ed deform – Page 4

June 24, 2013June 25, 2013

Letter from Measured Progress: All is Well!

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On June 3, 201, Commissioner Gist received a letter from the Principal Founder of Measured Progress concerning the NECAP. It said, in part:

“While graduation decisions were not a consideration when the NECAP program was designed, the NECAP instruments are general achievement measures that are reliable at the student level”

First of all, it is interesting to speculate why such a letter would be sent at this particular time, well after setting the policy requiring the use of NECAP for graduation decisions. I speculate that the letter was requested to reassure a restive Board of Regents, but that is just my guess.

Still, if this is intended as reassurance from Measured Progress, it can only be read as tepid. First, the letter acknowledges that the NECAP was never designed to measure the learning of individual students. It was, instead, designed as a general achievement measure. Unspoken is the reality that, if the NECAP had been designed to measure the learning of individual students, it would have been designed much differently. But, that question, which drags in issues of test validity, was not asked and was not addressed.

There is not a word about test validity in the letter. That is, there is no claim that the test provides information that predicts “college and career” readiness any better than a large number of other contending measures: grades, recommendations, work or leadership experience, portfolios, senior projects, or socio-economic background.

Actually, test scores track socio-economic background so closely that it would be difficult to do a good job of distinguishing the two in a validity study.

So, there is no claim in the letter that the test is more useful than information that is already available. But there is the important claim that the test is reliable at the student level. And, after all, it is the reliability of the NECAP score that contributes so much to its attraction– that attraction being the simplicity of reducing a complex history of learning into two numbers–one for reading and one for math. After all, what could be more objective that a single number? Like the current balance of a bank account, this number tells us how much reading and math the student knows.

But the test score number is not like the current balance of a bank account, which is an exact number. Instead, it is an estimate of how much a student knows. Part of the test score is what the student really knows—the true score–and part of the test score is the mistakes the student makes—getting something wrong he/she really knows, or getting something right that he/she really does not know. These mistakes create error in the test score–the more error in the test score, the less reliable it is.

When testing companies like Measured Progress talk about reliability, they talk about the reliability of the test. They mean that, using different analytical techniques, they can tell how much measurement error the test contributes to the score of a student.

Using a camera as an analogy, this is like telling someone how much the lens distorts a picture. In photography, where the subject doesn’t contribute distortion to the picture, this is all you need to know. If, to pick a number, the test is reliable at the .85 level for students, that means that .15, or 15% of the test score is error.

The usual way to deal with the error is to turn it into an error band around the reliable portion of the score. Thus, when RIDE creates a cut-score for graduation, it puts an error band around it and takes the score at the bottom of the error band as the cut-score. Voila, fair and true cut scores!

But in testing, the person tested has long been acknowledged as a source of distortion, or variation, or measurement error (see Thorndike, 1951). Beyond the test itself, the person tested contributes random variation based on “health, motivation, mental efficiency, concentration, forgetfulness, carelessness, subjectivity or impulsiveness in response and luck in random guessing”.

If you ask teachers, parents, or anyone else who actually knows students, one of the first things they bring up is how differently students behave from day to day. They worry about whether a student will have a good day or a bad day when they take the NECAP. They assert as commonplace knowledge that the same student can get very different scores on the same test on different days. This kind of variation is called test-retest error.

Yet there is no reporting on this source of measurement error in the NECAP Technical Report. Partly, this is because getting test-retest reliability entails serious logistical problems—large numbers of students need to take parallel forms of a test in a relatively short period of time. It’s difficult and prohibitively expensive.

But recent improvements in techniques for analyzing tests (Boyd, Lankford & Loeb, 2012) have changed this and, all of a sudden, we can begin to understand the reliability of students when they take “general achievement measures”, i. e., standardized achievement tests.

To return to our camera analogy, in addition to understanding how much distortion the lens produces, we can now begin to understand how much distortion the object of observation causes. Now, instead of one layer of error, we have two layers of error and they impact each other as multipliers. If, for example, the lens is .85, or 85%, reliable, and the subject is also .85, or 85%, reliable, the total reliability is .85 X .85, or .72.

Reliability of .72 means that more than a quarter of the score (28%) is error. In other words, taking the student into account, the test is a lot less reliable than we thought it was when we only took the test into account. As the authors cited above report:

“we estimate the overall extent of test measurement error is at least twice as large as that reported by the test vendor…”

The test referred to by the authors– developed by CTB-McGraw Hill–is very similar to the NECAP.

All of this casts stronger doubt on the wisdom making the NECAP a graduation requirement. Not only is the NECAP flawed in the several ways discussed in this column before—it discourages students, victimizes the weaker students in the system, constricts curriculum, and degrades teaching and learning–but one of its chief virtues, its reliability, is seriously oversold.

Underestimating test reliability is bad for a student graduation requirement, but we should also consider the impact on the whole accountability structure: teacher assessments are based not on just one student test, but several, so increases in unreliability puts the evaluation system in doubt. Likewise, accountability associated with schools—the measures defining Priority Schools and, school progress and gap closing, to name a few. The whole house of cards is now exposed to a stiff breeze.

June 17, 2013

Arlene Violet misses the issue on teacher evaluations

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No one connotes Rhode Island quite like Arlene Violet. She’s got the full package: the accent, the politics and the resume. She’s been a nun, a lawyer, a politician and, as a result, now she’s a political pundit. Violet is so Rhode Island she even wrote a musical about the mob.

