Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
New York is looking into charges that credit recovery programs make it too easy for students to blow off schoolwork, earn credits for doing very little and pick up a diploma. Principals are evaluated based on graduation rates, providing an incentive to lower standards. (Students can earn P.E. credits online.) Read teachers’ comments on Gotham Schools.
It’s not just a New York City thing. Teachers all over the country have been complaining about credit recovery.
New York has dumbed down its Regents exam to avoid failing too many students, writes Michael Winerip in the New York Times. This year, for the first time, high schools students must score at least 65 on five exams — English, math, science, global history and U.S. history — to earn a diploma. But it’s easy to score 65, Winerip asserts. Literacy is optional.
The three-hour English test includes 25 multiple choice questions, an essay and two short responses. A student who gets 1’s on both responses is likely to reach 65, Winerip writes. What does it take to score a 1? The state teachers’ scoring guide gives an example of a 1-worthy short response:
These two Charater have very different mind Sets because they are creative in away that no one would imagen just put clay together and using leaves to create Art.
He also provides the start of an essay that deserves 4 out of 6 points, according to the guide:
In life, “no two people regard the world in exactly the same way,” as J. W. von Goethe says. Everyone sees and reacts to things in different ways. Even though they may see the world in similar ways, no two people’s views will ever be exactly the same. This statement is true since everyone sees things through different viewpoints.
I suppose one could argue that blathering, bluffing and echoing the words of authority figures are important workforce skills.
Winerip, never a fan of standards and accountability, doubts “there are new and higher standards, stronger curriculums and better tests just over the next hill to solve all our problems.”
“Four now,” he writes, “Wm. Shakespare must Be a turnover in his Grave (1 point).”
Getting students to pass the Regents exam is “damn near everything,”, writes a Bronx high school teacher in New York Magazine‘s Workplace Confidential.
As teachers, we massage the tests to make sure if a kid is close to passing, he or she does. We don’t take a 30 and make it a 65, but we do our best to make that 62 a 65.
. . . This test is a requirement to pass high school and graduate. If the student doesn’t pass, the parent comes in screaming that he was a mere three points from passing. The principal hears it. Then we hear it. Then he ends up passing anyway. This is the norm. Seniors are the worst, because they feel so entitled that we have to cover our asses nineteen different ways to fail them. There have been stories of guidance counselors’ flat-out changing grades and passing seniors who should have failed but miraculously walked on graduation day.
Teachers are cogs in the system, the anonymous teacher writes.
Oklahoma may repeal its brand-new graduation requirements for fear of high failure rates, reports the Tulsa World.
The class of 2012 is the first group of students to face the state graduation requirements created by lawmakers in 2005 as part of Achieving Classroom Excellence legislation.
Each student is required to pass four of seven end-of-instruction exams to get a high school diploma. The exams are in Algebra I and II, English II and III, Biology I, geometry and U.S. history.
Rep. Jerry McPeak, D-Warner, predicts 80 percent of legislators will support repealing the higher standards.
Even Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, a co-author of the original bill, wants to rethink the legislation. Schools haven’t been able to give students enough remedial help, she said.
Several states are backing off on higher graduation requirements, notes the Hechinger Report. Georgia eased its requirements last year, cutting the number of exams from four to one.
Other states are raising standards to ensure a passing score signifies college readiness.
New York has vowed to make its high-school graduation exams tougher after a study last year showed that even students who pass the math test may be placed in remedial math classes in college. Florida recently raised its cut-off scores on all standardized exams, including those in high school, and is developing additional end-of-course assessments.
Statistics showing that large numbers of high-school graduates are unprepared for college coursework have fueled the push to make tests more difficult. Right now, many of those who do earn a diploma must enroll in at least one remedial course in college.
Nearly a quarter of high school graduates who seek to enter the military fail the entrance exam, which tests subjects such as word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, arithmetic reasoning and general science, Hechinger reports.
Hundreds of New York principals are protesting plans to use test scores to evaluate principals and teachers, reports the New York Times. To qualify for Race to the Top funds, the state put together a new evaluation system.
Their complaints are many: the evaluation system was put together in slapdash fashion, with no pilot program; there are test scores to evaluate only fourth-through-eighth-grade English and math teachers; and New York tests are so unreliable that they had to be rescaled radically last year, with proficiency rates in math and English dropping 25 percentage points overnight.
Delaware, one of the first states to get Race to the Top funds, also has rushed through “ludicrous initiatives,” writes Hube at The Colossus of Rhodey.
