District 2 principals fight back! Parents, Rally with your school on Friday morning vs awful State ELA exam

See letter from most of the Elementary school principals in Community School District 2 below; D2 takes up a large slice of Manhattan from the southern tip to 96 St. on the East Side and the 50's on the West Side, with a small chunk of the Lower E. Side taken out.

Note: the letter mentions "product placements":  Among the trademarked products in the ELA exams this year were not just Nike and Barbie mentioned below; but also Lifesavers, Ipods, Mug Rootbeer, Singer Sewing Machines, IBM and FIFA, trademark of the International Soccer Federation, each with the TM after their name and below the reading passage. Mug Rootbeer, Fifa and IBM were also in the exams last year.

Community Action: Join Principals  in Speaking Out Regarding the NYS English Language Arts Exam Friday, April 11th, at District 2 Schools

Dear District 2 Families,

Community School District 2 represents a richly diverse group of school communities and it is not often these days that we have an opportunity to join in a shared effort.  Last week, and for several weeks prior, every one of our upper grade classrooms devoted hours of instructional time, vast human resources, and a tremendous amount of thoughtful effort to preparing students to do well on the NYS ELA exams and, ultimately, to administering them.  Only a handful of District 2 families even considered opting out, and we are not advocating families do so, specifically because we believe our students are well prepared for the rigor and high expectations of the Common Core and our schools have worked hard for several years to adjust our curriculum and teaching to support students in meeting those expectations. 

We had high hopes for what this year’s tests would bring and assured families that they would reflect the feedback test makers and state officials had received from educators and families regarding the design of the test following last year's administration.  Our students worked extremely hard and did their very best.  As school leaders, we supported teachers in ensuring that students and families kept the tests in perspective – they were important, but by no means the ultimate measure of who they are as readers, students, or human beings. We encouraged them to be optimistic, and did our best to do the same.  Frankly, many of us were disappointed by the design and quality of the tests and stood by helplessly while kids struggled to determine best answers, distorting much of what we'd taught them about effective reading skills and strategies and forgoing deep comprehension for something quite different.   

Last Friday morning, Liz Phillips, the principal of PS321 in Brooklyn, led her staff and her parent community in a demonstration objecting, not to testing or accountability or high expectations for kids, but to these tests in particular and, importantly, to their high stakes nature for teachers and students, and the policy of refusing to release other than a small percentage of the questions.  500 staff and parents participated.

By Friday evening some officials were dismissing the importance of their statement, claiming that Liz and her community represented only a tiny percentage of those affected, implying that the rest of us were satisfied.  Given the terribly high stakes of these tests, for schools, for teachers and for kids, and the enormous amount of human, intellectual and financial resources that have been devoted to them, test makers should be prepared to stand by them and to allow them to undergo close scrutiny.

Many District 2 schools will be holding demonstrations this week, making sure our thoughts on this are loud and clear and making it more difficult to dismiss the efforts of one school.  On Friday morning, April 11th, at 8:00am, we invite our families and staff to join District 2 schools in speaking out, expressing our deep dissatisfaction with the 2014 NYS English Language Arts LA exams and the lack of transparency surrounding them. 

Among the concerns shared by many schools are the following: The tests seem not to be particularly well-aligned with the Common Core Learning Standards; the questions are poorly constructed and often ambiguous; the tests themselves are embargoed and only a handful of select questions will be released next year; teachers are not permitted to use (or even discuss) the questions or the results to inform their teaching; students and families receive little or no specific feedback; this year, there were product placements (i.e., Nike, Barbie) woven through some exams. We are inviting you and your family to join together as a school community in this action, helping to ensure that officials are not left to wonder whether our silence implied approval.  

Yours truly, District 2 Principals

Adele Schroeter, PS59; Lisa Ripperger, PS234; Robert Bender, PS11; Tara Napoleoni, PS183; Jane Hsu, PS116; Sharon Hill, PS290; Amy Hom, PS1; Lauren Fontana, PS6; Jennifer Bonnet, PS150; Nicole Ziccardi Yerk, PS281; Susan Felder, PS40; Alice Hom, PS124; Nancy Harris, PS397; Kelly Shannon, PS41; Nancy Sing-Bok, PS51; Lisa Siegman, PS3;  Irma Medina, PS111; Terry Ruyter, PS276; Medea McEvoy, PS267; Darryl Alhadeff, PS158; Samantha Kaplan, PS151; David Bowell, PS347; Lily Woo, PS130; Jacqui Getz, PS126; Kelly McGuire, Lower Manhattan Community MS

NSA Snoops on ELA Test

April 4, 2014 (GBN News): Pearson’s vaunted security was put to the test, so to speak, when the NSA reportedly spied on NY City schoolchildren taking this week's ELA exams. While Pearson, who designed the Common Core tests, forbids teachers and principals from revealing any details about them, sources told GBN News that NSA agents have compiled a huge database of questions and answers, through the use of cameras hidden in students’ number 2 pencils.

