My twitter spat with Core DeAngelis and Talk out of School podcast on the well-funded assault on our public schools

This morning I got into a twitter spat with Corey DeAngelis, the top voucher evangelist who, according to his bios, is currently a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a  senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, executive director at Educational Freedom Institute, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, and a board member at Liberty Justice Center.  Phew!  No wonder his tweets sound like they were written by bots. 

Yet he consistently refused to answer my simple question:

If you'd like to know the real motivations of Charles Koch and the many other billionaires  who want to dismantle public schools and are paying the duplicative salaries of guys like DeAngelis, please listen to the revealing podcast I did with Carol Burris and Charles Siler above. 

Carol is the Executive Director of Network for Public Education and Charles used to work for the privateers at the Goldwater Institute.   Some resources are below.  And please follow Carol at @carolburris & Charles  at @charles_siler 

Episode Notes

Videos of NYC rally on Feb. 3, 2023: elected officials and parent leaders explaining why they oppose raising the cap on charter schools​. https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2023/02/legislators-and-parents-speak-out.html  

Send a message​ to NY Governor and state legislators urging them not to raise the charter cap but require more accountability and transparency for the charter sector.  https://actionnetwork.org/letters/dont-raise-the-cap-on-charters-instead-dont-make-nyc-pay-their-rent-require-more-accountability?clear_id=true&source=direct_link

Class Size Matters NY state budget testimony, showing how Mayor Adams is planning to cut school budgets again next year despite an increase of $568 million in state Foundation Aid.  https://classsizematters.org/state-budget-testimony-doe-is-planning-on-making-even-more-cuts-to-school-budgets-despite-568-million-more-in-state-foundationaid/

The Federalist, Two States Now Have Universal School Choice and Yours Could be Next https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/27/two-states-now-have-universal-school-choice-and-yours-could-be-next/

The Nation, Robbing From the Poor to Educate the Rich https://www.thenation.com/article/society/vouchers-attack-public-education/ 

Peter Greene, Vouchers Are Not About School Choice. Here's How We Know. https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2023/01/vouchers-are-not-about-school-choice.html·    

Diane Ravitch, Charles Siler: a Former Privatizer Changes Sides https://dianeravitch.net/2021/05/04/charles-siler-a-former-privatizer-changes-sides/  

Ed Week, Voucher Programs Gains Strength with Help from the Courts https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/voucher-programs-gain-strength-with-help-from-the-courts-an-expert-says/2022/12

 American Prospect, Will the Education Culture War Backfire on Republicans? https://prospect.org/education/2023-02-08-republican-public-school-culture-war/

Subscribe to Network for Public Education newsletter at https://networkforpubliceducation.org/ 

NPE Toolkit: School Privatization Explained https://networkforpubliceducation.org/privatization-toolkit/ 

NPE list of 76 state voucher bills  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wo04PewW20Y7SlPI3sgYNd7S_nM-OY9srzrEX0N1gqA/edit#gid=0

Education advocates and parents speak out against appointment of Joe Belluck to the Panel for Educational Policy

UPDATE 2/17/2022:  Belluck did not show up for the PEP meeting last night, and  reporter Madina Toure on twitter reported that he had withdrawn, and linked to a Politico article  behind the paywall..  

An article about this appointment was in yesterday's NY Post.

For immediate release: Feb. 15, 2022

Contact: Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

 

Education advocates and parents speak out against appointment of Joe Belluck to the Panel for Educational Policy

 

The news that Joe Belluck, chair of the SUNY charter committee, is going to be appointed to the NYC Board of Education, otherwise known as the Panel for Educational Policy, has sparked outrage among many education advocates and parents. 

SUNY has authorized nearly two thirds of the three hundred NYC charter schools, which together are now costing the NYC Department of Education more than $2.5 billion per year.  These include many of the most controversial and the fastest growing charters,  including Success Academy, which has been found guilty of violating student civil rights in both the federal courts and by the State Education Department, as well as violating student privacy rights by the US Department of Education and the state.  The Success Academy network is also the focus of an ongoing investigation by the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education.