And here’s another thing that makes Arlene Violet pretty typical of the Ocean State: she doesn’t seem to have a strong understanding about the underlying issues causing the political problems in public education.

Here’s what she wrote about Deborah Gist in last week’s Valley Breeze: “Disingenuous arguments about how she ‘disses’ educators and only has a one trick pony for evaluation of students’ achievements and teacher competencies failed to derail her.”

On Newsmakers she followed this up by adding:

“It’s just a systemic resistance, for example for teacher evaluations. After I wrote a column in supporting of your reappointment I got my usual feedback when I support you, and they talked about the Rhode Island model teacher evaluation and support system addition 2 is 100 pages written by someone who has never spent a day in the classroom…”

However, there are actual issues with the new evaluation system that incentivize, rather than discourages, the dreaded status quo (that Violet herself rails against). Specifically, that the system being used to evaluate teachers inspires mediocrity. Here’s how an actual educator at the now-famous teacher rally in Cranston very succinctly summed up the real problem with the new teacher evaluation system:

“Less rigor of task or target set to low teacher becomes highly effective; rigorous task and target and the teacher is scored effective and developing. The rating has little to do with the quality of the teaching and everything to do with the subjective development and rating of the task.”

This is why holding someone accountable is only as good as the metric being used. But this didn’t stop Arlene from pretty much ignoring any criticism at all and skipping right over to educators being lazy. “First of all I’d like you to respond to that criticism, but putting that aside,” she asked Gist, “do you feel that anyone will ever accept teacher evaluations or is this just ‘don’t bother me?'”

She may as well have asked if teachers beat their spouses (the most famous example of a hard-to-answer leading question in journalism)! WPRI had no counterbalance to Violet’s support for Gist; the panel consisted of two impartial reporters and Violet, who says on the show that she often supports Gist.

But Gist, to her credit, didn’t take the bait: “They [teachers] want to make sure the process is fair, that the process is high quality and they want to be held accountable in a way that is appropriate and fair, not that they don’t want it to happen at all, that they want to make sure the process is done well.”

June 17, 2013June 17, 2013

Mancuso, Gist keep ed debate in spotlight

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Weekends are supposed to be school-free, but not here in Rhode Island where public education politics have become a hot button issue on the Eva Mancuso, chairwoman of the state Board of Education, did a sit down with Bill Rappleye on 10 News Conference while Deborah Gist, the state commissioner of education, joined Tim White on Newsmakers.

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

Meanwhile, as the Ocean State moves forward with our new day in education politics, Diane Ravitch had this post the other day headlined: An Education Declaration to Rebuild America. It’s a great primer on what progressives will be looking for as we all work together to improve our public schools:

Americans have long looked to our public schools to provide opportunities for individual advancement, promote social mobility, and share democratic values. We have built great universities, helped bring children out of factories and into classrooms, held open the college door for returning veterans, fought racial segregation, and struggled to support and empower students with special needs. We believe good schools are essential to democracy and prosperity — and that it is our collective responsibility to educate all children, not just a fortunate few.

Over the past three decades, however, we have witnessed a betrayal of those ideals. Following the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, policymakers on all sides have pursued an education agenda that imposes top-down standards and punitive high-stakes testing while ignoring the supports students need to thrive and achieve. This approach – along with years of drastic financial cutbacks — are turning public schools into uncreative, joyless institutions. Educators are being stripped of their dignity and autonomy, leading many to leave the profession. Neighborhood schools are being closed for arbitrary reasons. Parent and community voices are being shut out of the debate. And children, most importantly, are being systemically deprived of opportunities to learn.

As a nation we have failed to rectify glaring inequities in access to educational opportunities and resources. By focusing solely on the achievement gap, we have neglected the opportunity gap that creates it, and have allowed the re-segregation of our schools and communities by class and race. The inevitable result, highlighted in the Federal Equity and Excellence Commission’s recent report For Each and Every Child, is an inequitable system that hits disadvantaged students, families, and communities the hardest.

A new approach is needed to improve our nation’s economic trajectory, strengthen our democracy, and avoid an even more stratified and segregated society. To rebuild America, we need a vision for 21st Century education based on seven principles:

· All students have a right to learn. Opportunities to learn should not depend on zip code or a parent’s abilities to work the system. Our education system must address the needs of all children, regardless of how badly they are damaged by poverty and neglect in their early years. We must invest in research-proven interventions and supports that start before kindergarten and support every child’s aspirations for college or career.

· Public education is a public good. Public education should never be undermined by private control, deregulation, and profiteering. Keeping our schools public is the only way we can ensure that each and every student receives a quality education. School systems must function as democratic institutions responsive to students, teachers, parents, and communities.

· Investments in education must be equitable and sufficient. Funding is necessary for all the things associated with an excellent education: safe buildings, quality teachers, reasonable class sizes, and early learning opportunities. Yet, as we’ve “raised the bar” for achievement, we’ve cut the resources children and schools need to reach it. We must reverse this trend and spend more money on education and distribute those funds more equitably.

· Learning must be engaging and relevant. Learning should be a dynamic experience through connections to real world problems and to students’ own life experiences and cultural backgrounds. High-stakes testing narrows the curriculum and hinders creativity.

