Comments on the SHSAT and the Chancellors Privacy regulations

Dec. 13, 2024

On Wednesday, night, the new Public Engagement Committee of the Panel for Education Policy, NYC’s school board, met to hear from the public on two controversial issues, a contract for Pearson to produce a new computerized version of the SHSAT, the entrance exam for the Specialized high schools, and also  DOE’s  proposed revisions to the Chancellors regulations A- 820, that govern student privacy.

The proposed Pearson five year contract for the SHSAT at cost of $17 million took up most of the time, with many parents concerned that any further delay in a vote to approve the contract that had already been postponed twice would threaten the ability of their children to attend one of the eight elite schools that decide admissions solely by means of that one exam.  

My comments follow, suggesting that the PEP only renew the contract for one year, and base any further renewal on specific conditions.  I also include my comments on the Chancellors regulations.  Shannon Edwards of AI for Families also offered excellent comments on this critical issue; you can read them here.

A video of the proceedings is here. Whatever happens, it’s real progress that the Panel for Education Policy seems interested in hearing from the public on these critical issues, rather than merely rubberstamping whatever the Mayor wants them to do.

 Statements on SHSAT

Thank you for holding this public session this evening.  As the American Psychological Society, the American Education Research Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the testing companies themselves proclaim, no high stakes decision such as admissions to any school should be based upon test scores alone.

In fact, NYC is the only district in the nation that uses this unacceptable method for admissions to any single school, and yet we do it for eight schools, with a test that is non-transparent, scored in a highly unusual way, and is designed by Pearson, a company that has been shown repeatedly over more than a decade to engage in improper behavior and to  administer faulty tests and score them erroneously, year after year, starting with the infamous Pineapple questions on the 2012 state exam that not only  made news nationwide but  became a symbol of everything wrong about standardized testing.

 We have offered a timeline of these issues on our NYC Parent blog – none of which, by the way, did DOE report on in their Request for Authorization, as they should have been. .

We understand that the state requires a standardized exam, but we urge you to amend the terms of the contract so that it is renewed for only for one year, and condition any further renewals in the years to come on the following  three demands:

• DOE should use this test for admissions only for the three schools that are required to use a standardized exam by state law. 

• Consider whether another standardized test could be used instead for these three schools at lower cost or even for free, such as the state exam, as the law only says that a standardized exam should be used, and doesn’t specify which one, and also given how Pearson has a long history of errors and misdeeds;

• Finally, require full test transparency, including an independent analysis of the SHSAT for racial and gender bias, a formal validity study that shows whether the scores predict HS performance, and an analysis of how the results of the new computer-based adaptive exam compared to the earlier paper-based, non-adaptive exams.  

This sort of transparency has been requested for at least 16 years by researchers, but has not been provided.

 The importance of independently analyzing the exam for gender bias is paramount, as girls are accepted to the specialized HS at far lower rates than boys, and there is peer-reviewed, published research showing that those who are accepted do far better than boys who received the same scores.

 On the Chancellors A-829 proposed privacy regulations

Hi again, my name is Leonie Haimson and I am the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.   We helped get a new  state student privacy law passed in 2014, Ed Law 2D, when we realized how ineffective the federal privacy protections for student data were in an era of ed tech expansion. 

I was appointed to serve on the state education department Data Advisory Committee, and  have  been advocating for years for the DOE to update their  Chancellors regulations A820, but was horrified to see that when this was finally done, they weakened rather than strengthened the existing privacy regulations, despite  widespread breaches and misuse of data that has occurred over the last few years. This includes the Illuminate breach that exposed the personal data of over one million current and former NYC students.

According to these regs, DOE and individual schools could disclose a huge range of student and parent info with anyone they please, and without any enforceable privacy or security protections, including but not limited to: their names; addresses; telephone numbers; e-mails; photographs; dates of birth; grade levels; enrollment status; dates of enrollment; participation in officially recognized activities and sports; weight and height and more.

They propose doing this by designating this info as “Directory Information”  -- an outmoded provision of FERPA from the 1970’s that allowed the disclosure of any information that would not be considered too risky  to divulge.

Yet this ignores the fact that there is NO mention in Ed Law 2D of Directory Information nor any language that would exempt any personally identifiable info from its mandated privacy protections.

