Children, Parents, and Teachers Pushed to the Bottom in RTTT

[James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com>]

> From Tennessee to New York: Welcome Back to School--You Fail!
> Jim Horn
>
> When Tennessee children left school in early June, the majority of  
> them were proficient in reading and math.  When they return to  
> school later this month, most of that majority of children will not  
> be proficient or even close to it.  From Saturday's The Commercial  
> Appeal:
>
> Friday, the State Board of Education passed new "cut" scores for the  
> state tests, retooled last year to match more rigorous curriculum  
> and standards the state began adopting in 2007.
>
> Based on the new scores, more than 52 percent of third-graders  
> flunked math in the just-finished school year.
>
> And the news gets worse with each grade. In grade six, for instance,  
> nearly 70 percent flunked math; in grade eight, 75 percent failed.
>
> Reading in most grades was slightly better, with the failure rate at  
> 52 percent for fifth-graders and moving up to 57 percent for eighth- 
> graders.
>
> "I think that everyone in the room fully realized that tough work  
> lies ahead and that there would ultimately be real consequences for  
> students, our districts and our state," said Memphian Teresa Sloyan,  
> a member of the State Board of Education.
>
> "For the first time we will know where our children are in terms of  
> their academic preparedness."
>
> In the test taken in the spring of 2009, 91 percent of Tennessee  
> students scored advanced or proficient. . . .
>
> So the new mass failure, thank goodness, doesnât have anything to  
> do with all the video games or hours of TV watching that filled  
> studentsâ time this summer.  For the majority of children to become  
> failures overnight, it took coordination from a set of policy  
> recommendations by Achieve, Inc. (the education arm of the U. S.  
> Chamber of Commerceâs Business Roundtable), a lame duck governor,  
> Phil Bredesen, who sits as Co-Chair of Achieve, Inc., and a  
> Tennessee State Board of Education willing to toe the line of the  
> corporate education reformers who now run the U. S. Department of  
> Education, which paid out $500 million to Tennessee last spring in  
> the Race to the Top.  In short, it is time for Tennessee school  
> children, parents, and teachers to suffer the consequences of  
> Tennesseeâs acceptance of the RTTT money and corporate governance  
> of schools.
>
> This most recent âstandard setting process,â then, that  
> culminated July 30 with the establishment of new cut scores, or  
> passing scores, for TCAP will, no doubt, cause much confusion and  
> not a small amount of anxiety and heartbreak for children and their  
> parents.  The confusion and misinformation can already be seen in  
> one of the first editorials on the subject in The Commercial Appeal:
>
> Huge drops in scores are predicted as the questions get harder in an  
> effort to match tests administered to students in the National  
> Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP].
>
> The truth of the matter is that there are no tougher or harder  
> questions responsible for the testing sledgehammer that has just  
> come down.  The failure fever that will set in over the next few  
> weeks as parents learn of the new âstandard settingâ by the State  
> comes, in fact, from moving back the goalposts after the ball has  
> been kicked.  (The same thing happened Friday, by the way, in New  
> York).  The students who would have split the uprights under the  
> TCAP rules last Spring when they took the test will now see their  
> effort fall way short of the goalposts, which have suddenly been  
> moved as a result of the new cut scores just established while the  
> ball was still in the air.
>
> According to the State Board of Educationâs âindependentâ  
> expert hired to oversee the âstandard settingâ process, Dr. Wayne  
> Camara, who, by the way, sits on the Board of Directors for the  
> Association of Test Publishers, the new cut scores were greatly  
> influenced by consideration of external data from NAEP and ACT, even  
> though panelists were instructed NOT to use NAEP or ACT as evidence  
> in establishing cut scores for the TCAP.  NAEP and ACT were to  
> inform but not influence.  It is as if a judge were to allow a load  
> of evidence he knew to be prejudicial ahead of time, while telling  
> the jury to disregard it in arriving at a verdict.
>
> Now if Goldilocks would have found Tennesseeâs former TCAP surely  
> too soft prior to the most recent âstandard settingâ by the  
> State, there is no doubt that she would find the new NAEP-influenced  
> TCAP much too hard.  For the cut scores for NAEP, which have shaped  
> by the Tennessee juryâs verdict despite the complicit judgeâs  
> instruction to the contrary, have been failing the Goldilocks test  
> on the hard side for a long, long time, as leading academics and  
> psychometricians found in 1991, when they were hired by the  
> governing board of NAEP (NAGB) to make recommendations about NAEPâs  
> own âstandard settingâ process. From a 2008 article in The School  
> Administrator by Gerald Bracey:
>
> The governing board hired a team of three well-known evaluators and  
> psychometricians to evaluate the process â Daniel Stufflebeam of  
> Western Michigan University, Richard Jaeger of the University of  
> North Carolina at Greensboro and Michael Scriven of NOVA  
> Southeastern University. The team delivered its final report on Aug.  
> 23, 1991. This process does not work, the team averred, saying:  
> "[T]he technical difficulties are extremely serious â these  
> standards and the results obtained from them should under no  
> circumstances be used as a baseline or benchmark â the procedures  
> used in the exercise should under no circumstances be used as a  
> model."
>
> NAGB, led by Chester E. Finn Jr., summarily fired the team, or at  
> least tried to. Because the researchers already had delivered the  
> final report, the contract required payment.