· Teachers are professionals. The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. When we judge teachers solely on a barrage of high-stakes standardized tests, we limit their ability to reach and connect with their students. We must elevate educators’ autonomy and support their efforts to reach every student.

· Discipline policies should keep students in schools. Students need to be in school in order to learn. We must cease ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices that push children down the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools must use fair discipline policies that keep classrooms safe and all students learning.

· National responsibility should complement local control. Education is largely the domain of states and school districts, but in far too many states there are gross inequities in how funding is distributed to schools that serve low income and minority students. In these cases, the federal government has a responsibility to ensure there is equitable funding and enforce the civil right to a quality education for all students.

Principles are only as good as the policies that put them into action. The current policy agenda dominated by standards-based, test-driven reform is clearly insufficient. What’s needed is a supports-based reformagenda that provides every student with the opportunities and resources needed to achieve high standards and succeed, focused on these seven areas:
1. Early Education and Grade Level Reading: Guaranteed access to high quality early education for all, including full-day kindergarten and universal access to pre-K services, to help ensure students can read at grade level.

2. Equitable Funding and Resources: Fair and sufficient school funding freed from over-reliance on locally targeted property taxes, so those who face the toughest hurdles receive the greatest resources. Investments are also needed in out-of-school factors affecting students, such as supports for nutrition and health services, public libraries, after school and summer programs, and adult remedial education — along with better data systems and technology.

3. Student-Centered Supports: Personalized plans or approaches that provide students with the academic, social, and health supports they need for expanded and deeper learning time.

4. Teaching Quality: Recruitment, training, and retention of well-prepared, well-resourced, and effective educators and school leaders, who can provide extended learning time and deeper learning approaches, and are empowered to collaborate with and learn from their colleagues.

5. Better Assessments: High quality diagnostic assessments that go beyond test-driven mandates and help teachers strengthen the classroom experience for each student.

6. Effective Discipline: An end to ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices including inappropriate out-of-school suspensions, replaced with policies and supports that keep all students in quality educational settings.

7. Meaningful Engagement: Parent and community engagement in determining the policies of schools and the delivery of education services to students.

As a nation, we’re failing to provide the basics our children need for an opportunity to learn. Instead, we have substituted a punitive high-stakes testing regime that seeks to force progress on the cheap. But there is no shortcut to success. We must change course before we further undermine schools and drive away the teachers our children need.

All who envision a more just, progressive, and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

June 11, 2013

Progressive Dems dismayed by Chafee’s support for Gist

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The following is an open letter to Governor Chafee from the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats in response to the renewal of Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s contract:

Working teachers have gotten together with their leadership to give voice to the despair they feel over the conditions in the Rhode Island schools. One of those troubling conditions is the Commissioner’s insistence that the state use a standardized test to determine whether students can graduate from high school and as a means of evaluating teachers—the very test that is specifically designed for improving curriculum and specifically not intended for the purposes for which Commissioner Gist plans to use it. Many educational researchers have repeatedly indicated that the testing frenzy is totally counterproductive to the educational outcomes of students and the data is proving that. Even Bill Gates, who, since 2009, put enormous resources behind qualitative testing, has recently made a turnaround in his thinking. Students need to be engaged and involved in their educational experience. Superintendent Gist’s fixation with testing is the antithesis of engagement. It is factory model teaching.

Another area of concern is Superintendent Gist’s background and alliances within the country’s educational community. Her association with Eli Broad, for example, indicates an agenda that has more to do with the privatization of schools and the elimination of teachers’ unions than it does with providing an excellent education for Rhode Island students.

Finally, the teachers have repeatedly spoken about the condescending attitude the superintendent exhibits toward teachers, parents, and students in almost every interaction. Her unwillingness to even entertain suggestions is becoming legendary throughout the state.

Every public meeting has become a vote of no confidence in the Superintendent of Rhode Island Schools from teachers around the state. This same sentiment was reflected in the Providence Journal poll where readers were invited to vote on whether Supt. Gist’s contract should be renewed and an overwhelming number voted no. The unions commissioned another poll where 400 plus teachers were called at random with the same negative results. Do you really think that extending the contract of a Superintendent who is held in such low regard by the very people she is supposed to lead is in the best interest of the children of Rhode Island?

When you were first running for governor, the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats invited you to participate in a formal endorsement process where members of our Executive Board asked you and other candidates—each separately—to comment on issues facing Rhode Island. One segment was devoted to education and, when you were asked about your thoughts on charter schools and mayoral academies, you were eloquent in your response about how you were not a big fan of these kinds of schools because they drew money away from the regular public schools, and you felt the state should be committed to an equally high quality education for all our students rather than special treatment for a relatively small segment of the population. As an organization we were delighted with that response and highlighted it in messages we sent out to our whole organization urging them to not only vote for you but to actively work for your election. We remain mystified by what appears to be a complete reversal from the ideals you espoused during that interview. If the commitment to Rhode Island school children you expressed when running for governor was authentic, it is hard to understand the basis for a decision to renew Deborah Gist’s contract.

At the very least, we would urge you to delay the vote and assign a member of your staff to do some investigation into the latest research on high-stakes testing and the people who are backing these type of “reform “ efforts, what their agenda really is, and exactly who stands to gain from such “innovations.” You certainly need to have that information before making an informed decision, and you need to share it with the Board of Education so they too have all the facts before their vote.

