance, that it was possible for high schools to game the system and tamp down their dropout rates. He said what commonly happens is a student drops out but is instead listed as having moved or transferred when his classmates and even school administrators know the truth.

Whitehurst said, "We know schools can cheat" and the new federal data-reporting system was too new to fully control for such cheating.

More recently, Whitehurst told us by telephone that Texas appeared to be among several states to enjoy big jumps in graduation rates. But he said it would be an error to compare graduation rates using the new methodology, known as Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rates, to estimated graduation rates in earlier years as gauged by the national center’s methodology for Averaged Freshman Graduation Rates (or attrition).

"The two numbers are not comparable," he said.

Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rates come from data submitted by high schools and school districts, taking into account individual students who had transferred in or out of each district as well as student deaths. In contrast, he said, Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate estimates graduation rates by taking the number of diplomas granted each year and dividing that by the average number of eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders five years before.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ methodology for Averaged Freshman Graduation Rates is spelled out in its Jan. 22, 2013, report on the 2009-10 results.

By this measure, Texas has improved, the report indicates, though the measure does not suggest that Texas ranked among the best in the nation in 2009-10. Looking at this measure over time, we see that the Texas rate was 75.5 percent in 2002-03, dipped to 72 percent in 2006-07 and rose to 78.9 percent in 2009-10. Among the states, the Texas rate for 2009-10 was 25th highest. The Texas rate for 2002-03 tied with Indiana’s rate for 29th highest, according to the report.

The center’s report says, too, that these rates are not the best way to pin how many students are graduating, but the methodology has been applied since the 1960s to give a sense of how schools were doing before most states collected data on the progress of  individual students over time.

Whitehurst said to us: "I don’t necessarily believe Texas is now third-ranked," though "I am not saying it’s untrue. It’s too soon to know exactly what these numbers mean."

Federal distinctions

Separately, we asked the U.S. Department of Education about Perry’s statement.

Spokesman Daren Briscoe pointed us to the agency’s Nov. 26, 2012, press release announcing the state-by-state 2010-11 graduation rates. The release says: "The new, uniform rate calculation is not comparable in absolute terms to previously reported rates. Therefore, while 26 states reported lower graduation rates and 24 states reported unchanged or increased rates under the new metric, these changes should not be viewed as measures of progress but rather as a more accurate snapshot."

We asked Havens of Perry’s office about the governor’s reference to a significant turnaround. Havens’ email reply singled out the three years of rates measured by the new method--stressing the five percentage point difference between the results in 2009 and 2011.

Our ruling

Perry said Texas has the nation’s third-highest high school graduation rate, which he called a significant turnaround from a few years ago.

Texas tied with five states for the third-highest rate in 2011, of 86 percent. Then again, three states had higher rates, meaning Texas might better be described as fourth-ranked.

Other nicks in Perry’s statement: These results are preliminary and might prove unreliable. Also, by another measure, comparing the number of graduates one year to students in ninth grade four years earlier, Texas remained among middling states for 2009-10, with a 79 percent completion rate.

Finally, since it's not accurate to compare these rates devised in different ways, Perry’s reference to a "significant turnaround" depends on just the three years of rates measured in the newest way. But in this time window, there is no indication the rate was either stuck or plummeting before 2011, so the latest results do not indicate a turnaround.

All told, Texas graduation rates are improving and the state looks strong compared to most others. We rate this statement as Mostly True.

The Dangers of Testing by Monty Neill

 February 2003 | Volume 60 | Number 5
Using Data to Improve Student Achievement Pages 43-46

The Dangers of Testing

Monty Neill

Educators should reject test-based reform and focus instead on formative assessment practices that encourage skilled teaching and higher-level learning.

Driving instruction with high-stakes tests will not improve schools. A large body of research demonstrates that high-stakes testing narrows curriculum and dumbs down instruction. It causes students to turn off, tune out, and often drop out; induces schools to push students out; increases grade retention; propels teachers to leave; and inhibits needed improvements. In the end, high-stakes testing will hurt students—particularly those students who most desperately need better schools.

A Poor Record

High-stakes testing has not produced improvements in educational outcomes, even as measured by results on other tests. High school graduation tests started proliferating in the early 1980s, along with much-expanded state testing programs. By the late 1990s, high stakes for schools had become common. Over this time, research shows that

• States that did not have high-stakes graduation exams were more likely to improve average scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) than were states that did have such exams (Neill & Gaylor, 2001). At the same time, NAEP score gaps between low- and high-income students did not narrow (Barton, 2002).
• States without graduation tests were more likely than states with such exams to show improvement or to improve at a faster rate on a variety of tests, including the NAEP, the SAT, and the ACT (Amrein & Berliner, 2002).
• Data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study indicated that high-stakes testing was not associated with improved scores but was associated with higher dropout rates (Jacob, 2001).

These reports and many others show that the focus on tests has not produced the promised results. Claims of improvement typically rest on inflated scores on state exams. Texas, the model for the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides a good example. As Texas Assessment of Academic Skills scores rose dramatically, the state's NAEP reading results did not change significantly. At the same time, the racial score gap in Texas widened (Neill & Gaylor, 2001). Meanwhile, the test-driven approach in Texas led to a much higher dropout rate, particularly for Latinos and African Americans (Haney, 2000, 2001).

An Equally Poor Outlook

If high-stakes tests have not led to improvement by now, will they ever? Two important factors suggest that even if they could in theory, they won't in practice.
Socioeconomic effects. Low-income and African American and Latino students enter school substantially less prepared to do academic work than their middle-income (never mind wealthy) or white or Asian peers (Lee & Burkam, 2002). In addition, the first group attends schools that are far less prepared, in terms of teachers and physical resources, to teach them. Rothstein (2002) points out the vast disparities in housing, health care, and other supports available to children. Those who start with less get less, and as a result they either fail to catch up or fall even further behind. Without major social investments in both classroom and out-of-school supports for low-income children, it is absurd to believe that more tests will enable schools to overcome the gaps in academic learning.
Several reports over the past few years have purported to show that large numbers of schools serving low-income students have succeeded in overcoming the effects of poverty. More careful studies, however, have shown these claims to be at best wildly inflated and often completely misleading (Krashen, 2002). Simply demanding higher scores, even with rewards and sanctions attached, will not do the job.
Teaching to the test. Any exam can only sample the curriculum that students should learn. For test results to be valid measures of real learning, students must have been taught a full curriculum. If instruction narrows to focus on the limited sample covered by the test, scores become inflated and misleading. This largely explains the difference between results on state-specific tests and those on such neutral measures as the NAEP.
Many supporters of test-driven “reform” argue that it will at least guarantee that teachers teach the basics (which the test will supposedly cover), and will thereby initiate a positive reform process. Unfortunately, test-driven schooling often fails to provide even the basics. For example, some reading teachers teach students to “read” by looking over the answer options to questions attached to short reading passages and then searching the passage to find a clue for selecting the answer. Others drill phonics, but never get to comprehension. As a result, independent evaluators find that the students cannot explain what they have just read—meaning they actually cannot read (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001).

