Why dumping the ESSA regs is not a big deal; and what is

There has been an unnecessary amount of angst and ink spilled on the blogs and elsewhere over the fact that Congress has voted on eliminating the ESSA regulations on accountability.  It bears repeating that the law itself -- the Every Student Succeeds Act -- still exists in force and is quite prescriptive, for good or for ill only now just a little bit less so.  Every state must still give standardized exams annually to students in every in grades 3-8 and once in high school; must evaluate and rate schools mainly on the results of those exams plus graduation rates; and must intercede in schools rated in the lowest 5 percent.  The fact that the regulations were ditched by Congress changes very little.  What this instead has done is give states a little more flexibility in deciding what to do with schools with high opt out rates, which is a good thing in my view.  

See the EdWeek explainer on this:

The Obama administration wanted schools to take the testing participation requirement in the law seriously, so that states, districts, and educators could have data on how English-learners and students in special education were doing relative to their peers. So it used the now-dead-in-the-water regulations to call for states to take pretty dramatic actions for schools that didn't meet the 95 percent threshold. The choices laid out in the regs included lowering the school's overall rating or putting it on a list of schools deemed in need of improvement. The Obama regulations also allowed states to use their judgement, putting in harsher penalties for a school that had a really high opt-out rate vs. one that didn't quite hit the 95 percent participation threshold. Some Republicans, including Alexander, thought this went beyond the bounds of the law. 

Now that the regs are being killed? We go back to ESSA, as it was written originally. Schools still must test 95 of their kids. But their state gets to decide what happens if they don't meet that target.

What this piece doesn’t mention is that the law still requires that in every state’s accountability system, at least 95% of the students in each testing grade must be included in the denominator of the academic indicator for each school, whether they took the test or not.  Unfortunately, this language was incorporated into the law, even though it appeared to contradict other sections of ESSA, including that the Secretary of Education is prohibited from telling a state how school participation rates will be factored into its accountability system and cannot punish states that allow kids to opt out of exams.  

What this seemingly technical but very damaging requirement would seem to do is to force states to label schools with high opt out rates as failing – which would be a travesty especially in New York, where many otherwise high-performing schools had opt-out rates of 50% or more. s  Yet as NYSAPE and Class Size Matters pointed out in our memo to the Regents,  while the denominator may be specified in the law, there is nothing that specifies the numerator.  Thus, we propose that instead of counting opt-out students as having failed the state exams for the purpose of rating schools, the average test scores for the school’s overall student population or the subgroup they belong to should be substituted as their scores in the numerator. 

Now many of the Inside-the-Beltway education advocacy groups protested hugely against Congress’ elimination of the ESSA regs, arguing that this somehow would lessen the need for states to try to improve struggling schools and help low-scoring kids.  If they really cared about addressing low-performance rather than merely punishing schools with opt out rates, they should have supported this additional flexibility – to ensure that those schools that really need extra help are provided with the extra support they need.

Of course, the biggest problem with ESSA is that we have no idea whether the support offered struggling schools will work to improve them.  Ever since NCLB, the federal government under Bush and then Obama hasn’t encouraged or required positive, effective reforms for struggling schools but instead pushed districts to fire teachers, close schools, and/or turn them into charter schools.   These same disruptive models were subsequently incorporated into the $7 billion School Improvement Grant program by Arne Duncan that proved to be a bust. The federal model for failing schools itself failed, and now ESSA will leave the decisions of how to intercede up to states, which probably won’t do much better but likely won't do worse.

Instead of helping schools improve, the experience of being identified as a failing school in NYC and elsewhere has been harshly negative, leading to a downward spiral of declining enrollment, losing  programs, and teachers fleeing or being fired -- as in NYC's faltering Renewal program.

If schools with low test scores were merely offered more money to reduce class size, along with hiring more counselors and offering more arts and other programs, I doubt if these initiatives would be experienced as so damaging.  That is why NYSAPE and Class Size Matters have proposed that as part of the state’s accountability system, an Opportunity to Learn index be included along with the mandated academic factors, to give all schools the incentive to provide kids with the right conditions to succeed. 

All schools should have to report and make efforts to improve their class sizes, to provide arts education, recess, and phys ed, and proper numbers of counselors and librarians, as well as the other programs that we identified as part of our OTL index; as these are the features that parents want to see in their children’s schools and evidence shows contributes to their success.