According to Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, “Appointing Joe Belluck to the PEP is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house – a huge conflict of interest given how the interests of charters are diametrically opposed to our public schools, by taking away their resources and space.  Moreover, Belluck has allowed the charter schools authorized by SUNY to violate the privacy of students year after year, and to illegally push out struggling kids. One has to question whether he has the interests of any NYC child at heart.”

As Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, pointed out, “Pro-charter hedge funders and other billionaires gave the Adams campaign nearly $7 million, including one million dollars donated by controversial hedge-funder and Success Academy board member Daniel Loeb.  I guess they’re getting their money’s worth with this appointment.”

“The fact that Mayor Adams is appointing a charter school authorizer to the Panel for Education Policy further underscores the need to reform Mayoral control,” said Naila Rosario, a public school parent and President of NYC Kids PAC.  “We need a more democratically elected Board of Education that will work to protect and strengthen our public schools, rather than undermine them for the purposes of campaign donors who favor privatization."

####

Talk out of School podcast on charter schools getting PPP funds and how teachers and parents should talk to kids about race and racism

This morning on the Talk out of School podcast on WBAI, I spoke to Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, about their research on charter schools that applied for funds under the Payroll Protection Program,  meant for struggling small businesses. Then Takiema Bunche-Smith, executive director of Bank Street College's Center on Culture, Race, and Equity, joined us with advice for teachers and parents on how to discuss race and racism with kids.

Please listen and check out the resources below.  You can also subscribe to the podcast here.

Charter schools and the Payroll Protection Program
Carol Burris and Marla Kilfoyle, Did some charter schools double-dip in federal coronavirus relief funding?, Washington Post
Erica Green, Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief, NY Times
Network for Public Education, What do you think? Are charter schools public schools or small businesses?
Email info@networkforpubliceducation.org if you discover that charter schools in your community have applied for or received PPP funds.

Resources about race and racism in schools and the larger society
Center on Culture, Race and Equity:  Equity & Culturally Responsive Resources and Black Lives Matters at Schools Symposium
Imani Perry, Racism is Terrible. Blackness is Not, Atlantic
Howard Zinn,  A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn,  A Young People’s History of the United States
Beverly Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race
Shawn Ginwright, The Future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement, Medium

Talk of out School - join us next Wed. on WBAI at 10 AM with Wendy Lecker and Senator John Liu

Next week on Wednesday Sept 18 at 10 AM, I will have two guests, "Talk out of School": attorney Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center, who will bring us up to date on the class size lawsuit of on nine NYC parents vs the state and city of New York for their failure to lower class size.

My other guest will be  Senator John Liu, chair of the NYC Education Committee in the State Senate, who will tell us what new laws, funding levels and other developments we may expect in the coming legislative session that affect our public schools. I always find what goes on in Albany to be very mysterious - hopefully straight-talking Senator Liu, who was formerly a City Council member and NYC Comptroller, will help us undo some of that mystery.  Please listen in at 99.5 FM or at wbai.org and call in at 212-209-2877.

Also, if you haven't yet, please check out our first show from last Wednesday, co-hosted with Carol Burris.  We focused on the diversity and integration proposals of the School Diversity Advisory Group, with guests Shino Tanikawa of the SDAG, and Alex Rodriguez and Tiffani Torres of Teens Take Charge.  You can livestream or download the program here.

Shino and co-host Carol Burris at the WBAI studio - check out the words on the wall we aren't allowed to say on radio.

Queens forum with AOC on how our schools must make every child feel like they matter

There was an amazing education forum yesterday with standing room only. Thanks to Jackson Heights People for Public Schools for organizing it. Among the wonderful speakers were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the district in Congress,  NY Senators Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, who represent the district in the Legislature, as well as Senators Robert Jackson and John Liu.
Among the terrific education advocates who spoke were Johanna Garcia of NYC Opt out, Maria Bautista of AQE, Carol Burris of Network for Public Education, Diane Ravitch, Kate Menken  of the NYS Association for Bilingual Education and me. 

I was thrilled to be there and meet AOC, who spoke eloquently about how her family had moved out of the Bronx for good schools, and how no one should ever have to move from their home or to a charter school because the public schools aren't good enough.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Jackson Heights education forum from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Jackson Heights education forum from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

My presentation on the fundamental inequities of NYC schools and what we need to do to make every child feel like they matter by lowering class size is below.

