Education Reform: Boondoggling along

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Sandra In Brevard









As SB736/HB7019 heads to Governor Scott's desk for signature, questions continue on costs. The Senate Pre-K12 Appropriations subcommittee peppered Commissioner Smith on costs, even though these committee members are the most knowledgeable on the question of costs. An article in the Tampa Gradebook asked if the questions indicate the bill went through too fast. Race to the Top funds will pay for most of the development of new tests, but no word on funding after federal funds run out. The merit pay portion of the bill receives no new money. Governor Scott indicates that he will sign the bill without answers to basic costs question indicating he is apparently satisfied that there will be no impact on taxpayers.


President Obama has presented his educational reform "Blueprint" modifying portions of No Child Left Behind, a welcome aspect; however, the plan includes additional testing to measure growth before the high-stakes test and pinpoint areas that require more attention. The rationale is that the correct things are not being tested. Congress is in a budget cutting mood and education will not get special attention on the chopping block.

Nationwide, parent unhappiness over the obsession with testing is getting some notice.

Duncan last September said he has visited 42 states and that nearly everywhere he went, teachers, parents, principals and lawmakers complained that what's taught in school is narrowing as more teachers focus on improving scores in standardized tests, especially in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students

Pennsylvania allows parents to "opt out" of standardized testing and there is a movement to do just that in order to cause a shift away from schools as testing factories.

Under Pennsylvania Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4 (d)(5), parents have the right to opt out of testing for their children. The exemption is “religious,” but the Pennsylvania Department of Education confirmed this includes any moral, psychological, philosophical or even medical objection. The reason cannot be challenged.

A large national "opt-out" movement, will impact the quantity and frequency of tests and the way the results are used. Such a movement would impact the vast amount of dollars spent on test development, scoring, and implementation costs. Apparently, the only "opt-out" provision available in Florida is to homeschool or find a private school, where other accountability rules apply.


Against this backdrop, there are clear supporters of maintaining the status quo on the testing routine.

http://www.centredaily.com/2011/03/11/2575400/pssas-put-burden-on-schools-students.html#ixzz1H75J7RSo

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-18-schooltesting18_ST_N.htm

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Grumpy Note  Ducan openly admitts kids parents, teachers, smart politicians and Obama's dog Bo have had it with the all the testing,  As always Obama could care less about public opinion.  Besides his close buddies Jeb Bush and Bill Gates are all for it.  I'm beginning to wonder why when Gates barks, Obama jumps.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/gates-spends-millions-to-sway.html  

To see the rest of Sandra's blogs on Education Reform, visit Grumpy Educators

SB736/HB7019: Legislative Irresponsibility, Incompetence, or Deceit?

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Sandra in Brevard










This week, the Florida Senate passed SB736 fully informed that no one knows how much the bill will cost the State and localities or where funding would come from. In spite of the deep budget cutting, Senator Evelyn Lynn believes the money is available.


“I want money to be put into this bill,” said Sen. Evelyn Lynn, an Ormond Beach Republican who ultimately voted for the proposal. But she remained optimistic on future funding: “It will come, but we’ve got to get the structure in place to do exactly what needs to be done.”

On the other hand, North Carolina Republicans led the effort to end its expansive testing regime as a cost saving measure and to respond to over testing concerns. The Texas legislature is also considering a measure to reduce the quantity of tests its school children take, citing the frequency of testing provides little useful information.

Why is Florida in such a hurry?

One reason is found in the requirements to secure Race to the Top funding. Legislation must link student performance to evaluations or lose the funding. The details were left to the State legislatures. Failure to pass legislation could end up in loss of funds. Florida won $700 million and is late on that requirement. Oddly, this is one fact that is not mentioned in the legislative discussions or media reporting. School districts were invited to participate in Race to the Top, some did not and will be required to implement under this unfunded mandate. Others districts that did sign were aware implementation of Race to the Top would impact their budgets, they did not anticipate deeper budget cutting.

The Costs of Federal Funding

The connection between Race to the Top and SB736/HB7019 is clear. Without the federal funding and under current budget constraints, end-of-course exams would likely not be a subject of discussion. The implications of Race to the Top and previous federal mandates on local budgets and decision-making are clear.

Pete Hoekstra, former Chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee's oversight an investigations subcommittee, described the committee's 1998 study of effective and ineffective use of federal education dollars. The report concluded that "locally directed efforts - by the folks who know the names of the children they're responsible for educating works best." The subcommittee also found that successful schools were "characterized by parental involvement, local control, and emphasis on basic academics and dollars actually spent in the classroom."

