necap – RI Future

March 4, 2015

PARCC as a high stakes test will spell disaster

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It is heartening to see a robust discussion on the imminent use of the PARCC test in Rhode Island’s public schools, but the state Department of Education seems to have made up its mind before the test has even gotten off the ground. It is already actively encouraging school districts to use the PARCC to penalize students as early as next year.

Before having any chance to meaningfully examine how this untried test is working, or to determine whether, like the NECAP, it will have a disproportionate and devastating impact on poor and minority children, English Language Learners and students with disabilities, Commissioner Deborah Gist has already advised school districts they may “use PARCC results as a component in determining students’ grades” beginning as early as the upcoming 2015-16 school year. The Commissioner, with the backing of the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, has also encouraged school districts to consider using the PARCC as a high stakes graduation requirement for the Class of 2017.

In light of this push by RIDE, the biggest concern isn’t necessarily whether testing should be delayed for a year or even whether children should be able to opt out – it is whether the test results should be used punitively against students rather than as a supportive accountability tool to help them and their schools succeed. RIDE likes to claim its goal is the latter, but as we know from the NECAP debacle, it operates more like the former.

RIDE’s desire to punish kids by allowing the test to be used in this high stakes fashion so quickly is extremely troubling, especially since education officials know full well the importance of time in getting a new test like this off the ground. Last August, before changing course, the Commissioner gave good reasons why PARCC should be used as a high stakes test beginning in 2020, not 2017. As she noted then:

“We need to make sure that everyone has adequate time to prepare for the implementation. That means students having adequate support and time, families and teachers and school and district leaders need adequate time to make the changes to their support and interventions for individual students.”

By instead giving school districts the option to use the test results against students a year from now, RIDE is actually doing everything it can to make sure students are not fully prepared. To make matters worse, the local implementation of such testing places pressures on students of particular school districts who embrace PARCC in this fashion, while protecting students who happen to live in more skeptical school districts.

We all want students to succeed, but this approach spells disaster and will inevitably lead to a repeat of the fiasco surrounding the NECAP. Opting out of the PARCC test means little if students face a reduction in grades or denial of a diploma in a few years for failing to take it. Nor is it fair if students who opt in find their grades lowered because of their scores on the test. Whether one agrees or disagrees that PARCC can be a useful support tool, parents and others concerned about punitive standardized testing should be demanding first and foremost that this test not be used for high stakes graduation or grading decisions in the way that RIDE is, sadly, so hastily determined to use it.

January 20, 2015

Groups call for reversal of Dept. of Education high-stakes testing plans

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A number of community and advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, are calling on the Council of Elementary and Secondary Education to promptly overturn guidance issued by Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist that advises school districts they can use the PARCC exam as a high-stakes test graduation requirement as early as 2017, three years before the 2020 starting date the Council had originally proposed.

The Commissioner issued this guidance in a “field memo” Friday despite the fact that just last week the Council tabled a RIDE proposal that would have given school districts the 2017 testing option. In addition, without any public discussion, the Commissioner’s field memo also told superintendents they could begin using students’ PARCC scores as a component of their school grades—and could do so starting in the next school year.

In a letter sent to the Council, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, R.I. Disability Law Center, R.I. Legal Services, R.I. Teachers of English Language Learners, and five other community organizations raised serious concerns about the guidance and urged the council to bar school districts from using PARCC as a high stakes testing requirement until 2020 and from using the test’s results as a factor in students’ grades.

Our letter stated: “We would expect that before allowing PARCC to be used for such consequential and punitive purposes, RIDE would be spending the coming five years monitoring the test’s implementation to ensure there was adequate teacher preparation and curriculum development, equitable computer training and access for all, and fair implementation for English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Instead, the Commissioner’s memo is encouraging school districts – many of whom, by RIDE’s own standards, failed to meet basic accountability standards with the NECAP – to be demanding accountability from the students (not themselves) on this new test in a manner that can only be described as exceedingly premature.”

We also noted that the Commissioner’s unilateral decision to allow school districts to establish their own high-stakes testing requirements for graduation and for grading is “extraordinarily significant” and creates a two-tiered system for students based solely on their address.

You can read the full letter here and learn more about high-stakes testing and students’ rights here.

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015

Best wishes Tom Sgouros, new adviser to Seth Magaziner

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It’s always gratifying when one of the best and most deserving folk actually get a position in government where they can make a powerful difference. We recently learned that RI Future contributor Tom Sgouros has been appointed as senior policy adviser to Seth Magaziner, the new treasurer of Rhode Island.

Tom was himself a candidate for the office of treasurer in 2010 but dropped out early in the race that Gina Raimondo would go on to win. He is known for his incisive, well-researched and often sarcastic insights into the economics and policies of Rhode Island.

In addition to writing for RI Future, Tom recently started — and will suspend — an excellent column in the Providence Journal. Which is a shame, but a fair tradeoff for honesty and transparency in government.

Tom’s most recent book, Checking the Banks is subtitled “The Nuts and Bolts of Banking for People Who Want to Fix It”, so it looks like they’ve picked the right person for the right job.

sgouros book ad — “This is a marvelous book! Well-written—even enjoyable to read—about local banking! ” — Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?

In the book, Tom goes into great detail about what’s wrong with the banking system, like the mortgage crisis, lack of loans to small businesses, and predatory practices. He also offers alternatives, solutions and possibilities for change.

