NYSED official agrees: state ELA exams given to English Language learners provide no useful information to their teachers or parents

Tomorrow at 11: 30 AM, Sunday April 11, I will be appearing on Tiempo, on ABC, hosted by Joe Torres, talking about why all kids but especially English Language Learners should opt out of next week’s ELA state exams.  The program taped last week.  English Language Learners make up 14.4% of the total NYC public school population.

I appeared with Angelica Infante-Green, NY State Associate Commissioner of the Office of Bilingual Education.  To my surprise, Ms. Infante-Green immediately agreed that the state ELA exam is useless in terms of the information they provide about ELL students to teachers, parents or schools.  She also said that because the test was so difficult, it could not show "growth" and thus was an invalid measure to evaluate teachers with ELL students. Yet she strongly opposed opting out of the test, and continued to argue that it could hurt the school’s funding if too many students opted out – a point that has been refuted by other NYS Education officials.

Ms. Infante-Green revealed that NYSED had sent in a waiver request to the US Department of Education, asking if they could exempt English Language Learners from the test for at least two years after they enter this country, instead of only one year, which is the mandate now. She said that they really wanted to exempt such students from the ELA exam for at least three years, but didn't think they could possibly get such a waiver.

Below is some of the research I did in advance by asking teachers and professors, expert in this area.  This is important information to share, especially as I didn’t have the time to make all these points

Please also read Katie Lapham’s terrific list of reasons to opt out, and the oped in the Daily News today by Arthur Goldstein, a high school ESL teacher.

Katie Lapham: first grade dual language teacher, previously 5th grade ESL teacher:

Children take the grades 3-8 ELA test after just one year in the system (even though it takes a lot longer than that to become fluent in academic English). Looking at test score data for ELLs highlights how unreliable and misleading the scores are. Only three percent of ELLs "passed" the 2014 ELA. It's ridiculous to make the claim that 97% of ELLs are "failing" in ELA. 

The scores are useless to me and do not reflect the growth ELLs make in the classroom.

The tests are abusive: ELLs get extended time (time and a half) on the tests; instead of 90 minutes per day for six days (3 days for ELA, 3 days for math), 5th grade ELLs, for example, are entitled to 135 minutes each testing day. That’s a total of 13.5 hours! 

Our ELLs are subjected to even more tests afterwards. Following the NYS ELA and math tests, ELLs are mandated to take the 4-part NYSESLAT which assesses their proficiency in the reading, writing, listening and speaking of English. The reading and writing sub-tests resemble the NYS ELA test.   This means hours and hours more of testing.

Laura Kaplan, Adjunct Professor of bilingual education at Hunter College:

All research in the field suggests that it takes English language learners 5-7 years to develop Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in English, the kind of academic knowledge that is tested on standardized tests (Cummins, 1979, 1981, 1984). 

This is quite a different kind of knowledge than conversational English (Basic Interpersonal Communication - BICS) which can be picked up in 1-3 years.  Just because a student is conversationally proficient in English, this proficiency should not be confused with academic mastery that a native English speaker might be expected to have at the same age.

The testing is totally antithetical to all research on English language learning. It is inhumane and cruel and shows us absolutely nothing.  Testing negatively impacts instructional time which could be productively spent learning English, not test-prep, and fosters resentment, decreased motivation, and the highest dropout rates of any other population (ELLs). Shame on the SED for propagating tests which have no educational value.

Watch my appearance on Tiempo with Joe Torres here- April 12th, 2015 show

John King's decision on teacher evaluation: voodoo or wake-up call for "bad" teachers?

UPDATE: the DOE says the evaluation system will require new assessments in K-2 and subjects like art and gym.  This puts them on a collision course with the growing opt out movement, with parents already sick and tired of all the testing.

Also, King's full plan -- with all 240 pages -- is posted, and is shown to be a bureaucratic nightmare.  I noticed on the press release his reiterated judgment that "Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall."  This means despite the claim that there are multiple measures, one year's worth of unreliable and inherently volatile test scores will trump all.

