Re: test misuse

["George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>]

In a message dated 9/10/01 1:01:36 PM, pureparents@PUREPARENTS.ORG writes:

<< It is also true, as George says, that CPS is not doing so well keeping
to their agreement. >>

I think this is an understatement, but we don't have enough information yet
to take a closer look. One thing that's certain is that children without
effective advocates (usually, the most effective advocates are parents, but
many of the kids in Chicago's harshest and poorest areas are in foster care)
are simply processed based on those ITBS scores.

Let's assume that the Chicago Board of Education is going to treat the PURE
OCR case the way they treated a teacher rights First Amendment case we won 20
years ago (Substitutes United for Better Schools v. Rohter, which is a
published case in F Supp). They were ordered to change the Board Rules about
distribution of literature. They simply ignored the order and kept bothering
us for selling Substance. After Judge Decker held them in contempt and fined
them, they stopped bothering us (for awhile).

But they still didn't change the Board Rule(s) (6-18 and 6-19) pertaining to
the distribution and sale of literature in Chicago's public schools. And
their enforcement of those rules has continued against anyone against whom
they can get away with it. The most notorious recent example of that kind of
flagrant violation of people's First Amendment rights during the Vallas era
was Vallas ordering the dumping of the PURE materials on the ITBS in January
1999. There have been lots of others.

I suspect they'll do the same thing with the OCR complaint. They'll try to
stall until someone at OCR finally gets tired and starts nastily chiding PURE
for being "obsessed" or some other put down. A lot of their stuff in case
like this is to continually spread noxious fumes behind your back.

As to the present. On August 22, the Chicago Board of Education passed its
latest promotion policy. As anyone can see, the eighth grade new graduation
(and promotion for third and sixth grades) guidelines put the ITBS "grade
equivalent" scores first and central. Everything else is secondary.

I bet if you surveyed most teachers and principals they'd still tell you the
ITBS score is the cut score.

And Arne Duncan's press release on the subject talked about "raising the bar"
again and getting things to a "new level." (The propagandia offices love to
substitute dumb sports and war metaphors for complex and often intractable
facts, and many of our firends in the media eat up the junk food diet of
silly similes and moronic metaphors...).

George Schmidt

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