We hope that Tom and Treasurer Magaziner will create bold initiatives to make banking more innovative. Maybe we can start our own state bank, and save taxpayers millions while priming the local economy’s pump…

At the beginning of the session everything is possible. Now the hard work begins.

(DISCLAIMER: As the editor and publisher of two of Tom’s best books, this article is 100% biased and slanted.)

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014

Mancuso remarks draw ire on anti-NECAP groups

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A high stakes test graduation requirement is outlawed until 2017, but it’s still pitting Board of Education Chairwoman Eva Mancuso against the activists who fought to ban it.

The Providence Journal reports that using the NECAP test as a graduation requirement would have only deprived one student of a diploma, and in that article Mancuso is quoted as saying: “Maybe everybody should trust the professionals rather than running behind our backs and going to the legislature. The system worked just fine.”

In “response” six groups who argued to suspend the NECAP graduation requirement, sent a letter to legislative leaders:

An article in today’s Providence Journal quotes RI Board of Education Chair Eva S Marie Mancuso as citing RIDE! data that only one student benefitted from the “high stakes testing” moratorium bill that passed at the end of the session. In doing so, she suggests that passage of the law was unnecessary (or worse), and that its impact was negligible. Since she expressed interest in informing the General Assembly about the law’s impact from the Board’s perspective, our organizations thought! it worth making you aware of! it from our less defensive posture.

The groups are the RI ACLU, the Providence NAACP, the Providence Student Union, young Voices, RI Teachers of English Language Learners and Parents Across Rhode Island. You can read the letter here. It says the data is inaccurate (the ProJo article says only one student would have been denied a diploma but the ACLU says this document shows that three students in Bristol alone would not have graduated) and that the number of students potentially denied a diploma was but one reason for the moratorium.

“But perhaps its most important impact is in ensuring that, at least for the next three years, teachers won’t have to waste hours and hours of classroom time teaching to an irrelevant test, and students won’t be dragged out of real classwork in order to spend pointless hours cramming for a meaningless standardized test.”

June 6, 2014June 9, 2014

Red Bandana Fund recognizes Henry Shelton and Providence Student Union

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This weekend look for the gathering of friends, Rhode Island College educators, progressives, folkies and family members of the late Richard J. Walton, who come to the Red Bandana Award to pay homage and remember him. With his prominent long white beard and red bandana, decked out in blue jean overalls and wearing a baseball cap, Walton was a dedicated advocate of worker rights and committed to the nurturing of young people as a college professor at Rhode Island College. He gave hundreds of hours of service every month to organizations including Amos House, the George Wiley Center, Providence Niquinhomo Sister City Project, the Green Party, and Stone Soup Folk Arts Foundation.

The Red Bandana Fund was also created to be a legacy to help sustain Rhode Island’s community of individuals and organizations that embody the lifelong peace and justice ideas of Walton. Through the Red Bandana Fund, an annual financial award will be made to an organization or individual whose work best represents the ideals of peace and social justice that exemplify Walton’s life work.

Stephen Graham, a member of committee organizing the fundraiser, noted that 12 nominations received. “There were many deserving nominations, all of which one could make an excellent argument for the award,” he said. “After much deliberation and agonizing, the Red Bandana Fund decided to give not one but two awards,” noted Stephen Graham, a member of the committee. “Awards will be given to longtime community activist and hell-raiser, Henry Shelton, and the other to the passionate, unrelenting organizing workers called the Providence Student Union (PSU),” he says, noting that their work embodies the spirit and work of Walton, a well-known social activist in the Rhode Island area who died in 2012.

“Richard would have loved the choices,” noted Graham, a very close friend of Walton’s and a retired community activist.

The Red Bandana Fund celebration takes place on Sunday, June 8 at Nick-a-Nees, 75 South Street. In Providence from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The event is open to the public and donations accepted. Shelton, a former Catholic priest and long-time director of the Pawtucket-based George Wiley Center, is known throughout the region for his steadfast commitment to bettering the lives of all Rhode Islanders, especially the poor and disadvantaged. As a longtime advocate for the needy, he has been a fixture on the streets and at the statehouse for decades, advocating for fairness in housing, public transportation, and medical care.

“It is not an understatement to say that Shelton is the conscience of this state and has been for a long, long time,” says Graham, noting that there was no way Shelton could be ignored.

The committee also honored a new generation of young people working to make a better world, added Graham. So, the Red Bandana Fund also recognizes the PSU for its groundbreaking work done in addressing important issues of education in creative and powerful ways. The PSU is an important voice in the debate over the value of high-stakes testing, challenging the NECAP tests as a requirement for graduation, and has forced officials and politicians to address their concerns, he said.

“It is their commitment to grass-roots organizing and social change, at such a young age, that has earned them the recognition and thanks of the Red Bandana Fund and for all those fighting for justice in today’s society,” says Graham. Coming up with a name for Walton’s fundraiser was tied to his unique fashion sense and was the idea of his daughter Cathy Barnard and Richard, her brother. Like most people, Richard had a vivid, visual image of his father, who had long white hair and beard, being known for wearing his trademark worn blue jean overalls, a red bandana and Stone Soup baseball cap. After Walton died his close friends came over to his house and wanted one of his red bandanas to remember him. Thus, the red bandana became the perfect moniker and recognition for the annual fundraiser.

