PARCCopalypse

Since my last post on the Lederman lawsuit victory, in which I included a link to Celia Oyler's blog, Outrage on the Page, the PARCC police went after her with legal threats of personal liability if she did not take down information about their 4th grade language arts test, calling her an "infringer" of copyrights. They also hit all tweets mentioning the post, including a few of mine. As Peter Greene tweeted about the #PARCCopalypse that ensued, he wrote, "You know what kind of test needs this sort of heavy security? A crappy test." Outraged by the idea that they could be successful in these intimidation tactics, educational bloggers rallied over the weekend and began a campaign of protest. To know more, you might start with Diane Ravitch's site, then Leonie Haimson's, and Anthony Cody's. But I'm pretty sure if you try a Google or Twitter or Facebook search for PARCC you will find the story has gone viral. Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig thinks it would even make a good dissertation topic. 
5/24/16 update: The story has been published in the New York Times and USA Today. Here's what they left out.

Good News About the Lederman Lawsuit on APPR

Today Judge McDonough ruled that Sheri Lederman had met the burden of proof for showing that her APPR VAM-based "ineffective" rating was "indisputably arbitrary and capricious." The recent actions of the New York State Regents to impose a four year moratorium on the use of VAM in teacher evaluations had led the state to seek a settlement with Lederman, but she held on for this important victory. The judge did rule that the second category of relief was moot by the actions of the Regents. What will be most useful moving forward is the language about inherent bias in the use of VAM. Judge McDonough wrote in his 15 page summary posted by Leonie Haimson that he found:

"...convincing and detailed evidence of VAM bias against teachers at both ends of the spectrum (e.g. those with high-performing students or those with low-performing students)....and most tellingly...a 'bell curve' that places teachers in four categories via pre-determined percentages regardless of whether the performance of students dramatically rose or dramatically fell from the previous year" (p. 11). 

I wrote about the hearing and Judge McDonough's difficulties with bell curve logic back in August. It seems increasingly that the public is understanding the many problems with standardized, normed testing and the inappropriate ways it is being used. Evidence is mounting that national tests such as PARCC are created to produce high rates of failure and are not even aligned with the common core standards. See for example this recent account of a teacher revealing in detail inappropriate content and questions on the 4th grade PARCC posted by Teachers College professor Celia Oyler on her blog.  Alan Singer also reported on his Huffington Post blog about high numbers of parents and students opting out  of the state tests, and outrage about the content and difficulty level.

This is a day for celebrating, but the truth is, this testing nonsense is not going away anytime soon. Time to open our eyes and make our outrage known. 

It’s All About the Bell Curve: Sheri Lederman’s Day in Court

I traveled up to Albany this morning to hear the oral arguments in the Lederman v. King case presented to Acting Supreme Court Justice Roger McDonough by Bruce Lederman, and Colleen Galligan representing the State Education Department. This is the first time in my life I have sat in a courtroom proceeding. I don’t even watch Law and Order. Let’s just say I was most definitely not in my element. But I’m a pretty good observer of human behavior, a decent note-taker, and I had personal reasons for caring deeply about the outcome of this case, above and beyond all the reasons we all should care about a case that may have far-reaching implications for the misguided reforms of Race to the Top (see full disclosure below). What I witnessed was a masterful take down of the we-need-objectivity rhetoric that is plaguing education. So I should begin by saying that I am hopeful, because it seems someone with the power to make a difference gets it. Judge McDonough gets that it’s all about the bell curve, and the bell curve is biased and subjective.

In case you need a refresher on how test scoring works these days (and who doesn’t) I suggest you start with the excellent fact sheets from Fair Test, first on norm-referenced tests, or NRTs, and then on criterion-referenced tests, or CRTs, and tests used to measure performance against state standards. In particular note the following important points:

“NRTs are designed to sort and rank students 'on the curve,' not to see if they met a standard or criterion. Therefore, NRTs should not be used to assess whether students have met standards. However, in some states or districts a NRT is used to measure student learning in relation to standards. Specific cut-off scores on the NRT are then chosen (usually by a committee) to separate levels of achievement on the standards. In some cases, a CRT is made using technical procedures developed for NRTs, causing the CRT to sort students in ways that are inappropriate for standards-based decisions.”