It is unclear why the NSA, after revelations that it spied on everything from foreign embassies to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, would feel a need to spy on schoolchildren’s standardized tests. J. Fredrick Mugson, a national security consultant and recognized expert on educational espionage, feels that the agency may actually be targeting the teachers.

“Knowing that the common core tests are supposed to evaluate the teachers even more than the kids,” he told GBN News in a phone interview, “the NSA is probably just trying to evaluate which teachers may pose a national security threat.

“But the ironic thing,” he went on to say, “is that it will likely backfire. From what I hear, the ELA questions on this exam were so incomprehensible that I doubt the NSA agents were able to make head or tail of it.”

Meanwhile, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in on the opportunity to criticize his successor, Bill DiBlasio, over the security breach. “This kind of thing would never have happened on my watch," Mr. Bloomberg told GBN News. "In fact, I guarantee that if Chancellor Merkel had come to our schools when I was in charge, the NSA could never have listened in on her cell phone calls. With our cell phone ban, we would have confiscated her phone before that could have ever happened.”

Liz Phillips, Brooklyn principal: I have never seen a worse ELA exam. Other principals agree.

See below comment from Liz Phillips, principal of PS 321 in Brooklyn, who was scathing about the 2012 exam as well, but says this one was as bad or worse.  One would think with all the controversy and parents opting out,  NYSED and Pearson would be careful to construct a better set of exams.  But perhaps they are simply incapable of doing so.

PS 321 PARENTS--Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th  graders have just completed three days  of the New York State English  Language Arts Exam.   Your  children were wonderful and worked incredibly hard.  On the whole, we think that we were able to protect them from the worst stresses of the test,  and most seemed fine during most of the exam.   However, the teachers and administration are truly devastated by what a terrible test it was and how little it will tell us about our students.   

Because we are bound by test security, we cannot reveal details but we can tell you that we have never seen an ELA exam that does a worse job of testing reading comprehension.   There was inappropriate content, many highly ambiguous questions, and a focus on structure rather than meaning of passages.   Our teachers and administrators feel that this test is an insult to the profession of teaching and that students’ scores on it will not correlate with their reading ability.  

 Because of this, the staff has decided to hold a protest outside of school TOMORROW, FRIDAY, APRIL 4, FROM 8:15-8:35 to express their extreme dissatisfaction with the ELA exam.  Parents are invited to join the staff before going into classrooms for Family Friday.  

____

Liz Phillips is not alone.  Here is another principal, commenting on the Testing Talk website: 

Day 3 of the Common Core NYS ELA is absurd. The third grade test includes an excerpt from a book that, according to Scholastic, is written at a Grade Level Equivalent of 5.2. Its Lexile Measure is 650L, and it’s categorized as a Level X Guided Reading selection. Yet, it appears on a test that has been written for third grade students.

Day 3 of the Common Core NYS ELA is incongruous with Common Core Learning Standards. The same third grade test asks students to identify how specific paragraphs support the organizational structure of a selected piece of literature. The Reading Standards for Literature in Grade 3, with respect to Craft and Structure, state that Grade 3 students should be able to: Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections. It is not until Grade 5, according to The Reading Standards for Literature, that students should be able to: Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

Day 3 of the Common Core NYS ELA is ill-conceived. A short- answer question that appears on the Grade 4 exam calls upon students to explain why a specific piece of text is effectively written. Regardless of what the Reading Standards say, or don’t, about evaluating text, how in the world can a test be created around such an entirely subjective question?

An administrator of a suburban public school, I take seriously my responsibility to students and teachers. It seems to me that the most responsible thing that I could have done this morning would have been to excuse teachers and students from being bullied by an absurd, incongruous and ill-conceived test.

Here are the observations of another principal, Kate Matthews:

I am the Principal of a 3rd and 4th Grade diverse building, and I am highly disappointed in these tests. While Days 1 and 2 were challenging for our students, Day 3, particularly for 3rd Grade was poorly written, developmentally inappropriate and soul crushing for our students and their teachers. Students did not have enough time on ANY of these books. I do not think I am permitted to speak specifically about the nature of the questions, and who knows whether or not NYS will ever release these questions. 

However, the very first passage with highly technical language was a terrible example of non fiction writing. Where were the text features that our students have learned to use with such proficiency? To ask students to define and understand two terms that are deeply buried in a text is developmentally inappropriate. The amount of time it took students to answer this question left little time for the remaining 2 lengthy passages with 3 short answers and 1 extended response.