Says Bill Harley, also on the organizing committee, The Red Bandana Fund is a continuation of Walton’s tradition of having an annual birthday bash – usually held the first Sunday in June, to raise money for Amos House & the Providence-Niquinohomo Sister City Project and other progressive causes. Over 24 years, Walton had raised over $40,000 for these favorite charities, attracting hundreds of people each year including the state’s powerful political and media elite to his family compound located at Pawtuxet Cove in Warwick

“We hope all the people who attended Richard’s parties in the past [1988 to 2011] will show up for the event and you can bring your favorite dish for the potluck,” adds Harley.

“This is our second year giving the award,” said Bill Harley, a member of the selection committee. “We chose the awardees from a great list of nominations, and decided to acknowledge both young organizers, and one of our long-time heroes. Too often, the people who are in the trenches working for us don’t get recognized. We hope the Award begins to address that shortcoming.”

According to Graham, “last year’s event was more of a concert and tribute to Walton.” Over 300 people attended the inaugural Red Bandana fundraising event in 2013 at Shea High School, raising more than $11,000 from ticket sales, a silent auction and raffle. At this event, the first recipient, Amos House, received a $1,000, he said. Graham says the well-known nonprofit was chosen because of its very long relationship with Walton. He was a founding board member, serving for over 30 years, being board chair for a number of years. For almost three decades, the homeless advocate spent an overnight shift with the men who lived in the 90-Day Shelter Program each Thursday bringing them milk and cookies. Each Friday morning he would make pancakes and eggs in the soup kitchen for hundreds of men and women who came to eat a hot meal.

As to getting this year’s Red Bandana Fund off the ground, Harley says: “It’s been a year of fits and starts to make this thing work. I believe that the establishment of this award, and the honoring of people on a yearly basis, will help us build a community here that can transform our culture. It’s a little thing down the road, I can envision this award meaning more and more to recipients, and to the community those recipients come from.”

Walton touched people’s lives, Rick Wahlberg, one of the organizers. “Everyone had such an interesting story to tell about Richard,” he stated, noting that the Warwick resident, known as a social activist, educator, humanitarian, very prolific writer, and a co-founder of Pawtucket’s Stone Soup Coffee House “had made everyone feel that they themselves had a very special, close relationship with him.” Like last year’s inaugural event, Wahlberg expects to see many of Walton’s friends at the upcoming June 8th fundraiser. He and others attending will view this event as a “gathering of the clan” since those attending will be Walton’s extended Rhode Island family.

So, block out some time on your busy Sunday. Come to the Red Bandana Fund event to remember our good old friend, Richard Walton, and support his legacy and positive impact in making Rhode Island a better place to live and work. Enjoy the gathering of caring people who come to recognize the advocacy efforts of Shelton and the PSU to carry on Walton’s work.

Spread the word.

Core participants in organizing this year’s Red Bandana Fund include, Bill Harley, Stephen Graham, Jane Falvey, Barbara & Rick Wahlberg. Other participants included Jane Murphy, Jodi Glass, Cathy Barnard and Richard Walton, Jr.

For more information about donating to The Red Bandana Fund, click here.

Herb Weiss, LRI’12, is a Pawtucket-based writer who covers health care, aging, and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

May 12, 2014

Teacher group says no to NECAP as grad requirement

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The Rhode Island Teachers Advisory Council has recommended to the Board of Education that it halt its high stakes test graduation requirement policy.

“Assessments, such as NECAP, should not be used as a graduation requirement because such assessments have not been proven valid and reliable for high stakes purposes such as promotion and graduation decisions,” the Council said in a new report. “Research has also shown that these tests may narrow curriculum, and limit future educational opportunities, particularly for poor and minority students as well as English Language Learners and students with disabilities.”

The report says the NECAP test should not be used as a graduation requirement, and that its replacement – the PARCC – not be used either.

Standardized tests are designed to inform decision-making at the district level. For example, the NECAP scores from a fourth grade class in Pawtucket show that 80% of the students are either partially proficient or substantially below proficient in mathematics. The administration should be able to use the results as a “red flag” to show the need for a change in mathematic instruction for the next school year; i.e. an additional mathematics specialist/coach for the teaching team, smaller mathematic class sizes, longer mathematic classes, a change in curriculum or additional mathematic classes. When the needs are addressed at the district level our students will have access to the proper interventions leading to academic success later on.

The group was created by the legislature last year to improve communications between public school teachers and the state Board of Education.

The NECAPS and high stakes testing have been a scorching political hot potato in Rhode Island for more than a year. Teachers have long been opposed and last year Tom Sgouros wrote a blistering critique of the NECAP tests ability to measure individual performance. The Providence Student Union gave voice to student concerns and their Take the Test action showed a wide swath of politically-engaged adults how difficult the test can be. The legislature is considering weighing in on high stakes testing this session.

Through it all the Board of Education has declined to address the issue, even being chided by a judge for deliberating a request by the ACLU to discuss the matter in public.

The Board meets tonight and is not expected to have a formal debate on NECAPs in particular or high stakes tests in general.

May 9, 2014May 11, 2014

Wingmen: NECAP, high-stakes tests, adequacy and accountability

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With so many students bombing the NECAP test, the state Senate moving forward with a bill that would put a moratorium on using the high stakes test as a graduation requirement and the Board of Education being chided by a court for having a discussion about all this in private, Justin Katz and I debate the matter on this week’s NBC 10 Wingmen.

