Students Advocate Novel Civil Disobedience During PARCC Tests & Pearson Enlists Governments in Retaliation

UPDATED 
*Tweet, baby, tweet -- Students share absurd PARCC question responses & Big Brother Pearson enlists local governments to act as Big Brother *NM districts into overdrive, bullying parents who opt their children out
News media have covered the test opt-out movement as the Common Core-based Pearson-owned Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests have been rolled out: students walked out of school en masse in various locales in New Mexico; elsewhere students quietly or not so quietly opted out. And students and parents have engaged in many public demonstrations: In Colorado, in Illinois; today in Mississippi parents advised students to skip the test, today in Rhode Island protesting in defense of a teacher that spoke to students about the controversial PARCC test.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan ventured into a Chicago school recently, only to encounter people protesting the PARCC tests. See video at this site. (Was this part of a thinly veiled effort by Duncan to shore up mayor Rahm Emanuel's fledgling reelection campaign in the face of Chuy Garcia's increasingly formidable challenge?) This week Chicago activists sent this public letter to Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools CEO, telling them to stop the bullying and deceptions towards parents seeking to opt their children out of the tests.   He was challenged on Common Core, high-stakes tests and funding priorities. Ravitch's blog reported that outrageously, he flat-out lied when he denied that the federal government imposed Common Core and its attendant unfunded mandates.
Save Our Schools helped the discussion process by offering "The 12 Reasons We Oppose the PARCC Test."
Florida has withdrawn from a national consortium, but it still has a Common Core-based high stakes test. There a mother met with such district resistance to allowing her to pick up her own daughter that she had to call 911 to get her daughter released. The district said that parents picking up their children was disruptive of tests and therefor was not allowed.

A Colorado student cut to the central point: this is a test owned, controlled and promoted by a private entity: "We want a test where it is not owned by a private company but owned by the state and that way we actually have the people that know about the subject, that know bout what students need to know."

School districts, under the influence of state dictates for the Common Core tests, have resorted to 'bribing' students to take the test. For example, as Valerie Strauss reported in the Washington Post, the Morris Hills Regional New Jersey district is offering an American Express gift card to the grade with the highest PARCC participation.
Several districts are aggressively bullying and stretching the truth to get students to give in to the tests. One New Mexico district claimed that compliance with the tests was dictated by federal, state and local law. Read this report on administrator pressure on parents to comply, "Naming names: These school districts are bullying parents into PARCC testing they can actually opt students out of."

In the Diane Ravitch a post read "Time for Civil Disobedience." The article said, in part, “I would encourage all of my students to post pics of the questions or tweet the questions as they remember them. I did this several years ago when Indiana had just one graduation qualifying exam. I got reprimanded and transferred to a terrible inner city school, but the action did have some impact because the state had to admit that a great deal of the exam questions were wrong or too poorly worded to make sense. I realize that in today’s testing-mania culture I would probably have been fired, lost my license or maybe even jailed, but this stuff is so terrible we need to start some civil disobedience.”

Recent blog postings have mentioned some outrageous and creative responses. Actually, Twitter lit up with these irreverent suggested responses to test questions in the April 2014 round of tests.
"12 more ways students sabotaged the PARCC field tests" opened,

So, I think its unanimous. Everyone hates the PARCC test, except for those who made it, or can make money off of it.

— 
Cornelius Bayler (@CorneliusBayler) April 12, 2014

Students have recognized that the tests are one absurd, sick joke and have advised their fellow test takers to give silly, absurdist responses to test sections involving written statements.

Spongebob Squarepants seemed to be a popular way to answer PARCC essay questions:

After takin the parcc for the past 3 days and having to write an essay everyday id say ive written a short novel about my love of spongebob

— OG Bobby Johnson (@SeXYDOUBLEsTuFF) April 3, 2014

Dakota Parks @ImGayGoAway

Follow

Just gonna click some f***ing answers and bull**** this PARCC test today. Not in the f***ing mood for this s***.

9:17 AM - 11 Apr 2014

Lisa♡ @lisaacalabrese_

Follow

Best part of today was quoting mean girls on the parcc test

2:58 PM - 11 Apr 2014

2 RETWEETS 2 FAVORITES

One student adopted thug typing style:

Optimus @ChrisKlein_

Follow

Guys remember the answer to number 4 on the PARCC is A$VP Trill Fo Lyfe

10:03 AM - 13 Apr 2014

Another recommended using texting shorthand:

yung luce @lucebeave

Follow

tbh I just wrote "idk" "wtf" and "huh?" in all the boxes on the parcc test

12:34 PM - 7 Apr 2014

1 RETWEET 7 FAVORITES

* * *
Students have reportedly shared test questions and answer choices over social media. Tweeting of actual questions, rather than snarky comments were what really sent Pearson and their enablers ballistic.