In last month’s poll, 60% of working teachers said they would not take up teaching if they had to do it over again. That is a heart-breaking statistic. We have no greater resource than the intelligence and skills of our youth and no better guardians than their teachers. Please show them the respect and the care they deserve.

June 10, 2013January 14, 2015

Blackstone Academy: great charter school; can it be scaled?

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Blackstone Academy, a charter school serving 165 high school students from Central Falls and Pawtucket, looks a lot like what I wish the entire public education system looked like.

Students are encouraged to pursue their passions within, and sometimes a bit outside of, the constructs of the curriculum. Everyone has individualized plans for success. Teachers are highly engaged with their students, their learning styles and their personal struggles. Educators develop community service projects for their classes. There’s a vegetable garden out from and students and teachers all call each other by their first names.

I went the the school’s graduation ceremony on Friday and nearly every senior was going to college. This from a school who 86 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. Not all publicly financed charter schools in Rhode Island are outperforming their public school counterparts, But Blackstone sure is.

How does Blackstone do it? Here’s what my lifelong friend John Horton joked to the graduates on Friday.

Horton is a 14 year veteran of teaching with a degree from U Penn. He’s also one of the smartest, nicest and most compassionate people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. There’s certainly something to this; Blackstone does have a great staff of teachers. My brother, a former teacher, is their attorney.

What makes Blackstone different?

Here’s what school principal Kyleen Carpenter told Julia Steiny in GoLocalProv last week.

“No one wants to hear this, which is why I really want to say: Our school culture kicks butt. Everyone’s here to learn; no one’s here to screw around. And we will achieve at a high level, whatever that takes. I used to have a line outside my door with kids who said ‘F you’ to a teacher, or did something wrong. No more. You can’t buy culture; you can’t make it. You have to have consistent expectations in every single class, and to celebrate achievement.”

“As corny as it sounds, a great culture is a commitment to relentless happiness. Also, throw ‘no excuses’ out the door. These kids have plenty of excuses. But we help them address and remove those excuses so they can get to work. We do not pretend they don’t exist. No, it’s not all roses and puppy dogs. But we talk about the problems and don’t hide them.”

Ah, I see … great teachers AND great culture!

So if have great teachers in our all of our schools, do we have great culture? If not, what can we learn about how Blackstone Academy has created its great culture? Rhode Island is diverting funding from traditional public schools, in part, so that charter schools can act as living laboratories for everyone. Is RIDE monitoring and helping to export the success stories? Or is it only diverting resources from the many to the few?

And here’s the million dollar question: whatever it is that Blackstone Academy is doing to help poor kids from Central Falls and Pawtucket great a great education, can it be scaled to work elsewhere?

June 7, 2013June 11, 2013

RI holds Gist accountable

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Embattled Education Commission Deborah Gist will keep her job in Rhode Island, but the Board of Education offered her a two year contract instead of the three year deal she was seeking. Both labor and management can claim some victory this morning.

“It’s a new day for education in Rhode Island,” said Board Chairwoman Eva Mancuso after the meeting.

Going forward, Gist will be given performance reviews. But this isn’t something the new Board instituted last night as a result of the public outcry against Gist. This is something Gist asked for in her initial contract that the old board never did. In other words, while Deborah Gist was holding teachers accountable, Rhode Island wasn’t holding her accountable.

After weeks of watching Rhode Island teachers speak out about Gist, her reforms and her management style, it seems as if both Gist and the Board now want this as much as educators and activists.

“It’s more of a statement going forward that we all need to work together, and that means going in a room and rolling up our sleeves as we did tonight,” Mancuso said after the meeting.

The meeting lasted four hours and about half of it happened in executive session. Executive session means a public body can meet outside the view of the public, but the conference room at CCRI where the meeting was held had a glass wall, and many reporters, teachers, activists and RIDE employees could see the very animated executive session playing out before their eyes.

“We were loud at times, we discussed it, people had very strong opinions,” Mancuso said. She said the Board may revisit either the NECAP test as a graduation requirement or the statewide performance review in the near future.

Pat Crowley told me yesterday, “If the board votes to renew the contract, we want to make it clear tonight isn’t the end of a campaign.”

It shouldn’t be the end of a campaign, and that’s a good thing. To my mind, a very great thing happened for public education in Rhode Island because teachers spoke out and managed up.

June 6, 2013June 7, 2013

‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, Deborah Gist has got to go’

More than 100 teachers showed up at CCRI tonight to make sure the Board of Education knows how they feel about extending Deborah Gist’s contract. You can watch the video to see for yourself in this quick video:

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013

Pretending to discuss NECAP test validity

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One of the real problems that our politics has never addressed is full-time advocates. In issue after issue, only one side has money, so therefore has the time to write, speak, argue, make radio appearances, testify at great length to legislative committees, and generally conduct an all-out campaign to win. The other side relies on volunteers, stealing time from their jobs or families in order to wage a fight. You see this in fights over tax cuts, over the argument about whether payday lenders should be allowed to charge 260% interest, and in discussions about virtually every environmental regulation ever proposed.

So it is in the debates about the state’s misguided use and abuse of the NECAP test. To date, I have yet to see any response to my letter to the Board of Education chair that didn’t rely on misconstruing it. Not only that, but I’ve heard from several psychometricians that my criticisms were on target. And I keep hearing from teachers the same refrain: “yeah you’re right, but you don’t know the half of it.”

