Flurry of surveys re-opens debate on education reforms

(Baton Rouge – August 22, 2013) New surveys demonstrate that parents overwhelmingly favor public education as the best choice for children, Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said today. The results call into question continued efforts to privatize the state’s education system and judge teachers by standardized test results, he added.

“Seventy percent of Americans oppose vouchers for private and religious schools,” Monaghan said. “That is the highest negative ever recorded in 45 years of research by Phi Delta Kappa and the Gallup organization.”

Monaghan’s comments came after release of the annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the public’s attitudes toward public schools.

Reflecting public support for neighborhood schools, Monaghan said, was the PDK/Gallup finding that 71 percent of public school parents would grade the school their oldest child attends as “A” or “B.”

Another poll released about the same time, from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shows that 76 percent of public school parents rate their child’s education as good or excellent, and that 82 percent have high opinions of their children’s teachers.

“These are careful, scientific surveys,” Monaghan said, “that need to be taken seriously as we debate the nature of education reform in Louisiana.”

The state’s reliance on standardized tests for determining everything from teacher salaries to school funding does not seem to have great public support. In the PDK/Gallup poll, for example, only 22% of Americans believe that increased testing has helped the performance of local public schools. A solid majority (58%) reject the notion that teacher evaluations should include “how well a teacher’s students perform on standardized tests.”

In the AP-NORC survey, parents agreed that the proper use of standardized tests should be “to identify areas where students need extra help.” But according to Monaghan, the testing imposed under new state law has little diagnostic value, and is used primarily to label teachers, students and schools.

Also in the AP-NORC survey, parents were asked to rank the importance of different factors in determining teacher salaries. The top three responses were classroom observation by local school officials, the type of training or advanced degrees obtained by the teacher and years of teaching experience. In Louisiana, all three have been eclipsed by testing, and state officials downplay the importance of degrees and experience.

The PDK/Gallup poll shows support for community charter schools, as well as a belief that students can “receive a better education at public charter schools than at other public schools.”

“We’d like to see more research on that question,” Monaghan said. “Apparently people see charter schools as places where there is parental support, where discipline is enforced, where disruptive students can be removed and where learning is prized. Instead of abandoning traditional public schools, we need to inculcate those values into them.”

The PDK/Gallup survey also reveals general support for “increasing opportunities for students to earn high school credit online over the Internet.”

While that may seem to bolster Louisiana’s controversial Course Choice pilot, Monaghan urged caution.

“Louisiana had a viable public school online learning program,” Monaghan said, “but it was supplanted by Course Choice, which is little more than an online voucher scheme. Course Choice opens the state treasury to profiteers as certainly as any other voucher program.”

Not all of the survey results would lead to policies favored by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Monaghan said. But the deeper issue revealed by surveys like these is that no real policy debate was allowed when still-contested reforms were rammed through the 2012 legislative session.

“Not since the days of Huey Long have such radical policies been imposed so quickly and with such overwhelming political force,” Monaghan said. “We are seeing the consequences of that action as courts overturn policies and teacher morale plummets.

“We need to reopen the education reform debate in Louisiana. It should be informed by surveys like these, by scientific research, and by input from educators and parents. Political ideology and potential profits should be left at the door when we discuss the education of our children.”

Report shows need to move away from test fixation

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is yet another lesson from overseas demonstrating the need for a course correction in the United States—away from our obsession with a punitive accountability approach that uses high-stakes standardized tests as its centerpiece and towards a more supportive accountability approach that continuously improves teacher performance and student learning, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.

The report, Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment, urges a balanced and holistic approach to evaluation, assessment and teacher improvement so that the overall emphasis is on efforts to help, not punish, teachers and to give students a great education. It recommends that teacher evaluations feed into professional development, ensure that underperformance is identified and adequately addressed, and ensure input from teachers and other stakeholders.

"It should give pause to those U.S. education leaders and so-called reformers who are fixated on high-stakes tests to the virtual exclusion of using multiple measures to inform instruction and improve teacher quality," Weingarten says.

"The report's recommendations echo what Vicki Phillips (of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and I said in a column in the April 11 New Republic. A high-quality teacher development and evaluation system requires elements that are designed to improve teacher practice and student learning, including matching high expectations with high levels of support, using evidence of teaching and student learning from multiple sources, providing constructive feedback to teachers, and aligning teacher development and evaluation to the Common Core State Standards."

The Jindal plan: Social promotion for private school failures

There's a lot the administration hasn't had time to tell us about Gov. Jindal's voucher scheme. That's one of the problems with ramming a bill through committee in the first week of the legislative session.

Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis deBerry exposes some of what they missed in this essay about the unequal treatment given students in public schools versus those in private and religious schools.

If a public school student fails the LEAP test, the student is held back. If a student in one of Gov. Jindal's voucher schools fails the LEAP, the student gets a social promotion.

That unfairness is just one of the many reasons why Gov. Jindal's vouchers shouldn't spread to the rest of the state.

As previously reported here, voucher schools in New Orleans in fact produced worse test scores than public schools.

Public schools showing such dismal results would be sanctioned, then closed or chartered. There is no such accountability for Gov. Jindal's voucher schools.

Reporter deBerry asked the governor's spokesperson if it is true that voucher students get social promotions. The response was less than direct:

"We've provided evidence that the scholarship program is working and parents are overwhelmingly satisfied. It's also clear that current system is failing far too many students. How many kids over how many decades would you trap in failing schools while you wait on MORE data the program is working."