Moreover, in this day and age, a child’s name, birth date and home address is sufficient for identity theft, as the NY Dept of State warns, which is especially valuable to fraudsters given that minors do not already have credit ratings.

Personal student data can also be used for predatory marketing by ad tech and social media companies, bombarding them with ads, and undermining their mental health, as noted in recent lawsuits launched vs Facebook, Instagram & TikTok by New York City and the State Attorney General

This data including photos could  also be used to threaten student safety, leading to sexual harassment, Deepfake porn or even abduction.

Providing student names, photos & addresses could also aid in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrant students, based on their residence in hotels or shelters.

As a result of over 3,000 emails sent by parents and teachers to DOE and  Panel members, as well as letters from several elected officials and UFT President Michael Mulgrew, the vote on the regs was repeatedly delayed, and on Nov. 19, the Chancellor held a meeting during which she promised to form a Working group that would collaborate on the regs. Yet we have not heard back from the DOE about this Working Group, [Note: The next day, on Thursday at a CPAC meeting, the Chancellor and her team confirmed that a Data Privacy Working Group would begin meeting next month to strengthen these regulations].

We hope that in the meantime, the PEP will refuse to approve any regulations such as these which so seriously threatens the health, safety, and privacy of NYC students.  Thank you for your time.

Joel Klein's failed record as NYC Chancellor

Whatever favorable reviews Joel Klein has gotten for his new book, "Lessons of Hope" have mostly been written by people who did not experience his failed policies as NYC Chancellor.  If you want to read illuminating accounts, I recommend Diane Ravitch, Helen Zelon in the Observer, or Gary Rubinstein's blog, all of whom offer important reflections on Klein's record. 

I could write about the tremendous waste and corruption of the many multi-million dollar contracts he handed off so recklessly, for example to Wireless Generation for ARIS and/or Future Technology Associates.  I could write about his obvious mismanagement style, re-organizing the governance structure continually, creating more chaos and confusion than the steady hand the school district needed and deserved.  I could also write about his evident contempt for parents, teachers, and the law itself, with one of his favorite phrases when challenged being, "So sue me." 

But in the below I focus on the evidence that Klein himself would recognize as damning if he were to be intellectually consistent in his emphasis on test scores as the best measure of accountability:  the fact that NYC made less progress than any other city as measured by results on the federal assessments known as the NAEPs, except for Cleveland, over the course of his administration.

leonie7851

Joyce and Megan's story with a (somewhat) happy ending for this holiday season

Megan Marrera credit: NY Post

Here is the story of a Queens parent, Joyce Caba, who refused to allow her honor-roll daughter, Megan, to be denied her chance to graduate from middle school after the DOE claimed she had flunked her 8th grade English Language Arts exam.  

We first found out about Megan’s plight from a comment Joyce left on our NYC Public School Parents blog after the state ELA exams were held last spring, an exam which many parents, students, and teachers found to be flawed and confusing --and which included the now-infamous Pineapple question, on the very same 8^thgrade exam which Megan supposedly failed.

Everything that follows is just as Joyce wrote it, with a few typos corrected and edited for length, along with the NY Post articles which resulted from her emails to me.  Megan's story, as well as the thousands of other students who were unjustly prevented from graduating with their class, underscores how the fate of no child should ever be decided on a single exam--and the city’s policy to hold back students  on the basis of unreliable test scores is not unfair but contrary to research.  In a holiday spirit, I thought I would recount Megan's story, as her mom told it to me, because there is a partially happy ending, as you shall see. 

On the blog: Joyce Bellerose NY said...

Hi I am a parent of a 13 year old. My daughter was unable to attend her 8th Grade graduation with her class because she did not do well on her NYS ELA test. Meanwhile she made honor roll, did not fail any of her classes throughout the school year. If you ask me that is mental torture! How can the NYS school system and the politicians behind it do this to a human being especially to a kid. Talk about abuse ….! I tell you I went on sleepless nights and sick to my stomach just seeing how upset my daughter was and still is, all her classmates went to graduation and she could not participate because of one NYS Test that even our educators question! So my question to whom ever wrote and implemented this rule …. What is the purpose of sending them to school all year long …. for one test to determine the end results … If there is someone out there that is doing something about it please let me know I would like to join in or if not let's have our voices heard!

