New York’s Truth in Testing Act

Probably the best time to consider the cost and effect of Common Core might have been BEFORE adopting it, but better late than never.

In April the Truth About Testing Act was introduced in the New York State Assembly and Senate.  In short, the bill calls on Education Commissioner John B. King to compile information for each school district – over 700 in the state – regarding the cost to the district for Common Core testing and the amount of time students are missing in direct instruction due to the tests.  The study would include an anonymous statewide survey to find out how much time is spent on test preparation and its effect on the quality of instruction.  Teachers would also be asked for their opinions about how student assessment could be improved.

The data collected from the field would be disaggregated into several groups:  students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, general education students, for example.  In addition to the Truth About Testing Bill, a second bill would require the commissioner to develop regulations regarding the administration of tests to children in grades K-2.  The bill would allow testing in those grades for diagnostic purposed only.

The push for the bill comes from truthabouttesting.org, sponsored by NYSUT, New York State United Teachers.  Despite the concern about self-interest, few can argue about the need to evaluate what Common Core is costing kids in terms of time, effort, and stress.  In addition, we need to get a composite picture of what kinds of instructional experiences have been jettisoned in order to make room for test prep and testing. 

Adding to concerns about Common Core testing are the difficulty of the tests themselves and the widespread technical failures and interruptions experienced in numerous states that attempted to test kids online, a requirement in 2014-15.  Scores themselves have yet to be released in New York State, but members of the state board of regents cautioned back in March to expect lower scores.  Technical failures were experienced in many of the other 45 states that have adopted Common Core.  Thousands of students found computers slow to load questions or experienced being closed out of testing as they were answering.  Still others were unable to even log in.

I expect that enthusiasm for the passage of New York’s Truth About Testing Act will increase as scores are released and schools are ranked later on this year.  Actually acknowledging the educational and financial impact of all this testing would add a new aspect to the testing argument – factual evidence instead of bias, opinion, and blame.  Too bad we had to put all our kids through this nonsense first.  I’m optimistic this bill might bring things into perspective, especially since NYSUT is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest political contributor in the state.

The Organic Curriculum

Common Core brings with it new tests and new curriculum.  However, there are only so many hours in the day, leaving teachers to consider what can be left out to make room for new requirements?

Cursive writing instruction is on the chopping block. Proponents of cursive say that it’s a traditional skill that has been passed down through generations almost as an art form.  They note that children love learning how to sign their names.  Some even say that if we don’t teach children cursive, they won’t be able to read the Declaration of Independence in its original form.

Common Core allows individual states or communities to make their own decisions regarding teaching cursive, but many schools have abandoned the practice, calling it “obsolete.”  I, of course, was taught cursive in elementary schools and remember, as some of you do, the black and white posters of cursive capital and small letters posted above the blackboard (why did the capital “Q” look like a giant 2?). 
  Today I use cursive to sign my name and make out a grocery list.  As for reading the Declaration, I had to phonetically memorize the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in college and I couldn’t read or write Old English.  So as kids learn to use computers and text on smart phones as preschoolers, maybe the need to teach cursive is more sentimental than practical.

Abandoning cursive will allow more time for one of Common Core’s additions:  more nonfiction.  Reading and English teachers have complained bitterly about not getting to teach novels that have been part of the curriculum for the last 40 years.  Some worry that the “dryness” of nonfiction will turn kids off.  As a former English teacher, I believe there’s room for reading of all kinds, and some of today’s nonfiction reads like an interesting story.  Take, for example, Mary Roach’s new book, Gulp:  Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.  Earlier books are Stiff, about cadavers; and Bonk, about – you guessed it.

If you had the good fortune to see Roach’s latest interview on The Daily Show, you know that she is entertaining and funny.  You understand the science behind the book, but you’ll also discover how Elvis really died in the chapter entitled, “I’m All Stopped Up.”  She investigates the day-to-day work of scientists and shares some of their experiments – like the one to find out if a mealworm can eat its way out of a toad’s stomach.   In an NPR interview, Roach said that she wants readers to say not, “This is gross,” but instead, “I thought this would be gross, but it’s really interesting.  OK, and maybe a little gross.”  Kids don’t care whether a book is labeled fiction or nonfiction; they care if it’s interesting and readable – and maybe just a tiny bit gross.