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

April 27, 2014April 28, 2014

Judge says Board of Education should discuss NECAP policy in public

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With high school graduation imminently approaching, legislators, mayoral candidates, students, teachers, parents and community organizations have been discussing with frequency the Board of Education’s high stakes testing requirement for seniors. Remarkably, about the only entity that hasn’t publicly discussed the merits of the requirement is the Board itself.

Thanks to a court decision on Friday, that will soon change. But the Board’s refusal for so long to publicly defend their controversial policy – one that has the futures of literally hundreds of students hanging in the balance – demonstrates why it is critical for the General Assembly to step in and halt the NECAP testing requirement.

On three separate occasions in the past nine months, courts have found that the Board violated open government laws in avoiding publicly discussing the NECAP issue. In this most recent ruling, Superior Court Judge Luis Matos ordered the Board to finally come out of hiding.

Specifically, in response to a lawsuit we filed some months ago, the judge has required the Board to publicly discuss and vote on a petition submitted last June that asks the Board to hold a hearing on eliminating high stakes testing.

Last September, in a private meeting – that the judge held was a clear violation of the open meetings law – the Board rejected the petition by a 6-5 vote. Minutes of the secret meeting show that those who voted it down objected to reconsidering the mandate without having fall’s NECAP test results. Well, that excuse no longer exists. We know the results, and we know the harm that the NECAP requirement is wreaking on too many Rhode Island’s seniors, especially students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and those in the inner cities.

The court’s ruling is important for accountability: it is long past due for the Board to have a full and fair airing – in public – about why they think students’ futures should be ruined on the basis of an arbitrary standardized test. But the Board has dawdled long enough. It is difficult to put much faith in an agency that has violated the law three times to avoid the issue.

Whatever the Board ends up doing, let’s hope that legislators will take Friday’s ruling to heart, say “enough is enough,” and pass a bill that, at a minimum, puts a moratorium on high stakes testing. The stakes for hundreds of seniors are too high to wait any longer.

March 28, 2014March 28, 2014

The NECAP standards aren’t that different than the Common Core standards

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Elisabeth Harrison’s generally good story on the Common Core in Rhode Island contains this passage:

Marilyn Adams, an expert on early reading and a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University helped write the standards for early reading. She says the result is far from perfect, but she does believe it is better than almost any other set of state standards out there.

“And by the time you get to the upper grades, they’re stronger than anything out there, they really are,” Adams said. “In terms of literature, in terms of writing, in terms of thoughtfulness that’s expected to permeate the curriculum, they are intellectually stronger.”

When an expert’s comment is that a document is “far from perfect,” and then goes on to praise some of the parts furthest removed from her expertise, it is a bit of a tell. While standards documents are extensive and tedious, individual sections are manageable, so let’s just look at the 11th and 12th grade reading literature standards in the Common Core and the current NECAP. I’ve just shortened them up a bit by removing the number codes and parenthetical examples.

Common Core

Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama.
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.
Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant.
Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.
By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.

NECAP

Demonstrate initial understanding of elements of literary texts by…

Identifying, describing, or making logical predictions about character, setting, problem/solution, or plots/subplots, as appropriate to text; or identifying any significant changes in character, relationships, or setting over time; or identifying rising action, climax, or falling action
Paraphrasing or summarizing key ideas/plot, with major events sequenced, as appropriate to text
Generating questions before, during, and after reading to enhance/expand understanding and/or gain new information
Identifying the characteristics of a variety of types/genres of literary text
Identify literary devices as appropriate to genre

Analyze and interpret literary elements within or across texts, citing evidence where appropriate by…

Explaining and supporting logical predictions or logical outcomes
Examining characterization motivation, or interactions, citing thoughts, words, or actions that reveal character traits, motivations, or changes over time
Making inferences about cause/effect, internal or external conflicts, or the relationship among elements within text(s)
Explaining how the narrator’s point of view, or author’s style, or tone is evident and affects the reader’s interpretation or is supported throughout the text(s)
Demonstrating knowledge of author’s style or use of literary elements and devices to analyze literary works
Examining author’s style or use of literary devices to convey theme

Is one of these clearly intellectually stronger than the other? Why should we think they would be, since the NECAP standards were published in 2006 and closely aligned to Achieve’s American Diploma Project standards, which were a direct precursor to the Common Core standards? There was no breakthrough in our understanding of high school or collegiate English in the intervening three years.

In terms of writing, it depends on if you believe that being “intellectually stronger” requires an almost singular focus on one particular type of formal, logical, academic argument. If you believe that writing for self-expression or aesthetic reasons makes you intellectually weak, you may agree with Dr. Adams and Common Core proponents. On the whole, though, at the high school level Rhode Island’s old and new writing standards are more similar than different.

People don’t trust the Common Core because most of what what we have been told about the standards is obviously not true. Some people are a bit confused about exactly which bits are the lies, but it is no wonder given the context.

March 3, 2014

Why it’s harder to get a better score on NECAP math retest

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Now that we are in the period of NECAP retesting for seniors who failed the test as juniors, it would be good to take a look at how the math test is constructed. Because that, after all, is the test most juniors failed in the first place. In the chart below you can see how students did, item-by-item, when they took the NECAP grade 11 math test in 2012.