Moreover, smaller classes and these other supports are especially critical in schools with large numbers of high-needs children, whether they be students with disabilities, from low-income families, or English language learners – and research shows these are the children who benefit most from these programs. Rather than schools be judged exclusively or primarily on test scores, as Kemala Karmen points out, a better solution would be to require that these supports be provided especially in schools with the most intense concentration of high-needs students.   

Test scores are not only an unreliable way to assess the quality of schools, but by placing so much pressure on tests much of what is involved a well-rounded education is squeezed out of the curriculum, and in the race to boost test scores, too much of the joy of learning is extinguished.  Finally, it makes no sense to provide these opportunities when schools have low test scores only to take them away from students when the school begins to improve, making it likely that this will cause them to struggle once again.

I only wish that the accountability hawks within the DC corporate reform groups and civil rights organizations would pay as much attention to the conditions of learning as they do on testing.  By now, they should  recognize that access to high-stakes tests has never been a necessary precondition to improving schools, nor has it been helpful.  In fact, research shows that there was more narrowing of the racial achievement gap in the 1970’s and 1980’s before NCLB and annual testing than since. More recently, the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families has actually widened, and is “roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five years earlier.”

In any case, these are the debates we should be having – how the quality of schools can be more reliably measured, how should they can be incentivized to provide students with a better chance to learn, and how states should intercede when schools need more support in a manner that is helpful rather than hurtful.  Not whether Congress dumping the ESSA accountability regulations is somehow a big deal, when it is not.

What would Martin Luther King Jr. say about class size and charter schools?

On this, the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, we should remember that African-American children still suffer from inequitable conditions in our nation's schools - foremost among them, larger classes.

This is despite the fact that class size reduction is one of the very few reforms that have been proven to narrow the achievement gap, as poor and minority children receive twice the benefit from smaller classes than the average student. (See this recent issue brief from ETS, with data revealing the persistent inequities in class size, and pointing out that the achievement gap narrowed substantially in the 1970's and 1980's but stalled in the 1990's -- just as progress in reducing class size stalled nationally as well. )

Yet the corporate reformers who have hijacked educational policy in this nation, including Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee, are all calling for even larger class sizes in our nation's public schools.

Rather than support equitable conditions, they are promoting the further expansion of charter schools, which as the UCLA Civil Rights Project has pointed out, leads to more segregation, not less. See also this excellent article by Jim Horn on the charter school issue, "What would Dr. King say?"

See below; one of the first in-depth televised interviews ever given by Martin Luther King Jr., first broadcast on NBC news on October 27, 1957.

(thanks to Mona Davids of the NY Charter Parents Association for pointing out the Jim Horn article.)

Joel Klein's resignation: it's about time

Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities. In DOE’s own surveys, parents said that class size reduction was their greatest wish for their children, and yet class sizes have risen sharply under his leadership.

He also showed very little regard for the rule of law; and faced multiple lawsuits as a result, including one triggered by his refusal to reduce class size despite receiving more than $2 billion in additional state funds in exchange for promising to do so. He misspent that $2 billion, and stole our children’s futures.

Klein was also an extremely poor manager and kept on reorganizing the department into chaos.

He is leaving us with a legacy of classroom overcrowding, communities fighting over co-located schools, Kindergarten waiting lists, unreliable school grades based on bad data, substandard credit recovery programs spreading like wildfire, and our children starved of art, music and science – all replaced with test prep.

Instead of progress, NYC black and Hispanic students have fallen further behind their peers in all nine other cities tested since 2003 in the national exams known as the NAEPs.The achievement gap has not narrowed in any grade or category. And we are the only city in the nation in which non-poor students now have lower average test scores on the NAEPs than in 2003.

It would be a difficult hole for any successor to dig out of.

As for Cathie Black, it is unfortunate that once again, the mayor has chosen someone with no educational experience, except for sitting on the board of a charter school with teacher attrition rates of 42 -71%, and a student suspension rate of 62%.

Our schools need a chancellor who has a compassionate and deep understanding of how our children should be educated, and I hope that Commissioner Steiner thinks twice before granting Ms. Black a waiver.

So what's the story? Have NYC schools made progress in test scores, or not?

Today's Daily News reports on how NYC parents are reacting in the Bronx and in Manhattan to the revelation that the great progress claimed by Bloomberg and Klein in the past was a fraud: "The scores make you want to cry," said Monica Major, a Bronx parent and president of School District 11's Community Education Council. "For years, we've been bamboozled and lied to."

Or as as Diane Ravitch writes in an oped, "When the [state] scores were released, there was a sound of bursting bubbles across the state. What once were miracles turned into mirages.”