Please help us stop John King's "test and punish" ESSA regulations

John King, now US Education Secretary, is up to his old tricks and is trying to eliminate all the flexibility that Congress intended the new law called ESSA to achieve.  He instead wants to require that states punish schools with high opt out numbers and to impose a single grade on all schools-- which NYC wisely moved away from.  Other problems with the proposed regs are below. 

Please take a minute to leave a comment on the US ED Gov site on these proposed regs by using the NPE suggestions below -- and click on the link to send a letter to your members of Congress; if you can, try to edit the letter a bit so it doesn't register as spam.   thanks! 

We urge you to take a stand against the proposed regulations drafted by U.S. Secretary of Education John King for implementing the accountability provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  Although the intent of ESSA was to put an end to the “test and punish” regime of NCLB and give more flexibility to the states, in some ways the draft regulations are even more punitive and prescriptive than under NCLB.

For example, although ESSA permits states to pass laws allowing parents to opt their children out of taking the state tests, the draft regulations would require states to harshly punish or label as failing, schools in which more than 5% of students opt out.

The regulations would also require that every public school in the country receive a single grade--based primarily on test scores and other strictly academic factors -- even though the law properly leaves it up to the states to devise their own grading systems within certain limits. This would impose simplistic and damaging school grades that have already been found defective in many states and districts across the country.


In short, these proposed regulations would micro-manage the ability of states to create their own accountability systems, and take away the opportunity for parents and educators to have a real voice in their school accountability system.

It is imperative that we push back now while there is still time to change course. We need you to do two things as soon as you can:

1.     Please cut and paste the comments below the line into the area for comments on the US Department of Education website, which you will find by clicking here – or revise them according to your liking.

2.     Complete our Action Alert and send a letter to your own representatives urging them to block these destructive regulations. We make it easy to do! Just click here.

It is critically important that you take the time to try to improve these regulations, before it’s too late – and stand up for our public schools and students.

Although the comment period is open until August 1, we ask that you take action as soon as possible and preferably by Tuesday, June 29 because the Senate is questioning Sec. King on Wednesday. Thanks for your help!
Carol Burris, Executive Director of NPE
___________________________________________________________
Please cut and paste the text below here, or revise if you prefer.
 
I oppose the following proposed regulations as contrary to the language and spirit of ESSA and because they will impose damaging and overly prescriptive mandates on our public schools.
In each case, the US Department of Education is foisting its own preferences while tying the hands of states, districts, parents, and educators to devise their own accountability systems, as ESSA was supposed to encourage. Specifically:

1. Draft regulation 200.15: This would force states to intervene aggressively and/or fail schools in which more than 5% of students chose not to take the state tests. This violates the provision in ESSA recognizing “a State or local law regarding the decision of a parent to not have the parent’s child participate in the academic assessments”


Recommendation: This regulation should be deleted. States should be able to exercise their right to determine what measures should be taken if students opt out, free of federal intrusion.

2. Draft regulation 200.13
The law requires states to create a growth score as an indicator for elementary and middle schools. Secretary King has inserted “based on the reading/language arts and mathematics assessments” into the regulation. This would prevent states from creating their own measures of student learning across the curriculum, based on factors other than standardized test scores.

Recommendation: The language “based on the reading/language arts and mathematics assessments” should be deleted from the regulation so that states have the freedom to devise their own measures of student growth.


3. Draft regulation 200.14

The law requires that there be four accountability indicators. The fourth is a school quality indicator that is not based on test scores or graduation rates. States have the freedom to include school climate data, parent engagement, or other factors related to school quality. The proposed regulation insists that such measures prove by research how they are linked to achievement or graduation rates, therefore restricting what states can include.

Recommendation: This regulation should be amended by allowing states to encourage improvements in school climate, safety, engagement, or other factors that may or may not be directly linked to academic achievement, but are important in their own right.


4. Draft regulation 200.17

Proposed 200.17 would require that the test scores and graduation rates of any subgroup (such as students with an IEP or disadvantaged students) of at least 30 students be measured for accountability purposes. Both NCLB and the ESSA leave the decision of minimum subgroup size for the states to decide. The regulations argue that group size of 30 is sufficient to provide a fair and reliable rating, but this claim has no basis in research. It should be noted that with a group size of 30, even 2 absent students will push the school below the 95% participation requirement.