$2012 necap math test$

The thing that shoots off the page is that the curve shown in the chart doesn’t look much like a normal curve. If you remember, a normal curve is described as a “bell shaped curve”, meaning it is symmetrical, highest in the middle, and slopes downward to the right and left. To see a bell curve, look at the reading test results shown below the math test: it’s not a perfect curve, being squished a little on the left, but at least it’s some version of a normal curve.

What we see above is definitely not symmetrical, nor does is slope downward to the right and to the left—to the right, yes, there is a long, straight slope, but to the left there is a precipitous drop. Altogether, it looks like a wedge with its thin edge to the right.

What does a wedge shape mean to a student taking the test? The numbers below the bars tell you how many students got a particular item correct and you can see that very few students only got item “1” correct. But thereafter, things change dramatically and the numbers of students getting very low numbers of items correct stacks up like 95 at rush hour. In fact, in the math test, the scores the most students got were between 7 and 11 items correct—out of a possible 64! More than 300 students only got 9 items correct.

What this tells us is that the math test has no lead-up of items that gradually get more difficult. Instead, it begins with difficult items and then makes each item more difficult, which accounts for the almost straight line of descending scores to the right. This design—hard items and then harder items—makes it difficult for students to do better without putting big resources into remediation efforts of doubtful long- term value.

Defenders of the NECAP math test say the problem is not the test but the education system—bad teachers, essentially. Part of their defense rests on showing questions that students who fail the test get wrong. Adults who see these items tend to solve them and think that of course most students should get them right. But this is a bogus exercise–the adults who see these items are never in the pressurized testing environment where students encounter them, so it should not be taken seriously as a defense of the math test.

Instead, look at the reading test, shown below. It’s hard to look at the two graphs and believe the reading and math test are constructed using the same design. In the reading test, the long tail to the left indicates a run-up of easier questions and, in this situation, improving performance between tests would be a much less difficult task. The remediation might not be any more educationally meaningful, but there would be less of it, it would be less difficult to provide, and it would divert much less time, energy and money. Indeed, that is what happened.

$2012 necap math 2$

March 3, 2014March 3, 2014

Eva Mancuso stifles debate, wonders why debate went elsewhere

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Susan Lusi, the superintendent of the Providence school department, has come out against the NECAP graduation requirement, and Eva Marie Mancuso, the chair of the Board of Education, has accused her of “grandstanding” by presenting her concerns to the legislature rather than to her board.

Ha ha. This is funny because over the past year, Mancuso has maneuvered the Board and its agenda to shut down any possibility of real discussion of state testing policy. If Susan Lusi has chosen to use a different forum to make her concerns known, Mancuso might be the only person in Rhode Island who wonders why.

As I’ve written in the past, I have completely failed to find a forum in this state even for simply presenting a technical critique of the use of NECAP tests to anyone in authority. What’s remarkable about this is that a technical critique is more than just a statement of opinion. It’s an opinion about how the future will unfold. What I observe is a natural consequence of arithmetic, statistics, and the choices of the test designers. The results are impervious to the attention they get. Whether anyone listens to the critique or not is irrelevant to whether or not its effects will be felt. To date, I have not heard or seen a single response to my critique that did not rely on purposefully misconstruing it, and it has been endorsed by people who know a lot more about testing than I do.

If my critique is correct, then lots of kids will flunk the NECAP test, pretty much no matter what. I don’t have to be heard at a Board of Education meeting for this to come true. If my critique is correct, then RIDE is wasting a lot of money forcing school districts to undermine the test they have spent so much money designing and promoting. I don’t have to be on the radio for this to come true. If my critique is correct, performance on the NECAP test will not be well correlated with performance in college or a job. I don’t have to be called by a reporter for a response to RIDE’s many misstatements for this to come true.

These are serious consequences, with dollar signs attached to them. Not to mention thousands of damaged lives. Unfortunately, they are no longer just future possibilities. At this point, six hundred Providence students, along with over a thousand of their peers around the state, are at risk of not graduating from high school. To some extent their school systems have failed those kids, and to a large extent RIDE has failed them.

Policy makers have a responsibility to consider the consequences of their actions. Simply ignoring the possibility of bad consequences — precisely what has happened — is utterly irresponsible. Eva Marie Mancuso and Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, by doing everything they can to shut down debate over their policy, have demonstrated that they simply do not care about the consequences of their decisions. They claim to care about the students for which they are responsible, but belie those empty claims with their actions.

The rumors I hear are that Mancuso yearns to be appointed to the bench. Just the sort of judge we want: the kind who refuses to hear evidence. Gist wears her career ambitions on her sleeve, and they obviously extend far beyond our little state. Presumably advances in test scores will help her career after her contract here expires, and get her a lucrative book deal about how she turned around a little state. What are the lives and futures of a couple thousand kids when weighed against that kind of success and fame?

It is indeed true that having high school graduates who cannot do math is bad for our state. Is it not also true that having education policy makers who do not care about math is equally bad for our state?

February 26, 2014

National experts testify in support of halting NECAP graduation requirement

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National education experts are now joining students, parents, education and advocacy groups and the RI ACLU in urging the Department of Education to end its mandate requiring students to pass the NECAP test in order to graduate.