Yet in recent days, Bloomberg and Klein have tried to argue that the evidence is still strong that city students have made "dramatic progress" under their leadership.

First, they have repeatedly claimed that since the city's average scores on the state exams have been rising over time, the fact that the proficiency cut scores have now been drastically lowered is irrelevant.

Yet the city's average scores on the state exams are likely just as unreliable as its proficiency levels, since the questions on the test have gotten easier over time.

See an earlier posting, in which Steve Koss discusses a 2007 Daily News expose showing how the increase in "P" (or "probability) values on the field test questions indicated that the state tests had become simpler between 2002-2005. (The chart to the right was originally in the Daily News.)

To prove this, intrepid reporter Erin Einhorn even gathered a bunch of children to take both the 2002 and 2005 math exams, and out our 34 kids, 24 of them did better on the 2005 exam.

As one of them said, "the 2002 questions were more complicated than in 2005... In 2005, they kept it short, simple and sweet.”

Really, the only semi-reliable measure we have of student achievement over this period is the city's performance on the national exams known as the NAEPs. Klein has also made questionable claims in recent days in relation to the NAEPs.

Here is what he said to the Wall St. Journal: "In both fourth-grade math and reading, New York City now performs at the same level as the nation overall," the schools chancellor said."

Is this true? No. In no subject or grade does the achievement level of city students match that of the nation as a whole, including 4th grade reading or math; though the gaps are smaller in that grade than in 8th.

A more meaningful comparison would be to look at in the change in NAEP scores compared to other large cities from 2003-2009, to see whether there has been exceptional progress during the Bloomberg/Klein era .

First I looked at the change in the percent of students at or above basic over this period, in NYC compared to other large cities and to Atlanta, which has made exemplary progress.

Note that compared to other large cities, NYC has done a bit better on average in two categories and worse in two: 8th grade reading and 8th grade math.

In all subjects, however, NYC's gains have been far less than those of Atlanta, (which incidentally has neither mayoral control nor has it been awarded the Broad prize.)

I also analyzed NYC's record in 8th grade reading, to see how our schools have done compared to other large urban districts.

This is what I found: NYC comes in dead last among the ten cities tested since 2003 in this subject -- the only city to make absolutely no progress.

Then I looked at the achievement gap issue between racial and ethnic groups, which Bloomberg and Klein's repeatedly claimed to have narrowed over the past few years. At one point, Bloomberg even went before Congress and boasted that he had cut it in half. Is that true?



No, of course not; In NYC schools, according to the NAEPs, the achievement gap is still very substantial, in all subjects and grades, from 23 to 35 points depending on the category.

But have these gaps narrowed over time? Well, the black-white gap has shrunk by one or two points in 4th grade reading and 8th grade math, which is relatively small in relation to the overall size of the gap; and the gap has increased slightly in the other two categories.

In terms of the white-Hispanic gap, Bloomberg and Klein's record is even worse. In three out of four categories, the gap has increased; and it has grown much larger in 8th grade reading and math.

So, when you look at the NAEP scores, the progress made in NYC under Bloomberg and Klein compared to other large cities is only a little better in some areas, and in some areas, like 8th grade reading or the Hispanic achievement gap, far worse.

Closing the Achievement Gap? Black & Hispanic Students Disappear from City's Top High School

As reported today in the NY Times and the Post, a grand total of 7 black students scored high enough on the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT) to be offered admission to Stuyvesant High School. The total for Hispanic students was an equally dismal 17. The under-representation of black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant has been pointed out for a number of years (see 2006 and 2008 NY Times articles).

During my tenure as a parent and PA officer, there was much consternation about it, but of course nothing that either the PA or the school itself could do (most notably, a mentoring program for students already at Stuyvesant) could improve the dismal admission statistics. These are basically a reflection of the quality of preparation in the lower grades. No doubt the test is culturally biased, but that alone cannot explain the low numbers. And it certainly cannot explain the continuing drop in admissions, as there is no reason to believe the test has become any more culturally biased over the years.

According to the “DOE spokesman" interviewed by the Post reporter, “the demographics of those taking the test and receiving offers has stayed relatively constant in recent years.” The statistics on the DOE's own website tell a different story.

The state statistical reports for Stuyvesant (here and here) indicate that the school had 83 “Black /African-American” students in 2003-4; 75 in 2004-5; 66 in 2005-6, 66 in 2006-7, and 61 in 2007–08; the corresponding numbers for “Hispanic or Latino” are 96, 86, 99, 99 and 93. These classifications are probably somewhat fluid, but there has undoubtedly been a huge fall-off. Incidentally, the shrinking number of black students is even more dramatic when viewed against the backdrop of ever-larger freshman classes (between 2004 and 2009, the freshman class grew from about 700 to almost 1000 students).