Recommendation:

The minimum group size should be decided by states, as the law requires, after consultation with researchers, given the high-stakes consequences for schools.

5. Draft regulation 200.18
This would require that each school receive a single “summative” grade or rating, derived from combining at least three of the four indicators used to assess its performance.  Yet imposing a single grade on schools has been shown in states and districts across the nation to be overly simplistic, unreliable and unfair, and is nowhere mentioned in the law. This is why it has been severely criticized in Florida, for example, and why NYC has moved away from such a system. The proposed regulations go further and forbid states from boosting a school’s rating if it has made substantial improvement on the 4^th or non-academic category.

By doing so, the US Department of Education is again undermining the right of each state to determine its own rating system, and whether it chooses to provide a full or narrow picture of school performance.


 Recommendation: DoE should allow states to retain the authority given to them by ESSA to create their own rating systems, and to determine their own weighting of various factors. The federal government should be prevented from requiring that schools be labelled with a single grade, just because that happens to be its own policy preference.

Breaking: the Lederman decision and Gallup poll: the beginning of the end of high-stakes testing?

Today, the court decision in the Sheri Lederman case was issued.  Judge Roger McDonough of the NY State Supreme Court concluded that rating teachers via their students' growth scores on the state exams is "arbitrary and capricious."  He cited a wealth of evidence from affidavits of academic experts such as Linda Darling-Hammond, Sean Corcoran, Aaron Pallas, Carol Burris, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Jesse Rothstein  and others, showing that the system of evaluating teachers by means of test scores is unreliable, invalid, unfair and makes no sense.  The full court decision is below.

Here is the message from her attorney (and husband) Bruce Lederman:

"I am very pleased to attach a 13 page decision by J
udge Roger McDonough which concludes that Sheri has “met her high burden and established that Petitioner’s growth score and rating for the school year 2013-2014 are arbitrary and capricious.” The Court declined to make an overall ruling on the rating system in general because of new regulations in effect. However, decision makes (at page 11) important observations that VAM is biased against teachers at both ends of the spectrum, disproportionate effects of small class size, wholly unexplained swings in growths scores, strict use of curve.

The decision should qualify as persuasive authority for other teachers challenging growth scores throughout the County. Court carefully recites all our expert affidavits, and discusses at some length affidavits from Professors Darling-Hammond, Pallas, Amrein-Beardsley, Sean Corcoran and Jesse Rothstein as well as Drs. Burris and Lindell . It is clear that the evidence all of these amazing experts presented was a key factor in winning this case since the Judge repeatedly said both in Court and in the decision that we have a “high burden” to meet in this case. The Court wrote that the court “does not lightly enter into a critical analysis of this matter … [and] is constrained on this record, to conclude that petitioner has met her high burden” ...To my knowledge, this is the first time a judge has set aside an individual teacher’s VAM rating based upon a presentation like we made.

THANKS to all who helped in this endeavor."

At the same time, a national poll was released by the Gallup organization showing how most parents, teachers, students and administrators do not believe state exams are useful:

 Most teachers find their quality of the state exams are only "fair" or "poor":

And most families, whatever their income level, do not believe that these exams improve learning:

Let's hope that together these poll results, along with the Lederman decision, sound the death knell for the obsession with high-stakes testing that has overtaken our schools.

NY Judge finds rating teachers through growth (test) scores "arbitrary and capricious" by Leonie Haimson

Videos up from Public Education Nation!

Last Saturday at the Brooklyn New School, the Network for Public Education held a terrific forum.  Here are two videos, Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, who wrapped up the day.  Diane needs no introduction; Jitu is aneducation organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) in Chicago, and the national director of the Journey for Justice campaign. He also teaches African-American history at St. Leonard’s Adult High School, the only accredited high school in that nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated.

Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

See also the wonderful panel of Carol Burris, Takiema Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja, speaking about testing and the common Core.

Testing and the Common Core from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

2014 Annual "Skinny" Awards Dinner! Please buy your ticket today!

On Monday, June 9 we will be holding our annual “Skinny” award dinner, to honor three extraordinary individuals who have given us the real “skinny” about our public schools. 

