Teacher Accountability Laws Harm Education

In 2010, Colorado passed one of the strictest teacher accountability laws in the country, tying teacher and school evaluations to the results of standardized assessments. The law was landmark for its reach and control, impacting every area of education from curriculum to teacher pay to technology requirements. The costs to implement the law and its reforms were extraordinary, estimated by the Pioneer Institute at $213 million (excluding federal grants), most of which were passed on to the districts as unfunded mandates.  At the same time, the state legislature decimated the K-12 education budget because this was recessionary period with little growth.

 Last year, approximately 65,000 Colorado public school students opted out of standardized testing to protest education reform and over-testing. The legislative task force on testing heard passionate pleas for relief from hundreds of parents and educators. The legislature responded with minimal reductions to help some students, mainly juniors and seniors. The reductions did not include relief for our youngest children, those most harmed by high-stakes testing. The legislature did not address the main concerns parents and educators have with the new standardized testing regime, which are:

•  The infrastructure to support testing is expensive. Collectively, the states will spend $19 billion to meet the technology requirements. Most of the costs are passed on to the school districts.

• Standardized testing drives curriculum, again draining millions of dollars from school budgets to purchase new textbooks. The new textbooks, based on the common core, are not adequate for all learners.

• The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments are developmentally inappropriate for young children and are designed to fail those students not exposed to Pearson’s math and language arts programs.

• Standardized testing wastes valuable instruction time. FairTest.org estimates teachers spend a quarter of the school year on test preparation.

• “Teach-to-the-test” schooling kills intrinsic motivation and devalues important academic skills, such as conceptual thinking, communication, writing, research, analysis, depth, focus, creativity, curiosity, ethics, opinion, individuality, and the arts.

• The high-stakes nature of testing has created an atmosphere of intense stress and pressure, starting in kindergarten.  

• Colorado’s testing requirements are highly punitive and are a poor measure of teacher effectiveness and of school performance. The 2010 law holds teachers accountable for factors that are out of their control, such as poverty.

• The textbook and testing organizations collect data on our children. The College Board and Pearson-PARCC make 10 percent of their revenues by selling student’s’ confidential data to colleges, credit card companies, cell phone carriers, and military recruiters, to name a few. Approximately 85 percent of students consent to collection during testing because they are not informed of their rights to decline.

When I listen to our leaders in government and the business community discuss education, it is clear to me that the monetary interests of the textbook, testing, and technology companies and the investment community matter more to them then the needs of children. I support the Opt Out [of standardized testing] movement because I support a well-rounded and high-quality education for all children.

 

 

Ex DPS School Board Member Jeannie Kaplan Explains How Big Money Backed Reformers Won In Denver

Source: Anatomy of a School Board Election: When Big Money Wins, Kids Lose

Testimony On Privatization in Colorado

I read this letter to Leadership St.Vrain on September 18, 2015, regarding the state of public education in Colorado.  I was hoping for a greater legislative presence. There were only two legislators, a state board member, a school board member, and the superintendent. As we learned from the recent presidential debates, education is not a priority issue for most of our leaders.

The State of Public School Education in Colorado, September 18, 2015.

Thank you for taking the time to be here today.  And, thank you for your support of public schools.  I appreciate the bills you sponsor and I like how you vote on behalf of children. I would like to say a few words about the state of public school education in Colorado.

Last week the Boulder Valley Superintendent told the media, “Public education in this state is dying a slow death.”  He was responding to the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent Dwyer decision, which interpreted Amendment 23 in a way to suggest voters did not support full-funding of public school education.  He could have been talking about more than Dwyer. Public schools are being squeezed by Supreme Court decisions, by TABOR and Gallagher, by unfunded mandates from our legislature, and by education reform, which has created an opportunity to privatize education in our state. We are losing local control of our neighborhood schools to corporations, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and billionaires.

There is a reason that education hedge funds and venture capitalists are opening offices in Denver and that political advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity are interfering with our local school board elections. There is big money to be made off of privatizing education in Colorado.