Of course, the city's response to the continuing slide in the number of black and Hispanic students who “ace the test” (shorthand for making the cut-off for admission to Stuyvesant) has been more test prep rather than more instruction. Instead of teaching more math, science and English in K-8 (including correct verbal expression and critical reading of books and essays rather than isolated passages), DOE set up a Specialized High School Institute, which gives promising candidates “extra lessons and test-taking tips.” Predictably, the approach hasn’t yielded results. Although it seems that most people who can afford the often substantial fees have given in to SHSAT test-prep frenzy--"cram schools" in Flushing are given much of the credit for the explosion in Asian enrollment at Stuyvesant, while Kaplan and its clones are considered virtually obligatory for everyone else--there's little reason to believe test prep will make a real difference for a child who isn't already adequately prepared in the subjects the test covers.

The stories behind the statistics are instructive and heart-breaking. The 2006 New York Times article cited above reported on two kids in the city's free SHSAT test prep program, which was held at Stuyvesant. (I have edited identifying information):

[A girl], 12, said the very act of striding through Stuyvesant’s gleaming hallways made her feel smart. “You can be like, ‘I could be here, I could be in these desks in a year or two,’ ” she said during her lunch break one day. For [a boy], 12, who got an “overall excellence” medal at his sixth-grade graduation, the experience has been humbling. His teacher at [PS XXX] had called him a “walking dictionary,” but in the first seven pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a book he read for the institute, he found 71 new vocabulary words.

How can a few weeks of "extra lessons" and "test tips" possibly prepare these kids for the SHSAT, much less the Stuyvesant curriculum? Consider, by contrast, the experience of several kids I know, who moved to New York after going to school overseas, took the SHSAT without much preparation or even familiarity with that sort of test, "aced it" and did well at Stuyvesant. Most did not even speak English in the home, but all were well-prepared to learn what Stuyvesant can offer.

When the Post reporter called me for comment last night, I practically fell off the couch on which I was dozing. The under-representation of black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant is an old story, but a drop in the black student population from 2%-3% to less than 1% is astonishing. No matter how much BloomKlein may crow about increasing scores on dumbed- down and easily gamed tests, the proof of the pudding eventually is in how many kids get admitted to good high schools. A competitive-exam school such as Stuyvesant is not for everyone, nor would I suggest it is the only avenue to academic success. But I don't see how the administration can claim to be making progress on the racial achievement gap when the number of black kids who qualify for the city’s top high school has fallen to insignificance under their watch.

Racial gap in gifted and talented grows larger

In today's Daily News, an article explores the way in which Tweed completely botched gifted and talented admissions this year, by centralizing the process and basing admissions entirely on the results of high stakes tests – with the effect that less than half as many students qualified this year, and far fewer children of color ended up being admitted.

While Bloomberg promised to create more programs in “historically underserved districts’, in these districts, many fewer of these classes were the result, with some primarily minority districts having no gifted classes at all, and racial and economic disparities widening.

A NY Times article from yesterday has even more details, pointing out that in six districts there is not a single gifted class this year: Districts 7,8,9 in the Bronx, and 16, 19 and 23 in Brooklyn. Moreover, in many schools, gifted and talented classes are only half-filled, with the effect that some G and T Kindergarten classes have 16 children or less, while the other regular kindergarten classes are crammed with as many as 28 students - a situation that Lisa B. Donlan, president of the Community Education Council in District 1 is quoted as saying “unfair to the entire school community.”

It’s a pretty good article except for the following misstatement:

“Problems with the new admissions policy surfaced in June, when an analysis by The New York Times showed that children from the city’s poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage of gifted slots than in the previous year, while children in the city’s wealthiest districts captured a greater share.”

Actually last November, Deborah Meier commented on our blog how any admissions policy based on test scores alone with lead to inequitable outcomes. After all, the National Academy of Sciences has pointed out that high stakes testing for such purposes can be viewed as inherently racially discriminatory. Following Tweed’s announcement of the results, in early April, Patrick Sullivan pointed out how the policy had clearly led to fewer kids accepted into gifted classes in the poorer districts:

“The low number of children qualifying in lower income districts suggests the DOE has not met its goal of expanding the reach of G&T programs…. This is the fourth or fifth year the Bloomberg administration has changed the admission process. Its efforts would clearly be better spent working on building programs and outreach in historically underserved communities.”