Curriculum is organic,fluid, constantly changing. We need to be continually adding some items and subtracting others to fit our current students’ needs.

Do Family Dinners Improve Child Behavior?

Research shows that kids who regularly have dinner with their families are less inclined to engage in risky behaviors.  Or maybe not.

New research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health indicates that the more frequently families have dinner together, the better kids do emotionally.  McGill University of Montreal researchers sampled over 26,000 Canadian children ages 11-15.  The researchers found that frequent family dinners had a positive correlation with fewer behavioral problems, more helpful behaviors, and higher life satisfaction among the children.  “The effect doesn’t plateau after three or four dinners a week, “ said Frank Elgar, an associated professor of psychiatry at McGill.  “One is better than none, and all up the scale.  The more dinners a week, the better.”  Still, the researchers admit, they don’t know if family dinners contribute to good mental health or if kids who are having problems tend to avoid eating with the family. 

Another study conducted last year published in the Journal of Child Development, however, found no correlation between dinner and positive outcomes for children.  The study was based on information gleaned from over 21,000 children in grades K-8 in the United States.  But, said Daniel Miller, the author of the study, eating together as a family might just be one of the activities that families engage in that help kids feel grounded.  Other research has found that there is a connection between family activities such as dinner and lower risks of smoking and binge drinking.  But again, researchers are unclear whether the effects are causal.

In this age of technology, I find it hard to believe when I watch families out to dinner that the experience is necessarily having a positive effect.  The kids are looking down at their hand-helds or have earbuds in their ears.  Parents frequently check their smart phones.  Nobody talks to anybody else.  Nobody shares food and some kids only order soda.

I also find it hard to believe that simply engaging in family activities produces a positive effect.  Living near Busch Gardens and Water Country, I’ve seen numerous family outings from hell, with parents shrieking at their kids and kids talking back or ignoring them (earbuds in, iPhone out).  As one mother said to her child last summer, “Quit hanging on me!  It’s hot, I’m sticky, and I don’t want you touching me.”  Out-of-towners are spending a bundle to visit here in historic Williamsburg, and they often act like it’s a sentence.

So I have to think it’s not dinner or the activity in and of itself, but the attitude that adults bring to the table (so to speak).  Put the tech away.  Talk about what you did that day.  No criticisms.  If a kid knocks over his or her drink, so what?  Get a paper towel and refill the glass.  If it’s a family outing, plan it so it’s not a 12-hour day with kids whining and adults exasperated.  It’s not the dinner together per se; it’s spending time together as a family, communicating with one another, and acting as if you care about one another.

 

 

 

School Bus Cameras Detect Bad Motorist Behavior

Few things make me more angry than watching a motorist pass a school bus despite its flashing red lights, swing out stop sign, and children beginning to load or unload.

A few years ago as one of my district’s school buses stopped to pick up kids at a children’s residential center when a car swerved around the bus into the center’s parking lot.  It was the director of the center.  The bus driver called the transportation director, who called the police.  The director’s response?  “I was in a hurry.”

At least in this case no one was injured, but no job is worth risking the life of a child.

Now in an attempt to cut down on such violations, some school districts are equipping their buses with cameras not only inside the bus to detect student misbehavior, but also outside the bus to identify motorist misbehavior.  Like red light cameras, school bus mounted cameras snap pictures of motorists who fail to stop for the bus when its red lights are flashing.  The pictures are then transmitted to the police, who issue citations.  Violations tend to be expensive, ranging in some areas from $300 to $1000.

All of this is just fine with me, with the exception of one little wrinkle:  The cameras are installed by a company called American Traffic Solutions, and the company receives 75% of the revenue generated from these traffic citations.   The financial results have been, unfortunately, pretty lucrative for all concerned.  In Cobb County, Georgia, for example, from last November through January, citations resulted in about $133,000 in revenue.  The company got about $100,00 of that money, the rest going to the county and school district.