A Flawed Concept

Testing proponents believe that focusing on a limited set of skills and facts will prepare students for further education—a theory based on profound misunderstandings of how humans learn. Shepard (2000) has demonstrated the mismatch between tests and learning, a point also developed in rich detail in several books from the National Academy of Sciences (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001). In short, humans learn best through active thinking. “Learning” while not thinking is like remembering lists of phone numbers one will never call. Memorization of facts and procedures has its place, but deep learning must engage the brain and spur thinking. Teaching to the test rarely accomplishes either.
Overall, state tests do not do a good job of measuring state standards, particularly higher-level thinking. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that state exams poorly matched state standards and measured mostly lower-level thinking (Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, 1999).
In a high-quality education, students conduct science experiments, solve real-world math problems, write research papers, read and analyze books, make oral presentations, evaluate and synthesize information from a variety of fields, and apply their learning to new and ill-defined situations. This work provides them with both deeper substantive knowledge and higher-level thinking skills. Standardized paper-and-pencil tests are poor tools for evaluating these important kinds of learning. If instruction focuses on the test, students will not learn the skills that they need for success in college and beyond.

What's the Alternative?

If focusing instruction on large-scale, high-stakes tests will not lead to genuine improvements in our nation's schools, what should schools do in response to high-stakes testing mandates?
Educators can take some comfort from the knowledge that employing richer curriculum and instruction is likely to somewhat improve standardized test scores (Center for Collaborative Education, 2001; Institute for Education and Social Policy, 2001). In Chicago, students of teachers who used more interactive rather than exclusively didactic instructional approaches gained more than their peers on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Smith, Lee, & Newmann, 2001).
One can also assess higher-level attributes. Teachers do it all the time. Studies of a group of small schools in New York City and similar schools in Boston described these successful schools as having high standards and rigorous assessments (Center for Collaborative Education, 2001; Institute for Education and Social Policy, 2001). The high schools often require students to present and defend their work in a number of subject areas to earn a diploma. A committee that typically includes outside experts reviews the work. As Meier (2002) says, these high standards do not entail the standardization or drill-and-kill imposed through high-stakes exams.
These high-quality schools in New York and Boston generally do not focus on teaching to the test; indeed, many are struggling to avoid being coerced into becoming test-prep programs. They demonstrate their success by far more than test scores. Deborah Meier's Central Park East Secondary School, for example, prepares low-income students not only to enroll in college but also to succeed there—a far more important goal than merely increasing their test scores (Meier, 1995). Indeed, Meier has often pointed out that although her students learned to succeed, their standardized test scores did not necessarily show substantial gains. These schools succeed not by teaching to standardized tests but by teaching for deeper, important learning.
Some have argued that such schools cannot be replicated. They presume that test-driven improvements can be. However, researchers from the Dana Center went hunting for successful Texas school districts that had improved scores and closed racial score gaps (Skrla, Scheurich, & Johnson, 2000). Using modest criteria that were overly dependent on TAAS scores—enrollment of 5,000 or more students; high poverty levels; and 50 percent of the high- poverty schools in the district categorized as Recognized or Exemplary on the basis of their state test scores—they studied data from all Texas districts. They found only 11 districts to examine closely, which they reduced in the end to 4 successful districts. In other words, after nearly a decade in which the state had focused on high-stakes testing, sympathetic researchers found only a few districts in the state to meet their narrow criteria for success.
Unlike high-stakes testing, which undermines good schools and prevents real improvement, better forms of assessment can play a powerful role in improving schools. Most important is assessment that provides meaningful, usable feedback to students and engages them in self-evaluation. A research summary of more than 250 articles and chapters by Black and Wiliam (1998) found that formative assessment can contribute more to improving outcomes (primarily as measured by test scores) than any other school-based factor, benefiting low achievers more than high achievers. In other words, formative assessment helps raise everyone's achievement while also closing the gaps—which test-driven reform has not done. This approach, however, requires treating teachers as professionals, improving professional development, and spending more money.
Rather than chasing the illusion that test-driven change will produce significantly improved learning, policymakers need to shift attention to practices and models that emphasize serious thinking and skilled teaching. If we do less, we consign far too many students to a continued second-class education. At the moment, few policymakers recognize this. It appears that to get on the path of genuine improvement, educators and parents will have to join together to beat back test-based “reform.”

References

Amrein, A., & Berliner, D. (2002). High-stakes testing, uncertainty, and student learning. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(18). [Online]. Available: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18

Barton, P. E. (2002, January). Raising achievement and reducing gaps. Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998, October). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 139–148.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school, expanded edition. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Center for Collaborative Education (CCE). (2001). How are Boston pilot schools faring? An analysis of student demographics, engagement, and performance [Online]. Available: www.ccebos.org/quant_report_final.pdf

Haney, W. (2000). The myth of the Texas miracle in education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(41). [Online]. Available: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41

Haney, W. (2001). Revisiting the myth of the Texas miracle in education: Lessons about dropout research and dropout prevention. Paper prepared for the “Dropout Research: Accurate Counts and Positive Interventions” conference sponsored by Achieve and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, January 13, 2001, Cambridge, MA. [Online]. Available: www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/haney.pdf

Institute for Education and Social Policy. (2001, December). Final report of the evaluation for New York Networks for School Renewal. New York: Author.

Jacob, B. (2001). Getting tough? The impact of high school graduation exams. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(2), 99–121.

Krashen, S. (2002, February). Poverty has a powerful impact on educational attainment, or, don't trust Ed Trust. Substance [Online]. Available: www.fairtest.org/k12/krashen%20report.html

Lee, V. E., & Burkham, D. T. (2002). Inequality at the starting gate. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.

McNeil, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2001). The harmful impact of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric. In G. Orfield & M. L. Kornhaber (Eds.), Raising standards or raising barriers? Inequality and high-stakes testing in public education (pp. 127–150). New York: Century Foundation Press.

Meier, D. (1995). The power of their ideas. Boston: Beacon Press.

Meier, D. (2002). In schools we trust. Boston: Beacon Press.

Neill, M., & Gaylor, K. (2001). Do high-stakes graduation tests improve learning outcomes? Using state-level NAEP data to evaluate the effects of mandatory graduation tests. In G. Orfield & M. L. Kornhaber (Eds.), Raising standards or raising barriers? Inequality and high-stakes testing in public education (pp. 107–126). New York: Century Foundation Press.