What I have seen is a continuing blizzard of media and radio appearances by the Commissioner and her supporters, where her assertions about testing policy and statistics are allowed to pass essentially unchallenged by hosts who maybe aren’t exactly statistics aces. I’ve also seen a very strange letter from business leaders that endorses Commissioner Gist for no reason they could actually cite.

Let the record show that, since I wrote my letter in March, Dan Yorke’s is the only media outlet to invite me on. I was on Buddy Cianci’s show for about five minutes, when I called in. I also got to mention the subject for a minute during a Lively Experiment appearance, out of the indulgence of the producers who hadn’t put the controversy on that week’s agenda — even though the Commissioner had appeared the previous week.

Outside the media’s eye, I got two minutes to speak at a Senate Education Committee hearing, after the Commissioner spoke for about an hour and a half, and failed to speak at a Board of Education hearing when Eva Mancuso, the chair, shut down the public comment after 30 minutes, most of which was filled by endorsements of decisions the Board was already planning to make.

Have you seen any independent psychometricians interviewed or questioned by other media? They exist out there in the wide world. Which local reporter has called around to find one to weigh in? Who has published it?

In short, we’ve seen nothing that remotely resembles a debate over the issues raised by me, RI Future and by the Providence Student Union. The issues have not only gone unanswered, they pretty much remain ignored. This is not a debate that I have lost; it’s a debate that has never happened. The Department of Education has gone out of its way to show they have policies to address some of the failings of the test, but the easiest policy to address misuse of the NECAP test is simply to stop misusing it, and that is apparently not on the table.

So this is how policy works around here. There is no debate about issues going on, though we pretend. The pretense is abetted by politicians and education board members who only make a pretense of caring about public policy. The sad fact, though, is that policy is what the government actually does, for us and to us. If we don’t discuss policy in any useful fashion, is it any wonder that we can’t get out of our own way?

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013

Teachers to protest outside before Gist contract debate

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Public school teachers plan to protest outside a Board of Education meeting tonight where Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s future employment will be debated and perhaps decided.

“If the board votes to renew the contract, we want to make it clear tonight isn’t the end of a campaign,” said Pat Crowley. “Tonight is the beginning of the campaign.”

The action was announced in an email today from the NEARI, the larger of the two teachers’ unions in Rhode Island. Both are vehemently opposed to Gist’s contract being renewed. Here’s the email:

Rhode Island educators will gather at CCRI, Warwick, prior to the Board of Education meeting Thursday, June 7, to express concern once again over the continuation of Deborah Gist as commissioner of education. Frank Flynn, president of RI Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, and Valarie Lawson, president of East Providence Education Association, will speak at 5:00 pm.

At a debate-changing teacher rally recently in Cranston, Brian Chidester, a French teacher in Warren/Bristol, said, “if you want mass civil disobedience from your teachers, go ahead and renew Gist’s contract.”

June 5, 2013

How to assess education without high stakes tests

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As part of of graduate school seminar class, a professor asked me to name three important figures in counseling/psychology and what I learned from them. With all respect to Rogers, Freud, Jung, Ellis and Skinner, my answer centered on a few non-traditional types. Magic Johnson, Bill Cosby and my grandmother were probably not the answers the professor was expecting.

My three ‘therapists’ all did things that good counselors do. They each influenced behaviors in a beneficial way. Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson infused new life into a tired Lakers team. His enthusiasm, unselfish play and the ability to make others better, immediately had an impact on teammates. Bill Cosby, a legendary comedian was in many ways able to empathize with kids and tap into his inner child to communicate with them. Finally, my grandmother. On days when 6-year-old Bobby Houghtaling pouted and ran away from home (which was across the street) she would fix me lemonade, create a safe environment and turn on the TV until my mom would pick me up later, a changed man. My grandmother always had a calming way about her.

What made my three examples successful was their ability to connect, communicate, build levels of trust and establish longitudinal commitment. Look as long as you want – no rocket science is to be found. But, without those four dynamics in play our therapist’s effect would be minimized.

Despite obvious differences, counseling and teaching have much in common. One such area would be the importance of establishing an environment conducive to growth. This environment encompasses things like; trust, respect, connection, modeling behavior, enthusiasm, support, etc.. When clients/students feel that their growth is encouraged and supported some very good things can occur.

The Common Core, along with the over emphasis on standardized tests, limits a great deal of a teacher’s potential impact. Threats of school closings, students being denied graduation, overloading kids who struggle on English and Math assessments with extra classes, a teaching to the test dynamic and other concerns, often create a negative learning environment.

Assessing student progress is important. But are standardized tests the best way to go? In many ways it is a lazy and incomplete means of measuring academic competence and growth. Creativity, critical thinking and multiple application(s) are often secondary to scores, rankings and compliance. On top of all of this, the teacher’s role is minimized. We are curtailing their ability to be change agents by forcing them to function as (primarily) information givers.

One thing that might be changed is the report card. To present, report cards have provided students with letter grades, a few comments and a bit of data. Why not upgrade the report card by turning it into a more informative assessment? Perhaps details could be provided regarding strengths and weaknesses, learning styles.