So far the response from motorists has been muted compared with the negative response many have to red light cameras. The set-up is the same, with the camera companies sharing in the revenue generated from citations (unless prohibited locally by law).  According to industry data, the use of red-light cameras has burgeoned over the past few years from 155 contracts in 2005 to nearly 700 last year.  Motorists complain that camera companies have calibrated traffic lights to shorten the yellow in order to catch more motorists; the companies retort that the length of the lights is not their responsibility.

John Bowman, of the National Motorists Association, which opposes traffic cameras, believes that people aren’t complaining about school bus cameras because “everyone wants children to be safe.”  Still, he says, instead of cameras, schools should be “looking at the training and support we give out school bus drivers.”

School bus drivers are licensed and well trained, and in many states are required to have additional training throughout the school year.  But no school bus driver, however well trained, can keep a thoughtless motorist from swerving around a stopped school bus.  Frankly, I think sharing the citation fines with the company that puts the cameras on the bus or on the red light can encourage unscrupulous behavior on the part of the company, but that behavior pales in comparison to the risk of carelessly injuring a child getting on or off a school bus.

 

Giving Poor Kids a Chance at an Elite Education

A growing concern of American’s elite colleges, according to David Coleman, president of the College Board, is that classes are filled with predominantly upper class students.  Researchers at Stanford and the University of Virginia decided to explore whether high achieving, low-income students didn’t apply toselective colleges because they did not want to or because they did not understand that they could.

Researchers sent admissions information to 40,000 high achieving, low-income students during their senior year.  Included in the packet was information regarding admission standards, graduation rates, and financial aid policies.  For the purpose of the research, application fees were waived if students applied.  A control group with similar demographics did not receive the packets.

Within the control group, researchers report that only 30% were admitted to a college matching their academic qualifications.  Among similar students who received the packet, 54% were admitted to the most selective colleges.  Researchers concluded that there are many low-income students who are well prepared for selective colleges and would opt to attend if they understood the process.

David Leonhardt, writing in the New York Times, says that the packets that students received presented the important information that selective colleges frequently cost less than local colleges because they have more resources for scholarships.  Leonhardt is quick to point out that low-income students who graduate from less selective colleges still do very well, but graduation rates from these second or third tier colleges are lower.

While recruiting low-income students will add to the diversity of the student body, it will also prove more costly to the universities.  However, some feel that the efforts would resonate with alumni and result in more alumni giving.

One issue that neither Leonhardt nor the researchers consider is how well low-income students adjust socially to highly selective colleges.  Getting in is one thing; staying in is another.  In my experience in rural upstate New York, hard working guidance counselors could help bright kids gain acceptance to selective colleges.  However, often students would drop out or change colleges not because of the academic challenges, but because of the social disparities they felt.  If selective colleges are sincere in wanting to increase diversity, they need to help students adjust socially as well.  Not every student at 18, however bright, can negotiate the social systems without guidance and a strong network of support. 

 

 

No Need for a Soda as Big as Your Head

Being free to do something doesn’t just mean being legally permitted to do it.  It also means having a reasonable prospect of being able to do it.  Parents don’t want their children to become obese, or to suffer the grave consequences of diet-induced diabetes.  Yet our current social environment encourages heavy consumption of sugary soft drinks, making such outcomes much more likely.  So that environment clearly limits parents’ freedom to achieve an eminently laudable goal.

                                                                                         ~Robert H. Frank, Business Day, NY Times

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to prohibit the sale of 32-ounce cups of soda is seen by some as an infringement of individual rights.  Others, like Robert Frank, see it as an attempt to help parents raise healthy children. 

Personally, I don’t understand why your average person would need to drink a quart of soda in one sitting unless he or she had just finished putting on a roof or tearing down a building in 90 degree heat.  Even then water would be a better alternative.  When I see kids with a 32-ounce cup of soda, it’s usually at a rest stop on the highway or at the movie theater.  So it makes me wonder if Frank is right:  Outlawing 32-ounce cups of soda would help parents say no to wheedling kids.  Parents without the gumption to say, “Because I said so” can now say, “Because it’s against the law.”