Newmann, F. M., Bryk, A. S., & Nagaoka, J. K. (2001, January). Authentic intellectual work and standardized tests: Conflict or coexistence? Chicago: Chicago Consortium on School Research.

Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (Eds.). (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Rothstein, R. (2002). Out of balance: Our understanding of how schools affect society and how society affects schools. Chicago: Spencer Foundation.

Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4–14.

Skrla, L., Scheurich, J. J., & Johnson, J. H., Jr. (2000, September). Equity-driven achievement-focused school districts. Austin, TX: Charles A. Dana Center, University of Texas.

Smith, J. B., Lee, V. E., & Newmann, F. E. (2001, January). Instruction and achievement in Chicago elementary schools. Chicago: Chicago Consortium on School Research.

Wisconsin Center for Educational Research. (1999, Fall). Are state-level standards and assessments aligned? WCER Highlights, 1–3. Madison, WI: Author.

Author's Note: Additional material can be found at www.fairtest.org.

Monty Neill is Executive Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) in Cambridge, MA; monty@fairtest.org.

Copyright © 2003 by Monty Neill

Let's Stop Making Migration a Crime

Let's Stop Making Migration a Crime

A scene from the million-person march in Los Angeles in 2006. (Photo: David Bacon) 
David Bacon argues that instead of immigration reform that includes guest worker programs and more enforcement, we need to change the free trade programs that cause migration and stop making it a crime for the undocumented to work.

We need an immigration policy based on human, civil and labor rights, which looks at the reasons why people come to the US, and how we can end the criminalization of their status and work. While proposals from Congress and the administration have started the debate over the need for change in our immigration policy, they are not only too limited and ignore the global nature of migration, they actually will make the problem of criminalization much worse. We need a better alternative.

This alternative should start by looking at the roots of migration - the reasons why people come to the US in the first place. Movement and migration is a human right. But we live in a world in which a lot of migration isn't voluntary, but is forced by poverty and so-called economic reforms.

Read more here.

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E-mails link Bush foundation, corporations and education officials

By Valerie Strauss , Updated: January 30, 2013

A nonprofit group released thousands of e-mails today and said they show how a foundation begun by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and national education reform leader, is working with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders.
A call to the foundation has not been returned.
The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office.
Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization “to move an education agenda that may or not be  in our interests but are in theirs.”
He said companies ask the foundation to help state officials pass laws and regulations that make it easier to expand charter schools, require students to take online education courses, and do other things that could result in business and profits for them. The e-mails show, Cohen said, that Bush’s foundation would often do this with the help of Chiefs for Change and other affiliated groups.
The e-mails were obtained by Cohen’s group through public record requests and are available here, complete with a search function. They reveal — conclusively, he said — that foundation staff members worked to promote the interests of some of their funders in  Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana.
The Web site of the Foundation for Excellence in Education used to list some of their donors but no longer does and is not required to list all of its donors to the public under tax rules for 5013C organizations. However, it is known that the foundation has received support from for-profit companies K12 and Pearson and Amplify, as well as the nonprofit College Board.
There are strong connections between FEE and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy:

Aptly named FEE, Bush’s group is backed by many of the same for-profit school corporations that have funded ALEC and vote as equals with its legislators on templates to change laws governing America’s public schools. FEE is also bankrolled by many of the same hard-right foundations bent on privatizing public schools that have funded ALEC. And, they have pushed many of the same changes to the law, which benefit their corporate benefactors and satisfy the free market fundamentalism of the billionaires whose tax-deductible charities underwrite the agenda of these two groups.

FEE and ALEC also have had some of the same “experts” as members or staff, part of the revolving door between right-wing groups. They have also collaborated on the annual ALEC education “report card” that grades states’ allegiance to their policy agenda higher than actual student performance. That distorted report card also rewards states that push ALEC’s beloved union-busting measures while giving low grades to states with students who actually perform best on standardized knowledge tests.

Here is some of what the e-mails released today by Clark’s group say, taken from the Web site of In the Public Interest:

* In New Mexico, FEE acted as a broker to organize meetings between their corporate donors and individual Chiefs.

*Maine moved the FEE policy agenda through legislation and executive order that would remove barriers to online education and in some cases would require online classes –  including eliminating class size caps and student-teacher ratios, allowing public dollars to flow to online schools and classes, eliminate ability of local school districts to limit access to virtual schools.

*In Florida, FEE helped write legislation that would increase the use of a proprietary test (FCAT) under contract to Pearson, an FEE donor.

* Foundation for Excellence in Education CEO Patricia Levesque urged state officials to introduce SendHub, a communications tool, into their state’s schools. News reports indicate that Levesque’s boss, Jeb Bush, is an investor in SendHub.

Florida 

• FEE staff sought legislation that would count the state test, known as FCAT, as more than 50% of the state’s school accountability measure. FEE staffer Patricia Levesque wrote to a state official that she had negotiated the related language with state legislators, who were now “asking for the following, which the Foundation completely supports: FCAT shall be ‘at least 50%, but no more than 60%’ of a high school’s grade.” Pearson, the company that holds the $250 million FCAT contract and sponsors FEE through its foundation, has an obvious financial stake in ensuring that FCAT continues to be at the center of Florida’s education system.

• Levesque writes, “I think we need to add a sec onto this bill to give you/the department authority to set a state‐approved list of charter operators or private providers so districts can’t pick poor performers to implement turnaround.” At least one FEE donor, the for-profit Florida-based Charter Schools USA, could benefit from being placed on such a state-approved list.

• Charter Schools USA also could benefit from a “parent trigger” law, the passage of which, as Nadia Hagberg of FEE wrote, was the goal of a partnership between Bush’s Florida-based organization (the Foundation for Florida’s Future) and Parent Revolution: “The Foundation for Florida’s Future worked closely with [Parent Revolution] throughout the process in Florida and they proved to be an invaluable asset.” Parent trigger, which failed to pass during Florida’s last legislative session, is a mechanism to convert neighborhood schools to charter schools.

Louisiana

• An April 26, 2011, e-mail indicates that Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, through its Chiefs for Change project, had engaged John Bailey, a director of Dutko Grayling. CEO Patricia Levesque wrote to State Schools Superintendent Paul Pastorek:

“John Bailey, whom you met over the phone, will be on the call to provide an update on reauthorization discussions on the Hill. He is going to be on contract with the Foundation to assist with the Chiefs’ DC activities in light of Angie’s departure.

“Dutko has been accused of working with industry front groups in the past. For example, Dutko worked with AIDS Responsibility Project (ARP), an industry-supported effort described by an HIV/AIDS policy activist as a ‘drug industry-funded front group. ‘”

• There are records of the Foundation for Excellence in Education reimbursing Paul Pastorek and John White, the two men who led the state’s education department, for their travel to Orlando and Washington, D.C., for events sponsored by FEE and the Chiefs for Change.