Finally, Eduwonkette offered a detailed analysis in mid-April, With New Gifted and Talented Rules, Who Wins and Loses?, showing the huge gap between the wealthy districts and those with more free-lunch students.

Problems with the new admissions policy surfaced in June due to NY Times reporting? Hardly.

How many policies of this administration have led to more racial disparities widening, rather than narrowing?

Here are just a few examples: We have far fewer students of color in our gifted classes now, there have been fewer admitted to our selective, specialized high schools, and our teaching force has become significantly whiter over the course of the last six years.

Broad Prize: Politics and PR or actual achievement?

The Broad Prize will be awarded on Tuesday, which NYC won last year, despite protests from parents and others that this award was undeserved.

See, for example, the statement from Dave Quintana last year. Dave was one of four parents selected by DOE to give input to representatives from the Broad foundation beforehand:

As one of the four (4) parent participants in a focus group held at Tweed for researchers from the Broad Foundation, I am disappointed in the fact that NYC received the Broad Foundation prize today.

This group of parents, handpicked by Martine Guerrier of the Department of Education (DOE), expressed uniform disappointment with the various changes put into place by DOE, the lack of transparency and accountability, and the lack of consideration given the views of parents about what their children really need to succeed.

Clearly the Broad Foundation did not take parents views into consideration when awarding this prize to NYC today.

See also the letter of protest signed by fifty one parents and teachers, sent to the Broad Foundation before the award was announced.

Since that time, Steve Koss has analyzed NAEP scores between 2003-2007 showing that NYC came in 11^th out of 12 urban school districts in terms of gains.

There was also no closing of the achievement gap in NYC in the NAEP scores over this period, either in math or in ELA, for any grade level tested.

The NAEPs are considered the “gold standard” of assessments in terms of reliability.

As for the NY state scores, there was no narrowing of the achievement gap if scale scores are considered.

According to its website, the Broad Prize is awarded each year "to honor urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among low-income and minority students."

How can anyone be assured that the decision to award the Broad Prize is not determined more by politics and PR than actual improvements, and that this year’s winner deserves it more than NYC did last year?

Update: Brownsville won the Broad award, though it has been on the NCLB failing list for two years. Of course, NYC is on the NCLB failing list as well, as are most of the urban school district in the nation. Yet another reason to get rid of NCLB -- and the Broad awards as well.

More statistical malpractice from Tweed: Joel Klein and his claims do not measure up

Check out Elizabeth Green’s article today in the NY Sun, in which she asked three academics to scrutinize the validity of the administration’s claim of narrowing the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups.

See, for example, Bloomberg’s recent testimony before Congress, in which he said that “over the past six years, we’ve done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap – and we have. In some cases, we’ve reduced it by half.”

Yet the evidence for this is weak to non-existent. On the national tests called the NAEPs, there has been no narrowing of the achievement gap in any area since the Bloomberg/Klein reforms were instituted:

An analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the federal Education Department, concludes that no achievement gaps have narrowed at all in New York City between 2003 and 2007. The only gap that moved in any significant direction is the one between poor students and the rest of the population, which widened slightly, that analysis said. The National Center for Education Statistics also concludes that upward trends in the reading scores of black and Hispanic fourth-graders lauded by Mr. Klein are not statistically significant.

In the article, Joel Klein reveals his statistical illiteracy:

“Those are just confidence levels. Nobody is saying this is a science," Mr. Klein said. He added: "If three points is flat, and four points is statistically significant, then what you're doing is, you're playing something of a game."

Chief press officer David Cantor called the memo from NCES "a politicized gloss.”

Instead, it is the DOE who insists on playing games – and politicizing the issue, by continuing to slander experts as somehow biased when they provide objective evidence that the non-stop PR spin issuing from Tweed has no basis in reality.

This is hardly the first time the DOE has revealed such statistical malpractice. Jim Liebman, law professor and head of the DOE accountability office, is a repeat offender. I recall one episode in particular when Liebman, testifying before the City Council, insisted that he wasn't basing school grades primarily on the results of a few tests, since each test was really "multiple assessments" given out over "multiple days," resulting in "multiple measures" of proficiency.