Pearson assuming authority over students; social media monitoring
After a student tweeted about a test question, the Britain-based multinational education and media mammoth Pearson announced that it was monitoring social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
But worse, beyond the fact that the organization is spying (albeit on a public activity) on students' online communication, is the fact that this is a private organization that has succeeded in leaning on public entities, state departments of education and local school districts, for the mission of disciplining those students. The Living in Dialogue blog has gone as far as to suggest that surveillance is a natural trajectory of high-stakes tests.
Surely, this is the corporatization, the privatization of the disciplinary role of government. First we saw the corporations initiate the privatization of education, now with Pearson telling governments to monitor and discipline students, it is assuming disciplinary authority over students. This is an ugly moment in American democracy.
Following Pearson's statement that it is monitoring students' behavior on the issue of test questions, a New Jersey local district superintendent sent an email to peer superintendents on the issue of student social media statements. After Bob Braun's blog exposed this (and his blog was temporarily hit by a denial of service attack --was Pearson leaning on the blog service hosting his blog?) the superintendent admitted that she indeed sent the email, and today the New Jersey State Education department issued a statement echoing some of the talking points.

Breaking news: the New Jersey Assembly Committee Chair has issued a call for Pearson to appear and explain its student surveillance policies.
Pearson, PARCC, SBAC in the Brave New World of high-stakes tests enlists in government to join them in playing the Big Brother role
Now, the critiques have been raised that tweeting on the tests disturbs the integrity of the tests. But the problem is that these tests have taken a life of their own, evincing a government juggernaut that is not backed by popular will. The tests have gigantic implications for students' own academic lives and but on teachers' professional lives and schools' institutional lives. Democratic activism has not led to the Democratic/Republicans' lessening of the testing onslaught. Furthermore, any contractual obligation upon students that might exist is an invalid contract. If there are such statements that students must assent to the students are not signing these on their free accord.
Furthermore, one child psychologist has argued that with the test-taker's alienation from the process the tests are alienating to students, and that ominously, in the process are committing "soul murder."

Joyce Murdock Feilke, a child psychologist, warns of the harm our society is doing to children by subjecting them to 10-12 hours of high-stakes testing. This stress does nothing positive for them. By the time the scores are returned, the children have a new teacher. The teacher is not allowed to see what they got wrong. The tests have no diagnostic value. The only beneficiaries are the testing corporations.

Thus, this weekend we saw a teacher posting on Diane Ravitch's blog a comment, which led to a full blogpost, "Teachers: Time for Civil Disobedience."

The Common Core test consortium pressuring upon districts to be vigilant about how students use their free speech does not end with Pearson and its PARCC tests. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has made similar statement, but has gone a step beyond, in its one page memo, "Social Media Monitoring during the Field Test." Mercedes Schneider noted in her blog, "Smarter Balanced Offers Tips for Monitoring Students on Social Media." the SBAC suggested modus operandi:

The SBAC-suggested keys to successful social media “test security trolling”?
1) Set up a school social media site, and encourage students to join.
2) Search social media sites by keyword.

A sinister, deceptive aspect of this is that under this plan, schools would be pre-emptively work against students' free communication, using a school social networking site to monitor students without students' knowing of this.

More correctly, civil disobedience traditionally involves resistance to unjust laws and government policies. We should not grant the veneer of public legitimacy to Pearson, et al by calling opposition to their test rules "civil disobedience." Such resistance is resistance to corporate authority over our lives.

The New Iron Triangle of the Information Sector, Education Reform and the Democrats

This quintessential blogpost by Paul Horton, "Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?," at Anthony Cody's Living in Dialog blog lays out with great precision the dynamic nature of the forces at play with the war on public education.

The corporate media, the metrics-focused ideologues, and the education reformers more acutely, are aligned against the teachers. In the Republican-Democratic battle for money in the Citizens United era, the media / information technology sector of business are aligned more closely with the Democrats. This has profound significance for the direction of our country's education and for our political options. [graphics added]

Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?

By Paul Horton.

Why have those defending public education had such an uphill fight in crafting a compelling counter to the mainstream message that “public education is broken”? How can we break through this monotonous monopoly of thinking with an alternative message?

As Noam Chomsky points out, the mainstream political discourse in America is largely shaped by media outlets under complete corporate control.