June 28, 2012 4:59 PM  

After the state test scores were released in July, Joyce found out that the DOE had made a mistake and Megan had actually passed the exam.  She then wrote on the blog, once more:

I just want to give an update for those of you who wrote me back with concerns and advising me who to contact regarding my daughter's NYS ELA test score. It so happens that my daughter after all passed her NYS ELA test the NYC DOE made a mistake. …How can they make such a huge mistake like this? It was bought to my attention that this has happened to a lot of children this year. Who is scoring these tests? How can this happen? If we as parents do not voice our concerns then how can this HUGE error be corrected in the future?  I am so disappointed in the NYS School system…Where can I go to voice my concerns? Thank you July 23, 2012 10:33 AM 

 I advised Joyce to email me offline, and she did:

From: Joyce Caba
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 10:21 PM
Hi Leonie: Thank you for hearing my story regarding my daughter not being able to graduate with her class because NYC DOE cheated her …. I want to be heard I want this to go to Albany or Washington! I want to make a change for the future of the other children. We cannot go back in time, but NYC DOE marked my daughter's life and cheated her of what would of been a beautiful memory that she would of cherished for the rest of her life! …

I asked her if I could forward her email to a reporter, Yoav Gonen of the NY Post, and she agreed.

From: Joyce Caba
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 10:31 AM
Leonie, Yoav [Gonen] from the NY Post contacted me. I sent him all of my back up letters from the school and even copies of my daughter's awards throughout the school year. He is waiting for the green light from his editors to see if he can post the story tomorrow.

From: Joyce Caba
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:02 AM
 Good morning, just wanted to keep you posted and let you know that finally my daughter and I went to pick up her diploma today. It was heartbreaking how we went to the main office and the lady just handed her the diploma as if you would go and pick up any simple document. My daughter was not a thrilled as she should have been walking across that stage at St. John University on Friday, June 22 with the rest of the Bell Academy Graduation Class.

We met with the NY Post reporter Loraine at Bell Academy Middle School this morning and she took down all our comments along with some pictures.…Thank you for listening to this heartbreaking ordeal that we had to encounter when it should have been a happy milestone in my daughter’s life experience.

 On July 26, the NY Post article was published which not only focused on Megan’s plight, but also pointed out that DOE officials had mistakenly prevented thousands of NYC students from attending their graduations, because they had wrongly assumed they had failed their exams:

As many as 7,000 city elementary- and middle-school students were wrongly barred from attending their graduation ceremonies this year because education officials mistakenly thought they had failed state exams.

Test scores announced last week revealed that the Department of Education had overestimated how many students had failed the exams and needed to attend summer school — but the reversal came only after students had already missed their class celebrations.

“I was looking forward to my graduation — I had a red, strapless dress picked out and sandals. I couldn’t wait to wear my cap and gown and graduate with all my friends,” said Bell Academy MS eighth-grader, Megan Marrera — who was barred from even sitting in the audience at her graduation last month. “When they told me I wasn’t graduating, I was very sad. I felt like such a failure,” she added. “The day of the graduation, I was crying in bed.”

The 13-year-old was stunned to learn last week that she actually passed the English exam she had been told she failed — and should have been allowed to graduate with her Bayside classmates.
The news left her mother, Joyce, steamed over the injustice — particularly because her daughter worked extra hard to keep her grades up while dealing with a medical condition.
“I feel that Megan was robbed of seeing a milestone in her life, and that’s unforgivable,” she said. “There’s no way to go back to that day now.”….

 One week later, Joyce emailed me with the good news.  As reported in a follow-up article in the NY Post, the city planned to make it up to the 1200 8^th graders who had been prevented from graduating with their class, by holding separate ceremonies around the city. This happened because Speaker Quinn had complained to the DOE after reading the NY Post article about Megan’s plight.   Here's an excerpt from the article:

It’s better gradu-late than never
They can don their caps and gowns after all.

The city is planning to make amends to more than 1,200 eighth-graders wrongly barred from graduating with their friends and classmates in June by holding make-up ceremonies in each borough.
The move, a joint effort by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Department of Education, came after The Post reported that 7,000 students in third through eighth grades had been wrongly assigned to summer school based on their preliminary test results.