   

Liz Phillips, Principal of PS 321

Our honorees this year are Liz Phillips, principal of PS 321 in Brooklyn, Carol Burris, principal of South Side HS on Long Island, and Patrick Sullivan, former Manhattan representative to the Panel for Education Policy.  

Liz and Carol are leaders in one of the most exciting developments of this or any year  --principals who are speaking out against the high-stakes and low quality of the NY State exams.  

Carol Burris, principal of South Side HS

Patrick stood up for NYC parents and consistently challenged the DOE to justify their damaging policies during the Bloomberg years.  

Patrick Sullivan, NYC public school parent
and former Manhattan representative on the PEP

Diane Ravitch will be there to help give out the awards; always an inspiration to all of us in the “resistance,”  fighting to protect and strengthen public education and against the forces of corporate reform.

Please buy your tickets now, to reserve your seat for a terrific  four course dinner at Bocca Di Bacco at 191 7^th Ave (at 21^st St).

If you cannot attend, please donate to our organization if you would like our work on student privacy, parent rights, and class size to continue, or simply to honor these three heroes who have courageously spoken out,  when others would have remained quiet.

Our annual dinner is always one of the most enjoyable evenings of the year, and one that you will not want to miss. And this year,  with the demise of inBloom, we have something special to celebrate.  -- thanks. Leonie Haimson, Executive Director

NYSAPE: Flanagan’s Proposed Legislation Insult to the People of New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  December 13, 2013

More information contact:

Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com

Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com

www.nysape.org

 

Senator Flanagan’s Proposed Legislation Insult to the People of New York

During the past few months, Senator John Flanagan of Long Island held a series of hearings across the state entitled, “The Regents Reform Agenda: Assessing our Progress”.   Senator Flanagan, his colleagues and members of the State Education Department listened to a steady stream of concerned citizens express their grave concerns regarding the implementation of Common Core, high stakes testing, APPR, and student data sharing.  The overwhelming majority of speakers were very critical of the performance of the New York State Education Department, and the leadership of Commissioner John King and Chancellor Merryl Tisch.

Yesterday, December 12, 2013, Senator Flanagan released his findings along with proposed legislation: (http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/nys-education-chairman-flanagan-calls-immediate-sed-action-common-core-and-unveils-pac). Unfortunately, the four bills fall completely short of addressing parent concerns.

Bianca Tanis, New Paltz public school parent and Founding Member of NYS Allies for Public Education says, "These bills fall short of the mark. I am sorely disappointed by the lack of protection afforded to students. The bills do not address the concerns of nearly all who took the time to attend, speak out, and testify.”

According to Carol Burris, Ed.D. principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre New York, “The P-2 Senate bill S6006 http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6006-2013 appears to be an attempt to blame schools for the extra testing caused by the teacher evaluation system mandated by the legislature. It allows schools to re-write APPR plans to exclude pre-tests, but such pre-tests were given in the fall. Its passage this spring would have little to no impact on students. Second, it does not relieve schools of the obligation to incorporate student achievement in teacher evaluations and provides no valid or reliable alternative measure.”

The Unnecessary Testing Senate Bill S6008 http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6008-2013 also does not address the serious concerns raised by parents regarding standardized testing and young children. The bill allows schools to test pre-K to grade 2 students, using "BOCES or regionally developed assessments that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms." Such tests, as described, meet the definition of a standardized tests. “Ironically, S6008 both bans and encourages standardized testing at the same time,” says Jeanette Deutermann, Bellmore public school parent and Founder of Long Island Opt-Out (of testing) group.  Deutermann further states, “There will be an explosion the number parent refusing the state tests.”

Lisa Rudley, Ossining public school parent and Founding Member of NYS Allies for Public Education says, “The Privacy Protection Bill S6007 http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6007-2013 would not stop the state from sending students’ sensitive data to inBloom, nor does it allow for parents the option of “opting out” – even though 78% of the New York school board members in a recent survey said parents should have that right.  It does however, add another level of bureaucracy by calling for a “Chief Privacy Officer” under the control of the Commissioner – who has shown he has no respect for parent rights or student privacy – and calls for penalties to be issued, but only after data breaches have occurred. The Senator missed the mark on parental rights.” Rudley further says, “Making the Commissioner of Education essentially responsible for the “Parents Bill of Rights” further indicates that our explicit concerns in trusting Commissioner King were ignored.”