Who are the players here? Over the past two decades, as the internet has transformed communication, a circle of Silicon Valley billionaires have achieved great influence. Their outlook tends to be Libertarian, and finds much in common with neoliberals when it comes to education policy. These nouveau tech billionaires have found common cause with hedge fund managers and banking industry insiders, who also hold tremendous power.

According to Robert McChesney,

…much of the wealth generated by the Internet has been funneled into a small number of hands….[T]he Internet has produced monopolistic titans like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, e-Bay, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, and Qualcomm….In combination, these firms have almost unlimited power in Washington, and the only time they face any regulatory threat is when the giants find themselves on opposite sides of an issue….Academics trip over one another as they sing the praises of digital titans,

…but [T]he Internet brings one of the core contradictions of capitalism to the fore—what is good and rational for those who control the economy is bad and irrational for society as a whole. (Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century, 228-9)

The most important fact in American politics today is the Citizens United decision. With this, the hand of the Democratic Party was forced: in order to win major elections the party must accept major campaign funding from the Silicon Valley right libertarians, neoliberals and their financiers on Wall Street. For neoliberal Democrats who are forced to lick the Nikes of their major funders, the privatization of education has become the price they pay to get the dollars needed to win elections.

The Obama Administration’s education policies are the equivalent of doing dog tricks or “dancing” for someone who is holding a gun.

So what role does the media play in this dance?

Although things have improved slightly in the print media in 2014, almost all major print editorial pages are controlled by publishers who are whole hog on privatization and charters: NYT and Chicago Tribune and the Tribune network are leading the bandwagon and heavily influenced by Bloomberg, Broad, and Murdoch. The Chicago Sun-Times editorial page is completely compromised by the political pressure exerted by publishers friendly to governor-elect Bruce Rauner who supports privatization of education. The New Republic is dead, succumbing to Silicon Valley neoliberal libertarianism.

The Progressive, The Nation (the country’s oldest journal of political and cultural opinion), Salon, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post most often include stories and voices of teachers in print; while Politico, The Huffington Post, Alternet, Truthout, and Common Dreams are open to teacher voices that call attention to a counter narrative.

Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Jon Pelto’s Education Blogger’s Network, Cynthia Liu’s K12 News Network,Tim Slekar’s Busted Pencils site, Dr. James Miller’s War Report, and the Network for Public Education, an organization formed to counter the neoliberal Democrats for Education Reform, have all worked to build online grassroots communities opposed to right libertarian and neoliberal public education disruption-destruction. Peter Greene has been relentlessly spot-on, taking Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli on every day. The work of blogger-authors Mercedes Schneider and Jeff Bryant has been exemplary in reaching a broader audience at Huffington Post and Salon. Edushyster (Jennifer Berkshire) brings a deft humorous touch to her articles and interviews. Dozens of local bloggers around the country like Mike and Fred Klonsky in Chicago, The Jose Vilson in New York, and Julian Vasquez-Heilig’s Cloaking Inequity blog have been relentless, but don’t always get the attention they deserve.

Rethinking Schools is perhaps the longest standing alternative educational media outlet, and this organization has produced outstanding curriculum and analysis for more than twenty years.

Bill Moyers remained a stalwart presence on the air and online, and remains an inspiration to all of us who cherish his native Texas progressive populism that refuses to dismiss the moral dimensions of political economy in the face of an all out assault on public discourse maintained by the right libertarians of the Chicago School of economics who have come to dominate Obama Education policy. Democracy Now likewise produces news coverage that challenges the corporate narrative in education. The LA Progressivegives prominent space for teacher voices.  Travis Smiley is also worth noting, along with his sometime co-host, Dr. Cornel West, for their attention to the issues of poverty, and willingness to challenge the Obama administration’s policies.

MSNBC should be a progressive voice on education, and to an extent, Chris Hayes is open to teacher voices. Melissa Harris-Perry has sometimes also featured guests that question the reform narrative, such as Julian Vasquez-Heilig. However Rachel Maddow is reputed to be a friend of Eva Moskowitz and appears to supports the charter movement. Democrats are heavily influenced by NPR and PBS coverage that virtually excludes teacher voices except for a recent NPR series on the “Secret lives of teachers” that reifies the political, social, and economic contexts of educational issues. NPR and PBS both receive very generous support from the Gates and Walton foundations and Students First, which is heavily subsidized by many individuals and foundations hostile to public education. Among centrist Democrats heavily influenced by the Wall Street investors who support privatization of schools, NPR, PBS, and the New York Times remain the three most influential institutions that most directly shape mainstream public opinion on education issues.