Ironically, a similar soda controversy played out in public schools not so long ago, but schools were on the side of letting kids drink what they wanted.  Soft drink companies contracted with schools for “pouring rights,” stocking the schools with vending machines that would carry only the company’s products.  In return for exclusive rights to their students, schools received a hefty percentage of the sales.  In addition, some schools received a chunk of cash that some applied to building or refurbishing sports complexes.   If the soda tended to fatten kids up, they could work out the extra calories on state-of-the-art fields.  At least some kids could.

Eventually, however, most schools began to see that being an accomplice to childhood obesity maybe wasn’t the role of public education.  Sugared drinks were replaced with diet drinks, flavored water, and juices.  When the contracts expired, many schools replaced the soda machines with milk machines, thinking they were helping kids make healthier choices.  Kids, however, tended to choose high calorie flavored milks until those milk vending machines disappeared as well.

Now that kids are feeling the effects of adults’ fecklessness about nutrition, the federal government has taken an aggressive role in setting guidelines for calories, choices, and serving sizes.  Many schools still run snack bars because they are moneymakers and can help support the cafeteria program, but choices are limited and kids are often not allowed to make a lunch of snacks.  Fast food franchises are fading out as school lunch programs as well.

So I guess I don’t have a problem limiting 32-ounce sodas for adults who don’t know better than to set that kind of example for kids or to allow their kids to buy them themselves.  There’s precedent for these kinds of guidelines.  Kids need help in making good choices, and some parents don’t like to say no.  At the movies I’ve sat near kids with sodas as big as their heads; they spend most of the time scooting out of the aisles on their way to the bathroom, parent behind them. 

So go for it, Mr. Mayor.  Appeal the court’s recent rejection of your ban on Big Gulps – and while you’re at it, go ahead and hide the cigarettes.

 

 

Teaching Is about the Heart

The recently retired teacher was holding forth at lunch the other day about how kids aren’t half as good as they used to be.  They’re rude, they’re disinterested, they’re disrespectful, they’re disengaged.  You can’t teach them anything.   “I don’t know what’s going to happen to this country with kids like this,” she concluded.  Well, not “concluded.”  “Stopped for air” is more like it.

As one of the luncheon group, I kept my head down and focused on my salad, grateful that this woman never worked for me and thinking she should have retired a long time ago.  For the most part I spent my career with teachers who were competent, dedicated, responsible, and enthusiastic about their profession.  They genuinely liked kids.  They didn’t look for excuses, badmouth their students, or spend a lot of time talking about how hard their jobs were.  They kept their sense of humor.  After a couple of attempts to change the subject, I sat quietly waiting for the check.  I didn’t order this big glass of whine.

So Greg Michie’s blog post, “Salvador’s Last Day” was just the antidote I needed when I got home.  Michie, who teaches in the Chicago public schools, tells the story of 13-year-old Salvador, a “sweet kid” who informs him one day that his family is moving soon.  Salvador seems to like Michie’s class and often hangs around afterwards to help straighten up.  Michie has noticed that Salvador has to squint to see the board, and the teacher makes a mental note to check on getting him glasses.

But Salvador doesn’t leave, and after a while Michie begins to wonder if the boy is really moving or whether it’s just a story to draw some attention to himself.  Michie adds, “Or maybe he just didn’t want to vanish from our school unnoticed, which isn’t uncommon in city schools.  Living in poverty doesn’t always afford parents the luxury of planning ahead, and I remember occasions when, out of nowhere, the intercom buzzed, a kid was called down to the office, and that was it.  Gone.”

One day the boy is fooling around in class and Michie yells at him to sit down and get to work. Chastened and silent, Salvador doesn’t stick around at the end of class, but he comes in after school.  He wants to say goodbye; it is, finally, his last day.  Michie is dumbfounded, berating himself for yelling at the boy on his last day and for not having the foresight to prepare a little farewell – or to check on those glasses.  “It’s not that I wanted to make a big production of it,” Michie writes.  “But if creating a welcoming and affirming classroom environment is part of a teacher’s job, isn’t it also our responsibility to say a decent goodbye?” In the end, “Value added formulas for teacher evaluation don’t account for how one says goodbye to a kid,” he adds.