"More than 760 education programs, overseen by at least 39 federal agencies, cost taxpayers $100 billion a year even as schools continued to decline. Teachers and parents in neighborhood schools saw federal mandates, paperwork and red tape — not the necessary tools to help educate their children. As little as 65 to 70 cents of every dollar made it into the classroom."

“It is time for the burden of proof to shift to the federal government,” the subcommittee report concluded. “If it cannot be demonstrated that a particular federal program is more effectively spending funds than state and local communities would otherwise spend them, Congress should return the money to the states and the people, without any burdensome strings attached.”

That was in 1998. Yet today, when children who were kindergarteners then should be ready to graduate from high school, the story remains the same. In 2001, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, a law filled with more mandates and red tape that significantly expanded the federal government’s role in K-12 education. The federal “educrats” tell local schools who the good teachers are and what schools are making adequate yearly progress."

Florida House to vote

Reports suggest the Florida House will vote on HB7019 as early as Tuesday of next week. The bill is quite similar to SB736. Are members of the Florida House equally uninformed regarding the costs of the bill and where the money will come from to support it? To persist in full ignorance and lack of accountability is a sign of both legislative irresponsibility and incompetence. Could it be that they do know the costs and prefer to go silent? That would be deceit.



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SB736/HB7019: The trouble with value-added measurement

The trouble with value-added measurement is

It's not on the test



SB736/HB7019 intends to apply value-added measurement (VAM) to connect student achievement on a test as a performance indicator of the teacher, or a poor student score = poor teaching. VAM uses statistical tools to calculate the contributions a teacher makes to student achievement gains. The formula for the calculation includes factors the developer chooses to include. What do experts have to say about the value of value-added measurement?


1) Jim Angermeyr, Director of Research, Evaluation & Testing for Bloomington Public Schools and "one of the designers of a widely respected value-added test lots of Minnesota schoolchildren take two or three times a year" was interviewed by Beth Hawkins. In the article, "Do 'value-added' teacher data really add value?", Angermeyr is described as "something of a standardized testing skeptic. He believes that economists tend to believe in using value-added data in evaluation. Educators and psychometricians, not so much."

“It’s not necessarily that the methodologies are wrong,” he said. “It’s that the inferences we’re drawing can be wrong.”

"The kids are the greatest of the variables, of course. The tests may tell you a student is reading better or sliding in math, but they don’t tell you whether she spent the summer with a tutor or he is so young the test isn’t as accurate as it would be in an older child.

Nor is the same test used from year to year. A particular student or teacher may fare better on a test closely normed with curriculum vs. one aligned with a set of knowledge-based standards."
“

You leave out a lot of the potential variables,” Angermeyr said.  “They’re just not at the point where we should use them to make decisions about jobs.”

2) The National Research Council and the National Academy of Education gathered experts in the this field and held a workshop titled "Getting Value Out of Value Added." There was general agreement by participants that there is no single statistical model and still a work in progress for applicability when measuring teacher quality.

Discussion resulted in these additional conclusions:

Results generated by existing models have a high degree of instability.

Good results require good tests and good test results.

Experts find it useful for low stakes use to identify areas that need improvement.

Experts recommend against using it for high stakes such as, teacher pay.

According to Henry Braun, the group determined the following:"

To nobody’s surprise, there is not one dominant VAM. Each major class of models has shortcomings, there is no consensus on the best approaches, and little work has been done on synthesizing the best aspects of each approach. There are questions about the accuracy and stability of value-added estimates of schools, teachers, or program effects. More needs to be learned about how these properties differ, using different value-added techniques and under different conditions. Most of the workshop participants argued that steps need to be taken to improve accuracy if the estimates are to be used as a primary indicator for high-stakes decisions; rather, value-added estimates should best be used in combination with other indicators. But most thought that the degree of precision and stability does seem sufficient to justify low-stakes uses of value-added results for research, evaluation, or improvement when there are no serious consequences for individual teachers, administrators, or students." (p.54)

While Florida plunges into creating dozens of new tests, North Carolina's legislature in bipartisan agreement is sending a bill to the Governor to end some end-of-course tests, maintaining those to meet federal requirements and to measure student achievement. Two years ago, they voted to end a few others. This legislature wishes to stop paying for so many tests that are both expensive and failing to yield the returns once thought beneficial.

Concerns over the costs for implementing SB736/HB7019 by Florida Senators and by school boards are being reported. In the end, this is an unfunded mandate using an experimental statistical model, and an expensive test development and implementation scheme that extends far beyond the reach of RT3 dollars. Legislators remain silent on the issue of costs and cost benefits. The public has a right to know.