These three major media outlets are in turn heavily influenced by studies coming from policy think tanks that receive generous contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, and The Bloomberg Fund. The Fordham Institute, AEI, the Joyce Foundation, and the Brookings Institute (turned neoliberal) and a spate of conservative think tanks have all produced non-peer reviewed papers to support the privatization of education. They have all received heavy subsidies from the above foundations, and education beat reporters and editorial pages routinely use talking points from these and other think tanks to write stories about education issues.

GMMB, a think-tank and PR firm located in Washington DC and heavily subsidized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also had a big impact on the shaping negative opinion of public schools and public school teachers. GMMB carefully prepared the media packets and campaign in support of the Common Core Standards and has worked very closely with the Fordham Institute to supply talking points and interviews to virtually every major media outlet. GMMB has hired media insiders who have worked in most major cable news and print media institutions, opening easy access to editorial boards and the country’s major education reporters. Mr. Duncan’s former PR officer, a former reporter for the LA Times, revolved into a GMMB job one year ago. It is not a stretch to say that there is virtually no institutional membrane existing between GMMB, the Fordham Institute, and the Department of Education under Secretary Duncan. Indeed, presidential appointments of top assistant secretaries that are closely connected with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are the norm within the Obama Department of Education. Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute was called by virtually every major print, cable, and digital reporter from 2012-14 for talking points in defense of the Common Core Curriculum which, like the Fordham Institute, is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Department of Education, for its part, promotes the agenda of Mr. Gates at every turn. Like a general threatening to bomb a noncompliant subaltern population, Mr. Duncan routinely disparages the teaching profession and public schools. Ignoring the validity decades of NAEP assessments, Mr. Duncan has turned Pearson Education loose on all American educators, students, and teachers by publicallly funding his own version of Operation Phoenix: the PARCC assessments that will not only hold all students to a higher standard, but will rid the country of “bad teachers.” This campaign intentionally ignores mountains of peer reviewed studies that indicate that ineffective teachers make up no more than 3% of the current teaching force in virtually every state.

Perhaps the most telling fact of the success of the GMMB-Fordham Institute-DoEd manufactured consent for the disruption and destruction of public schools is the virtual absence from major national print, digital, and cable public discourse of any discussion of what can only be called the Corvair-Edsel of the Education Industry complex: Pearson Education. I know of no corporation that consistently produces such shoddy products as Pearson Education. The public, especially parents, are learning about the lack of quality of Pearson software and sample questions when they consult online sample questions. Teachers have known about the shoddy quality of Pearson test generators for some time. This educational equivalent of Halliburton, Pearson has benefitted from greasing the wheels of the Obama campaign, and has enjoyed a very cozy relationship with Mr. Duncan’s Education Department from day one.

Pearson has not only profited from developing PARCC at warp speed on the federal dime to please Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli, it has also obtained no bid contracts in many states that were greased by free trips given to state education superintendents. The Pearson Foundation has since been disbanded and fined by the New York State’s Attorney for such shady quid pro quo-reeking interactions. The fact that Pearson has not been taken to court in many states attests to the lack of effective ethics codes in the states and a lack of DOJ and FTC oversight. Such oversight is sorely lacking within an administration that serves Wall Street and Silicon Valley when it comes to education policy.

Because Pearson and PARCC are the centerpieces of Mr. Duncan’s policy agenda, and Chicago School ideas about building unfettered and more “efficient” economies of scale championed by Henry C. Simons, Milton Friedman and their students Gary Becker, Judge Richard Posner, and Richard Epstein; have heavily influenced the Chicago “clique” surrounding the president (Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt, Penny Pritzker, the board of the Commercial Club of Chicago who were essential to funding Obama’s first campaign) and the antitrust enforcement in the form of requiring Pearson Education to write competitive impact statements when it gobbles up more and more market share like an educational version of the movie “The Blob” is entirely moot at DOJ.

This story is the biggest story of the last several years that has not been touched by education reporters, especially local reporters who are assigned and held to deadlines.

Our biggest challenge to date is this: How can classroom teachers penetrate the corporate media apparatus? Can we cultivate enough relationships with the few reporters who have the courage to find stories that are critical of the dominant disruption-destruction ideology that can see through non peer reviewed and corporate foundation supported “studies”-propaganda.

Another question to examine is: can grassroots media marshal enough support to build coalitions in support of public education among fellow progressive populists?

We need senators Brown, Sanders and Warren to be more vocal in their support of public education. We need them on CNN and NBC. We need more sympathetic talking heads to speak out more forcefully and more often.