Administrators, who’ve evaluated countless teachers through the years, are required to attend “training” sessions to … evaluate teachers.
Teachers will support a fair evaluation system, he writes.
. . . why not take a few master teachers from each subject area and pay them to, say, three times a year visit the classrooms of district teachers for the latter’s evaluations? . . . not only would these evaluators be experienced teachers, they also know the subject area as well. . . . I bet this idea’d be a heck of a lot cheaper.
Teachers and their unions should rethink their lockstep support of Democrats, Hube writes. “George W. Bush was blasted by these folks for No Child Left Behind, but Obama’s initiative is NCLB on steroids.”
Students are rapping the Regents exam, reports the New York Times, which visits a U.S. history test-prep class for Spanish-speaking immigrants.
“Follow along closely so it won’t get convoluted,” (Jamel) Mims, 25, rapped, flicking his wrist to the beat. “The supreme law of the land is called the …”
He paused. The girls conferred in their native language, Spanish, scrambled for the marker, and hoisted their whiteboard into the air. “The Constitution!” they shouted in English, reading off their answer.
Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership, has raised $400,000 in donations to write Regents raps and deliver the review curriculum. The goal is to help students memorize facts and “bridge the engagement gap,” Mr. Mims said.
Two dozen rap songs with rapid-fire lyrics . . . review global history and American history. Students are given a 250-page workbook in which to fill in the blanks and write answers, and they are supposed to download the songs onto their MP3 players and memorize them at home.
So far, Fresh Prep claims more rap review students pass the exam, but says “hip-hop as a review method is hard to teach to a neophyte teacher. Now Urban Arts is revising its strategy to make sure a Fresh Prep artist instructor is always in the room.” That sounds expensive.
Though I’m no connoisseur of hip hop, the rap seems impossibly “convoluted” in syntax, complex in vocabulary and downright dreadful. The students had trouble following the Constitution rap, even with a text, the reporter notes.
“First Amendment, that’s freedom of speech, needed that desperately
Freedom of expression, plus church and state separately
Right to bear arms the deuce, Third the quartering of troops
Four: protection from search and seizure unless a warrant is used.”
Let’s say the students memorize the words. Will they understand the ideas?
I was amused by this section:
Now the States had powers for themselves preserved
Powers not belonging to the Federal Gov. are Reserved
These include making drivers license regulations
Laws for marriage and divorce and standards for education.
Perhaps Arne Duncan should try a little rap review.
Public schools spent $10,499 per student in fiscal 2009, according to the Census Bureau. That was 2.3 percent more than the year before. New York was the top spender at $18,126 per pupil, followed by the District of Columbia ($16,408) and New Jersey ($16,271).
For $18,126 per student — or even $10,499 per student — it should be possible to pay teachers fairly, buy books and supplies and heat the building.
Utah spent just $6,356, Idaho $7,092 and Arizona $7,813.
Public school systems received $590.9 billion in funding in 2009, up 1.5 percent from the prior year. States provided 46.7 percent, local sources 43.8 percent and the federal government 9.5 percent.
Test scores should be information at a teacher’s disposal, not information used to dispose of teachers.
The New York State Board of Regents passed the new regulations, which allow scores on state standardized tests to account for up to 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Several researchers expressed concern about this, before the vote, in a letter. At least two board members spoke up against this change, and three voted against it. Kathleen Cashin said that this would lead to even more reliance on test prep. Roger Tilles pointed out that the districts that can’t afford to develop local assessments will be forced to use state assessments for the full 40 percent of the evaluation.
We need tests, including standardized tests. As a teacher, I want to know promptly how my students did on a given test. (Often the results don’t come back until the following year.) I would like to look at the questions and my students’ answers, instead of relying on diagnostic reports that tell me that such-and-such a student needs to work on “finding the main idea.”
The tests are one way of verifying that students have learned what they are supposed to learn. But they cannot be the only way, or even close. In English language arts, the tests can be especially misleading, as they are generally rather weak in “content.” That is, they do not presume that students have read anything in particular. They test generic skills–sometimes accurately, sometimes not.
They are even less reliable as indicators of teachers’ performance. For reasons that have been brought up again and again, reasons given by scholars, teachers, policymakers, and others, test scores should not decide a teacher’s fate or override human judgment. There are simply too many unstable factors–the tests themselves, the students’ lives, conditions on the day of the test–that make the scores inaccurate indicators of what a teacher is accomplishing.