When the final scores came out in mid-July, they showed that the students had actually passed the required math and reading tests — but only after many of them had been blocked from graduation or stepping-up ceremonies.

Their wrongful placement into summer school also forced families to postpone or cancel summer trips. 

Quinn, who has led several initiatives targeting middle-schoolers in recent years, said she was moved to find a solution to the injustice after reading about it in The Post.

“This sends the message that every child who meets their requirements deserves an opportunity to be recognized,” she said. “We wish these graduates the very best in high school and beyond.”
Families gave kudos to the city for trying to right a wrong but said it was impossible to undo the harm.

From: Joyce Caba
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 11:32 AM
….By the way I also received a call from the Chancellor's office yesterday. They are apologizing for what my daughter had to encounter and they will try to send someone to her graduation ceremony to speak and commend Megan for speaking out and letting her voice be heard. They are also going to regroup and will go back to their rules and regulations to make some changes on behalf of Megan …. They apologized several times during our phone conversation… there is nothing like going to the media and having your voice heard!

Both Megan and I want to personally thank you for all your help and making your suggestions. We need to make changes because it is so obvious there are many cracks in the NYC school system affecting our children ….

 From: Joyce Caba
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2012 2:40 PM

 I thank you, Class Size Matters and the NY Post for helping us voice our opinion and our concerns! Freedom of Speech! I hope this will open the doors to a lot of other people going through this negative experience; and as per today's NY Post article, I see the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is getting involved. We got their attention. Kudos to all!

An excerpt from the article about Megan’s belated graduation ceremony: 

This graduation was very light on the pomp.More than a dozen Queens eighth-graders mistakenly banned from attending their graduation in June got to walk across the stage yesterday — which many called bittersweet.

“I feel happy because I finally got to graduate. But it is not the same because there are some people I’m not going to see next [school] year, and I wanted to be with them,” said Megan Marrera, a 13-year-old who attended Bell Academy MS in Bayside.

Time to change the stakes with testing? Join us for an evening with Yong Zhao!

American education is at a crossroads. Two paths lie in front of us: one in which we destroy our strengths in order to catch up with others on test scores and one in which we build on our strengths so we can keep the lead in innovation and creativity.  

The current push for more standardization, centralization, high-stakes testing, and test-based accountability is rushing us down the first path, while what will truly keep America strong and Americans prosperous should be the latter, the one that cherishes individual talents, cultivates creativity, celebrates diversity, and inspires curiosity. – Yong Zhao

Join us for an evening with Yong Zhao, the nation's  most eloquent and brilliant critic of high stakes testing!

When: Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.

Where: I.S. 89, 201 Warren Street at the Westside Highway, lower Manhattan

Dr. Yong Zhao is also an expert on the Chinese educational system, which is attempting to move away from the rigid accountability system that Arne Duncan and other corporate reformers are pushing our country towards.  A flyer you can distribute or post at your school is above.

Zhao is the Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education at the University of Oregon, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE). He blogs at http://zhaolearning.com

Sponsored by: Class Size Matters, Grassroots Education Movement, Parents Across America,
Time-Out From Testing & the I.S. 89 PTA. More info, call Class Size Matters : 212 674-7320 or email us at info@classsizematters.org

Maggie Moroff on how parents need a voice in teacher evaluation

Several months ago, Class Size Matters sponsored an online petition to the Governor and the Regents, asking that public school parents be appointed to their 57-member taskforce on teacher evaluation, which had not a single parent on it.  They ignored us, and instead came up with a new unfair and unreliable system, based 40% on standardized test scores, and that will lead to even more high-stakes testing.  Check out the letter from Maggie Moroff of Advocates for Children below, and let's work together to make sure that parents are not let completely out in the cold when it comes to evaluating their children's teachers. 

New York State is changing the way teachers are evaluated. If things happen on schedule, teachers of grades 4 – 8 ELA and math will be evaluated under the new system beginning this fall, and it will be rolled out to all teachers by the 2012-2013 school year. Importantly, the state law requires the agreement of the teachers union before the new system takes effect.

Once in place, the new evaluation system will affect how teachers are trained, promoted, paid, given tenure, and fired.  It will affect who teaches our children, and it could impact how our children are taught.