We must energize the congressional progressive caucus to work for public education by blasting away at the Gates supported, astro-turf funded, propagation of “’education reform’ as the Civil Rights issue of out time.”

We need Matt Damon to produce a feature film about teachers that are at war with disrupters and who are doing brilliant work in the classroom.

Most of all, we need to come together and act politically and fight. We need to learn more from Ras Baraka and Karen Lewis and join together with as many allies as possible to take neoliberal lies head-on.

Finally, we need to take heart from the people of Latin America and Greece who have defeated or are struggling with the neoliberal cultural apparatus. According to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, “Lies destroyed Latin America. People lie too much, from the press, the politicians, and on the street….I think one of the main problems around the world is that there are private networks in the communication business, for profit business providing public information, which is important for society. It is a fundamental contradiction.” “I think there should be more public and community media, organizations that don’t have that conflict between profits and social communication.” (quoted in McChesney, Blowing the Roof Off, 218).

Public Education Bloggers are actively pushing forward to create what Myles Horton called “islands of decency” within a neoliberal hurricane that seeks to monetize every human relationship, that destroys human relationships and potential within a digitalized “Glass Cage” filled with punitive test scores and VAM calculations. The fight requires us to break through the “Glass Cage” and join hands in one big progressive populist union.

As Graham Nash is fond of singing, ”Won’t you please come to Chicago.”

Paul Horton has taught for thirty years in virtually every kind of school. He began his teaching career in a recently integrated rural Texas middle school. He then taught for five years in a large urban high school in San Antonio’s West side where the majority of young people were ESL. He has been teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the country’s most diverse independent school founded by John Dewey, for fourteen years.

Teacher: No longer can I throw my students to the ‘testing wolves’

At Valerie Strauss' "Answer Sheet" column in the Washington Post, 9/5/14:

By Dawn Neely-Randall

I’m not a celebrity. I’m not a politician. I’m not part of the 1 percent. I don’t own an education testing company. I am just a teacher and I just want to teach.

My life changed dramatically after a Facebook lament I wrote was published on The Answer Sheet last March. I was explaining how weary I was from the political addiction to mass standardized testing and how educationally abusive it had become to so many of the students in my care.

Last spring, you wouldn’t find the fifth-graders in my Language Arts class reading as many rich, engaging pieces of literature as they had in the past or huddled over the same number of authentic projects as before. Why? Because I had to stop teaching to give them a Common Core Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online sample test that would prepare them for the upcoming PARCC pilot pre-test which would then prepare them for the PARCC pilot post test – all while taking the official Ohio Achievement Tests. This amounted to  three tests, each  2 ½ hours, in a single week, the scores of which would determine the academic track students would be placed on in middle school the following year.

No time left for learner - a point
made by a CTU teacher

 In addition to all of that, I had to stop their test prep lessons (also a load of fun) to take each class three floors down to our computer lab so they could take the Standardized Testing and Reporting (“STAR”) tests so graphs and charts could be made of their Student Growth Percentile (SGP) which would then provide quantitative evidence to suggest how these 10-year-olds would do on the “real” tests and also surmise the teacher’s (my) affect on their learning.

Tests, tests, and more freakin’ tests.

And this is how I truly feel in my teacher’s heart: the state is destroying the cherished seven hours I have been given to teach my students reading and writing each week,  and these children will never be able to get those foundational moments back. Add to that the hours of testing they have already endured in years past, as well as all the hours of testing they still have facing them in the years to come. I consider this an unconscionable a theft of precious childhood time.

Children have less exciting news to share with
moms and dads.

One parent sent me her district’s calendar showing that students would complete 21 mandated (K-3) assessments before a child would even finish third grade.  When I asked an Ohio Department of Education employee about this, she insisted there were not that many tests. When I read them to her one by one from the district’s calendar, she defended her position by saying that some of them were not from her department, but from another one. “But it’s the SAME kid!!!” I told her.

Indeed, it sure seems that school just isn’t for children anymore.

As I sat in my recliner writing about my frustrations all those months ago, I felt that I was sitting alone in a darkened theater watching a horror movie with my students in the starring roles. After it was published, however, it seemed as if the lights had been switched on and I found that the room was full of people from across the nation and they were just as traumatized as I.

Many Ohio teachers told me they were afraid to speak out because it might hurt their rating based on the new Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) framework for scoring (now House Bill 362).  When I, for example, worked through this process last year, I was evaluated based on my students’ test scores as well as the evidence of “teacher performance” my principal had collected on me. One 40-minute lesson alone took me over seven hours to write up.