Three national education experts are submitting written testimony to the House Health, Education and Welfare Committee today in support of legislation that would delay or halt the state’s “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors.

The experts say, among other things, that high stakes testing requirements increase dropout rates, narrow curriculum, and disproportionately impact minority students and students with disabilities. In fact, according to the latest RIDE statistics, almost 1,600 seniors remain at risk of not getting a diploma because of the testing requirement.

Here are brief excerpts from their written testimony:

Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of Education at Stanford University, director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, and education adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign:

“The preponderance of research indicates that test-based requirements for graduation do not generally improve achievement, but do increase dropout rates… Studies have raised concerns about reduced graduation rates, especially for African American and Latino students, English language learners, and students with disabilities; reduced incentives for struggling students to stay in school rather than drop out or pursue a GED; increased incentives for schools to encourage low-achieving students to leave school, especially when test scores are part of the state school accountability system, so as to improve the appearance of average school scores; narrowing of the curriculum and neglect of higher order performance skills where limited measures are used; and invalid judgments about student learning from reliance on a single set of test measures, a practice discouraged by professional testing experts.” (Full testimony)

Ron Wolk, founder of Education Week, the newspaper of record in American education:

“Despite hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours spent on standards and testing over the past 25 years, student achievement has not significantly improved, and the gap that separates needy and minority students from more affluent white students persists. … [A recent RIDE report] reveals that over the past five years, reading and math scores in the 4th, 6th, and 8th grades have increased by about 4 percent—about 0.8 percent a year. Eleventh grade scores in both reading and math increased by an impressive 8 percent over the past five years. Since more than 25 percent of all Rhode Island students score below proficient in reading, however, and about 40 percent score below proficient in math, it could take roughly 25 more years to get all students to proficiency in reading at the current rate of progress, and as many as 40 years to get all students to proficiency in math. Most importantly, it is a serious mistake to equate test scores with learning. Studies have shown that intense test preparation can raise scores, but the ‘learning’ is often transitory and temporary.” (Full testimony)

Lisa Guisbond, policy analyst for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest):

“The ‘model’ exit exam state, Massachusetts, still has persistent, unacceptably large gaps in educational opportunity and achievement… In Massachusetts, disparities in dropout rates persist more than 10 years after the state adopted MCAS high school graduation tests. Latino and African-American students drop out at rates three to four times that of white students, and 11th and 12th graders who have not passed MCAS are more than 13 times more likely to drop out of school than those who have passed . . . Students with disabilities have been hit particularly hard and make up a steadily growing portion of Massachusetts students who don’t graduate because of the MCAS graduation test. Students receiving special education were five times more likely to fail MCAS in 2002-03; by 2011-12, they were 15 times more likely to fail.” (Full testimony)

The RI ACLU is also testifying in support of these bills and will continue to work towards the elimination of standardized test results as a graduation requirement.

February 26, 2014

Common Core, high stakes tests are under attack locally and nationally

As a General Assembly committee considers today a bill that would suspend high stakes test graduation requirements and reevaluate Rhode Island’s commitment to Common Core, there is a debate raging both here and across the nation about whether such accountability measures account for more harm than good.

“The Common Core State Standards were hailed as the next game changer in education,” wrote NEA President Larry Purtill on this blog recently. “Unfortunately, the way it is going, they may ruin the game, not just change it.”

Time was perspectives like Purtill’s were easily dismissed as a special interest. But other special interests in Rhode Island – parents, students, taxpayers and civil libertarians – have also organized to fight these corporate-backed “reforms” to public education.

The ACLU of RI and underfunded urban school districts in Rhode Island have long fought these measures first implemented by George Bush and heavily backed by both corporate and Wall Street interests. But then something new happened here.

The Providence Student Union made national news when they made adults take the test teenagers face as a graduation requirement. And following their inspiration, a parent group from East Greenwich is fighting against these kinds of education “reforms.” That group is led by a former Moderate Party candidate for lt. governor who was an enemy of organized labor as a member of the East Greenwich School Committee.

Opposition to high stakes testing in Rhode Island has brought together the formerly disparate interests of tax-obsessed suburban parents, underfunded inner city students, social justice activists and educators.

“The current misuse of and over reliance on standardized testing in education is nothing short of unethical and immoral,” according to Parents Across Rhode Island’s website. “Standardized tests like the NECAP are simply not able to accurately measure the knowledge and skills of all students, yet they are being used for major decisions such as graduation, promotion and teacher evaluation.”

And it’s not just happening here in Rhode Island. All across the country (please read: “Education Uprising: the Myth Behind Public School Failure“) education activists are preparing to step up the fight from peaceful street theater and strongly worded blog posts to direct action and what might be considered civil disobedience.

A new national coalition known as Testing Resistance and Reform Spring made national news last week.

“The emergence of the alliance represents a maturing of the grassroots testing resistance that has been building for several years locally in states , including Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois,” wrote Washington Post education blogger Valarie Strauss. “Though many supporters of Barack Obama expected him to end the standardized testing obsession of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind when Obama was first elected president, many now say that the Obama administration has gone beyond the excesses of NCLB to inappropriately make high-stakes standardized tests the key measure of achievement by students, teachers, principals and schools.”

According to the group’s website, it supports “a range of public education and mobilizing tactics, including community meetings, boycotts, opt-out campaigns, rallies, petition drives and legislation. TRRS will help activists link up, communicate and learn from one another. This will build a stronger national movement to overhaul assessment policies.”