Americans for Prosperity held a conference on education reform in Denver two weeks ago. And, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education will be hosting their national summit on education reform in Denver in two weeks. These organizations, along with the Aspen Institute, discuss policies and legislation that enrich investors and harm public schools, such as tax credits for donations to private school scholarships (100% tax credit in some cases), existing tax credits for investing in charter schools and education non-profits, pay for success loans, education savings accounts where the per pupil funding goes to the student and not the school, and unfunded technology mandates.

There are huge conflicts of interest among our leaders. For example, Robert Hammond, our recent Commissioner on the State Board of Education was banker from Wichita and a member of the PARCC governing board, as was our Lt. Governor, Joseph Garcia. Democrat Senator Michael Johnston is a fellow with the Aspen Institute, which is funded by the Koch Brothers, Bill Gates, the Waltons and Eli Broad. He is an advisor to Democrats for Education Reform, which is backed by Wall Street investors. He is a board member of America Succeeds and an advisor to America Achieves, whose signature initiative is to guide investors in education “philanthropy.”

The Americans Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, drafted our Senate Bill 191, our READ Act, and the Douglas voucher program. The Douglas school district created a sham charter school to launder public money into private schools to support these vouchers. And now out-of-state billionaires are paying the Douglas school board’s legal fees to support a Supreme Court challenge to protect this program.

Our state poorly regulates charter schools and virtual charter schools, which in some cases are nothing more than personal ATM machines for uncertified administrators.

While we are squeezing public schools on the one hand, we are also mandating that school districts purchase brand new and expensive textbooks, computers, and software to comply with the common core standards, standards that are marginally better, if at all.

Pearson the major textbook company made a profit of $258 million in 2012. Nationally, the Pearson-PARCC contract is worth $138 million. Education technology companies secured $1.25 billion in investments, in 2013. In all, states are expected to spend $12 billion on testing, technology and teacher development to support the common core.

These companies are making millions while are children are left with a standardized education that pulls every child down to a new low-level. Some schools won’t teach beyond this new low-level because students need to score well on standardized tests. Thanks to Senate Bill 191, their survival depends upon it.

The PARCC tests, through grade 8, are designed to fail students who have not been exposed to the common core and Pearson’s new math products.  Pearson has unfettered access to our children’s personal data and our state doesn’t restrict how they use it.

Education reform is not sustainable.  As Superintendent Bruce Messinger stated last week, “public schools in our state are dying.”

Back in May, you asked a couple of us from this group “what as legislators can we do?” I have thought about this for a long time. I actually made a list of 80 concerns.  I believe the best approach for this legislative session is to form a bipartisan education reform commission, similar to the Oil and Gas Commission to examine: funding, curriculum, testing, charter schools and virtual schools, privatization, school safety, and technology, using a fair, open, and transparent process.  Right now, the education reform overhaul is heavy-handed. We don’t feel like we have a voice.

Thank you for your time,

Noelle Green

www.raisethebarhigher.wordpress.com

Further Reading:

1. Fang, Lee. “Venture Capitalists Are Poised to “Disrupt” Everything About the Education Market.” The Nation, Sept. 25, 2014. http://www.thenation.com/article/venture-capitalists-are-poised-disrupt-everything-about-education-market/

2. Lafer, Gordon. “Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” Economic Policy Institute. April 24, 2014. http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/

3. Simon, Stephanie. “No Profit Left Behind: In the High Stakes World of American Education, Pearson Makes Money Even When Results Don’t Measure Up” Politico. Feb. 10, 2015. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026

4. Stotsky, Sandra. “Common Core Fails to Prepare Students for STEM. Denver Post. Dec. 17, 2013. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_24743742/common-core-fails-prepare-students-stem

5. Strauss, Valerie. “Everything You Need to Know About the Common Core Standards – Ravitch.” Washington Post. Jan 18, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/

6. Wiggin, Addison. “Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express to Fat City.” Forbes. Sept. 10, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/09/10/charter-school-gravy-train-runs-express-to-fat-city/

Pay for Success Contracts: Not the Panacea for Education Funding Woes

Hedge funds and equity firms aren’t flocking to Colorado for the mountain views. Colorado has tremendous investment opportunities in education philanthropy, the new way for the super wealthy to make money and appear charitable.  Our government leaders, both Democrat and Republican, are falling all over themselves to support these investments, even though they hurt public education and government in the long run.