I am left to wonder if Pearson made a mistake: was this truly intended for 3rd Grade students?

Many more scathing critiques of the NYS ELA exams on the Testing Talk website here. 

It's apparently the end of the line for inBloom, but not our fight to protect student privacy

This morning, Stephanie Simon of Politico reports that indeed, after a long battle, the NY State Education Department has finally agreed to sever its relationship with inBloom and will ask them to delete all the student data already stored on its cloud.  This was the clear intent of the state budget bill approved on Monday, and marks the end of a long battle that started when the Regents approved this egregious contract in December 2011.  (UPDATE: See also the article by Gary Stern in Lohud News featuring a quote from me, and the follow-up AP article in which inBloom confirms they have deleted NY student data at the instructions of the State Education Department.)

This also means that inBloom has NO known clients left, as Stephanie points out (contrary to the credulous article in the WSJ recently.)

" Massachusetts is still officially considering a contract with the nonprofit, but a state education department spokesman said it was unlikely to proceed. Illinois no longer plans to upload large amounts of data, though individual districts may participate; inBloom won’t say whether any have agreed to do so."

In state after state, district after district, the original nine partner states of inBloom have cancelled their contracts after protests from parents, teachers, and voters, and have got rid of this data-engorging monster, the $100 million creation of the Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation.  New York state, the Gates Foundation's most faithful cult follower, was the last to agree to let go.

This wouldn't have happened of course without the incredible support of parents throughout the state, who immediately recognized the threat that inBloom represented, and contacted their school boards and Superintendents, who agreed with us and vehemently opposed the project.  Thanks to all of you!

Also thanks to Stephanie Simon, who wrote the first and still the best article in the national media on inBloom when it launched, and pursued this story when countless other journalists from the mainstream media told me that there was no news here and nothing important to report.

Instead, this turned into a multi-layered saga, full of parent protests, hearings, the overturning of a school board election,  as well as evasiveness, false information, and misleading tweets from the Gates Foundation and inBloom, ineptly trying to do damage control.

From the beginning, when we crashed an Gates learning camp, (then called the Shared Learning Collaborative) and in our subsequent, frustrating meeting with Michelle Cahill of the Carnegie Corporation, it was clear that the modus operandi of these officials was to go over parents' heads and ignore our concerns.  Instead, they appeared to be convinced that they would win by dealing solely with state and district administrators, who they felt they could buy off with promises of grant money and the like.  These educrats, including the top brass at the NY State Education Department, had no understanding or interest in dealing with the real-life concerns of parents, who simply wanted to protect their children's privacy.

Whether inBloom will survive or morph into something else is as yet unclear.  inBloom spokesman Adam Gaber told Stephanie that the nonprofit is “pushing forward with our mission” to make student data more accessible to educators. In reality, their goal was always to facilitate the collection and sharing of personal student information with data-mining vendors, and they may still be able to do this in one form or another.  Or the Gates Foundation may pull the plug, with no revenue coming in to make inBloom self-sustaining.  They may finally recognize the albatross that even the name inBloom has become, emblematic of all the oppressive aspects of their multi-pronged, autocratic education agenda, including the Common Core and the multi-state testing consortia, which could become inBloom-like in themselves, and with the assent of State ed departments, amass huge amounts of personal data and hand it off to vendors or use it themselves in all sorts of shady ways.

In any case, the inBloom saga has opened up a can of worms, letting us know that dangerous threats to student privacy arise from a multitude of sources, including the state agencies, avid to track your child's data from cradle to the grave, as well as for-profit vendors, eager to collect as much highly valuable student data as possible in the name of "improving instruction" and "personalized learning" but primarily to make a buck. 

Though we may have won the battle, we are far from winning the war.   Here in New York, Commissioner King will be appointing a "privacy officer" (which in my mind is akin to having the fox guarding the hen house) and will be writing regulations for the new law, whose language in many ways is ambiguous and confusing. We will all have to keep a close eye on him as he is likely to be adopting language for those regs from expensive attorneys hired by the Gates Foundation, Pearson and the like, who are his real "partners" in the educational endeavor known as corporate reform.  Keep tuned as we continue our work to inform parents, and help them fight for the right to protect their child's privacy and security to the maximum degree possible going forward.

Maybe Cuomo's & Tisch's High Standards Aren't So High

When gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino announced his family was opting out of state ELA tests this week, the response from Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch was swift and stern:  "If you are against standards, you are contributing to our decline."  Turns out that by "our decline" she may have meant something peculiar.  This year's 8th grade ELA had a passage on the existence of Bigfoot.  In the unbiased article, experts cited evidence for and against the existence of the species.  A multiple choice question asked the reader to point to the most convincing evidence supporting the argument that the creature was real.   Faced with choices like footprints and DNA tests, one test taker admitted he found some of it to be quite compelling.