In an op-ed in the New York Daily News, Arthur Goldstein points out that students’ efforts are not uniform: “For example, how much television does a student watch? … If my students don’t know how to read, haven’t been in school for the past six years or refuse to put a mark on a piece of paper, is it my fault? If a kid was dragged to the U.S. against his will and simply won’t learn English, should I be penalized?” (Having taught ESL, I have seen these situations.)
Value-added formulas are just as problematic as test scores, if not more so. They control for all sorts of factors, but the various controls create their own problems and distortions. Value-added ratings can provide useful information about schools, over time. But in teacher evaluations and tenure decisions, they should be regarded carefully and critically. And there should be room to “unpack” them–to figure out what a teacher’s rating might have been under this or that different condition.
All of this has been said, many times. Of course, human judgment is also fallible. “Multiple measures” can also be misleading. Don’t get me started on portfolios–it is often the teacher, not the student, who puts time and effort into these portfolios, and they may not reflect what a student can do independently.
What, then, should constitute teacher evaluations? Well, as in government, I prefer a system of thoughtful checks and balances. Consider test scores, but don’t give them too much power. Consider the principal’s judgment, but don’t let that override all else. Consider student work, but look carefully at it–don’t just check off items on a checklist. Consider a teacher’s lesson plans, assignments, and contributions to the school. Yes, this comes down to “multiple measures,” but the point isn’t just that they are multiple. The point is that each one is regarded carefully.
When one measure (not to mention a flawed one) is given too much power, it is bad for schools through and through. It tells teachers (and, indirectly, students) that excercising one’s judgment isn’t that valuable after all.
Wiffle Ball, tag, kickball and dodgeball are dangerous games with a “significant risk of injury,” according to New York day camp regulations. So are Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon and Red Rover, reports the New York Daily News. But Frisbee, tug of war and sack races are considered safe.
“It looks like Albany bureaucrats are looking for kids to just sit in a corner in a house all day and not be outside,” said state Sen. Patty Ritchie (R-St. Lawrence County).
Under the new rules, any program that offers two or more recreational activities — with at least one on the risky list — is subject to state regulation as a day camp. That means paying a $200 registration fee and providing medical staff, Ritchie said.
Deborah Graham, 51, a mother of two from Harlem, said moving around was less harmful than playing video games all summer.
“You could develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome,” she said. “And when (kids) eat, eat, and eat, they get diabetes. That’s dangerous.”
Regulators said not every program will need to hire medical staff. Some will get by with a plan to deal with medical emergencies.
Perhaps dodgeball risks “significant injury,” but Wiffle Ball? Tag?
Only 23 percent of New York City students are ready for college or careers, according to state data, reports the New York Times. That doesn’t include special education students. Other big cities in the state are doing even worse: Only 5 percent of Rochester students did well enough on state exams to be considered college and career ready. Statewide, 41 percent of students test as college or career ready.
New York’s Board of Regents may require schools and districts to report the college-ready rate as well as the graduation rate, said Chancellor Merryl Tisch.
The move parallels a decision by the Regents last year to make standardized tests for third through eighth graders more difficult to pass, saying that the old passing rates did not correlate to high school success.
“With three through eight, we ripped the Band-Aid off,” Dr. Tisch said in an interview last week. “The thing we said then, in looking at the business world, is that if you sit on this, you become the of test scores, the Enron of graduation rates. We need to indicate exactly what it all means, especially since we’ve already said that college-ready should be the indicator of high school completion.”
I admire her honesty. But is it really possible to make “college-ready” the standard for a high school diploma? Without fudging on what it takes to be college ready?
Statewide, 77 percent of New York students graduate from high school. Students must score a 65 on four of the state’s five required Regents exams to earn a Regents diploma. Starting next year, they’ll need to a 65 on all five.
Using data collected by state and , testing experts on a state committee determined last year that a 75 on the English Regents and a 80 on the math Regents roughly predicted that students would get at least a C in a college-level course in the same subject. Scores below that meant students had to often take remediation classes before they could do college-level work.
. . . In New York City, roughly 75 percent of public high school students who enroll in community colleges need to take remedial math or English courses before they can begin college-level work.
The Regents may raise graduation requirements to include four years of math and science. Another possibility is raising the passing score on high school exams to 75 in English and 80 in math, the college-ready level.
At the same time, the Regents are considering letting students substitute foreign language, economics or art — or a vocational skills test — for one of the five required Regents exams in math, English, science, global history and American history.
The state also could grant flexibility to districts to give credits to students who demonstrate competency, based on “examination or online course work,” in addition to “seat time.”
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