One form of investment, gaining wide bipartisan support around the country, is called Pay for Success or Social Impact Bonds.  These are social contracts made by the government with investors for loans to fund social programs, such as preschool and childcare. The loans are paid back to the investor, with interest, if the social program proves to meet its intended social goal. The cost savings to the government covers the cost of the loan plus interest, and the investor bares the risk if the program fails.  Although these contracts have never been tested in the education setting, state governments are passing laws to support them anyway. Senators Johnston and Humenik along with Representatives Garnett and Rankin, sponsored a Pay for Success bill last session.  The bill was quietly signed into law by our Democrat governor on May 20th, 2015.  Only a handful of Republicans and two Democrats voted against its passage.

Pay for Success contracts are limited to those programs the investors deem valuable. Investors won’t take risks by funding new unproven programs, so the argument that Pay for Success will support difficult to fund programs is false. Preschool and childcare centers have demonstrated their social worth. Judy Williams, Director of Early Learning Ventures (ELV), a Colorado hedge fund, promises investors an $8 return for every dollar invested in the ELV Alliance shared services model currently being used at Colorado childcare centers (ELV Alliance). This savings belongs to the government, but will go into the pockets of the millionaires instead. Meanwhile 57,000 children nationwide have lost their Head Start services due to tax cuts.

Why are Colorado Democrats voting for bills that hurt successful programs and cost the government money in the long run?

2015: The Year of Education Savings Accounts

The Goldwater Institute along with the Heritage Foundation proposed an expansion to the voucher model that would expand the scope of vouchers beyond private schools. This model, called Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), operate like employee health savings accounts (HSAs). A portion of per-pupil funds earmarked for a public school are deposited in the students’ ESA. The amount contributed to the account is not subjected to federal income tax at the time of the deposit and will roll over and accumulate if not spent in a given year, or placed in a college savings account.  Students can apply their per pupil allocation towards homeschool expenses, private school tuition, tutors, online education, educational technology, community college, technical education, or future higher education expenses.  The purpose of ESAs, according to the Heritage Foundation Website, are to give parents more control over the funds that the state would otherwise spend on public school. The effect will be less money overall for public schools, which rely on contributions from the whole to control costs.

Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) hosts their National Summit on Education Reform in Denver October 22-23, 2015. The theme of the conference is to explore ways to make education more cost-effective. One key strategic session, moderated by billionaire investor and education privatizer, William Oberndorf, is called, “2015: The Year of Education Savings Accounts.”  Earlier this year, dozens of legislatures introduced American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-drafted ESA bills (see: ALEC ESA Model Legislation).  Governors from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada signed ESAs bills into law, following the leads of Arizona and Florida preceding them.  This summit in Denver is significant, as privatization is heavily supported by both Colorado Democrat and Republican leaders and the elite business community.

Impending ESAs will be exorbitantly expensive to fund, adding millions of private school and homeschooled children to the system. Participating states are phasing-in ESAs by limiting eligibility to low-income students at low-performing schools, with the intent of broadening the scope to include all children in the future.  Nevada will make ESAs available to all 450,000 children starting in January 2016, although each candidate must be enrolled in public school for at least 100 days to qualify. The State of Nevada will contribute 90 percent, or $5,100, of per pupil funding to each enrollee. Special needs children qualify for 100 percent, or $5,700.  Although the Nevada law does not permit public money to be used for homeschooling, the law is vague enough to include it.

The laws also allow children to re-enroll in public school at any time, even if the ESA funds for the year have been spent.  This puts an additional burden on public schools, which will have to absorb these costs on top of their budget shortfalls.  And because ESAs are managed by the parents and not the school district, there will be obvious issues of fraud and lack of accountability, problems that are already rampant in the poorly regulated privatization arena.

