Re: CA Accountability Program Fails Federal Standards

[Monty Neill <monty@FAIRTEST.ORG>]

Peter Schrag is wrong on several points:

Only 13 states now test in math and reading in grades 3-8; 16 states
test in 2 grades, 10 in 3 grades, so half the states would have to
double or triple their testing. That might not go down so well in many
states -- and it really does therefore make a difference.

I am told Miller and Kildee's bill does not call for more testing, but
is heavy on accountability -- have not seen the bill yet.

Monty Neil

George Sheridan wrote:
>
> Peter Schrag: Testing, accountability and wedge politics
> (Published in the Sacramento Bee Jan. 31, 2001)
> http://www.sacbee.com/voices/news/voices04_20010131.html
>
> Last week, at almost the same moment President Bush announced his education
> program, which is focused on testing and accountability, along comes a
> letter from the Clinton administration, sent Jan. 19, its last full day in
> office, declaring that California's testing and accountability program
> doesn't meet federal standards.
>
> Were those gremlins that snatched the W's off the White House computer
> keyboards just playing another merry prank? No, the letter, sent to state
> schools chief Delaine Eastin and signed by U.S. Assistant Education
> Secretary Michael Cohen, appeared to be in deadly earnest. The SAT9 test
> that the state uses, said Cohen, isn't aligned with the state's standards,
> and the "augmented" items, questions that are supposed to be based on the
> standards, haven't been validated.
>
> "No evidence was provided," says the letter, that the state's review
> process "ensures fairness and accessibility of the assessments. Moreover,
> no evidence was provided on the way the state will ensure that the
> assessment results are comparable for different schools and for different
> years, nor of systematic plans for reviewing and improving the assessments."
>
> Moreover, the letter states, the tests aren't valid for students with
> limited proficiency in English. Unless the state acts quickly, its federal
> Title I funding, which is designed to help disadvantaged students, could be
> in jeopardy.
>
> All this, no doubt, will get fixed when the appropriate Bush administration
> official finds his desk. But it is an indication of how murky and marginal
> all this federal rule-making can get.
>
> California, like the great majority of other states, already has in place
> almost precisely the state-devised testing and accountability plans
> requiring schools to show annual progress that the Bush proposals
> contemplate. A few don't test in every year between grades three and eight
> in reading and math, as Bush wants, but even they could easily adapt their
> testing programs to that requirement.
>
> While no one yet knows what it will regard as adequate progress, the new
> administration presumably will review state proposals to make certain they
> meet some minimal criteria. Bush is not likely to get Congress to buy his
> voucher program, which would allow poor children in failing schools to use
> $1,500 in Title I money for tutoring or private school tuition.
>
> But if Congress attaches any financial sanctions to state or local failure
> to show progress, states that had on their own been demanding as much as
> possible -- and often more than could be expected -- in the way of test
> scores from their schools and students will be tempted to reverse course.
> If the feds are going to punish you for failure, why make things
> unnecessarily hard for yourself?
>
> There are important elements in the Bush plan that have hardly been
> discussed -- among them the teacher-training proposals and the literacy
> initiative, which places Washington squarely behind phonics-based
> approaches in teaching reading. While phonics has strong research support,
> the proposal gives Washington a stronger role in telling state and local
> districts how to teach than it's ever had before.
>
> At the same time, the testing and accountability proposals, which are
> getting all the attention, add only incrementally, and sometimes not at
> all, to what the states are doing. Nor does Bush attempt to force states to
> use their federal Title I money more efficiently. As the lame-duck Clinton
> administration warning to California indicates, both the administration and
> Congress have been trying for years, generally with little success, to make
> the states more accountable.
>
> But testing and accountability, like vouchers, have enormous political
> importance, the former because they require little that's new and are
> likely to produce a quick, uncontroversial bipartisan success, the latter
> because, paradoxically, they offer Bush and the GOP a great opportunity for
> wedge politics down the road.
>
> In the past 10 days, there's been a love-in between Bush and Rep. George
> Miller, the liberal from Contra Costa County who is now the ranking
> Democrat on the House Education and Work Force Committee. Miller also likes
> testing and accountability. But at this point there's hardly anyone on the
> Hill who doesn't, provided that they don't make too many parents worry that
> their kids won't get their diplomas or cost too many districts their
> federal money.
>
> The school proposals are a great (and maybe a rare) opportunity to show
> that everybody can work together. (Meantime, Bush is slowly draining the
> rage of Florida out of the Democrats.) Ditto for the president's brilliant
> show of flexibility on vouchers. His proposal -- allowing poor kids in
> chronically failing schools to take their Title I money as a "scholarship"
> -- was always too limited in scope and funding to be more than a symbol.
>
> But as a symbol it's great, not only because its focus on poor kids
> burnishes the president's mantle of compassionate conservatism -- the play
> to moderates -- but also because it will be mighty useful in poor and
> minority communities.
>
> Bush failed dismally to attract black voters last year, but vouchers have
> increasingly strong support in minority communities, where many kids are
> stuck in ugly, dangerous, dead-end schools. Bush and Secretary of Education
> Rod Paige, himself a product of segregated Southern schools, can make a
> strong case that it's Democrats, in thrall to teachers unions, who are
> resisting vouchers and keeping them there. That could make things more than
> a little uncomfortable for a lot of them.
>
> Peter Schrag appears on this page Wednesdays. He can be reached at Box
> 15779, Sacramento, CA, 95852-0779, or at pschrag@sacbee.com
>
> Copyright © The Sacramento Bee
>
> George Sheridan
>
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