“Like so much of teaching, how we respond to the loss of a student – whether to violence, a terminal disease, or a family’s relocation – is not a science, not something that can be neatly quantified.  It’s another reminder that teaching is about the heart as much as the head,” he concludes.

I’ve had those kids who disappear one day, sometimes leaving a desk full of papers and books.  I’ve known kids who were enrolled in three or four elementary schools before fifth grade, all within a 50-mile radius.  Often their schooling was interrupted for a few weeks while the family got organized.  It is, as Michie says, one of the side effects of poverty.

So let me remind my retired colleague that kids are kids and have always been so, but that some of them today have to deal with many more issues than kids did 30 years ago.  If anything, they need even more care and understanding than kids did in earlier times.  Criticizing them doesn’t help; recognizing a child’s needs – including saying a decent goodbye – does.

 

 

 

Making the Hard Decisions

At my annual physical, my doctor asked me if I had tried an over-the-counter medication she had suggested the last time she saw me.  I told her I had.

“Really?” she said.  She sounded surprised.

“Well, yes,” I said.  “You recommended it, right?”

She laughed.  “Yes, I did,” she said.  “But most of my patients pay no attention to what I tell them.  So I’m surprised when somebody actually follows through.”

I had a similar conversation once with my eye doctor.  And with my accountant.  Both expressed surprise that I had followed a piece of advice they had given in their area of expertise.

I admit I’m old school.  When I pay for someone’s expert opinion, I tend to take his or her advice seriously.  I think that someone who’s spent his or her life studying and working in the field probably knows more about the topic at hand than I do  -- which is why I typically don’t give a rat’s about “trending tweets” or opinions emailed to news shows. 

That said, you’ll understand why I sympathize with a beleaguered school superintendent who is a friend of mine.  His district is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the cuts the board will have to make will be devastating.  But here’s the thing:  the district’s financial situation didn’t happen overnight.  It wasn’t solvent yesterday and bankrupt today.  The superintendent and the business office had seen it coming for years and had warned the board.  But like patients who ignore their doctor’s advice, they did so at their own peril.

Despite the impending financial dilemma, the board repeatedly refused to make the hard decisions to ensure the district’s solvency.  For years they insisted on no increase in taxes, a popular decision with the voters, but a road to disaster.  As expenses rose, the board closed the gap with the fund balance until it was completely depleted.  Now they’re looking at severe cuts in program and personnel AND a huge tax increase.

The superintendent knew that it’s generally unwise to present a zero-increase budget several years in a row unless your fund balance is well over the limit.  A more palatable scenario, if possible, is to raise taxes a very small amount each year to offset increases in expenses beyond the district’s control – fuel prices, insurance, materials and supplies, new unfunded mandates, etc.  Furthermore, as prices have increased, state and federal aid has decreased.  It’s not rocket science.  By proposing small yearly increases, districts that have to have voter approval for the budget keep the increase level and small enough for voters to handle.  The “feast or famine” routine doesn’t work over the long haul.  Eventually the board will have to ask the voters to approve a whopping budget increase of 10-15%, a proposition ripe for defeat.

The balance between a superintendent and the board is always a delicate one, and I definitely don’t think that the board should be a rubber stamp for the superintendent.  But being a board member means making the hard decisions when they have to be made.  And ignoring the administration’s advice year after year makes me wonder what they pay them for.

 

 

Common Core: The New York State of Mind

Most states have now implemented teacher evaluation systems that include student test scores.  At the same time, schools are in the process of implementing Common Core, which, of course, comes with a new set of tests.  The New York State Education Department officials admit that the tests are more difficult than before and to expect a drop in test scores.  Anyone see a problem here?

Well, the New York State United Teachers do.  The association, the largest teachers’ union in the state, is pushing back against what its leaders call “obsessive” standardized testing.  The tests, in grades three through eight math and English language arts, are scheduled for mid-April.