Another instance of this was the presentation of Jennifer Bell-Elwanger, head of testing for DOE, who was giving a power point presentation to the Panel for Educational Policy in late November, following the release of the NAEP results. She continually pointed out gains that, according to the NCES, were not statistically significant. Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan rep to the PEP and fellow blogger here, who seems to understand data better than anyone currently employed by the DOE, questioned her closely, saying, "But by definition these are insignificant gains, no?" Which she, of course, fervently denied.

Indeed, the memo from the NCES was prepared in response to a highly misleading email that Klein sent to nearly every NYC resident after NAEP results were first reported. In his email, he falsely claimed that the results showed “good progress that is consistent with the overall picture” and said that the NAEP showed a narrowing of the gap in nearly all areas, when the data itself revealed quite the opposite.

According to NYC’s results on the state exams, the situation is more complicated. The achievement gap is narrowing in some areas when one looks at “proficiency” levels, that is whether a student is at a level 1, 2, 3, etc., but not in terms of the actual scale scores.

Some testing experts consider proficiency levels less meaningful than scale scores, as they can be arbitrary, subjective and easy to manipulate. Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard and a national expert on testing, has just published the must-read book of the summer, Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. Here is what Koretz has to say about proficiency levels:

….the percents deemed proficient [on state tests] are largely unrelated to states’ actual levels of student achievement…are also often inconsistent across grades or among subjects in a grade....[This system] obscures a great deal of information [because] of the coarseness of the resulting scale.

Even more importantly, why should we trust the state scores at all, when we know that the gains that they purport to show are not reflected in more trustworthy measures like the NAEPs?

The best thing about the Koretz’ book is his lucid explanation of why “test score inflation” inevitably occurs when you attach high-stakes to exams, and how this undermines the integrity and validity of the results; this has increasingly been the case throughout the nation as a result of NCLB, but even more here in NYC, as a result of the increasingly high-stakes policies of the Bloomberg/Klein administration.

Steve Koss has written about this eloquently on our blog, in relation to Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

I have tried to explain this phenomenon to many elected officials, staff, and reporters over the years, apparently with little success. I certainly don’t know a single NYC media outlet that has ever mentioned it, though Campbell’s Law was cited in some recent letters to the NY Times in response to the administration’s experiment to pay students for high scores.

I recall a lengthy discussion of this issue several years back with NY Times reporter David Herszenhorn while he was still on the education beat, to explain my opposition to the Mayor’s newly-proposed 3rd grade retention policy. One of the reasons I so vociferously opposed this policy, and still do, was not just that it was unfair to the student to base such a life-altering decision on the basis of one single, fallible test score, with such large margins of error; and not just that retention has been shown to have a racially-disparate impact and hurt rather than help most low-performing students.

My opposition was also due to the fact that the more significant consequences are attached to any test, the less its results can be trusted as a reliable gauge of real learning.

Since then, of course, the administration has piled on more and more high-stakes consequences -- for students, teachers, and schools – by adding fifth and seventh grade retention, awarding principals, teachers and students monetary rewards for high scores, and threatening to close down schools if scores don’t improve fast enough. The scores themselves have been rendered entirely meaningless as a result, as excessive test prep, teaching to the test, cheating, and other strategies to “game” the system has totally overtaken our schools.

Here is what Koretz has to say about this:

"One might expect that with the huge increase in the amount of testing in recent years, we would know more…Ironically, the reverse is true. While we have far more data now than we did twenty of thirty years ago, we have fewer sources of data that we can trust. The reason is simple: the increasing in testing has been accompanied by a dramatic upsurge in the consequences attached to scores. This is turn has created incentives to take shortcuts --- various forms of inappropriate test preparation, including outright cheating – that can substantially inflate test scores, rending trends seriously misleading or even meaningless.”

To the administration, all this appears acceptable, because as long as test scores go up, this justifies their policies; in truth, they don’t seem to care if the increases are meaningful or not.

Their laissez-faire attitude is revealed by the total lack of interest evinced in following-up on even well-documented cases of cheating. (See for example this story in the NY Sun, which though it says the DOE is “investigating” this will likely lead nowhere, as such stories have in the past.)

This “anything goes” attitude is also reflected in Klein’s remarks in a recent interview in the NY Post:

Q: What about complaints about the report-card grades for schools?

A: The report cards were probably one of the noisy periods. But . . . I can't tell you how many principals said to me, 'You know, chancellor, I didn't get the right grade but I promise you I won't get the same one next year,' so I think that had a big impact.

Here, Klein implicitly acknowledged that even while principals do not accept the fairness of these grades, based primarily on one-year gains in scores, he is content as long as they guarantee that they will get these scores to rise in the future, by any means possible.