>
> The inappropriate use of these levels continues today. The  
> achievement levels have been rejected by the Government  
> Accountability Office, the National Academy of Sciences, the  
> National Academy of Education, the Center for Research in  
> Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing and the Brookings  
> Institution, as well as by individual psychometricians.
>
> I have repeatedly observed that the NAEP results do not mesh with  
> those from international comparisons. In the 1995 Trends in  
> International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, assessment,  
> American 4th graders finished third among 26 participating nations  
> in science, but the NAEP science results from the same year stated  
> that only 31 percent of them were proficient or better.
>
> If anyone from Pearson, Inc. or Achieve, Inc., the two outfits now  
> running education in Tennessee, had bothered to ask either the  
> scientific or academic community about using NAEP as  
> inspirationâNOTâ for TCAPâs new cut scores, they would have  
> been told to steer clear.  Did I mention that Dr. Camara notes in  
> his report that there were no representatives from higher education  
> and no college faculty included as part of Tennesseeâs recent  
> âstandard settingâ process?  Seems that could have been important  
> input to add to Achieveâs panel, since one primary purpose for the  
> new cut scores is purportedly to better prepare Tennessee student  
> for college.   But I digress.
>
> Achieve, Inc. and Pearson, Inc. didnât even have to ask a scientist  
> or a professor. NAEP, in fact, includes its own warning sign to  
> users at its website:
>
> The National Assessment Governing Board, as directed by the NAEP  
> legislation, has been developing achievement levels for NAEP since  
> 1990. A broadly representative panel of teachers, education  
> specialists, and members of the general public help define and  
> review achievement levels. As provided by law, the achievement  
> levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and  
> used with caution.
>
> If you click on the link just above, âused on a trial basis,â you  
> will get the text described here by Bracey (2005):
>
> Even the NAEP reports themselves contain a disclaimer quoting from  
> the NAS study: "NAEP's current achievement level setting procedures  
> remain fundamentally flawed. The judgment tasks are difficult and  
> confusing; raters' judgments of different item types are internally  
> inconsistent; appropriate validity evidence for the cut scores is  
> lacking; and the process has produced unreasonable results."
>
> Fundamentally flawed? Judgments inconsistent? Validity evidence  
> lacking?
>
> Can you imagine the howls of outrage that would greet ETS or CTB/ 
> McGraw-Hill [or Pearson, who now has the Tennessee contract] if they  
> dared bring to market an instrument with such basic failures? So why  
> are we still using the achievement levels? The official story from  
> the U. S. Department of Education is that "a proven alternative to  
> the current process has not yet been identified." That was written  
> in 1998. One would think that a Department as obsessed with applying  
> "scientifically based research" as the current one would have  
> screamed in horror at the flawed achievement levels and rushed to  
> fix them.
>
> The truth is, though, neither the Department nor anyone else is  
> trying to develop a "proven alternative." Indeed, many observers  
> believe that the NAEP achievement levels, created by the National  
> Assessment Governing Board under its then-president Chester Finn,  
> were deliberately set too high in order to sustain the sense of  
> crisis created by 1983's "A Nation At Risk." There is no rush to  
> develop new achievement level setting procedures because much  
> political hay can be made by alleging that American students are  
> performing poorly.
>
> Conspiracy theory, you say.  Bah humbug, etc. Not quite. Again, from  
> Bracey (2008), who cites a study done by Gary Phillips that examined  
> how well top-testing students from other countries would do if they  
> had to sit for the NAEP:
>
> Phillips, now at the American Institutes for Research, had asked:  
> âIf students in other nations sat for NAEP assessments in reading,  
> mathematics and science, how many of them would be proficient?â
>
> Because we have scores for American students on NAEP and TIMSS and  
> scores for students in other countries on TIMSS, it is possible to  
> estimate the performance of other nations if their students took  
> NAEP assessments.
>
> How many of the 45 countries in TIMSS have a majority of their  
> students proficient in reading? Zero, said Phillips. Sweden, the  
> highest scoring nation, would show about one-third of its students  
> proficient while the United States had 31 percent. In science, only  
> two nations would have a majority of their students labeled  
> proficient or better while six countries would cross that threshold  
> in mathematics.
>
>
> So why, then, did the U. S. Department of Education and the Gates- 
> Broad acolytes who run it find such comfort in Tennesseeâs plan to  
> drastically increase its numbers of failing schools? So much so that  
> they would cough up $500 million in RTTT funds?
>
> Well, think about it.  Whose interests are served in expanding  
> failure on a grand scale?  Could it be the charter school CEOs of  
> the CMOs and the EMOs will have years more of school turnaround  
> opportunities?  Will lower scores benefit the corporate enemies of  
> the teaching profession like Gates and Broad and the Business  
> Roundtable, especially since job security and pay in Tennessee,  
> thanks to the RTTT deal, are now to be determined significantly by  
> test scores?  Will standardized testing remain the reason we have  
> schools for another generation of children who, meanwhile, become  
> less capable of thinking as a result? Will the general public remain  
> distracted by the continuing "failure" of schools while the  
> oligarchy continues to ship our jobs and wealth abroad? As Bracey  
> notes at the end of a 2007 op-ed at WaPo, âA Test Everyone Will  
> Fail,â
>
> If the fear-mongers can scare you sufficiently (how many times have  
> you heard the phrase "failing schools" in the past five years?), you  
> might permit them to do to your public schools things you would  
> otherwise never allow.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Posted By Jim Horn to Schools Matter at 8/01/2010 08:27:00 PM