Since OTES also evaluates teachers based on their “positive rapport” as well as their “active volunteer, community, and family partnerships,” of course, teachers were afraid to speak out against harmful test practices and risk sounding negative and, of course, they worried about not being perceived as a team player if they didn’t want to be a part of test pep rallies or hosting parent PARCC information nights.

When teachers are being rated based on student test scores as well as their own attitudes about such, speaking out becomes a very risky business.

Principals too are afraid to speak out. Why? What if their disgruntlement empowers their staff to rally against all the testing and parents started opting their children out of taking the tests?  In Ohio, a zero is given in place of a score if a student does not take a standardized test. This zero is then averaged into the school’s rating on the state report card, which then affects the district’s rating. Administrators don’t have a union backing them to give them the freedom to advocate on behalf of students; most of them only have term contracts.

Parents were afraid to speak out because they are worried that school officials might consider them trouble makers or, worse, hold it against their child. And parents have no idea how their child’s teacher feelst because — back to the beginning — many teachers are afraid to speak out.

One parent told me recently that she asked her daughter’s teacher if she thought her 10-year-old could handle the stress of the new PARCC pilot test and the teacher said she had been advised to say “no comment” when it came to either topic of the Common Core curriculum or testing. (What country do we live in, anyway?!)

Many students didn’t speak out as much as they acted out. Cried. Gave their parents a hard time about going to school. Disengaged in class. Got physically sick. Or became a discipline problem. Struggling students struggled even more.

Last school year, one of my fifth-grade below-level readers was working hard and making great gains. However, during the big Ohio Achievement Assessment in reading at the end of April, when she had already put in about an hour and a half of testing with an hour to go, the stress became too much and she had a total meltdown. As much as I had already reminded her “this is just one test on one day in your life” and “just do your best”, this student was smart enough to know that this “one test” would determine the class she would get into in middle school and I knew she was worried about being pulled out of class for remediation (again).

This child sobbed because she cared so much and watching her suffer became a defining moment for me. It became blatantly obvious how one high-stakes standardized test had just negated the year’s worth of reading confidence and motivation she had worked so hard to attain. I can no longer be a teacher who tries to build these 10-year-olds up on one hand, but then throws them to the testing wolves with the other.

My student had trusted me and jumped through hoops for me all year long, but then in her greatest moment of testing distress, all I could do was hand her some tissues.

A lot of people in our Buckeye state (and country) are making nutty decisions that aren’t at all good for children; ones I feel sure teachers could prove are harmful in a court of law (don’t even get me started with the testing that’s going on in kindergarten classes with 5-year-olds).

And most disconcerting of all, in my entire 24-year career, not one graded standardized test has EVER been returned to the students, their parents, or to me, the teacher.  Also, for the past three years here in Ohio, released test questions have no longer been posted online. In addition, teachers have had to sign a “gag order” before administering tests putting their careers on the line ensuring they will not divulge any content or questions they might happen to oversee as they walk around monitoring the test.

This lack of transparency seems very suspicious to me and many educators and parents alike are beginning to agree that testing companies have been given a “full faith” free pass for way too long.

Aren’t schools supposed to be in the business of teaching and learning? If we’re forced to stop instruction to give state tests, shouldn’t a student’s results at least be used to help further that student’s academics?  Just how exactly is my student taking a high-stakes standardized test at the end of the year, the test questions of which I never see, the scored tests and essay questions which are never returned to the child, helping that fifth-grader to learn?

If you are still with me, let’s talk about Ohio’s 8-year-olds who are getting caught right in the middle of the madness. Our state legislature has mandated a Third Grade Reading Guarantee that fails an 8-year-old an entire school year even if he or she is only one point off from passing a  2 ½-hour standardized reading test (the same amount of time as a tenth-grader taking an Ohio Graduation Test), which is first administered in October.

That same 8-year-old must try to pass yet another 2 ½-hour reading test again in the spring. If the child fails again, the child must take yet another (shorter) test to try to get into fourth grade.

So, apparently, a third grader is going to fail a school year based on tests that the teacher and parents have never seen, neither the questions nor the answers, and yet, the test company held the key to the specific errors the student made and could have learned from all along the way, after the very first test was given in October?  In my opinion, this is complete and utter education malpractice.

Are the third graders failing the test or is the test failing the third graders?