Under the new system, 40% of teacher evaluations will be based on student outcomes, as measured by performance on statewide standardized tests and by other methods of assessing student progress chosen or developed by local school districts. The remaining 60% of teacher evaluations will be based on locally determined measurements of how teachers prepare, plan, and conduct lessons, develop their own skills, and create learning environments for their students. For more information about the new evaluation system, see Advocates for Children of New York’s (AFC) fact sheet.

This past spring, staff at AFC talked to fourteen focus groups – comprised of students with disabilities and English Language Learners, their parents, and teachers – about what makes a good teacher. We discussed a number of methods of teacher evaluation, including the use of standardized tests, classroom observation, review of portfolios of student work, and surveys of students, parents, and the teachers themselves.

We heard loud and clear that parents want a voice in evaluation – for themselves, and for their children as well. Parents are eager to complete surveys on their interactions with teachers and also to collaborate in the development of those surveys. Parents also want at least a part of the evaluations of teachers – and principals, too – to be based on their ability to work with parents and diverse communities. One parent told us, “If [the principal] doesn’t care what the parents say, it is as if they don’t exist. But they do exist; that is why our children are there.”

In addition, our focus group participants worried that standardized tests are not always the best measures of what students – particularly those with disabilities and English Language Learners – know and learn. The new evaluation system, so heavily reliant on standardized tests, may act as a disincentive for new teachers to work with these populations. One parent of a child on the autism spectrum asked, “When the principal asks the teachers who will take [my son] into their classroom, who will raise their hand?”

Do you share these parents’ concerns? AFC is now developing recommendations for the New York City Department of Education as it moves forward to change evaluation of our teachers and principals. We want to hear from more of you! If you’d like to add your voice, call (212) 822-9523 or email mmoroff@advocatesforchildren.org.

It is not too late for parents and students to affect the development of the new evaluation system. Although its basic framework is set by State law, the details are a work in progress.

- Maggie Moroff, Special Education Policy Coordinator, Advocates for Children of New York

My unvideotaped debate with DOE's Suransky re NCLB, testing, and NYC's dismal results

On Wednesday, September 15, I was invited to New York Law School to debate Shael Suransky, NYC's Deputy Chancellor for Accountability, about NCLB and the negative effects of high stakes accountability systems.

I also took the opportunity to rebut the claims of impressive progress in student achievement in NYC that DOE continues to make, even after the state test score bubble has burst, and to point out the many errors in Chancellor Klein's written statements concerning this issue.

Unfortunately, NY Law School did not allow Lindsey Christ of NY1 or Norm Scott of Education Notes to videotape the event, reportedly because of pressure from DOE.

Lindsey was quite annoyed, and said she had never been barred from taping any such forum, either at NYU, Columbia, the New School, CUNY or SUNY.

For more on what transpired, you can see Norm Scott's accounts here and here, and the email exchange between Lindsey, the very testy VP for PR at NY Law School, and me.

As many people have asked for it, I am posting my powerpoint here, part 1 and part II. If you would like me to present it to your organization, please email me at classsizematters@gmail.com

-- Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Yong Zhao on how our global competitiveness will be damaged by the US government's imposition of high stakes testing

Just as the federal government has announced the awarding of $330 million to two consortiums so that they can develop new national exams, it is more important than ever that people check out this video of one of our best critics of high stakes testing, Yong Zhao.

Zhao is University Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. More on Prof. Zhao here and here.

He points out that China and other Asian countries are trying to move away from standardized testing, because it kills creativity and innovation, just as the US government is trying to impose it on schools throughout the country.

He also talks movingly about the importance of arts education and nurturing individual talents and resiliency, all of which are damaged by the monolithic emphasis on high stakes testing.

Letters to the Times re high-stakes tests

Five letters were published in today's NY Times -- all pointing out flaws in their June 18 editorial about test-tampering, “That Cheats the Kids.” I wrote one of the letters about how the editorial completely missed the point about high-stakes testing -- that it makes the results unreliable. It is the system imposed by the city and increasingly the federal government that cheats our children; not the teachers.

Our children are more than test scores

Check out the new video about how high stakes testing in our schools has forced teachers to teach to the test, schools to close, and children to miss out on the joy and excitement of a real, well-rounded education.