Fw: goofiness

["GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>]

Alter's response appears after my response to his response.  He doesn't say much, misinterprets some.  Maybe it's a start.

Jerry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: GERALD BRACEY 
To: Web Editors 
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: goofiness


Mr. Alter,

I agree that measuring growth is superior to taking cross sections, but even that is not enough.  Poor kids show summer loss, middle class and affluent kids either hold their own or gain. 

So far, only one person has claimed that changes in test scores can be traced to individual teachers and no one believes him because his method is proprietary.  Those in the academic community who have worked with what is generally known as Value Added Measurement, say it can't be done.  One reason is that you would need random assignment of teachers to classess and random assignment of kids.  Ain't gonna happen.  Parents will see to that.  By the way, this IS rather rocket science, but it is something I know a bit about.  Most people don't.  I directed the Virginia testing programs for a decade and the Cherry Creek Colorado school system for another 5.  I have written books about testing and taught tests and measurements at the graduate level.  A lot of people who feel comfortable talking about tests really don't know doodley squat.  Ask a few of your colleagues to explain the difference between the one parameter and the three parameter model of Item Response Theory and discuss the merits of each.

Even if we could get by all the technical difficulties, your contention assumes that we've got tests that measure what should be measured.  We don't.  We have tests that are quick and cheap to give and which line the coffers of publishers, some of whom are family friends of the Bushes.  And after all, the kids who score the highest on standardized tests, Finnish kids, don't have much practice with them.  They are little used in Finnish education.  Testing is really not necessary. There is not one test being used states for NCLB that has been validated in terms of testing what kids will need in the future.  Not one.  

It is true that only the school gets AYP, but the kids get feedback on whether they passed the test or not.  And that's all they get.  NCLB presents a false dichotomy:  You're either proficient or you're left behind.  The results don't tell the kid what they really didn't understand and they don't tell the teacher how to do it better.  They just say "you better get better."  That's really a dumb approach.  

Your logic leaves YOU when you say I'm "too quick to write off the poor."  There is nothing in my letter that implies that.  I merely made the quick point that poverty has a huge impact on achievement.  I've been working with the poor since I was involved in Head Start in the 60's.  In the Third Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education (a title created by editors), I wrote, ""The Second Bracey Report accentuated the raging needs of city schools and the even more intractable problems of the largely invisible rural poor.  The ensuing year provided more evidence--as if any were needed--that our cities are in dire straits."  The Third Report was in 1993, the second, 1992.  Scandinavian countries have figure out ways of cutting, virtually eliminating poverty.  Can they keep it up?  We'll see, but it sure has paid great dividends so far.

What's missing here is political will.  We can spend $10 billion a month on an outrageous war on a country that did nothing to us, but the administration will veto a bill that cancels a pay cut for doctors in Medicare payments.  Not because he's anti-doctor, but because the money for the whomping 1 1/2 percent increase comes from his beloved private sector--the private companies who have been looting Medicare in recent years.  On the other hand, Head Start has never been fully funded, nor have the successful pre-school programs such as that from High/Scope been supported and widely disseminated (they would cost a bundle compared to Head Start but a least one pretty smart guy, Nobelist Jim Heckman says it would be worth it (why don't you write about that the next time education strikes your fancy?).  

You said flatly that "80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college."  Now you admit that "Sure, a lot of KIPP kids drop out."  Do they get factored into the 80%.  And I STILL want a citation for that 80% figure because, frankly, in the absence of one, I don't believe it.  Trust but verify.

"Don't we need to offer a lot more of those poor kids that same chance?"  Of course, but it will take a lot of resources.  And as the Broader Bolder coalition notes, "there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially, consistently, and sustainably close these [achievement] gaps." (www.boldapproach.org).  I've been arguing that for years.  Around 1990 there was a flurry of activity around the idea of making schools one-stop shops for everything--medical, dental, etc.  Why not?  The kids are there and it's a hardship on poor families to have to cart them around to different agencies for different services.  You'd probably not then see outrageous headlines about how a 12-year-old died because his mother couldn't find anyone to extract his infected tooth.  But those ideas got lost in high stakes testing and the delusion that schools could do it all (why don't you write about that sometime?).

Gerald W. Bracey
  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Web Editors 
  To: gbracey1@verizon.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:51 PM
  Subject: FW: goofiness


  Please see Mr. Alter's response below.