As you may notice, we’ve come a long way from getting a 91 out of 100 on a test and knowing that was an A-. Testing today is obtuse and confusing by design. In New York State, we boil it down to a ranking from one to four. That’s right, there’s even jargon for “ones and twos” that is particularly heinous when you learn that politicians have interests in making more than 50% of students fall in those “failing” categories. Today the state released the test score results for students in grades 3-8 and their so-called “proficiency” is reported as below 40% achieving the passing levels. By design the public is meant to read this as miserable failure.

The political narrative of public education failure extends next to the teachers, who must demonstrate student learning based on these faulty tests, even if they don’t teach the subjects tested, and even if they teach students who face hurdles and hardships that have a tremendous impact on their ability to do well on the tests. In Sheri’s case, her rating plunged from 14 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points on student growth measures. Yet her students perform exceedingly well on the exams; once you are a “four” you can’t go up to a “four plus” because you’ve hit the ceiling. In fact, one wrong answer could unreasonably mark you as a “three” and you would never know. Similarly, the teacher receives a student growth score that is also based on a comparison to other teachers. When it emerged in the hearing today that the model, also known as VAM, or value-added, pre-determined that 7% of the teachers would be rated “ineffective” Judge McDonough caught on to the injustice that lies at the heart of the bell curve logic: where you rank in the ratings is SUBJECTIVE.

In his affidavits, Professor Aaron Pallas of Teachers College brilliantly explains the many flaws with this misuse of student test scores to evaluate and rank teachers’ effectiveness. Predetermining a set percentage of ineffective teachers regardless of their actual “effectiveness” and their students’ achievements was the first major flaw. The second is that the model is not grounded in scientific definitions of teacher quality or effectiveness, as there are many factors beyond a teacher’s control that contribute to student performance on standardized tests and other measures of their knowledge and skills. Third, the model is not transparent on what “needs to be done to achieve effective or highly effective ratings” which is a requirement of the law. The model also violates the law’s definition of student growth as “change in student achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time.” Judge McDonough seemed to have picked up on this idea, and asked if a better model would test the student at the start and end of a given academic year. Pallas gives a far more nuanced explanation of the need for a different model of testing to measure growth over time, but suffice it to say, the model that produced Sheri’s absurd score is not measuring student growth as defined by the law. Pearson, the corporate entity behind the testing enterprise, even noted, “It is inappropriate to compare scale scores across grades as they neither measure the same content, nor are they on the same scale.” Yet that is what the growth model does.

The lame explanation from Colleen Galligan was that the model may not be perfect but the state tries to compare each student to similar students. The goal, she offered, is to find outliers in the teaching pool who consistently have a pattern of ineffectiveness, to either give them additional training or fire them. At this point Judge McDonough offered her a chance to explain the dramatic drop in Sheri’s score. “On its face it must mean students bombed the test (speaking as one who has bombed tests)” and this produced laughter in the courtroom. For who hasn’t bombed at least one test in their life? Who has not experienced that dread and fear of being labeled a failure? Then Judge McDonough asked rhetorically, “Did they learn nothing?” The only answer she could come up with, was that in this case Dr. Lederman’s students, although admittedly performing well compared to other students, did worse than 98% of students across the state in growth. At this point it was pretty clear to everyone present that this made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

 

Sheri Lederman speaking to reporters outside the courtroom in Albany

Full disclosure:

Sheri Lederman is my high school classmate and she is a highly regarded elementary teacher in the Great Neck Public Schools, which we both attended in our childhoods. She got her doctorate at Hofstra University, where my mother is a professor emerita, and where I know many of the faculty as personal friends. They confirm the high regard I have for Sheri’s intelligence and insights into education. I think she is absolutely heroic to be pursuing a lawsuit, with the expert guidance of her lawyer husband, Bruce Lederman, against the New York State Department of Education, to expose the irrational and illegal practices of evaluating teacher performance using “arbitrary and capricious” student growth models based on flawed science. I have previously written in my blog about Sheri’s hope that her lawsuit would prove to be a “tipping point” in halting the use of these erroneous student growth models. A bit of background on the case from last October can be found here.

On June 1^st, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that Sheri’s case could go forward despite the State Education Department’s claim that her lawsuit was baseless since Sheri’s overall evaluation was “effective” despite the “ineffective” label on the student growth portion, worth 20% of the total.

Today’s news was covered so far here, here and here. The local CBS station covered it here and WNYT here.