Let’s add to that all the test-scoring nightmares that have been reported in state after state after state (students receiving zeros due to scoring errors, missed graduations due to erroneously failed tests, parents receiving incorrect scorecards, blank pages found on tests, appealed scores found to have been miscalculated, etc…) and what does our nation do?  It keeps shelling out millions upon millions of dollars for standardized testing.

Shouldn’t our country demand accountability from the testing company? Is simply accepting phantom test scores from assessors even good business?

One Ohio School Board member shared with me that although she asked, the testing company would not allow board members to take the same PARCC tests the students would soon be mandated to pass.  Shockingly, she was told that board members could not see a sample test in its entirety until the students piloted them. She said the legislature had, indeed, mandated that Ohio third-graders pass a reading test that not one legislator or Ohio School Board member had even seen; one that had not yet even been written.

Also, please note: If so many of our schools are seen as “failing,” yet so many of our students are using a test company’s test prep materials ($$$) which are being reported to the state via the test company’s computerized program ($$$) and then taking the test company’s multitude of standardized tests ($$$), which are then assessed by the test company’s evaluators ($$$), and then remediation is done with students using, again, the test company’s intervention materials ($$$); and are then taking the same test company’s own graduation test ($$$) that the test company has prepared the K-12 materials for in the first place……. then, just exactly who, or what, is really failing that child?  But have no fear, dropouts can later take a GED ($$$) administered by the same testing company.

As for my language arts classroom, just give me some uninterrupted time with my students, some paper and pencils, and a great book and I’ll show you what amazing things my fifth-graders can do.

I’m just a teacher, but I do propose that we (myself included) stop the education bickering, the lawsuits, the union bashing, the political polarization and the spinning of our wheels and all take a moment to at least start SOMEWHERE to be the adults in the room and start a patriotic, non-partisan revolution for lasting, real school reform on behalf of our students who are already getting slammed by way too many societal woes.

Let’s all come together to find one area, at least ONE, in which the majority of our citizenship (legislators and constituents alike) can agree will be in the best interests of our nation’s youth.

I think I know one starting place that not one person could dispute would benefit students and their learning.  I can’t imagine how anyone, other than a test company executive, could say this request is unreasonable. I hope you agree so our country can then move on and figure out a Reform #2.

So, may I, just a teacher, speak?

Transparency in Education Reform #1 : No student, in the United States of America, will be given a high-stakes standardized test by any state or testing company unless said standardized test is returned scored, and in its entirety, to the parents, teacher, and child in an efficient and timely manner.

Can we at least start there? Let’s just then see how “failing” our schools really are. Let’s publicly lay the tests out, in full K-12 panoramic view, and evaluate how many tentacles of testing are being inflicted upon the psyches of our children.  Let’s analyze if these tests are truly measuring what we would like and if these tests are, indeed, an appropriate measurement tool to be used to determine “good” or “bad” teachers or to label, or flunk, our children.  Let’s just see what exactly is wrong with the answers our students are giving, anyway. And let’s do it quickly, because we might just be failing an entire generation.

However, in the meantime, beware.  Remember that the current climate of education bashing will keep wafting down into the ears of our children until they take to heart that in those failing schools sitting in the classroom of those “bad teachers” can be found them, the “failing” students.

Is this the way we do education today in the United States of America?  Is this the way we treat the children on our watch?

PARCC Common Core test tricks and the secrecy of the tests

*Common Core corporate tie-ins *PARCC test question secrecy *inBloom and data mining controversies *The silence of the unions in the face of test questions secrecy

The Common Core is a private entity, created by in a secretive process by a non-governmental entity, detailed here, replete with copyrights, and a seeming tie-in for two of the best connected publishers, McGraw Hill and Pearson.

Diane Ravitch mentions in "What is the Goal of Common Core testing?" that Rick Hess predicts that Common Core States Standards anxiety, prompting some parents "to demand “reforms” and an escape from their neighborhood schools." As she says, reformers will gloat over failing scores (no doubt to continue the "failing schools" line --schools that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now says deserves the "death penalty").

So, is it any wonder that the Common Core associated interstate assessment (the 21st century edujargon for testing) consortia (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)) are playing games with letting the public see the tests and their questions? After all, when such tests were under state production, teachers could retain copies of past tests and use them for preparing students for the tests. If the tests are all important, wouldn't that be fair all around, for teachers and students, so that all could excel?