The new umbrella group has affiliates all across the nation, including Rhode Island. The RI affiliate offers a detailed blueprint for opting out of the NECAP test and graduation requirement for parents and students.

“The RIDE policy does not allow exemptions based on a refusal to test,” according to a pdf on the site. “Therefore no exemption’ will be granted on these terms. Parents/student will have to state that they are REFUSING the test rather than requesting an exemption.”

It says so far, no Rhode Islanders have opted out of the NECAP test. But there was this comment on the site from a student: “Hi, I am an 11th grader in RI and I need to take the NECAP’s to graduate even though I and my parents are HIGHLY against high stakes testing. With the opt out, would I be able to not take the test and still graduate?”

February 21, 2014February 21, 2014

Four years later: Student achivement and Central Falls’ transformation

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As we approach the four year anniversary of the tumultuous firing of the the teachers at Central Falls High School (CFHS), regarded nationally as a watershed event in the Obama administration’s school reform efforts, we must once again consider the success or failure of what followed (and preceded).

Progressives and ed reform skeptics are somewhat hamstrung in this process, as we tend to discount the validity of reformers’ goals and metrics. It often seems like wiser strategy to not accept their premises. Yet, if we ignore this data, we risk unilaterally disarming our own arguments or simply lessening our own understanding of the situation.

With that preamble, consider some charts tracking Central Falls High School 11th grade NECAP proficiency rates, compared to the statewide 11th grade proficiency rate to provide perspective on overall trends. 2007 through 2013 covers all the years the 11th grade NECAP has been administered statewide, all data from RIDE’s website.

In all these charts, CFHS is in red, RI public schools statewide in blue, where applicable, CFHS transformation plan goals in yellow and RI statewide Race to the Top goals in green.

RIDE triggered the crisis in Central Falls following the application of the 2009 NECAP, either immediately before or after RIDE received the 2009 scores (it is hard to say which would be more irresponsible). As you can clearly see above, CFHS was named “persistently low-performing” after two consecutive years of double digit growth in reading proficiency, with a higher proficiency rate and lower achievement gap compared to the rest of the state than they have achieved since the transformation.

CFHS’s transformation plan hoped to “to sustain the rate of growth experienced in the past few years” while focusing their attention on math and other issues. This clearly did not work, and it has taken the school four years to approach the status quo ante in NECAP reading proficiency.

We all still pay to administer the NECAP writing assessment, but since it was not used for No Child Left Behind accountability, it has mostly been ignored by RIDE. Despite the lip service they may give to “multiple measures,” they cannot even be bothered to consider all the tests they administer. Regardless, as a relatively low-stakes, straightforward and authentic ELA test, it helps to corroborate trends in reading scores.

While both CFHS and RI writing proficiency jumped in 2013, the gap between the two is still 8% greater than it was pre-transformation.

Increasing math proficiency was the academic focus of the transformation plan.

While the authors of the plan stated “we are confident that our targets are reasonable” after consideration of “historical CFHS NECAP data… the proportion of students on the cusp of proficiency levels, and… statewide NECAP averages,” in retrospect, that was wishful thinking (or a politically necessary exaggeration). In reality, getting CFHS up to 14% proficiency is a substantial improvement based on a tremendous amount of hard work by students and teachers. But it is not what reformers projected after repeatedly citing CFHS’s 7% proficiency rate in 2009 as a justification for firing all the teachers.

For the NECAP science exam, I shifted the year label back a year to match with the fall test cadres above, and included the goals from RIDE’s strategic plan. The results are depressingly similar to the math test.

Taking a longer perspective on the CFHS data, a few things seem clear:

The school’s academic performance prior to the transformation was not as bad as reformers thought or presented it.
Rushing the process did not “save” the students in the school. The test scores of the student cohorts in the school during the process clearly suffered. They were worse off in reading and writing achievement according to the NECAP scores.
In the four years since RIDE named CFHS “persistently low performing,” the gap between CFHS and RI state proficiency rates has increased on all four NECAP tests.

CFHS has had success improving their graduation rate, but it is important to note that while the four year graduation rate jumped 20% between the classes of 2010 and 2013, when most students in those cohorts took the NECAP in the junior year, the class of 2010 outperformed 2013 in NECAP reading and writing (in fall 2008 and fall 2011, respectively). The class of 2013 did outperform the class of 2010 by 3% in math and science, but there is no evidence that the 20% improvement in graduation rate was driven by increased student learning as measured by NECAP.

In short, dramatic changes have not created dramatically different results on RIDE’s NECAP assessment. It does not mean that nothing can improve urban high schools in Rhode Island, in fact, our recent track record includes some notable successes, including some all too fleetingly implemented at CFHS in the past twenty years, should we choose to re-examine them. But the “fire ’em all” Central Falls transformation has not worked, on its own terms, by its own standards.

February 14, 2014February 14, 2014

The NECAP math test is wrong

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Recent remarks in the Journal by the Commissioner of Education point a finger away from the NECAP and toward math education in this state, “Gist said that math is the problem, not the NECAP. ‘This is not about testing,’ she said. ‘It’s about math. It’s about reading.” (Jan. 31, 2014).