Accountability in public schools means test scores. Accountability in Gov. Jindal's voucher schools means parents are satisfied (that their child got a social promotion).

And that stuff they've been saying for years about using data to gauge a school's success? That only applies to public schools. In Gov. Jindal's voucher schools, a happy smile is proof enough.

Tom Aswell's challenge to our leaders

Louisiana is fixin' to get tougher on our kids, with plans in the works to replace the current high-stakes LEAP test with a new, and so far acronym-less test that will be aligned with the "national drive to make public school courses more rigorous."

The implementation of the new test will probably make hash of the new Value Added Model of teacher evaluation, a fact that doesn't seem to faze the State Department of Education, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education or Gov. Bobby Jindal (but was recognized by Sen. Eric LaFleur at last Thursday's Joint Education Committee meeting).

Note that even as we make schools "more rigorous," we are freezing public education's budget, and cutting appropriations for after-school tutoring, technology initiatives and literacy and numeracy programs. Let's see how that works out.

And what are we really measuring with all these rigorous tests? A child's chance at future success?

If that's the case, all our elected officials should read this post by Tom Aswell over at Louisiana Voice.

He tells the story of a Florida school board member - a successful man who holds a Bachelor's degree and two Masters' degrees - who took that state's high-stakes math test.

Writes Aswell:

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he said. “The math section had 60
questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess 10 out of
the 60.” He got 62 percent on the reading test. “In our system,” he said,
“that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of
reading instruction.

Which got Aswell to thinking: Could our own test-happy bureaucrats and politicians pass the LEAP, much less its more-rigorous replacement?

At the risk of great personal embarrassment to myself (as if that would be
a precedent), I would like to issue a challenge to Gov. Jindal, each of his
cabinet members, every other statewide elected official (including the
congressional delegation), each member of the legislature, and especially to
each member of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, school board
members from all 64 parishes, and members of the Louisiana Board of Regents for
Higher Education...

I would like to challenge the aforementioned public officials to prove that
they are smarter than an eighth-grader. And to put my money where my mouth is, I will also volunteer to take the Louisiana eighth-grade LEAP test in the same
room, at the same time, as any public official who will take my dare. I’m
certain we can secure a room of sufficient size in the Claiborne Building that
houses the Department of Education.

Aswell lists some sample questions from Louisiana's test. It's worth a visit to his blog to read them, and ask yourself, honestly, how you would fare on the test used to judge our children's academic progress.

Louisiana students improving on key tests

High school students in Louisiana are showing improvements in key tests, according to reports issued by the State Department of Education this week.

The state's average composite score on the ACT test rose by one-tenth of a point in the past year, matching the national gain.

Even better news for the state came when the scores are disaggregated: minority populations in Louisiana out performed their peers in four out of five categories on the ACT test, according to the State Department.

"The steady growth Louisiana has achieved in our composite ACT score confirms that we’re indeed doing a better job of preparing our students to succeed in their college and career pursuits," Acting State Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler said.

A day earlier, the State Department released a summary report on high school end-of-course tests, announcing dramatic gains in achievement.

"Comparing student scores on the English II test from 2009-2010 to 2010-2011, the percentage of students performing at the levels of Excellent, Good, or Fair increased from 80 to 89 percent. Additionally, the statewide percentage of students scoring Excellent, Good, or Fair on the Algebra I exam rose from 71 to 79 percent between 2010 and 2011. In fact, the percentage of students receiving a score of Excellent, Good, or Fair has risen 15 percentage points (23 percent) since 2007-2008, the first year EOC exams were administered for Algebra I. Geometry results have likewise risen, from 66 percent scoring at the passing level in 2010 to 75 percent in 2011," the report says.

State skimps on erasure analysis

Louisiana's Department of Education is willing to spend $44 million to the company that "prints, issues, writes, grades and analyzes Louisiana’s No Child Left Behind-compliant state tests."


But when it comes to paying for the erasure analyses that can keep the system honest, the state balks at paying a bit more than $58,000.

Reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn writes about it here, in The Washington Independent.

Louisiana gets share of assesssment instrument grant

Louisiana is one of 26 states that will share a federal grant aimed at creating common assessment instruments for the recently adopted Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. Ours is one of 35 states and the District of Columbia to adopt the new Common Core standards.

According to this press release from the State Department of Education, the new assessments will eventually replace the iLEAP and LEAP tests, which will be phased out after the 2013-14 school year.

An important goal of the new assessment will be to have scores that can be compared among states that subscribe to the common standards.

The State Department says the new assessments will be administered by computer at key times during the year.

In a related Education Week story, reporter Erik W. Robelen writes that there are actually two sets of grants aimed at designing new assessment systems. Both are part of the Race to the Top program.

Oops...state is late with school data

The Associated Press reports that the Louisiana Department of Education missed an important deadline for reporting school performance scores.

The delay means parents at these schools have less time to take advantage of
federally mandated private tutoring or school choice.

State officials blame the delay on moving the testing dates from March to April, because the testing companies that are paid millions to score the tests need more time to complete their task.

Uhhh...Bad excuse. Test dates were moved for a very good reason: teachers need enough time to ensure that students are taught all the materials included on the tests. If we must have high-stakes tests, they should be done as late in the year as possible.

It is inexcusable that the school year has been calendared for the benefit and convenience of testing companies. But that's just what we've done in Louisiana. That's why school begins in August, when air conditioning costs are highest for schools, when families' vacation plans are inconvenienced, and when school buses are at their hottest.

Perhaps this delay will spur some outrage by parents, and some pressure will build for a more reasonable school calendar.