Not so in the world of private test production.
The PARCC consortium made a big media splash on August 19, saying that it was making some questions public. The tricky thing is that meant just a couple of questions per grade, not entire tests. Not the self-congratulating press release, making an appearance of transparency: PARCC Releases New Sample Items. Yet the PARCC site purported to carry the questions actually contains carries a very scant sample of questions. Note further, that when you click on some of the links you get disclaimers that you are clicking away from a site under the authority of PARCC. This is another indication that as you privatize the test production you get less and less transparency. Seasoned veteran teachers will recall that in the not-too distant past you could access state tests for your grade or discipline. Interesting: teachers are expected to teach to the test, yet, they are now blocked from seeing past tests.
All the PARCC issues are leading states to bail out, so far: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania (PA is remaining in the consortium, but will not use the test); and Oklahoma has withdrawn for 2014.

This essential statement came up at an August 14 recent Diane Ravitch blogpost, "NY Regents: Release the Test Questions!"

And when my own students do poorly on a test I created, I take a closer look at the test items and try to understand why they got the questions wrong – perhaps I made a bogus test – it’s happened to every educator out there. We won’t be able to do that here. Could it be that these kids didn’t really get all that much wrong? Or is it that the construction of the test items were so riddled with ambiguity and multiple correct responses that they don’t want us to see what a poorly crafted instrument it was? Or, perhaps it is because they tested 4th graders with 7th grade materials?

The timing is a little suspect. Could this be happening to mollify the growing uproar following the August 7, 2013 release of disastrous New York State test results from Common Core-aligned tests?

THE DATA MINING TIE-IN: STUDENT LONGITUDINAL DATABASES:
Take note of how so many of the up-front organizations PARCC and SBAC are non-profit. This distracts us from the fact that with little transparency or explanation, the two consortia have benefited generously from the government monies to create the tests: all together, the consortia received $346 million in federal education grants.
Not too far behind the veneer of the myriad of the non-profits, PARCC, SBAC, inBloom, are corporations profiting from the test creation, administration and data mining and storage.
Such is the case with inBloom, the designated company originally for nine states, now only New York, to mine and store data. Technically, it is a non-profit with ample Gates Foundation money; however, it is operated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation’s Amplify Education. Parents are uncomfortable with the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS, the controversial student data mines). The SLDS is an integral part of the multi-state usage of Common Core, and is another dictate from Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program. The primary informational technology person at inBloom has confirmed that the child's Social Security number is the primary element for accessing student data.
Stephanie Simon reported in Reuters, "School database loses backers as parents balk over privacy," revealing how “officials in several states [are] backing away from the project amid protests from irate parents.”  More specifically, “Kentucky, Georgia and Delaware - all initially listed as partners on the inBloom website - told Reuters that they never made a commitment and have no intention of participating. Georgia specifically asked for its name to be removed.” Massachusetts and North Carolina are said to be seriously reconsidering their involvement as well.

BLOWBACK OF TEST SECRECY
We see that this permanent war against teachers economy, just as the military has had "black budget items," items that were kept secret, "for the good of the people," we have Common Core questions that are kept secret-- NY's State Education Department is only selectively disclosing some questions. Since the government cannot use the national security excuse, what excuse could they use? -Corporate private security or copyright. Baloney. The real reason is that the tricky questions hello will expose what illogical, inappropriate questions the Common Cores brings into English and math, as At the Chalk Face reports. The blog site reports several substantive issues with the Common Core questions. This is the negative consequence of privatization of test publishing functions by the international corporate giant, Pearson PLC, away from what historically had been a public function under the aegis of the New York State Education Department.

However, from the organization that we would expect to hear much criticism, the United Federation of Teachers, whose members were in touch with the tests, we have heard limited anecdotes exact questions creating the trouble (any wonder there's a government ban on publicizing the questions under threat of firing or suspension of teachers), mixed with praise for the Common Core, as indicated in this April op-ed column in the Daily News from the UFT president, Michael Mulgrew. The leader mentioned the lack of a curriculum, the fact that test prep is not teaching and that teachers are over-burdened with paperwork. Contrast this limited critique with the multiple details from the Chalk Face blog a week earlier.
This is reflection, once again, of the detachment of the union leadership from rank and file (regular non-officials) teachers on the ground. Otherwise, we would have heard fire and this depth of detail from Mulgrew, and probably less enthusiasm for the Common Core, and even better yet, a statement on how the Common Core as dictated, leads to more micromanaging of teaching, and diversion of English teachers away from features that excited them about the subject, such as narrative expression or literature. Alas, is there any wonder why the union leaders are uncritical cheerleaders for the Common Core? As revealed in the deutsch29 blog, Bill Gates gave $5.4 million to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which has a symbiotic relationship with the UFT, and $6.3 million to the National Education Association (NEA).