The Cheaters and The Players: Why U.S. News and World Reports High School Rankings Are Meaningless

Every morning before the sun rises, I drive by the top ranked Colorado high school. It doesn’t standout. It’s just a nondescript medium sized K-12 charter school, located within the outer boundary of the wealthy Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). The plot is in a semi-rural area, near mobile home parks and farms. The buildings are new, modest, but tidy, and the lawns are trim. I don’t know much about the school itself, other than its legendary waiting lists. But there is one remarkable thing about this school that continues to surprise me, its consistently high U.S. News and World Reports (U.S. News) rankings.

I am familiar with other schools in the district.  One public high school, nestled at the base of the foothills, gives off an aura of understated privilege.  Rolling green hills crest into a worn out, windowless octagon structure that clashes with a parking lot full of luxury vehicles. Its proximity to a university and its prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) program make it a top choice for the academically inclined. In fact, this school posted the top standardized test scores in every category for the BVSD in 2014. This school nurtures more student research scientists, more math, science, and history competition winners, a Presidential Awards for Excellence winner in 2015, more Ivy-bound graduates, more perfect ACT scorers, and more concert musicians, than any other school in the area. Yet, U.S. News ranked this school a mere 10^th in the state and 2^nd in the district behind the charter school in 2015. This didn’t make sense to me, so I decided to learn more about the U.S. News rankings.

I found that U.S. News rates high schools based on two objective metrics, standardized test scores, and Advanced Placement (AP) and/or IB classes (U.S. News Methodology).This looks impressive in an executive summary, but a deeper look will show this is a flawed approach. First, the focus on test scores is based on a minimum level of proficiency, a low bar. The second measure, called the College Readiness indicator looks specifically at the number of AP/IB classes taken by each student and the AP/IB test pass-rate. U.S. News does not consider any other advanced programming or look at college success rates. Instead, U.S. News applauds schools that have no measurable achievement gap between rich and poor students. While this is an admirable achievement, it is not the only indicator of academic rigor, so it is misleading.

I also discovered that the algorithm used by U.S. News is not published so it is impossible to verify that the process is fair.  And, because the scope of the report is so broad, covering more than 29,000 schools, it is impossible to verify self-reported data by charter schools.  As a result, the entire system is vulnerable to cheating and manipulation by some schools.

The First Step Eliminates Schools with Quality Programs

Standardized testing measures whether students are proficient or not.  The U.S. News ranking process starts by eliminating schools that don’t meet several proficiency measures, based on state standardized test results. One is the Disadvantaged Student Performance indicator which measures the achievement gap.  In the BVSD, I know of five quality high schools that were eliminated from the 2015 rankings because of disparities between the non-disadvantaged and disadvantaged students.  One of these high schools has a popular project-based engineering program and also an IB program. Another offers more college classes taught by adjunct college professors than any other school in the area and the only business school.  A third school has an excellent theater and writing program and the second highest reading scores in the district for 2014.

In contrast, many of the charter schools selected for consideration by U.S. News do not offer enriching programming. These schools pour resources into test preparation curricula to get every student passed that proficiency bar. The test preparation approach is limiting because it narrows subject matter content and influences instructional practices.

The Second AP and/or IB Step is Too Narrow

Once cleared of the proficiency threshold, U.S. News considers College Readiness.  In this step, U.S. News looks first at the percentage of children who take and pass the AP and/or IB tests. This is an objective indicator of academic excellence, but not the only one.

As mentioned previously, there are other paths to college and career attainment than the test preparation approach. One of the unranked high schools in BVSD offers advanced mathematics through Calculus III and college-level physics and chemistry beyond AP. This school also offers more advanced computer science options than any other school in the district.  U.S. News does not look beyond AP/IB.

One way some schools, such as the high-ranking charters, ensure high AP/IB scoring is by providing tutors that work on test preparation with students, sometimes one-on-one. Students do not need to score high on these exams. They only need to pass with the minimum score.

One unfortunate result of this single-minded emphasis on AP/IB is the dumbing down of these classes to make them available to more students.  In Colorado, teacher development programs are encouraging teachers to steer more students into the AP program to help schools appear successful, even if their students aren’t college ready (Colorado A.P. Push).