A statement like this puts everyone on notice. It tells our students they had better try harder; it tells our teachers they need to stay on track and get better results; and it tells our schools they need to raise their test scores. The subtext of the statement is that there is a big crises and just about everyone in the school system is to blame.

And just behind this subtext is the further ominous and obvious subtext that everyone in the schools needs to be held accountable until we get out of this mess.

But what kind of a mess are we in? What if our low math scores are the result of how we measure math instead of how we teach math? If that is the case, there is much less of a crises and the argument for holding everyone to high stakes accountablity–students don’t graduate, teachers get fired, schools get taken over–

has much less traction.

Since a lot rides on the answer to this question—is it the way we teach math or is it the way we measure math?—it’s worthwhile trying to answer it.

One way to go about this is to compare the performance standards set by different tests. A performance standard is sometimes expressed as a grade level, as in, “the proficiency level of the grade 11 NECAP is set at a ninth grade level”. In this case, a student demonstrating proficiency would show us that he or she has mastered the expectations of a student completing ninth grade. That is, the student would get most of the questions with ninth grade content and ninth grade difficulty right, but would get many fewer questions set at higher levels of difficulty or questions covering topics not usually taught until tenth grade or later.

The way this would show up on a test would be in the average score of the students taking the test—a test set at ninth grade proficieny would have a higher average score than a test set at the eleventh grade proficiency level if they are taken by the same group of students. That makes sense–the eleventh grade standard for proficiency is harder than the ninth grade level because students have covered more content and developed stronger skills.

Back to the basic question—is it the way we teach math or the way we measure math? If we look at the way the NECAP measures reading, we can see that in the two states that take the test in grade 11, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, about 80% of students achieve proficiency. If we say 80% achieving proficiency indicates the test is at an eleventh grade level, then we have to wonder about the NAEP results students in these states achieve because less than half achieve proficiency.

We then have to ask ourselves, what performance standard is NECAP using? Whatever it is, it is much lower than the performance standard NAEP uses because a much higher percentage of students pass. In fact. over 80% more students pass NECAP than pass NAEP, so you can think of the NECAP performace standard as almost twice as easy as the NAEP performance standard. The tests are using different performance standards.

$math necap chart$

If you look at math, the results are startlingly different—here the percentages passing NECAP and NAEP as very comparable, meaning both tests use the same performance standard. And if you look at the NAEP reading and math performance standards, they are pretty comparable, with reading a little higher than math.

It looks like NAEP, the national measuring stick, uses about the same performance standard for reading and math while the NECAP does not.

Now, you can argue that NECAP has set the math performance standard right and has used a reading standard that is too easy. Then, of course, we would have a reading and a math problem instead of just a math problem.

But either admitting the math standard is too hard or the reading standard is too easy would mean admitting that something is wrong with the way NECAP standards have been set, something the Department of Education and the Commissioner have steadfastly denied.

I think that, at heart, they have denied such an obvious fact because it is too costly to their policy agenda to admit that anything could be wrong with the tests.

To do so would be to cast doubt on the expertise of the test designers who are the ultimate source of authority in the accountability debate. If test designers are wrong and tests are fallible, then how we measure students, teachers and schools is up for grabs. RIDE loses its top down leverage.

In the same article, Gist said, “Now is not the time to rethink our strategy.”

“Holding students accountable is really important,” she said. “We cannot reduce expectations.” The Chairman of the Board of Education, Eva Mancuso echoed the thought, “We are on the right course.” This sounds like a comment from the bridge of the Titanic.

February 5, 2014February 5, 2014

Nobody knows how to increase 11th grade NECAP math scores

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The most prominent and persuasive argument for using the 11th grade NECAP math test as a graduation requirement in RI high schools has been the relative success of Massuchusetts’ use of their MCAS exam for that purpose. Last year I prepared a graph showing how Massachusetts student’s math MCAS scores increased over time compared to the NECAP math scores of RI, Vermont and New Hampshire. It is important to note that Vermont and New Hampshire score in the top tier of states by virtually every measure of math achievement.

See where the percentage scoring at least “2” on the MCAS jumps about 20% between years three and four? That’s the graduation requirement kicked in for juniors. The same effect in theory should have kicked in in year six (last year) for the RI NECAP, but there was no corresponding jump.

The 2013 NECAP results, which have been partially released on RIDE’s website, continue the past trend. The number of 11th graders statewide scoring “1” or “substantially below proficient” decreased just 4% to 36%. This is simply not enough progress to show the policy is working. If you dig down to individual districts and charter schools — demographic and other in-district breakdowns are not available — it is even more disappointing (past years’ data from here):

The state’s flagship turnaround at Central Falls High School has the same number of students scoring “1” in 2013, 73%, as in 2008. After all the turmoil, expense, and the reformers’ best effort, no change.
Providence Public Schools has bumped the “1’s” down from 67% in 2008 to 63% in 2013.
Barrington High School has only improved 4% since 2008: 12% to 8% scoring a “1” (compared to 1% in reading both years).
Blackstone Academy, a small (about 40 in the junior class) charter with 85% economically disadvantaged students, has levelled off after some impressive progress with about a third of juniors not meeting the graduation standard.
Paul Cuffee Charter School, a well-regarded new high school in Providence, still has 52% of juniors not scoring above a “1.”
A few districts had noticeably fewer students at “substantially below proficient” compared to 2012: North Providence from 44% to 26%; