What was the test like today? Please leave your comments below!

Today is the first day of the NY State ELA exams for grades 3-8. 

As in previous years, we are asking teachers, parents and students to comment on how these exams went in their schools and if there were errors, ambiguous questions, product placements, or reading passages too difficult or inappropriate for the grade level of the students tested, as has occurred each year since the exams were redesigned to "align" with the Common Core. 

Remember, it was on this blog in 2012 that we first reported on the Pineapple question on the 8th grade exam, which quickly gained national renown and still lives on as a symbol of ridiculous, poorly written standardized exams and the lack of accountability of the testing companies.  Last year, the ELA exam was chock full of overly long, dense and grade-inappropriate reading passages with numerous typos, abstruse vocabulary and confusing questions.  Was the test better this year?  Please tell us below.

How did the ELA exams go today? Please let us know!

How were the NYS ELA exams today at your school?  Please use this blog as a discussion board.  We first found out about the infamous Pineapple passage on the 8th grade ELA exam in 2012 from a comment on this blog. 

I have heard second hand from my NYSAPE allies about opt out figures upstate and in Long Island at 70-80% at many schools, and at least one school in NYC.  I also heard secondhand that the 6th grade ELA exam had at least one reading passage at a 14.8 level on the Flesh Kincaid index -- which according to Wikipedia, indicates it is "best understood by university graduates." 

Feel free to post below opt out figures at your schools, or if you're a teacher, student, or principal, anything you found strange, incomprehensible, erroneous or not-so-unusual about the test today.  Thanks!

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

Pineapplegate and the media storm that has ensued

Credit: Bramhall Cartoons, Daily News

Here is a rather breathless account of what is now being called Pineapplegate.  I had no idea what a media storm would erupt as a result of Thursday’s blog post.  Please also be sure to fill out this short parent survey about the testing regime in NY State.  If you are a teacher, fill this one out, and if a principal fill this one.  These surveys were developed by the NYS principals who wrote the protest letter to the Commissioner, opposing the new teacher evaluation system.

On Thursday morning, on the train to Washington DC, I posted my piece revealing the absurd Pineapple reading passage and questions on the 8^th grade ELA exam. By the time I returned to NYC Friday night, NYS Education Commissioner John King had already released the full passage and its associated questions, and put out a statement, saying the section would not be scored because of their ambiguous nature of the questions.

Ever since, I haven’t had time to catch my breath about the plethora of articles being published about what is now being called Pineapplegate.   There are nearly seventy stories about the issue listed on Google News. 

The first media outlets to jump on the scandal late Thursday night were the Daily News (which credited this blog) and NY1.  By Friday afternoon, the Washington Post and Time magazine had blogged about it, and the Wall St. Journal interviewed Daniel Pinkwater, author of the original story from which the passage on the exam was based.

The NY Times reported on the story on Saturday, and though the reporter credited the Daily News rather than our blog with breaking the story, at least she had the good sense to quote Diane Ravitch and Debbie Meier.  Also on Saturday, the highly conservative Daily News ran an editorial blasting Commissioner King and Regent Merryl Tisch:

Allowing nonsense like “The Pineapple and the Hare” to be placed before New York students, many of whom found it absurd, gave testing foes powerful ammunition to argue that standardized exams cannot be trusted.

Tisch and King must a) get their acts together, b) recognize that they have no margin for error, c) build a consensus that their testing program is excellent, d) all of the above. The right answer is unambiguous and obvious.

The Fordham Institute, right wing home of many of the worst corporate reform ideas, carried a strong critique of the carelessness of NYS and the testing companies for including these indefensible questions, and strengthening the arguments of “anti-testing” advocates like me:

But the real outrage among those of us who care deeply about accountability is why these problems aren’t being caught earlier. For too long we have been focusing our attention on expanding the use of tests to more grades and more subject areas and increasing the consequences tied to the results of these tests without taking a hard look at the uneven quality of the tests themselves….’m sure this story will only add fuel to the anti-testing fire, and frankly, it would be very hard to argue that it shouldn’t. After all, how can we possibly hold students accountable to such poorly written questions aligned to such poorly written prose?

The NY Post reporter chimed in, adding new revelations about complaints rolling in about other passages on other ELA exams this year, including from teachers of deaf kids.

On Sunday, Daniel Pinkwater, the author of the original story, had an oped in the Daily News, calling these world’s dumbest test questions, and saying he got “dirty money” from “sleazy people” in return for allowing them use his story in their tests.

A teacher/blogger put out a clever parody, called The Fruitcake and the Big Banana, about Race to the Top and the damaging policies of the Obama administration.

Newsday reported that because the exams were so long and grueling this year, many students had trouble completing them, and some were so tired that they began to fill in answer sheets at random, a phenomenon known as “bubbling.”

About the only organization not to speak out is Pearson itself, which created these tests, using the same confusing reading passage about the Pineapple and the Hare, and ridiculous, unanswerable questions in at least six other states over SEVEN long years.  And to whose benefit, the NY State Education Department has decided to refuse to disclose their exams, even after students have taken them.

But never fear.  Pearson was paid $32 million for these tests, and the company’s pre-tax profits surged last year by 72%, totaling nearly $1.8 billion.  Meanwhile our school budgets are cut to the bone, class sizes are increasing each year, and our children are subjected to baffling high-stakes and expensive exams, with NO oversight and NO quality control.   Pearson is also spending more on lobbying to further expand their market and ensure that the government encourages even more absurd and unreliable high-stakes tests for years to come.

Oh, and the trip to DC?  I was with a group of Parents Across America representatives from throughout the country, who attended a parent meeting at t the US Department of Education. We also met with Congressional staffers.  Nearly all of these inside-the-beltway officials were absolutely clueless about how outraged parents have become about the expansion of high-stakes testing in their children’s schools, and the hugely negative effect it has had.

Clearly, a revolution is brewing, but whether the corporate reformers will have the sense to realize and step back before it is too late is still uncertain.  Perhaps only the Pineapple knows for sure, and he’s not talking.  As one teacher tweeted over the weekend, Pearson has moved it to an undisclosed location.

See also video from WABC news below.  And don’t forget to take these parent and teacher surveys!

Survey For Parents, Survey for Teachers; Survey for Principals.