No wonder Tisch was so concerned about the Astorino children opting out.  Clearly, they've not only missed out on some standards-setting nonfiction but they may very well have contributed to the decline of our most beloved hominoid cousins.

As for student lobbyist Governor Cuomo, he cannot brook any dissent on the matter of teacher accountability.  Clearly some college-and-career-ready skills are required for this analysis and teachers need to be rated on how well they've inculcated them.

The state tests started today; how did it go? Any pineapples on the exams?

Today is the first day of the state ELA exams for grades 3-8.  We have heard that many thousands of students are refusing the tests, especially on Long Island, where there are more than 11,000 reported as opting out so far.

The last two years we have featured reports on our blog from parents and teachers throughout the state, describing egregious errors on the state tests, the distraught responses of stressed-out kids, and if there were large numbers of kids who didn't attend or refused the exams.

Two years ago we broke the story of the absurd Pineapple passage and questions on the 8th grade exam, the account of which quickly went viral and nationwide; by the next day, the Commissioner had pulled the questions off the exam.

Last year, we received accounts about the epic fail of the ELA exams, with parents and teachers reporting ambiguous questions on the exams, repeated at different grade levels, kids not able to finish the tests, crying and throwing up, and distracting commercial logos and product placements in the reading passages.  It got nearly 100 comments, and more than 30,000 page views.

Parents, teachers and students: Please post your reports of what happened in your school below, if your children opted out, how they spent the day.   If not, how they and other students at the school responded.  Also post on this website which is collecting reports of testing nationwide.

Yesterday's press release from NYSAPE is below.  thanks Leonie

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 31, 2014

CONTACT:

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

Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com

NYS Allies for Public Education www.nysape.org

State Test Refusals are exploding as Parents Discover Legislature Brings No Relief

Despite the ineffective attempt by the State Legislature and the Governor to defuse parent anger by falsely claiming that the budget bill will cause a “pause” in the implementation of the Common Core, growing numbers of parents throughout the State will have their children refuse the NY State exams, which begin on April 1^st.  Thousands have already submitted letters to their principals informing them that their children will not take the tests.  At this point, we have reports from across the state that students are refusing the tests in record numbers. NYSAPE reports that at least 272 districts, (which represent 40% of the state’s districts) will have students refusing the test.  In some of those districts, over one third of the parents have already sent letters informing their principals that their children will opt out.  As more parents report in, we expect that number to grow significantly.

Lori Griffin, Copenhagen public school parent and educator says, “Parents will not be fooled by this mediocre attempt to appease their demands to stop aggressively pushing forward with a flawed program that is harming kids.” 

Danielle Boudet, parent and co-founder of Oneonta Area for Public Education said, “Regardless of whether the budget bill is approved, our children will still be subjected to inappropriate expectations tied to excessive testing with high-stakes consequences.  Until we see happier children coming home, the Pearson worksheets and scripted curricula disappearing, and the test prep going away, we need to make sure our voices are still loud and clear by refusing the Common Core exams due to begin Tuesday, April 1^st.”

"Although we were promised a true moratorium on stakes attached to the tests for kids, the legislature did not deliver. Their meaningless recommendations only serve as a distraction from the true matters at hand: excessive high stakes testing, developmentally inappropriate standards that widen the achievement gap, and an invasion of family privacy.  The number of parents refusing tests on behalf of their children has already reached record highs across the state as the public realizes that when it comes to the education of their children, specific action must take place now." said Jessica McNair, New Hartford public school parent.

“The NY State Education Department is moving ahead with the same failed testing program that was so out of touch with curriculum and students last year.  On April 1^st, schools are again faced with tests that will be developmentally inappropriate for public school children at their respective grade levels. Many parents are refusing to have their children participate in these assessments. Since one of the goals of the NYSED in harvesting assessment data is to evaluate those in charge of student education, it should be applied (beyond teachers) to those same NYSED officials at the helm of this disastrous initiative,” said Katie Zahedi, principal of Linden Avenue Middle School.

“In addition to not addressing the problems with the Common Core and testing, the bill did not go far enough in protecting the privacy of students,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, “This bill would allow the state to continue invading student privacy by disclosing their most personal information to for-profit vendors.  It is not even clear if its provisions would stop the Commissioner’s plan to share our children’s most private data with inBloom Inc.  The bill also represents a massive giveaway to billionaires and hedge funders, intent on privatizing public schools through the expansion of charter schools.  To serve and protect the interests of public schoolchildren, our legislators should vote no on this bill, and parents should deny the state the data, by having their children say no to the state exams.”

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