To read the report, access the widget on Grumpy Educators located on the right size of the page. Select the open book with the word Read underneath, then select Open Book on the small screen. The document  will open in an easy to read size

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The experts in the National Research Council and the National Academy of Education in this conference included:

Are you sure it's about the teachers




SEE MORE:  Jeff Parker Toons In

  It's not often I agree with Jeff Parker, for the most part I think he steers a little West of North... If he reads anything I write, he probably thinks I'm headed East.. This time Jeff nailed it and he nailed it right. The Legislature played the teachers, using them as a smoke screen and laughing about doing it. You see SB 6 isn't all about teachers, but the teachers are making so much "Poor Me Noise" all the legislators had to say was, "See we're protecting you voters from those greedy teachers." The teachers  inadvertently gave the Tally GOP the perfect cover,, This isn't all about the teachers, it's about all of us. It's about the legislature for reasons known only to them to passing a law that is completely flawed...



I wrote that almost a year ago, right after the Florida Legislature passed SB 6.  Not much has changed. Charlie Crist, in a last ditch effort to save his butt politically, vetoed the bill, hoping grateful teachers would make him a US Senator.  SB 6 is back, slightly different, the name's been changed but the big issues are still there.  Unlike last year, the legislature isn't lying about having the Race To The Top Federal Grant.  It's only $700,000,000 instead of the non-existent $900 Mil they claimed to have a year ago, no problem for Tally, that's what tax payers are for.  This year we've found out about some very serious privacy issues we didn't know about last year.  Another potential issue has The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aligned with the Board Foundation offering districts a plan to place foundation trained personal at the superintendent level, the scheme, being tried out in Hillsboro is an invitation for corruption.  Just like last year, the legislature refuses to tell us what "Reform" will cost.

The teachers are happily offering the legislature the same smoke screen they provided last year.  Unemployment in Florida is at dangerously high levels.  Most people have forgotten the last time they saw a pay raise.  At a time when the slightest change in a some one's budget can cause a family to become part of Florida's already high foreclosure statistics, taxes and utility costs are going up.  On top of that the civil war in Libya and futures speculation is driving up the cost of the gasoline people need to get to work.  Like they did last year the teachers, are acting like they're the only ones getting hurt by the economy, and like their only ones that Tallahassee will hurt if they pass this monster they're trying to disguise as Education Reform.

From time to time I talk to a very liberal and very vocal educator, who is also a serious blogger.   She blogs almost daily and posts them on several different sites.  Needless to say, she's not a fan of Florida's GOP controlled legislature or their Education Reform Proposals.  This year and last I've suggested she might want to explain to her readers how the reform bills would hurt everyone, not just teachers.  She must not have thought it was a good idea, as far as I know she never mentioned it. There must be some unwritten liberal rule against working with conservatives, even when you're on the same side of an issue.

On the other hand, conservatives, tired of hearing teachers use the same overworked line about about being over worked and underpaid they've used for the last sixty years haven't paid much attention to what's actually in the new law.  They want accountability in the school systems.   Many got stuck personally with bad teacher it took a district years to fire.  They want a way to measure teacher performance.  So do I,  I belive strongly in prefornance based compensation, but it has to fair to everyone.  The Tallahassee Politicians are promising to do just that, and telling all of us, the teachers are screaming because so many are incompetent, they feel entitled and don't want to face reality.  Here's a fact no one is talking about.  From the Brevard Public Schools Grant Application:

The District realizes there is a need for additional funds to fully accomplish the reform goals and commits to providing those funds in year 4 to supplement the grant. Funds equivalent to approximately 20% may be reallocated, redirected, or sought from tax based sources for use in the RTTT project 

So much for Tallahassee's "we got the costs covered" line of manure.  Remember how angry many of you got, first when you were told no one in Congress Reads a bill,   then when Pelosi said you have to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it.  The only way we learned what was coming was when we started taking it upon ourselves to find out what was in it.  That's the only way you'll know how SB736/HB7019 are going to affect the schools, the teachers, your children and your wallet.  Sandra has the easiest to read and most comprehensive coverage of the proposal's I know off, archived on Grumpy Educators.  She has been researching Florida Educational Issues for almost two years that I'm sure of.  Long before she posted her first blog on the subject she and were discussing education on Florida Today forums.

One other thought, in Florida it's called FCAT, (please click that link) other states have other names for it.  No mater what the name or the state it boils down to teachers spending most of the school year preparing students for a single test.  The results of that one test determine funding, school classification and a host of other thing I don't know about.  Every teacher and parent I know of complains about spending five or so months a year teaching to a single test.  I've heard of kids getting physically sick on "The Day".  If you think it's bad now;  Wait until 60% of a teacher's pay check depends on one test a year.  They will teach to the test, I for one can't blame them. 


This little video was designed to reassure kids to reasure kids about taking FCAT




What the hell will they do for Merrit Pay