Although we applaud a serious review of the testing system in the Truth-In-Testing Senate Bill S6009  http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6009-2013, however, until an objective, in-depth audit is conducted, Common Core testing should be suspended.  “Parents do not need an audit to know that their young children are being subjected to too much testing and test preparation. The audit could be conducted using 2013 testing conditions, items and results” said, Tim Farley, a parent and a principal of the Ichabod Crane School in Kinderhook, New York.

NYS Allies for Public Education are deeply disappointed that the Senator did not propose meaningful legislation that addresses the problems created by the hastily enacted Regents Reform Agenda.  Parental trust in our New York State leaders is rapidly eroding.

 New York State Allies for Public Education represents forty-five grassroots parent groups from every corner of the Empire State. The organizations are proud to stand with the parents, community members and fellow educators in NYSAPE to call for a change in direction and policy beginning with new leadership at the New York State Education Department.

###

Carol Burris and Ethan Young on the Common Core and testing

Last night, principal Carol Burris of South Shore High School on Long Island and Tennessee student Ethan Young were on the Huckabee Show on Fox News.  Carol was named principal of the year in New York State and is the author of a petition against the state's teacher evaluation system in New York that more than one third of the principals in the state have signed onto.

Ethan's brilliant speech blasting the Common Core before the Knox Co. school board has gone viral on YouTube, BuzzFeed and elsewhere. Their appear appearance on the show is in two segments below; Carol and Ethan come on at about seven  minutes in the first segment.

Apparently Huckabee has been getting heat from his audience for his support of Common Core and testing,so the first and last part of the show features his attempt to clarify his views -- not altogether successfully.

It is fascinating how the conservative news shows have picked up on the grassroots rebellion against the Common Core, testing and student data sharing before the liberal cable channels like MSNBC; but still seem somewhat ambivalent -- probably because the Common Core high-stakes tests are so useful in allowing the bashing of public schools and teachers.

Shock Doctrine: five reasons not to trust the results of the new state tests

Dear parents: As you may have probably heard, the new state test scores were released to the press and they are disastrous. 

Only 31% of students in New York State passed the new Common Core exams in reading and math. More than one third -- or 36% -- of 3^rd graders throughout the state got a level I in English; which means they essentially flunked.  In NYC, only 26 percent of students passed the exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math – meaning they had a level 3 or 4.  Only 5% of students in Rochester passed.  

Though children’s individual scores won’t be available to parents until late August, I urge you not to panic when you see them.  My advice is not to believe a word of any of this. 

The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence.  They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.  

Here are five reasons not to trust the new scores:

1-     1. The NY State Education Department has not been able to produce a decent, reliable exam with a credible scoring system in at least ten years. That’s why there have been wild gyrations from year to year in the percent of students making the grade.  For example, 77% of NYS students were at level 3 or 4 in English in 2009; this dropped to 53% in 2010 and 31% now. The last two years of exams created by Pearson have been especially disastrous; from the multiple errors in questions and scoring on the 2012 exams (including the infamous Pineapple passage)  to the epic fail of this year’s tests – which were too long, riddled with ambiguous questions and replete with commercial logos for products like Mug Root Beer.  Top students were unable to finish these shoddy exams, and many left in tears and had anxiety attacks.  To make things worse, the exams featured reading passages drawn straight from Pearson textbooks which were assigned to some students in the state and not to others.

2-     2. For nearly a decade, from at least 2003-2010, there was rampant test score inflation in NY state, with many of the same people who are now supporting the current low scores claiming with equal conviction that the earlier, rising test scores showed that NY State and NYC schools were improving rapidly.  The state test score bubble  allowed NYC Mayor Bloomberg to coast to a third term, renew mayoral control and maintain that his high-stakes testing regime was working, when the reality  was that, according to everyone who was paying attention, the exams had gotten overly predictable and the scoring too easy over time.  At the same time as the state exams showed huge increases, scores on the more reliable national exams called the NAEPs showed little progress. In fact, NYC made smaller gains on the NAEPs than nearly any other large school district in the country during these years.  