As a result, AP classes are becoming so watered down, colleges are refusing to accept AP credit for full college credit.  Dartmouth College was one of the first to recognize that a high school AP class is not the equivalent of a Dartmouth class.  Dartmouth, Brown, and other prominent schools are scrutinizing these programs for what they are, difficult high school classes and nothing more (Dartmouth Ends A.P. Credit).

U.S. News Ranking System Favors Charter Schools

Charter schools by their nature are selective. Most charters have an additional enrollment step that may be confusing to low income parents. They often don’t provide transportation and afterschool care, adding more barriers. A report published from the National Education Policy Center in Boulder, Colorado shows how charter schools discourage low income and special needs students from applying to their schools (NEPC Report on Charter Schools).

Charter schools have been known to counsel out underperforming special education children because these schools are not legally required to provide resources to serve them, unless it is specified in their charters. Unfortunately, most parents do not know this before they enroll their children. Some of these students leave midyear and are not replaced. Disadvantaged children might leave midyear for lack of support. These schools keep the money and count them in their student body figures before passing them off to the public schools, which can do neither. The public school must absorb their costs and their test scores. After enrollment numbers are recorded at the end of September, many charter schools do not admit new students for the rest of the school year or any new students after the 9^th grade.  U.S. News does not factor these anomalies, even though they have the effect of punishing public schools in the rankings.

High-Stakes Testing Encourages Cheating

All publically funded schools obsess over standardized test scores, despite their pronouncements that they don’t.  Test scores determine school rankings and reputation, which in turn influence enrollment, funding, and in some cases, justifications for sanctions against poor performing schools. Test scores determine where students are placed academically and even if they can graduate. Test scores are used to evaluate teachers, determine tenure, and are tied to bonus pay in some schools.

This is why I am not surprised by the alarming statistics that show widespread cheating by teachers and administrators in 39 states, including Colorado (Test Cheating). This makes sense.  Standardized tests are administered by teachers and school officials, the very people the tests are intended to evaluate.  Testing systems have algorithms built in to reveal statistical anomalies in extreme cases, but the subtle ways to cheat are not detectable: (60 Ways Schools Cheat). U.S. News, in effect, validates this high-stakes system that enables cheating by some schools.

The Data Cannot Be Verified

Large studies tend to be less accurate. U.S. News collects data from over 29,000 public high schools. This information comes from the Common Core Data (CCD) national database, which is a massive compilation of state data. Because of the volume, it is impossible to verify that the data is precise. Human errors are common. And because much of the information submitted by districts and charter schools is self-reported, such as student-to-teacher ratios and the racial makeup of the student body, there is a strong likelihood that many of the schools are misrepresenting the data used by U.S. News.

U.S. News Does Not Publish the Algorithm

Although the U.S. News methodology can be found on their website, the algorithms are not transparent (U.S. New Methodology).  In BVSD, an unranked school shows an almost identical breakdown of test scores, student body makeup, student-to-teacher ratios, and achievement gap numbers as a comparable school from another district, ranked 32nd in the state. The discrepancies cannot be analyzed using the methodology provided to the public by U.S. News. This is extremely frustrating for parents and school administrators who expect accuracy and consistency in the rankings.

Conclusion – Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

U.S. News ranks public high schools by the number of students that score above the proficient cut score on standardized tests. This process looks at the whole student body and has merit for policy makers and district leaders who make decisions about the schools.  These studies are important to ensure equity and funding to our most vulnerable children.

Unfortunately, some schools use the U.S. News rankings to mislead parents who may confuse proficiency with achievement. U.S. News feeds into the high-stakes madness of American education and, in my opinion, encourages, condones, and ignores the cheating, manipulation and lies by some schools.

Newsweek, a magazine competing with U.S. News for the rankings market, recently came out with a two-pronged approach to ranking high schools. The first approach, like U.S. News, looks at socio-economic factors and recognizes schools for their efforts to close the achievement gap. The second approach looks only at achievement and college readiness, providing a different perspective. Perhaps this trend will inspire schools to give up the gimmicks and get back to teaching children. I’m not counting on it.