Perhaps there could be room for diagnostic recommendations where teachers might offer students strategies on how to improve. By making the report card something where teachers would be asked to provide their students with a template for success (as well as an up-to-date measure of progress) kids and their parents would have a more complete picture of what is going on. It would actually mean much more work for teachers. It will ask them to provide a form of ‘educational diagnosis’ for all kids. In the end, I believe, it would enhance a child’s learning experience. It would also help parents to better assist their children as well as partner with the schools. Just a thought.

Another viable tool, might be called the ‘School Portfolio Assessment.’ In short, schools would be asked to create a portfolio which would provide an overview of their successes and how they were achieved. These portfolios would be made accessible to all schools around the state so that a sharing of information and strategies might follow.

In addition to this, a ‘Portfolio Summit’ might be sponsored by the Department of Education where schools could be offered a chance to ‘strut their stuff’ to others around the state (like an academic show and tell). No grades, no punishments – just a unique sharing and learning experience. In doing so districts around RI would be working in collaboration, rather than being pitted against each other. Schools would not be reduced to test scores.

Measuring the progress of students and their schools is important. It is how this is to be done that is an issue. Rather than racing and punishing we would be better off going on a journey together. In many ways it would be much more work.

Magic Johnson used talent and enthusiasm to breath new life into a tired team. He also had the ability to make those around him better. Bill Cosby made trying new things fun. He was also able to connect and establish rapport. My grandmother was patient and willing to go where I was. She built around my strengths and needs to facilitate change. All were/are change agents.

Isn’t that what we want from our teachers? Don’t we really want them to teach kids how to learn along with what to learn? Let us encourage and allow our teachers to be change agents rather than test preparers. The journey will be worth the ride. That is, of course, assuming that everyone wants creative, critical thinkers. Sounds like a question worth asking politicians, reformers, business leaders and the Department of Education.

June 5, 2013June 6, 2013

Duncan, Hasenfeld bat cleanup for Gist

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In baseball parlance, it’s the top of the eighth for Deborah Gist as her high profile political battle with teachers over her tenure reaches its final hours. The Board of Education has a vote scheduled for Thursday, so both teams still have some at-bats left. But barring extra innings, I think we’ve already seen the heavy hitters.

For teachers, their big plate appearance came two weeks ago when they held a huge rally in a Cranston gymnasium – you can watch video of it here. Estimates range between 700 and more than 1,000 educators came to publicly renounce Gist. Answering a poll question is one thing, and 85 percent said Gist should go, but taking time out of one’s personal life to stand up publicly and speak out against your employer is entirely another matter.

Gist’s cleanup hitter Arne Duncan batted yesterday. Read Linda Borg’s front page story in today’s Providence Journal and judge for yourself how he did. The reality of politics is no one knows for sure, and never will.

We don’t even know what inspired the highest ranking education official in the United States to call to talk to four local journalists about the state education commissioner’s contract situation, or if he’s ever done so before. Duncan and Gist’s spokesfolks both say Gist didn’t ask Duncan for the political favor. Yesterday I surmised that it was a power play on the brand new Obama-annointed Democrat Linc Chafee, but maybe it was a power play by Chafee. Maybe Chafee asked the Obama Administration to give a call to give him cover? More likely it was a Gist ally from the corporate reform movement that Obama and Duncan are so closely aligned with. Read this Washington Post piece by Fred Hiatt; it’s about Arne Duncan lobbying the Washington Post for Michelle Rhee in 2009, but it may as well be about him doing so for Deborah Gist in 2013.

We do know this: Duncan mentioned that test scores have improved but didn’t mention that the achievement gap – the more meaningful metric to many progressives and education experts – has widened.

So in today’s Providence Journal, Alan Hassenfeld, of the business community, and Christine Lopes, of the charter school community, go to bat for Gist. They liken her struggle for a contract extension to the signing of the first colonial charter. In other words, they struck out looking.

Rhode Island will not revert back to some sort of mythical status quo if Deborah Gist goes and reforms education somewhere else. And, yes, she has brought in a lot of money courtesy of Race to the Top, but if that money is being largely invested in online education, high stakes testing and charter schools it is easily debatable that we’re effectively spending money to further increase the achievement gap between rich suburbs and poor cities.

To further strain this tired old analogy of likening politics to baseball, Deborah Gist is Rhode Island’s Bobby Valentine, the highly-sought-after Red Sox manager who couldn’t win with the best talent in baseball. I know Arnie Duncan seems to disagree, but personalities matter. Especially in politics; and public education is political. Deborah Gist was and is great at managing up; hence the call from Duncan. But she hasn’t proven herself to be very good at managing down; hence the teacher revolt. We can find someone who can do both, if Gist can’t.

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

Duncan spokesman clears air about interview

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Arnie Duncan’s spokesman Daren Briscoe called me after the US education secretary had a conference call with local reporters to clear the air about why I wasn’t included on the announcement. We also spoke about some of the other questions that came up as a result of Duncan’s interview, too.

[RIPR has posted the entire audio of the conference call interview. (I ask my question at 9 minutes into the call.) Here’s WPRI’s story and here’s the ProJo account.]

Briscoe said his office did not deliberately keep information from me. Rather, he said, the two people from Duncan’s press office that I spoke with did not know about it. He also said Gist did not ask Duncan to make the call to Rhode Island reporters, nor did anyone from the Department of Education.

He also cautioned me not read too much into Duncan not using Gist’s name throughout the interview but also didn’t want to add anything to that narrative, saying, “I’ll let the call speak for itself.”