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Lots of news and commentary this morning on Commissioner John King’s

From the front page of today's NY Post

decision on a new NYC teacher evaluation system. 

Here's the one I like best:  Jersey Jazzman's Exclusive!  First look at NY Student surveys for Teacher evaluation (based on the the fact that starting in 3rd grade, the results of student surveys will be part of the formula.)  See also NYC Educator:  Highlights of Reformy John's New Decree.

NYC Doenuts points out that the 20% that was supposed to be based upon "locally-determined measures" to allow for flexibility will have to be selected from a pre-determined menu selected by John King: Making Sense Of the New Eval System.

Before we get to the mainstream media, which is mainly limited to repeating the pronouncements of Cuomo, Bloomberg, King, Walcott and Mulgrew about how much this system will benefit NYC children,  let us recall the celebration of these folks at City Hall in 2010, when NY state was awarded Race to the Top funds.  What have we gotten from the collective efforts of these men to win these funds?

Double the number of charters taking space and resources from our NYC public schools (since the charter cap was lifted to win more points ), the adoption of untested Common Core standards along with quotas that require 50% informational text assigned to students starting in Kindergarten, 70% in 6^th grade and thereafter, the privacy invading, Big Brother data cloud that is called  inBloom Inc. (which is now apparently the state longitudinal data system required by RTTT), and this year's Common Core-aligned state exams, that were full of ambiguous questions, product placements, and overly long reading passages, causing children to vomit, cry and get asthma attacks.  Not to mention the loss of $250 million in state education funds when the city and the DOE failed to agree on a teacher evaluation deal by the deadline earlier this year.

What will we get in the future? More Common Core tests, to be given on computers that will be time-consuming and expensive; and most likely, more teachers dismissed based on a formula that few educators and no reputable statistician supports.  In the future, I predict, the slogan "Race to the Top" will be held in even lower regard than "No Child Left Behind" is today,  as a grab-bag of some of the most absurd, ideologically-driven education programs ever foisted on the American people.

Here is the uncritical round-up from the mainstream media:  

Daily News:  City’s new evaluation system makes firing underperforming teachers easier;

CBS: City, Teachers' Union Praise State-Imposed Teacher Evaluation System 

NY Times: New York to Evaluate Teachers With New System 

NYPost:  New evaluations finally hold New York City teachers accountable ... -    

Bonus: the NY Post article quotes Arthur Goldstein, the only critic cited in any of these pieces, who calls the new system "voodoo."   

Shameless plug: Arthur, along with another prominent critic of the junk science of teacher evaluation, Gary Rubinstein,  will be honored at our annual "Skinny" award dinner on June 18; be there or be square.

School closing hearings at John Ericsson JHS and Grover Cleveland HS

The following is by Pat Dobosz, a teacher and a graduate of John Ericsson MS 126:

On Wednesday, April 4 we attended the closing hearing at John Ericsson MS 126 in Brooklyn. This was a "restart" school that is now becoming a "turnaround" school. This euphemism means it will close, lose 50% of its staff and get a new number and name. We heard many pleas from students, teachers, parents and politicians to give this school a chance. It has a new principal that everyone respects, and was just put under the restart model in September. Assemblyman Joe Lentol said that it was an insult to the new principal to switch gears now.  This school has 40% of its students receiving special education services, compared to 15.64% citywide. 25% of its student body are English Language Learners, several of whom spoke passionately about the education and services they were receiving at 126.

John Ericsson has suffered neglect for many years because of poor administrators that were allowed to bring it down. The DOE has a moral obligation to give support so that it  can once again be a model middle school as it was when I went there as a student.  These hearings are heartbreaking as the school communities speak on behalf of their second "families." It is outrageous that NY State, Bloomberg and The DOE/PEP turn a deaf ear to public outcry.