3.     3. The truth is that the new cut scores that determine the different proficiency levels on the state exams – which decide how many kids “pass” or are at Level 3 and 4 -- are arbitrary and set by Commissioner King.  He can set them to create the illusion that our schools are rapidly improving, as the previous Commissioner did, or he can set them to make it look that our public schools are failing, as King now is doing, to bolster support for his other policies.

4.     4. The primary evidence that Commissioner King now bases his overly-harsh cut scores upon is that the results are mirror the percent of students who test “proficient” or above on the NAEPs.  Yet while the NAEPs are reliable to discern trends in test scores, because they remain relatively stable over time, the cut scores that determine the various NAEP achievement levels are VERY controversial. See Diane Ravitch on how the NAEP’s benchmarks are “unreasonably high”; or this article that reveals that even the National Academy of Sciences has questioned the setting of the NAEP proficiency levels, and how many experts believe that level 2 on the NAEPs – or basic -- should be used instead to estimate which students are on track for college:

Fully 50% of 17-year-olds judged to be only basic by NAEP ultimately obtained four-year degrees. Just one third of American fourth graders were said to be proficient in reading by NAEP in the mid-1990s at the very time that international assessments of fourth-grade reading judged American students to rank Number Two in the world.

In fact, by using NAEP levels as support for his cut scores, King is either confused or disingenuous about what these levels really represent.

5.     5. So why are King, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein and the billionaires like Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch who are pulling the strings, so determined to prove that more that 69% of the students throughout New York State are failing?  This is the Shock Doctrine at work.  Naomi Klein has observed that when you scare people enough, it is easier to persuade them to allow you to make whatever radical changes you want, since the status quo will be perceived as so disastrous. In the case of these men, they would like to convince parents that their corporate agenda, including a steady diet of developmentally unsound standards, the Common Core’s rigid quota for “informational text” and overemphasis on testing,  and their favorite policies of closing schools and firing teachers based on test scores, expanding charter schools and online learning, data-mining and outsourcing educational services to for-profit vendors will somehow improve the quality of education in our state, even though there is little or no evidence for any of these policies.  

NYSED has even tried to persuade parents to accept their unethical plan to share the personal data of the state’s children with inBloom and for-profit vendors by claiming this will help ensure these students are “college and career ready.”  (By the way, as Politico reported last week, North Carolina became the fifth state to pull out of inBloom; now only New York, Illinois, and Colorado are still involved, and Massachusetts is sitting on the fence.) 

Joel Klein, who wrote an oped for Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post this morning in support of the new exams, appropriately entitled the The Good News in Lower Test Scores, now heads Amplify, Rupert Murdoch’s online learning division, which is the largest contractor for inBloom.  For Klein and Murdoch, the drastic fall in state test scores is indeed good news, because it will help them market their computer tablets, data systems, and software products to make more profit.  In the case of Pearson, the world’s largest educational corporation, more schools will now be convinced to buy their textbooks, workbooks, and test prep materials, as 900 NYC schools have now done – in hope that their students may do better on the Pearson-state exams, that may even include the same reading passages as happened this year.

Rick Hess, the conservative commentator at Education Week, revealed the motives behind the promoters of these exams in a column called the “Common Core Kool-aid”:

First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes… Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace "reform." However, most of today's proffered remedies--including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move "effective" teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds--don't have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about….Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the "reform" agenda. 

My advice is not to let this ruin your summer or your view of your child’s school.  When you receive your children’s scores, do not allow the results to wreck their self-confidence.  These new Common Core exams and harsh proficiency levels are meant to scare parents.  

To achieve their ideological ends, politicians, billionaires, and educrats are not only willing to define your children in terms of their test scores, but also to redefine them as failures – to help them implement their mechanistic, reductionist, and ultimately inhumane vision of education.  It is all a high-stakes game, carried out by people with little thought about how these wild test score gyrations affect the self-esteem of the children whose fate they claim to care about.

For an eloquent critique of the callous thinking at work, please also read Carol Burris, NYS principal of the year, in today’s Washington Post, and Diane Ravitch, on the political motives of the people who are setting these standards.

Here is the NYT on the decline in scores, the NYSED press release and slides, and the district and school-based aggregate results.