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

Duncan on Gist: ‘Every leader needs to listen’

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In spite of Deborah Gist’s office attempt to freeze me out of a conference call with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and his office telling me they were unaware of the call, I was able to ask him one question.

I asked him what the low teacher morale in Rhode Island said about Gist’s management acumen. Gist said recently that teacher morale was low when she got here and she has come under intense scrutiny since it became clear just how low it is. A statewide poll of teachers showed 85 percent want her replaced.

“Every leader needs to listen and build teams,” Duncan said. I followed up by asking if this applied to Gist and Duncan said, “I don’t begin to know the details.”

While I may have missed most of the conference call, I think these two quotes speak volumes about Gist’s contract situation and whether or not she will remain in Rhode Island. Gist needs to listen better and build stronger teams and Arne Duncan doesn’t begin to know the details.

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

Party politics at play with Gist’s contract

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So much for it being about the children. Now it’s about party politics.

Just a few hours after I tweeted that Deborah Gist lost control of the narrative about education reform in Rhode Island, she may have found a way to recapture it. The embattled education commissioner will get a plug from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will lobby local reporters today on her behalf, according to the Providence Journal.

The call from Duncan comes a day after the Providence Journal reported that “Governor Chafee waffled Monday on whether he supports a multiyear contract for state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist.” It also comes just a few days after President Obama, Duncan’s boss, went out of his way to praise Chafee for becoming a Democrat.

The show of support from the White House puts Chafee in an awkward spot. Locally, labor put him in office but if he’s to stay there it will require lots of help from Obama.

The call puts Chafee in a difficult position. He’s being lobbied hard by teachers and their union representatives to declare the Deborah Gist a wash and replace her.

A spokesperson for Duncan said she did not know about the call. Elliot Krieger, a spokesman for Gist, declined to provide me with a contact number. Effectively, this is Gist’s office trying to control which reporters are allowed to ask Duncan questions.

May 31, 2013

What is authentic assessment?

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Throughout the ongoing debate around Rhode Island’s new high-stakes testing graduation requirement, folks in our state have been hearing a lot of talk about standards and expectations.

This controversy has not, however, sparked a real conversation about the fundamental issue here, which can be boiled down to this question: what is authentic assessment? What does it look like and how can we create systems to support its use and – perhaps most important of all – what are its goals?

To see an example of true, authentic assessment, I urge you to watch “Seeing the Learning,” the 9th segment in a 10-part series of short, beautifully-shot films about the Mission Hill School in Boston, a shining example of what a public school can be.

At Mission Hill, staff hold fast to the original definition of “assessment,” which comes from the Latin, “to sit beside.” Students at Mission Hill take the required standardized tests, but teachers there understand that the best way to see if a student has grasped a lesson is through direct engagement and discussion; the best way to raise expectations for a child is to spark their curiosity and love of learning; and the most important goal of assessment is to better understand individual students so as to improve support, teaching and learning for them.

The Mission Hill School uses a similar assessment system as that used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a network of 28 public schools in New York that rely on practitioner-designed and student-focused assessment tasks rather than high-stakes testing. The Consortium schools – which have a higher population of students living at the poverty level, a higher percentage of ELL students, and a higher percentage of students entering school behind pace than regular New York City public schools – have remarkably better student outcomes than the average NYC school, including a dropout rate, at 5.3%, that is half that of the NYC average, and a graduation rate of special needs students (50%) that is double that of the NYC average. These superior results continue after high school, with eighty-five percent of Consortium graduates attending colleges rated competitive or better. And Consortium students’ college persistence to second year at 4-year colleges is 18.6% higher than the national average, while for 2-year colleges, persistence is 30.4% higher.

All this is to say that there are alternatives to standardized testing, and when they’re implemented well, these alternatives are actually far more effective than our current regime of high-stakes testing.

Which brings us back to Rhode Island. At the heart of the campaign against the NECAP graduation requirement that has been waged by parents, teachers and the youth group I work with, the Providence Student Union, is a belief that a simple standardized test gives us a pretty limited amount of data about students. This data can be valuable in helping us to make certain decisions (although the info becomes more distorted and less valuable as higher stakes are attached to the tests). But despite the fact that these tests cost millions of taxpayer dollars to develop and countless hours of lost teaching and learning time to administer, the data they provide is far from the whole picture, and I would argue that the goals you can achieve from these kinds of assessments are not the goals we should be devoting so much of our collective time, energy and resources towards. If you want to get detailed information about a student to better support him or her, a standardized test is not your best bet. If you want to engage students in an assessment they find challenging and that stretches them to be the best they can be, a standardized test is not your best bet. If you want to better understand how students respond and react in real-life situations, a standardized test is not your best bet.

In other words, if you want an authentic assessment, you can’t take the easy road. Assessment is important, and we should treat it as such. That means not phoning it in. That means doing it right. That means sitting beside our children. By all accounts, it will be worth it.

May 29, 2013May 30, 2013

Gist: Low teacher morale predated her tenure

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In what I thought was one of the most interesting and honest exchanges of my interview with Deborah Gist, she tells me that teacher morale has been low since she came to Rhode Island four years ago, and that there’s a negativity surrounding local teachers and the state itself.

“Morale was very low when I got here,” she said. “I was so surprised at, just, the dejection, people were really bummed out.”