A Sad Day at the Circus

Yesterday the New York State Board of Regents had a meeting. Most of the time they were apparently trying to wrap their brains around HEDI, a new ed acronym you’ll be hearing a lot about. New York’s Chalkbeat  called it “matrix madness” and the education summit held on May 7^th in Albany was dubbed “evalapalooza” on Twitter  and elsewhere. But for those of us in teacher education, the real nail biter was the discussion about so-called “safety net” provisions for the new teacher licensure examinations that have been a source of chaos, confusion, heartache, and despair. Send in the clowns, because you are in for a helluva ride.

Let’s start with how the news was officially reported. Jessica Bakeman of Capital New York wrote that the Board of Regents voted to further delay full implementation of new teacher certification requirements. The specific provisions of the emergency amendment which goes into effect immediately can be found on pages 5 and 6 here. The good news for students who are struggling to pass these exams is as follows:

•           Anyone who takes and fails the horrible ALST exam before the end of June next year can use a grade of 3.0 or better in equivalent coursework approved by the institution’s administration.   

•           The EAS exam’s cut score will be temporarily amended and lowered to an as yet to be determined number (this will happen in June apparently) and will be retroactive, so for those who missed passing by a small margin, it’s likely you won’t need to retake the test. You will eventually receive a written notification with an updated score report.

•          If you take and fail one of the new CST exams, you can take the older version, which is presumably easier, and use a passing score on it to be certified. Pearson is always happy to reactivate an obsolete test if it means more potential revenue!

•          Which brings me to the last but not least safety net extension of the edTPA. Remember I wrote about the earlier revision to the edTPA safety net provision,  so now just add a year and it should all be clear. You submit your edTPA, and if you fail, you get a voucher from the state to take the obsolete ATS-W, which you must pass by the end of June next year, but you still have another year to meet all other certification requirements. This means we won’t be fully out of the safety net woods until June 30, 2017.

Of course behind the scenes there has been a massive effort to educate and inform stakeholders of just how nightmarish this bungled rollout has been. Even David Steiner, architect of Relay and member of the Deans for Impact was quoted by Yasmeen Kahn of WNYC  as saying the edTPA was “over ornate” and the “multiple hoops to jump through to get it all organized feel a bit heavy to me.” I suspect he and others behind the close-down-bad-teacher-education-programs agenda had to back down when they saw the enrollment numbers across the state take a gigantic nose-dive. Brittany Horn, an education reporter for the Times Union tweeted yesterday:

Jessica Bakeman reported that Chancellor Tisch blamed colleges for poor performance on the new licensure exams. Otherwise, she reasoned, how could one college have high passing rates and another have low scores? I guess this means that she hasn’t fully grasped the clear connections between performance on standardized tests and factors beyond the control of the teacher. It is sad and scary that the person in charge doesn’t seem to understand how the South Bronx is different from the Upper East Side, or how Teachers College is different from City College just up the street. Luckily the Regents are asking tough questions and raising serious concerns that are likely to end up back in the hands of lawmakers.  

Meanwhile, those who want to balance on the high wire, fly on the trapeze, and enter the uncertain teaching profession have a safety net to fall into – for now.

Cause for hope. That's right, hope!

A decade ago, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, then president of AERA, gave us a portrait of teacher education at a major crossroads – for better or for worse – and invited us to see where these divergent paths might lead us. At the time, in that hotel ballroom, her bleak portrayal of a future hostile to the ideals and values so many of us held, brought me to tears as I thought of my graduate students who were making so many sacrifices and working so hard to become exemplary urban educators in schools others had written off as “failing” or “ghetto” and doomed.

Why then today, when the draconian education reform ideas of Governor Cuomo have succeeded in a budget vote last night in Albany, do I feel there is cause for hope? Because last night I attended a lecture at Teachers College by the brilliant scholar and public intellectual David C. Berliner. Known especially for his exhaustive defense of public education, The Manufactured Crisis, a 1995 book co-authored with Bruce J. Biddle, Berliner is a master of reasoned argument and robust evidence, all presented with clarity and that wow factor that makes you wonder how anyone could possibly disagree with him. His latest book, 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education, written with Gene Glass, is a must read. He began by characterizing current efforts to evaluate teachers and teacher education using standardized test scores of students as “ridiculous” and proceeded to enumerate a dozen slam dunk arguments against these misguided reforms. I was reminded of the spell Harry Potter learned from Professor Lupin to cast on a boggart, Riddikulus, transforming the scary into the humorous. Below is a photo of the final slide summarizing his reasons.