Teachers say they haven’t really had time to implement the new curriculum and it’s unfair to include scores in teachers’ evaluations.  The Department of Education says it’s no big deal because teachers will be measured against all the other teachers in the state who are in the same situation.  Teachers would like another year to get ready.

Currently the union is running ads in newspapers and conducting forums around the state.  The forums, called “Tell It Like It Is,” are attempts to encourage teachers to speak out against the new testing.  In addition, the union is pressing for local school boards to pass a resolution calling on state and federal officials to end excessive testing and find alternate evaluation methods.

But the State Board of Regents so far is standing by its decision to test on material some teachers say they haven’t had a chance to implement and need more time to implement.  Merryl H. Tisch, chairperson of the New York State Board of Regents, isn’t buying it.  She says the timeline for implementation was made clear two years ago and that school districts would have to have been “living under a rock” to protest now. 

In addition, New York’s contract with its testing companies contains the provision that all materials would be free of licensing restrictions, allowing them to post on their website free curriculum materials.  The State Education Department touts the ready availability of materials; NYSUT officials say that materials have been posted, taken down, revised, and reposted.  My experience with the State Education Department regarding other posted information for state exams suggests that NYSUT probably has a point.

It appears at the moment that Common Core implementation has seen uneven acceptance and implementation throughout the state.  It remains to be seen if pressuring teachers to produce good test scores will work to the benefit of kids.  It’s test time in New York, and let’s see who the real winners are in this latest skirmish.

 

Will Common Core Change Anything?

Ken Kay and Bob Lenz, writing in Education Week, wonder which path Common Core will take as it meanders through various states’ education systems.  Key is chief executive of EdLeader21, a network of education leaders in Tucson, and Lenz is CEO of Envision Education, a nonprofit charter management organization in Oakland.  One path for Common Core, they say, is that the curriculum will be absorbed or subsumed into the existing curriculum in many schools with very little actual change.  The second, more arduous path is that the curriculum will become the vehicle for a “transformational opportunity for our nation’s teaching and learning systems.”  I suspect most schools will follow Path #1.

Kay and Lenz call for Common Core standards to be the “floor” and not the “ceiling” of achievement.  Calling for schools to adopt a “Common Core and more” approach, they see the standards as a way to bring higher level thinking skills into the classroom – skills like analysis, inquiry, and research.   Common Core would be the jumping off point to transform teaching so that students could acquire the skills they need for college and/or career. 

Some educational leaders see the promise in Common Core, Kay and Lenz say.  Others see it as just another “compliance exercise.”   The final result, I think, will be something in-between.  The school curriculum will change, but the change will be neither systemic nor revolutionary.

School districts move with glacial slowness to adopt and implement innovative practices.  Entrenched practices tend to rub the sharp angles off new initiatives until they settle more comfortably into established routines.  Take, for example, the new teacher evaluation systems adopted in many states.  In Florida, 97%
of teachers were recently judged effective or highly effective.  In Michigan, 98% of teachers were found to be effective or better.  In Tennessee, 98% of teachers were “at expectations.”

Observes Jenny Anderson, writing in the New York Times, “Even the part of the [teacher’s] grade that was intended to be objective, how students perform on standardized tests, has proved squishy.  In part, this is because tests have changed so much in recent years – and are changing still, because of the new Common Core … administrators have been unwilling to set the test-score bar too high for teachers.”

Teachers and administrators say that constantly changing standards and tests make it nearly impossible to know exactly what students need to know to perform well on the new tests.  Others find the high scores of teacher performance unsettling particularly after all the money and time that has been poured into Common Core.  Sandi Jacobs of the National Council on Teacher Quality says. “It is too soon to say that we’re where we started and it’s all been for nothing.  But there are some alarm bells going off.”

One of the reasons that new school initiatives fail to make systemic changes is that with rare exception, 90% of money and effort is spent on initial training and implementation; 10% of money and effort is spent on maintenance.  The exception occurs when training occurs in waves over several years and maintenance is consequently ongoing.  It remains to be seen whether administrators are committed to full implementation of Common Core so that teacher training is ongoing and evaluation is strongly connected to the standards.  Otherwise, it will remain business as usual in Common Core schools.