Gist worked in four different states and the District of Columbia before coming to Rhode Island and said she has never before seen the level of divisiveness between management and labor. She also said the state suffers from a sense of negativity about itself.

So I asked her if she thought local teachers were embattled- a term both RI Future and the Providence Journal have used to describe Gist recently. She said she didn’t know. She also made reference to a vocal minority that actively engages in teacher bashing for the sake of shrinking government.

May 27, 2013May 28, 2013

Get education reform debate out of The Cave

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Deborah Gist has become a lightening rod for the electricity surrounding the Department of Education’s school reform measures.

While many politicians and business leaders extoll the commissioner’s virtues, this is often counter-balanced by teachers, parents and students who claim that her policies hurt many kids. Back and forth we go.

Sometimes I think that we lose sight of the fact that these arguments go much deeper than a debate over Deborah Gist’s performance. What is really being discussed here is philosophy.

The philosophical issues on the table go back to the days of Socrates and Plato. What is just? Who should lead? What should we teach our kids? Socrates went to his death asking these questions. In fact, he was accused of corrupting the youth with his ideas. In addition, Plato’s Republic had much to say about leaders and education. He also got the jump on The Matrix with his Allegory Of The Cave. Yes, this stuff goes way back.

Our current debate often times pits those presently in power (business leaders and many politicians) vs. those who might be harmed by power’s misuse. Also at odds here are many moral questions. Who wins and who loses? What responsibility do we have to our weak and disadvantaged? As all of this plays out some blame the commissioner. As all of this plays out others blame teachers and unresponsive kids. While we get caught up in terms like; Republican, Democrat, conservative, progressive, etc. we forget things like fairness, compassion and the best for all.

Most folks know the word ‘philosophy’ means the love of wisdom. What better goal could our Department of Education have than to cultivate a love for wisdom and knowledge in RI’s young learners? It certainly seems that under the present terms of excessive mandates, threats and an over-reliance on standardized testing there is little love going on.

Philosophy as a discipline promotes inquiry and analysis. Philosophy when used to explain one’s mindset speaks to the values we choose to live by. The strategies presently being espoused as reform point to conformity. We often debate issues pertaining to freedom of speech while freedom of thought is being eroded on a daily basis.

The Department of Education’s rush to test for English and Math often has us overlook other important disciplines. Perhaps Philosophy is one of them. Maybe we should be teaching kids about ethics, leadership, critical thinking, citizenship, purpose and meaning. Then again, as we witnessed from the PSU Group, maybe they could be teaching us.

Deborah Gist is a bright woman. In her world she is extremely accomplished. Knocking any of that is silly. She presents well and seems to handle opposing views in a professional manner. However, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that despite all of this her leadership has taken us in a direction that is unfair to some kids and hurts them as well. It has placed us back inside of Plato’s Cave.

What really needs to be looked at in this entire school reform debate is ‘What do we value?’ The Commissioner represents one world view. Is that the one you want?

May 24, 2013May 24, 2013

Deborah Gist discusses her contract situation

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Deborah Gist told me she hasn’t considered if she would accept a one year contract extension, but also that she isn’t ruling out signing something other than a three year agreement.

A one year deal would expire as the 2014 campaign begins to heat up, which could make Gist and the so-called education reform movement a central issue in the race for governor, as WPRI’s Dan McGowan reported.

May 24, 2013

Gist distances herself from ed reform movement

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After numerous teachers, parents and activists criticized Deborah Gist to the state Board of Education for the heavy-handed ways in which she has brought the so-called education reform to Rhode Island, the embattled education commissioner told me she doesn’t consider herself a member of that movement.

Gist was trained by Michelle Rhee, who is the national face of this movement. She’s a Chiefs for Change board member, which the Washington Post calls the “national education reform leader.” She’s a also graduate of the conservative Broad Institute, where ed reformers often go to learn the trade. More importantly, her biggest efforts here in Rhode Island have aligned with the signature reforms of this movement across the country: more charter schools, high stakes tests and new and more rigid teacher accountability requirements.

Gist has also implemented the first ever statewide education funding formula, but it slowly phases in over decades. Urban districts – those most affected by her other reforms – have complained that the funding isn’t aligned with the reforms.

She also expressed what I took as genuine concern for the complaints that have been leveled against her by educators recently.

Next: I will post video from our conversation about what she is looking for in a contract extension from the state.

May 23, 2013

Angel Taveras reaffirms NECAP concerns

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Providence Mayor Angel Taveras delivering his 2012 State of the City address. (Photo by Bob Plain)

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras reaffirmed his opposition to using the NECAP test as a graduation requirement, Dan McGowan of WPRI reported this morning. Taveras sent a letter to the state Board of Education he wrote:

“I worry that state leaders have imposed a graduation requirement on our students that is tied to a questionable measurement of individual proficiency and graduation readiness,” Taveras wrote. “Unlike tests designed to measure student achievement, such as the Regents exam in New York, the NECAP test was not designed to say whether students achieved mastery of a body of knowledge.

You can read the entire letter here. (Taveras sent an identical letter to the state Senate Education Committee)

McGowan reported the issue is of particular concern to Providence: “In Providence, more than 80% of students at four of city’s largest high schools—Alvarez, Central, Hope and Mount Pleasant— will have to improve their NECAP score by next year in order to graduate.”

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