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Alter, Jonathan 
  Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:46 PM
  To: Web Editors
  Subject: RE: goofiness


  Thanks, Gerald, for your thoughtful letter. Much that you say about Japan and the limitations of testing is right. But you lose your logic when you throw up your hands on assessments. The way to measure both schools and teachers is not through a flat standard but my measuring improvement over the course of the school year--.i.e. whether the kids actually learned ANYTHING. Right now, this isn't measured. Only the school gets AYP. (and I agree that NCLB has a lot of problems). Why should teachers be free of evaluation and consequences if they stink? It makes no sense. So while you're right about many schools, you're too quick to write off the poor. We've got to get a hold of these dropout rates. Sure, a lot of KIPP kids drop out. But how about all of the one who don't? Don't we need to offer a lot more of those poor kids that same chance?
   Best- Jonathan Alter 
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Ronneburger, Julie On Behalf Of Web Editors
    Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:45 PM
    To: Alter, Jonathan
    Subject: FW: goofiness



    -----Original Message-----
    From: GERALD BRACEY [mailto:gbracey1@verizon.net]
    Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:17 PM
    To: Web Editors
    Cc: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com; arn-l@interversity.org
    Subject: goofiness


    Mr. Alter        

    Back in April, I wrote NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert an email that began, "I am still amazed after all these years that people who can be rational and insightful about virtually every topic under the sun go all goofy when it comes to education.  Goofy is you in today's column."  

    Now it's your turn.  Goofy is you.  It so happens that Bob had also been visited by professional fear monger, Bob Wise.  I guess there's good money in fear.  Don't know if Roy Romer turned up in your office, but Roy, who was pretty smart when I knew him in Colorado, is the worst of the anxiety peddlers.  He gets $60 million from Bill and Eli to make people afraid, very afraid.  For an octogenarian, he's very energetic about it. 

    You guys don't seem to get it.  "A Nation at Risk" (ANAR) said we were doomed if we didn't completely reform our schools.  You point out that today we're #25 among 30 industrialized nations in math.  So we didn't shape up as ANAR demanded.  Yet the World Economic Forum ranks us the most competitive economy in the world.  So does the Institute for Management Development.  

    The IMD had us replacing Japan as #1 in 1994 and remaining in that position.  

    You remember Japan.  It had a great economy and the people who wrote ANAR thought that that was due to Japanese kids' high test scores.  After ANAR appeared, Secretary of Education Ted Bell dispatched assistant secretary Checker Finn and a group of policy wonks to Japan to see if we could import their schools.  They said they thought it was possible.  But 7 years later, Japan's economy sank into the Pacific and took the rest of the Asian Tiger nations with it.  But Japanese kids continued to ace tests.  Get it through your head: tests don't count.  As Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be measured and not everything that can be measured counts."

    Ask your fellow Newsweek pundit, Fareed Zakariya.  He noticed that those high flying 8th graders in Singapore compared poorly to American kids 10, 20 years down the road.  How come?  He asked the Singapore Minister of Education.  We have a test meritocracy, Mr. Minister said.  You have a talent meritocracy.  There are things we can't test like creativity, ambition and, most of all, the American kids' willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.  This is where Singapore must learn from America.  They're trying--a bunch of Singapore educators visited the adjacent county to mine and were blown away.  The kids were so ENGAGED with school.  Maybe that's why there are 105,000 Korean kids studying here.  Their parents want them to learn English, yes, but they hate the rote learning of Korean schools and the life-determining college entrance test.  But Korean kids do score high on tests.  

    Even if tests counted there'd be the fact that among 21 developed nations, the U.S had the highest poverty rate.  If we're #1 in poverty, is it reasonable to expect #1 in test scores?  But, really, tests, don't count.  In fact, if you analyze the test scores by the poverty levels of schools, 30% of American kids score higher than the highest country in reading.  And another 28% score high enough that if they constituted a nation, they'd rank fourth in the world (out of 35).  But the Bob Wises and Roy Romers aren't interested in such analyses.  They've got money to peddle fear.

    George Washington University professor Iris Rotberg recently wrote, "The fact is, test score comparisons tell you very little about the quality of schools" (Education Week, June 11).  You say it's fashionable to attack tests.  Yes, and the preceding statement is why.  If you wanted to evaluate schools based on test scores, you'd be a fool.  So would Obama.  

    If you wanted to evaluate teachers based on test scores, you would be equally foolish.  The resistance of anyone to teacher evaluation that no one has figured out how to do it. You admit this but say, "we have no way of determining which teachers can actually teach."  It's a bit complicated, this.  How do you separate this year's teacher contribution from last year's?  How do you factor out home, community, lead poisoning, poor nutrition, asthma (which somehow doesn't seem to turn up in affluent neighborhoods), single parenthood, stress (I was just reading some pediatric literature on the devastating impact of stress on the developing brain)?  

    By the way, the official 2008 Texas GOP Platform says, and I quote, "The No child Left Behind Act has been a massive failure and should be abolished."  Know what?  They're right.

    A second by-the-way and a strong request:  KIPP admissions are anything but random.  If Wise or Romer told you that, they're lying.  And I want to see a citation for your claim that 80 percent of KIPP go to college.  If you look even at KIPP's own annual reports,  you see extremely high attrition rates from grade 5 to grade 8.

    Sincerely,

    Gerald W. Bracey
    1797 Duffield Lane
    Alexandria, VA 22307
    703-317-1716