Berliner, D. C. (2015) "Evaluating Teachers and Teacher Education Using Student Test Data: A Misunderstanding"

            The Teachers College Sachs Lecture Series has set out to explore teacher education – its future, worth, and change (both reactive and transformative) – by examining curriculum, current practices, beliefs about knowledge, and needed research. Prior to Berliner, Marilyn Cochran Smith spoke of education reform, a “hot and huge topic” she defined as “a set of practices and policies, many of which were set into motion with NCLB, although with deeper roots, and continued or accelerated by RTTT. These were intended to fix America’s broken education system keeping with a neoliberal, market-based approach and a heavy focus on accountability.” She described the current state of teacher education as at best, uneven, and at worst, uninspired, ineffective, and out of touch.

            Many of the pessimistic ideas outlined in her AERA address ten years ago are now in motion. We are getting closer to a national database to track teacher education programs and their impact on student test scores, rewarding those effective in test results and enabling them to become, in her words, “lucrative national franchises.” Just look at the expansion of Relay. Politicians and policymakers continue to believe that creating competition and ranking programs, rewarding winners and sanctioning or closing down losers, is going to lead to improvement.

            What concerns me is that current ideas about teacher quality are terribly ill-defined, in large part because much of the research is based on statistics of standardized test results, which are horrible proxies for anything meaningful, and as Berliner pointed out, they measure next to nothing about teacher effects. Right now we are stuck, trapped in the bad idea that all that matters is successful teaching defined as making test scores go up. We have lost all regard for whether good teaching matters, whether the ends to means are ethical and justifiable. Driven by data Data DATA, it seems there is no trust in human judgment, or testimonials of stakeholders who can speak passionately to the difference teachers have made in their lives. They only want numbers.

            Take for example the latest incarnation of the bad ideas in teacher education reform, the Deans for Impact. Based in Austin, Texas with a million dollar start up grant, a group of deans from various colleges of education across the country have resolved to be “data driven, outcomes focused, transparent and accountable” and to use “empirically tested” features in their programs that improve student learning. On their website they boast, “We want to inject some of the values of start-up culture into higher education.” Their first order of business was to write a support statement in early March for the new accreditation organization, CAEP, stating “Deans for Impact stands ready to bring all hands on deck to help CAEP succeed.” Mercedes Schneider has already done the necessary investigation to connect the reform dots and money behind this venture. 

As Jorge Cabrera wrote recently, we are witnessing “a form a social engineering under the guise of ‘urgency’ and ‘reform’” and it comes as no surprise that these deans want to speed up the phase-in of new federal regulations by two years. A rush to implementation will create exactly the sort of chaos and havoc that allows them to ramp up the rhetoric of failure. Their litany of complaints is all too familiar: “teacher prep” is awful, there’s too much theory and not enough practice, it’s too easy to become a teacher. Backed by the simplistic critique of Arthur Levine, these ideas have paved the way for erroneous experiments of throwing beginners to the wolves with little more than a few weeks of boot camp preparation.  

            But the hopeful side has some promise and I believe that we have reached a tipping point. The misuse of value-added measures, or VAMs, in evaluating teachers and teacher education programs is poised for some harsh pushback. The AERA publication, Educational Researcher, has dedicated its latest issue to the VAM controversy. In a succinct and lucid editorial by my former professor at the University of Michigan, Stephen Raudenbush, he deplores the distorted use of VAMs. He cautions, “The hard question is how to integrate the new research on teachers with other important strands of research in order to inform rather than distort practical judgment.” He goes on to pose the question, “Does the answer to a precisely focused research question, by itself, have implications for practical action?” Aside from consistent and reliable evidence, he argues the need for a powerful theory of action to synthesize all of the evidence.