My school past will be only captured in yearbooks. My elementary school is now co-located with Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charter, my high school has been closed, and now they want to close my Junior High School. The wonderful education and memories I had at each of these schools will be only that, memories. My future grandchildren and friends' children will not have the pleasure of saying they went to the school their parents went to.

Below are videos of the  emotional Grover Cleveland HS "turnaround" hearings on April 2. 

Francis Lewis HS' dynamic  chapter leader and teacher Arthur Goldstein asks: How would you rate Mayor Bloomberg based on his record on overcrowding and class size?  Highly effective, effective, developing, or ineffective?  Based on his failed record, perhaps it is Tweed, not Grover Cleveland, that needs to be closed.

Grover Cleveland teacher: Mayor Bloomberg, shame on you! We will not let you hurt our students!



Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, and an alumnus of Grover Cleveland HS, who asks people to attend the PEP meeting of April 26: "The battle to keep this school open is not over."



Assemblymember Cathy Nolan, chair of the NYS Assembly Education member, also a proud graduate of Grover Cleveland HS.  "There is something to be said for a large, neighborhood comprehensive high school.  It was Cleveland that helped give me a wide variety of experiences, and gave me an opportunity to help me learn who I was.  Grover Cleveland is a part of me." The question is, is anyone in the Mayor's office or DOE listening?

Million dollar ravioli

Amazing piece by Arthur Goldstein, teacher at Francis Lewis HS at Gotham Schools about the last week's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

Excerpt: So city kids can't have regular teachers. They can't have reasonable class sizes, or even legal ones. They can't have decent classrooms, or adequate gymnasium space. They can't have lunch at a reasonable hour. Still, as a result of this meeting, whenever they do get lunch, city kids will finally get the million-dollar ravioli they deserve.

See also James Eterno's comments at the PEP about what's happened due to budget cuts at Jamaica HS.

Dueling opeds in today's Daily News on Mayoral control

See the great oped by Arthur Goldstein in today’s Daily News against Mayoral control:

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our federal and state governments have checks and balances so no one person has total control, which is a synonym for dictatorship. City kids need reasonable class sizes and decent facilities. Under Mayor Bloomberg, class sizes just took their biggest leap in 10 years.

An oped from the opposite point of view by Marc Sternberg, the principal of Bronx Lab is here, with the headline “Accountability saved my dying school.” The truth is very different, of course.

Bronx Lab is one of the small schools that replaced Evander Childs, a large failing school in the Bronx. Yet rather than save Evander Childs, DOE allowed it to die, and instead opened new schools with completely different types of students in its place.

As Eduwonkette noted in 2007, before Evander had been finally closed:

“On every dimension, the Evander incoming 9th graders are lagging behind academically - they are more likely to be in special education or to be classified as ELL, they are much more likely to be overage for their grade (i.e. they had been retained before), their attendance rates in junior high school were much lower, and they were much less likely to be proficient in reading and math.

Of particular note is the praise showered on Bronx Lab at the end of the 2004-2005 school year - see this NY Times article - but 46.6% of their kids were proficient in reading and 52.7% in math when they walked in the door, while Evander's entering students passed at rates of only 11.1% in reading and 12.8% in math. How did the reporter miss this? ….Comparing these schools is either incredibly foolish or incredibly dishonest - and I don't think the folks running NYC schools are foolish.”

What else? Oh yes, according to the DOE’s statistics, Bronx Lab has class sizes this year ranging from 13 to 25. Meanwhile, most of our large high schools – including the one that Arthur Goldstein teaches at – continue to have class sizes of 34, and the DOE refuses to help them improve by giving them the space and resources to reduce class size, despite a state mandate that would require this.

In fact Joel Klein recently said that if he had his way, he would shrink the teaching force by 30% -- which would consign the schools attended by most of our neediest students to class sizes of 45 or more.

This is the future we face, if Bloomberg and Klein are left unimpeded by any checks and balances, as is currently recommended by the billionaire boys club of Bloomberg, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch. None of whom, incidentally, would ever send their own children to a school where class sizes are larger than fifteen.