Maine
• As the Portland Press-Herald has reported, the e-mails were evidence of “a partnership formed between Maine’s top education official and a foundation entangled with the very companies that stand to make millions of dollars from the policies it advocates.”

• FEE Deputy Director Deirdre Finn wrote, “We can definitely help develop an executive order,” referring to what became a February 2012 executive order by Gov. LePage directing his education commissioner to develop a plan to open the door to more cyber-schooling in Maine. The elements of the order originated with the Digital Learning Council, a group co-chaired by Bush and funded by FEE donors K12 Inc, the Pearson Foundation and McGraw-Hill.

• The Foundation for Educational Excellence also acted as a conduit for ALEC model legislation and policies. LePage’s order originated at ALEC, was tailored for Maine by the FEE and sent to Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen, who subsequently forwarded it to LePage to release unchanged. “Resolution adopting the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning” is a model bill introduced by Arizona Sen. Rich Crandall at the 2011 ALEC Annual Conference.

New Mexico
• FEE provides its donors — including for-profit digital education companies — access to the chiefs. A draft agenda for the Excellence in Action 2011 Summit blocked off two hours for “Chiefs for Change donor meetings.” Another draft agenda for the meeting allocated nearly three hours to “Chiefs for Change donor meetings.” The donors for the summit were the Walton Family Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Carnegie Corp., Susan and Bill Oberndorf, GlobalScholar, Target, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Microsoft, State Farm, IQity, McGraw-Hill Education, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, Intel, Pearson Foundation, Apex Learning, ETS, Electronic Arts, Koret Foundation, SMART Technologies, K12, Morgridge Family Foundation, Charter Schools USA and Connections Academy. Demand for donor time was so high that Patricia Levesque wrote that she had to turn down opportunities for the chiefs to meet other representatives from companies.

• FEE staff served as advisers to acting education commissioner Hanna Skandera. FEE, and, by extension, its donors, had great influence over New Mexico legislation. In a Jan., 2011, e-mail, Skandera directs a staffer from the legislature to forward all education bills to FEE’s Christy Hovanetz for edits: “Can you send all Governor’s office ed bill language to Christy, including social promotion?” Another FEE staffer, Mary Laura Bragg, wrote to Skandera, “I’m at your beck and call.”

• The foundation sought to make connections between Skandera (as well as the other Chiefs for Change) and the Hume Foundation for funds for digital learning projects from  Hume  that “must flow through the Foundation for Excellence in Education as a project-restricted grant.” The Santa Fe New Mexican reported  Oct. 21 that Skandera had indeed applied for such a grant, which ultimately could lead to digital learning legislation favorable to FEE funders Connections Academy and K-12 Inc.

• The e-mails indicate that FEE paid for Skandera’s travel, reimbursing New Mexico $3382.91 for her expenses, including trip to Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress.

Oklahoma
• An Oct. 7, 2011, e-mail indicates that State Superintendent Janet Barresi was a guest of Louis A. Piconi — founder and SVP of Strategic Activities, Apangea Learning Inc., a distance learning company — at an event Piconi hosted for Jeb Bush and Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett. Apangea is not a known funder of FEE, but Apangea and Barresi contributed to Bennett’s campaign.

• As in other states, FEE staff had great control over state education policies, writing and editing regulations for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
*For unknown reasons, Barresi’s response to an e-mail from Patricia Levesque about SendHub was not included in Oklahoma’s response to the public records request. Instead, that was found in the documents from Louisiana. A Louisiana official was cc’d on the e-mail. A description of Barresi’s response is in the Rhode Island section of this document.

Rhode Island
• In February 2012, Patricia Levesque, using her Foundation for Excellence in Education e-mail address, urged state officials to introduce SendHub, a communications tool, into their state’s schools. News reports indicate that Levesque’s boss, Jeb Bush, was an investor in the start-up by the fall of 2012.

• An e-mail chain between RI Ed Commissioner Deborah Gist and FEE’s Patricia Levesque shows Gist trying to obtain a funding grant from the Kern Foundation, which was denied because of the “political environment” in RI.

• Gist also sought funding from the Hume Foundation for a digital learning initiative. FEE staff made it a point to connect Gist, as well as other state education commissioners, with Hume to launch digital learning projects.

© The Washington Post Company

MALC CHAIRMAN TREY MARTINEZ FISCHER FILES RESOLUTION TO MOVE FORWARD ON RESTORING EDUCATION CUTS AND SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM

Friends, below is information released by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus relating to the issue of taking up school finance.

As noted in the MALC's press release:

Today, Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer filed H.R. 408 to move the conversation on public school funding forward in the Texas House and discuss how to restore $5.4 billion in public education cuts.
“We have $8.8 billion of general revenue available to spend in fiscal year 2013. Some of these funds should be used to immediately begin restoring $5.4 billion in public education cuts. In light of a recent district court decision finding that Texas’ school finance system is broken and inadequate, we must act now to help our schools,” said Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer. “The only thing political about having to restore funding to education is why we had an inaccurate revenue estimate by the comptroller in 2011, which forced Republicans to cut much more than necessary.” 

Last Thursday, February 7, 2013, Chairman Martinez Fischer laid out a path for the Texas House to act now to begin restoring education funding cuts for the current budget cycle and move forward to fix Texas’ broken school finance system.
On Monday, February 4, 2013, Travis County District Judge John Dietz ruled that Texas’ school finance system is unconstitutional. Judge Dietz found that the system was inequitable, inadequate, lacked meaningful discretion for school districts to set tax rates, and was unsuitable for low income and English Language Learners.

MALC CHAIRMAN RAISES PROCEDURAL PATH ON HOUSE FLOOR TO ENGAGE SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM

Dear Readers,

The following is the press release put out by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus addressing the urgency for House members to take up the issue of school finance.  In lieu of Judge Dietz' ruling this past Monday (2/4/13), State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer is appropriately arguing that there is no reason for House members to stall on meeting the needs of millions of Texas school children.

Soon after Rep. Martinez Fischer's actions on the House floor, the following was cited in the Dallas Morning-News saying: 

[lawmakers] have the ability, within our rules, to act today...There is a clear path to begin the debate of restoring funding cuts and fixing our broken school finance system

The MALC's call to action has been echoed by the House Democratic Caucus and various other members, such as Representatives Mary Gonzalez, Terry Canales, Phil Cortez, Abel Herrero, Joe Moody, Poncho Nevarez, Mary Ann Perez, Justin Rodriguez, and Armando Walle.  In a joint statement (see below), the above members also called for Governor Perry to urge General Greg Abbott not to pursue an appeal, or delay school funding discussions in an expensive special session.

-Patricia 

Pressure Mounts in Some States Against Common Core

Pressure Mounts in Some States Against Common Core

Very good analysis in Education Week of where states are currently, with the Common Core.  It reveals just how important process is.  I also agree with Ms. Zimmerman's comments:  "Assessments drive curriculum. Standards drive curriculum. We are on the road to a national curriculum."

It's not entirely a partisan debate.  Let's see where this goes.

-Angela

Charting a New Course: Understanding the Sociocultural, Political, Economic and Historical Context of Latino/a Education in the United States

 Charting a New Course: Understanding the Sociocultural, Political, Economic and Historical Context of Latino/a Education in the United States

Dear Blog Readers:

On behalf of NLERAP, an organization that I co-direct with Dr. Patricia Lopez, I am very proud of this special issue that just came out in the Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal.  Thank you to AMAE editors Patricia Sánchez, Oscar Jimenez-Castellanos,and Antonio Camacho.  Special thanks the the special issue editors Sonia Nieto, Melissa Rivera, Sandra Quiñones Rosado, and Jason Irizarry and finally to all of the contributors.  Thanks, as well, to Pedro Pedraza, for securing funding for from what is now this special issue from the Spencer Foundation. 

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE ARE DOING

NLERAP has been in existence since 1999 and was previously directed by Pedro Pedraza and Melissa Rivera.  Since 2009, NLERAP has been cultivating a national-level “grow-your-own,” Latino/a teacher pipeline—termed the Grow-Your-Own, Teacher Education Institutes (GYO-TEI) initiative with support from both the Ford and Kellogg Foundations.  We are pleased to say that our first inaugural cohort of NLERAP pre-service teachers is currently attending Cal State University Sacramento.

This strategy represents a multi-year commitment on behalf of multiple partners (i.e., postsecondary institutions, community-based organizations, business, and public officials) that seeks to invigorate under-resourced schools and communities with an on-going, infusion of human, material, and intellectual resources in order to address the teacher preparation and retention crises in our states and nation, as well as the severe under-representation of Latino/a teachers (7.1% nationally).

NLERAP holds two premises at its core: first, a sociocultural and sociopolitical approach to learning is more effective than traditional approaches for historically marginalized youth in schools; second, research is more meaningful when it is defined through the experiences and knowledge of our community partners. NLERAP’s vision is to raise national voices for improving school, teacher and instructional quality for Latino/as in the U.S. via collaborative research, policy work that supports our programmatic goals, and systemic change in higher education via a research-based, NLERAP Curriculum that we are still developing that we hope will become a new default in the preparation of future teachers of Latino/a youth at the very least in the locales in which we are situated.

In addition, NLERAP is leading in the development of scalable, systemic education reform for all students by developing a national and regional infrastructure that supports and sustains the creation of a critical mass of culturally competent, social-justice-oriented, educators via our community-centered, grassroots partnership model with school districts and universities, involving the following entities across our nation:

·      El Puente, involving students from the El Puente High School’s Project for Peace and Justice in partnership with Brooklyn College, New York;

·      The Puerto Rican Community Center, involving students from Roberto Clemente High School, partnering with both the University of Illinois in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University;

·      Families in Schools in Los Angeles and the Sol Collective in Sacramento, California, involving students from McClatchy High School, partnering with California State University Sacramento;

·      Council for the Spanish Speaking,Inc., involving students from South Division High School, partnering with the Milwaukee Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee;

·      League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), LULAC’s National Educational Service Centers, Inc. (LNESC), and the Hispanic Institute for Progress, Inc. (HIPI), as well as involving students from Sunset High School in Dallas, Texas, partnering with the University of North Texas, Dallas.

Through this consortium, with its national office housed at the Texas Center for Education Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, we are thus an organization with deep roots and a wide, national reach and we are already making a difference.  Learn more about us at  http://NLERAP.org  


HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT US

We make it easy for you to support us.  For future business trips or vacation travel, simply go to http://www.nleraptravel.com/ to make your hotel and travel reservations (instead of Travelocity.com, for example).

Patricia Lopez and I have used this website for both flight and hotel reservations and have honestly found truly excellent, competitive deals as a result.  And we are happy to extend this benefit to you.  Most importantly for us in NLERAP, a percent of every purchase goes to NLERAP, Inc., our national nonprofit, which is located in Dallas, Texas, to support our pipeline efforts.

We in NLERAP are a little army of good will and we hope to be a resource for all in the weeks, months, and years to come.  Thank you for your interest and support!

Dr. Angela Valenzuela
Dr. Patricia Lopez

Growing number of educators boycott standardized tests

Glad these educators are on board.  Texas has led and continues to lead in this struggle, as well, and change is in the air.  This struggle is in fact the inspiration for the blog.

As per this article (see below), I do take issue with NEA President Dennis Van Roekel's statements not in terms of what he says the Seattle teachers are saying, but more generally, that the testing battle has always been solidly about the number of tests and how they are used—primarily because of serious issues with just how valid and reliable they are.  And with our student population experiencing its highest rates of growth among English learners, issues of validity and reliability are a growing concern.

There is no silver bullet.  There is no perfect test.  And if anything, they should be used to measure —rather than to actually be—the reform.  We will never test our way to equity; if anything, the reverse is true with these systems of testing systematically creating a system of winners and losers with poor, children of color on the losing end.  Plus, they feed a multi-billion dollar industry with highly-paid lobbyists like Sandy Kress—the chief architect of No Child Left Behind—that literally profits on the failure of our children and schools

Share our blog with your students and friends working on educational projects as it is a good, historic resource on high-stakes testing and various other areas of policy both in Texas and the nation.  May all have an awesome day today!

Angela Valenzuela


Growing number of educators boycott standardized tests

Greg Toppo, USA TODAY1:05a.m. EST February 1, 2013

Since 2002, standardized tests have taken on more significance because of federal mandates.


In this Jan. 23 photo, Garfield High School social studies teacher Jesse Hagopian, with his hand raised, and other teachers rally to protest the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test outside the Seattle School District Headquarters.(Photo: Greg Gilbert, AP)
Story Highlights

Seattle teachers at forefront of boycotting standardized tests
Rhode Island students join in protest against tests
The Chicago Teachers Union launched a campaign to cancel "non-state mandated tests" from public schools
The decision by a group of Seattle teachers to boycott a standardized test this winter could spill out to other cities as a decade of frustration over testing simmers.

Teachers at Garfield High School, Seattle's largest high school, said in December that theyw would take a pass on giving the latest Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test, a diagnostic tool that also screens students for remedial or gifted classes. Given several times a year, it's also used indirectly to rate teachers, but Garfield teachers say it's not aligned to the state curriculum and produces "meaningless" results. They have until Feb. 22 to administer the test or face unpaid suspension.

Since then, teachers at two more Seattle schools have said they'll sit out the test, with the approval of leading academics and both major U.S. teachers unions.

Elsewhere, the Chicago Teachers Union this week launched a campaign "in support of local and nationwide efforts to eliminate standardized non-state mandated tests" from public schools.
In Providence, a group of high school students led a protest on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to get rid of the high-stakes New England Common Assessment Program as part of new graduation requirements. And in Portland, Ore., a student group is encouraging classmates to opt out of the standardized Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. The group hopes to persuade at least 5% of students to stay home, triggering an automatic "In Need of Improvement" designation at each school.

Since 2002, standardized tests have taken on more significance as federal mandates, beginning with the No Child Left Behind law, pushed schools to give annual tests and report the results publicly. The Obama administration has upped tests' importance by rewarding states whose schools tie student test scores to teacher evaluations.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel calls the Seattle boycott "a defining moment" for the education profession. He said the test creates a dilemma for teachers who want something better for their students. "They're not saying, 'Don't test.' They're saying, 'This test is the wrong one.'"

Last month, a group of about 250 educators signed a letter showing support for the Garfield teachers — among them education historian Diane Ravitch, who said, "We've had more than a decade of standardized testing, and now we need to admit that it's not helping."

A Facebook page urging solidarity with the teachers now has more than 5,000 "likes," and a "Scrap the MAP" blog urges protesters to call Seattle Superintendent Jose Banda in support of the teachers.


A few educators say preparing for standardized tests takes away precious class time and costs school districts billions that could be better spent on improving instruction. As a result, school boards in a few states have pushed to re-evaluate their testing programs. In Texas last April, nearly 900 school boards signed on to a resolution questioning the tests. In June, the Florida School Boards Association called on state lawmakers to, among other measures, eliminate the practice of using student performance "as the primary basis for evaluating teacher, administrator, school and district performance."

In their Dec. 21 letter, Garfield's teachers "respectfully decline to give the MAP test to any of our students," saying they "cannot in good conscience subject our students to this test again." The letter said that students don't take the test seriously and that it uses precious class time. "We are not troublemakers nor do we want to impede the high functioning of our school," they wrote. "We are professionals who care deeply about our students and cannot continue to participate in a practice that harms our school and our students."

Van Roekel, a former Phoenix high school math teacher, said, "The teachers are saying, 'This is a professional dilemma.' " Because the test isn't aligned with the district's curriculum, it forces them to make a choice between teaching-approved material and helping students do well on a test. "I think that's a horrible position to put teachers in."
Banda acknowledges their concerns but says many educators use MAP results effectively.

"As much as the other side says that it's a waste of time, it's a waste of energy, that it's useless information, I hear from lots of teachers across our district who are in support of the MAP and in support of the fact that they have something that gives them data points on student achievement," he said.

"We've said from Day One that it's not the perfect assessment," he said. "We know that. I don't know that there is a perfect assessment, but we know the MAP's not perfect -- but it does give us enough credible data that helps us make decisions regarding student learning."

Banda noted that the district is reviewing the MAP as its contract with the test's vendor expires this year. He said he hopes the two sides "can come up with an agreement that still supports our kids, supports our students and serves our students."

Kris McBride, Garfield's testing coordinator, said Wednesday that teachers hoped to resolve the standoff, but that they weren't opposed to tests in general.

"This has nothing to do with teachers not wanting to give tests or teachers not wanting to be accountable," she said. "It has nothing to do with that. This is all about that this test is not good for our kids, period. So it's a win if we didn't have to give this test to our kids."

Great piece by Jason Stanford. Stalin would be proud. -Angela

Texas budget tale that would make Stalin proud

 

by Jason Stanford on January 26, 2013

My next column on the Viewpoints page of the Austin American-Statesman comes Monday. Republican Matt Mackowiak and I take on the budget. That’s Matt on the right in the photograph. Fun fact about this column: I called Sen. Tommy Williams’ office to ask his new press guy, Gary Scharrer, whether he thought his boss’ quote was more Kafkaesque or Orwellian. I left a message but did not get a call back.
Whenever a Texas Republican makes the national news for saying that “ping-pongs are more dangerous than guns”, for alerting Anderson Cooper to the danger posed by “terror babies”, or for shooting a coyote while jogging, friends from the boring states ask me, “How can you stand to live in Texas?”
It’s not just because of these colorful threats, though they do lighten the mood. I majored in Russian in college and lived in Moscow for almost two years after that. I studied the state-sponsored balderdash of Socialist Realism that paid artists to paint record harvests while peasants starved. I experienced the free-market dystopia that followed Communism’s fall and preceded the rise of the Putinocracy. The oft-comic consequences provided relief from the grinding stupidity of a false economic ideology.
This prepared me well for Rick Perry’s Texas. Keep reading here.

 

The feds' education power grab

Excellent analysis of the education policy landscape. -Angela
The feds' education power grab

It's time to have a conversation about the issue before we find that the executive branch, or even the entire federal government, has become our national school board.

By Marc Tucker
January 24, 2013

In December, California's application for a waiver from provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act was denied by the U.S. Department of Education . This, we were told, was because California had failed to embrace the federal department's reform agenda, especially on issues of evaluating teachers.
The denial is disturbing for what it reveals: namely, that the American education system is being reshaped in a truly fundamental way, and with little debate. National policymakers now behave as if they believe their role in making education policy ought to be much the same as that of the states in setting goals and standards, creating accountability systems, defining teacher quality, determining strategies for producing high-quality teachers and improving low-performing schools. Left unresolved, the conflicts this creates about who is in charge are likely to worsen.
Today's situation represents a sharp departure from previous policy. Historically, the federal government's role was to aid, assist, prod and push schools, districts and states. But the key word was always "aid." From the 1950s to the 1990s, there was never a question about who was in charge of schools, and it was not the federal government. The feds avoided interfering in any important way with the design of a state's education system unless issues of civil rights were involved, and in those cases, it was generally the courts rather than the executive or legislative branches that sparked the intervention.
Over the last few decades, the federal role in education has undergone a massive transformation. This process, which started during the George H.W. Bush administration, has continued under Presidents Clinton , George W. Bush and Obama.
The increasing federal involvement was initially fueled by frustration in Congress and the executive branch about a lack of improvement in student achievement, despite decades of increases in state and federal spending on education.
Building on the work of George H.W. Bush's administration, which had pushed for more clarity in education goals, Bill Clinton went further, calling for explicit standards for student academic performance. Building on those standards, George W. Bush and a bipartisan coalition followed by passing the draconian No Child Left Behind legislation, which employed standardized tests to measure whether goals had been met. Under the terms of No Child Left Behind, schools that didn't make adequate progress toward the goals defined by the standards and the tests would be punished.
To avoid sanctions, many states simply lowered their standards. That led the Obama administration, during the height of the fiscal crisis, to make certain federal education funds contingent on states adopting national standards for student performance.
His administration also redesigned the accountability system to focus less on schools, as it had under No Child Left Behind, and more on teachers. The idea is to improve teacher quality by identifying and getting rid of teachers who fail to sufficiently raise student performance on standardized tests. The Obama administration has also pressured states to allow more charter schools and to institute merit pay for teachers.
The result of these decades of federal education reforms has been a massive reshaping of the American education system. Its key features now include national standards aligned with national tests, a push for evaluating (and rewarding or punishing) teachers based on their students' test scores, and a strong emphasis on marketplace pressures, including charter schools, to ensure the survival of successful schools — and the failure of weak ones. Some of these reforms have been shown to be effective, others have shown mixed results or have little research to support their use.
In the early years of this process, Congress and the executive branch largely agreed on the agenda. More recently, since the onset of the fiscal crisis, the executive branch has acted independently to implement its agenda without the agreement of Congress. One way it has done so is by granting waivers from the requirements of No Child Left Behind to states that embrace the administration's agenda. While Congress gave the secretary of Education authority to waive provisions of the law, it is unlikely lawmakers envisioned that the authority would be used in this way.
The U.S. Constitution leaves responsibility for education policy to the states. In recent years, however, the federal government has ignored the framers' intention. The changes have been instituted without any significant debate about the role of the federal government in elementary and secondary education. And now, the executive branch alone is setting education policy without the active participation of either the states or Congress.
No nation has reached the top ranks of education performance without clearly defined roles for the national government and the state or provincial levels of government. In the United States today, the roles are ill-defined and overlapping.
Do we really want the executive branch of the federal government to decide, pretty much by itself, what the aims of American education should be and how they should be achieved? Do we want the federal government to be the principal architect of a national education system? Do we want the states to be in the driver's seat? Or do we want both the federal government and the states to have important, but complementary, roles in education policy?
There are many options for allocating responsibilities for education policymaking, and it is by no means obvious what the right path is. But it is time to have a conversation about the issue before we wake up one day to find that the executive branch, or even the entire federal government, has become our national school board.
Marc Tucker is president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank. This piece was adapted from the Hechinger Report, an education news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University . hechingerreport.org

Texas vs. No Child Left Behind

Texas vs. No Child Left Behind

Posted By Tom Pauken On January 23, 2013 @ 12:45 am In | 16 Comments

Seventeen months from now, every American student will be proficient in reading, and mathematics. On what basis do I make such a bold claim? It’s the law.

When the No Child Left Behind Legislation was signed by President George W. Bush 11 years ago, it required that by the end of 2013-2014 school year, “all students… will meet or exceed the State’s proficient level of academic achievement on the State assessments.”

If you find it absurd that we can make all our students above average with the stroke of the presidential pen, you’re not alone. The 100 percent proficiency goal of NCLB is now widely acknowledged to be a pipe dream. Recent trends indicate that schools are not even headed in the right direction; and, in much of the press, the 100 percent proficiency goal has become something of the punch line of a joke. Meanwhile, in a move that tacitly acknowledges the unworkability of the current law, the Department of Education is granting NCLB waivers to states which will make it easier for them to skirt the requirements.

So how did we get to the point where we confused legislating high standards with achieving high standards? To find the answer we have to go back in time. Even further back than January of 2002 when President Bush, flanked by a bipartisan group of legislators including Sen. Ted Kennedy, signed NCLB into law at a high school in Hamilton, Ohio. We have to return to the president’s home state of Texas.

Texas is where the failed policies of NCLB, along with an almost pathological obsession with testing, had their start.

And Texas, in a serendipitous turn of events, is poised to lead the way in reforming our nation’s approach to education. Diane Ravitch is a native Texan who served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and once championed many of the policies associated with NCLB before becoming one of the nation’s most outspoken critics of the law. Ravitch has recently written that “Texas brought No Child Left Behind to the nation” but that thanks to a recent revolt among parents and educators in the state, there is a new message: “Don’t Mess with Texas. The Revolution Begins Here.”

“Texas has to be the place where a stake is driven through the heart of the vampire,” Ravitch bluntly stated.

For the past two decades, excessive emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing and a one-size-fits-all focus on preparing all students for college came to dominate education policy in Texas and later, in Washington, D.C. with the passage of the Bush-Kennedy “No Child Left Behind” legislation. In addition, vocational education came to be neglected—even denigrated—in this massive push to make all students “college-ready.” Meanwhile, the principle of local control over education (which historically had been a deeply-held belief of Goldwater-Reagan Conservatives) was abandoned by Republican politicians in Texas and Washington, D.C., in their rush to be known as “educational reformers.”

The existing system relies heavily on how students score on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness—commonly referred to as the STAAR tests. Under the STAAR, students have to take up to 12 end-of-course exams during their time in high school; and the tests are supposed to account for 15 percent of the student’s final grade in the subject tested. However, implementation of the 15 percent grading requirement was delayed because of a public outcry.

Even longtime proponents of high-stakes, standardized testing are starting to question the wisdom of the current system of school accountability. As reported by Paul Burka in Texas Monthly, the former commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, Robert Scott, made this startling admission in a speech to the Texas Association of School Administrators: “I believe that testing is good for some things, but the system that we have created has become a perversion of its original intent, the intent to improve teaching and learning. The intent to improve teaching and learning has gone too far afield, and I look forward to reeling it back in.”

How did Texas education policy become so centralized at the state level?

H. Ross Perot began the process of having the state assume more control over public education in Texas with his well-intentioned effort in 1984 to improve standards of education by requiring students to pass a basic skills test to earn a diploma in Texas. The current, test-based accountability system really began to gain momentum during Gov. Ann Richards’s term in office in 1993 when, at the insistence of Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the Texas legislature passed a school accountability plan which used an annual statewide test for all public school students in Texas (the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills or TAAS) as the primary measurement for school and student performance.

The new Texas accountability system neatly categorized schools into four easy-to-understand labels: “Exemplary,” “Recognized,” “Acceptable,” and “Low Performing” (which was later changed to “Academically Unacceptable”). These categories were based on passing rates on state exams and on dropout rates, but had little to do with measuring whether schools were preparing students for success in college or for meaningful employment.

But the labels played well from a public-relations standpoint for respective governors, beginning with Ann Richards, who could tout their support for “education reform.” Realtors often include in their report on homes for sale not only the name of the public schools serving that neighborhood, but also the state’s accountability ratings.

The principal architect of Texas’s accountability system was a lawyer from Dallas named Sandy Kress. The most thorough analysis of Kress’s role in pushing Texas’s education policy in the direction of a high-stakes testing system was one written by Mark Donald for the October 19, 2000 issue in the Dallas Observer right before George W. Bush’s election to the presidency. Entitled “The Resurrection of Sandy Kress,” ^[1] Donald’s article ^[1] described how Democrat Kress and Republican Bush came to be close allies in pushing Kress’s vision of “educational accountability.”

I had gotten to know Sandy Kress when he was the Dallas County Democratic Chairman, and I was an active Republican. Later, I was elected State Chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1994, the year in which George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards in the race for governor of Texas. What I didn’t know at the time—but soon learned after the November election—was that Sandy Kress already had been a major advisor to George W. Bush on education issues for some period of time. I found that unusual since Sandy Kress was a liberal Democrat whose views on education and other domestic policy issues were very much at odds with the views of conservatives like myself who believed in local control of education and decentralization of governmental power, wherever possible. Moreover, Sandy had not exactly distinguished himself in the early 1990s when he chaired the board of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), during one of the most tumultuous periods in DISD history.

But I soon learned how influential Sandy Kress was with the incoming Republican Governor. Bush wanted to appoint Kress as his Education Commissioner, but the objections of conservatives like myself and others to his appointment resulted in Gov. Bush naming an educator Mike Moses to that position, instead. (Ironically, Mike Moses and Sandy Kress now find themselves on opposite sides of the school accountability fight in Texas.)

Nonetheless, Sandy Kress remained a key strategic advisor to the governor. He worked closely with Margaret LaMontagne (later Margaret Spellings), who was Gov. Bush’s education advisor, in expanding the statewide accountability system. During Bush’s tenure as Governor, the state consolidated power over education in the office of the Texas Education Agency and the Education Commissioner who was appointed by the Governor. Meaningful local control over education in Texas continued to erode as the accountability ratings system caused local school districts to focus more attention on the performance measurements put in place by the state particularly the testing system. Since that system did not include evaluation of the effectiveness of vocational education instruction, that area of preparation became de-emphasized in many Texas school districts.

During the Bush years, much of the opposition to the high-stakes testing was muted. Some parents and educators expressed frustration with the state’s performance measurements, but the system was new at the time. And, much of that opposition was dismissed as political. Or, when educators and members of the business community complained about the shortage of skilled workers and the lack of opportunities for career training at the high school level, those critics were accused of wanting to “lower standards.”

Fast forward 15 years, and the current system has lost most of its luster. Texas has worker shortages in the skilled trades, and improvements on state tests aren’t reflected in college entrance exams such as the SAT or ACT. In fact, average SAT reading scores in Texas have declined eight points in the last decade. A recent review by the National Academy of Sciences shows that high-stakes testing is not improving academic achievement. In fact, it may do more harm than good. While there is a debate about how to calculate dropout rates, just about everyone agrees that Texas has a serious problem with high school dropouts.

Many students get frustrated with the current one-size-fits-all test-based system with its emphasis on
pushing everyone towards college; and they drop out because they don’t see education as relevant to them.

Texas policy-makers are coming to the realization that the high-stakes accountability system is fundamentally flawed. The accountability system assumes all students are headed to college, even though a mere 25 percent of high-school graduates attend a four-year university upon graduation. It also assumes that the state knows what is best for students being educated in such diverse settings such as Houston or a small, rural town.

We all are created equal, but we sure aren’t created the same. People have different strengths, abilities and interests. The state’s one-size-fits-all accountability system pressures school districts to spend an inordinate amount of time teaching to the test. As one teacher told me, it all becomes a numbers game to get the most students to pass the single test. Certain students in her class are going to pass it, and others likely will fail, so both groups tend to get neglected while most of the attention is focused on those students who are “on the bubble.”

High-achieving students, and their parents, feel that they are wasting their time on multiple-choice testing drills and practice tests rather than reading Shakespeare. And businesses are fed up with the fact that high schools are producing a lack of students prepared to enter skilled trades due to our neglect of vocational education at the high school level. That has resulted in a shortage of skilled workers and a greying workforce. For example, the average age of a welder is 55, a plumber 56, and a stone masonry craftsman 69.

Sandy Kress was very effective in the early years of this new state accountability system in getting business leaders behind his vision of making everyone “college-ready” by selling his vision as raising educational standards. He enlisted important business allies in advancing his agenda.
But the shape of the education debate is beginning to change. Frustration on the part of parents, employers, and educators with the current system has built up for years. Change is long overdue, and we need the courage to propose bold, meaningful solutions to these issues, rather than just tinkering around the edges. And, that is just what we are doing. A growing coalition of legislators, business and labor leaders, school board members, parents, other community leaders, and educators recognize that this is a serious issue and are working to fix it. The solution is simple, if not easy.

We need to allow for multiple pathways to a high school degree. One academic pathway would emphasize math and science. Another, the humanities and fine arts. A third would focus on career and technical education. All students would get the basics, but there would be greater flexibility than under the “one size fits all” existing system which pushes everyone towards a university degree.
This is a common sense approach to preparing young Texans to be college-ready or career-ready. It is time to end this “teaching to the test” system that isn’t working for either the kids interested in going on to a university or for those more oriented towards learning a skilled trade. Let’s replace it with one that focuses on real learning and opportunities for all.

In the past, when public frustration hit the boiling point, the testing establishment would simply roll out a new test with a new acronym and promise that the new test will fix everything. That is why, from 1991 to the present, the acronym of the Texas standardized test has gone from TAAS to TAKS and, now STAAR.

But that trick isn’t working this time. Supporters of the existing high-stakes system tried to address opposition by introducing the restrictive 4×4 curriculum in 2006 and unveiling the STAAR testing program in 2009. But far from mollifying the opposition, these changes made the system worse.
The 4×4 curriculum made it more difficult for students interested in career and technical education to take enough courses in their field of interest to get an industry-certified credential by the time they graduated from high school.

As the 2013 session of the Texas Legislature convenes, a major priority for many of us in this legislative session is to fix a broken system of education which isn’t working all that well for either those students who are college-oriented or for those students who want to get training, and an industry-certified credential, in a technical field.

But there are powerful interests arranged to protect the existing testing system. Pearson is the testing contractor and has an existing state contract that pays it nearly $500 million over a five-year period. Sandy Kress, a principal architect of our existing education policy in Texas and President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation, is not only a paid lobbyist for the testing contractor but is also determined to preserve the educational structure he worked so hard to put in place.

Just as Texas started this failed approach to educational accountability, the Texas Legislature has the opportunity to replace it with a common-sense system that focuses on real learning and opportunities for all.

Tom Pauken is a Texas Workforce Commissioner and author of Bringing America Home: How America Lost Her Way and How We Can Find Our Way Back ^[2].