            Get ready for some intense work ahead of us. They will continue to put lipstick on the pig with slick ads, propaganda and celebrity endorsements, and splashy rallies, but money and political power can only go so far. Parents, teachers, professors, and students of all ages must work together on their common educational goals to restore sanity for the good of our universities, schools, and communities.

edTPA Implementation Run Amok

As the so-called “safety-net” deadline of June 30^th approaches, it seems the status of edTPA mayhem is quickly picking up speed. The Regents are now considering a proposed amendment to extend the deadline to June 30, 2016 for other certification requirements such as licensure exams other than edTPA, workshops required for certification, and even program requirements, for those candidates who fail the edTPA, use the “safety net” and take and pass the obsolete ATS-W, and file and pay for certification. This will likely be voted on in April. Meanwhile, let’s review the questions you likely have at this point:

How does the “safety-net” thing work again?

If you are confused, you’re not alone. A CUNY dean was until recently advising candidates to take the ATS-W if they hadn’t already, believing that it was good advice to pre-emptively be ready to use the safety net in case of edTPA failure. This made some sense because in the fine print the “safety-net” provision stated that candidates who had taken the ATS-W prior to April 30, 2014 did not need to retake the exam to qualify for the safety net provision. Therefore, the logic goes, a passing score on that test should be valid for any candidate who doesn’t pass the edTPA. But no! The passing ATS-W score only counts AFTER you have failed the edTPA. Unless of course you had previously (prior to April 2014) taken and passed the test in the good faith that it was a requirement for certification. There is still confusion out there. For example, a SUNY college in a FAQ says:

Q.    If I have already taken the ATS-W before failing the edTPA, can it be used in place of re-taking the edTPA?

A.    NO.  You must take the ATS-W after your edTPA failing grade is posted.

While another SUNY school has the correct information. 

 Meanwhile, if you do the math, those wanting to take the 4-hour ATS-W on paper rather than a computer have to be ready to submit their edTPA by the end of next month in order to have time to get a score and register and take the ATS-W in case they fail in time for the June 30^th deadline. Even if the Regents pass the amendment in April, candidates are still required to have failed the edTPA and taken and passed the ATS-W prior to June 30^th, 2015.

What do the websites say?

Apparently Pearson had no trouble taking money from candidates who believed they could take the ATS-W pre-emptively, and now that it’s become a problematic situation, they have added a note to the website explaining you should only take the test if you failed the edTPA. To get information about how to get a voucher to take the ATS-W for free, however, you have to dig through your college’s website and emails to know what to do. Here’s a handy PDF of the instructions in case you need it. 

Can you register pre-emptively?

That might not be a bad idea, if you are concerned as most candidates are about passing the edTPA, because computer-based test slots in the weeks leading up to the deadline are likely to fill up fast and you may have trouble getting a reservation. It’s going to cost you though, because without the free voucher you have to pay $119 and if you cancel (if you pass the edTPA after all) you’ll only get $84 back in the refund. Pearson, always earning.

Can’t I just submit a crappy edTPA and then take and pass the ATS-W and be done with this nonsense?

Not a good idea because that’s exactly the mentality of people in the state’s Department of Education, so they have put some vague language in the fine print about how an edTPA with an unscoreable code “may or may not” count as a failing grade. Plus that failing score does stay on the TEACH account, branding you forever as a dud. Not that your future employers may care as they can decide for themselves about your qualifications. I did hear a horror story though about a candidate who thought she was lined up for a job in the New York City Department of Education, who was then told she wouldn’t get hired without a passing edTPA score, even though she was certified with the safety net provision.

I’m not worried about the edTPA, it’s this stupid ALST that is killing me!

Your frustration is perfectly understandable. From all accounts, the testing conditions of the ALST are a nightmare and even reasonably smart people are not passing, even when they score a 3 out of 4 on the essay portion. That’s likely because when the cut score was determined, people who made that determination were aiming for a 50% - 60% passing rate. Because let’s face it, this is all about trying to certify fewer teachers and pretending that this will convince the public that these new tests mean we have better new teachers than we did before. Again, talk to people at your college because it is possible that if you failed the ALST you can get a voucher to try again, and know that you may have to try again after that. Don’t have a panic attack. You are not alone. Everyone hates this test.

I’m still waiting to get my other test scores! I thought they said “early 2015” and since my calendar is filling up with deadlines I’d like to know where I stand.

Yeah, the new multi-subject test scores are delayed until “early 2015” because those people who work on cut scores are still figuring out what the passing standards will be so that more people will fail than was previously the case, even though the tests themselves are also harder now than they used to be. My advice: be prepared for a retake. Unless the Regents pass the amendment in April and that will give you another year.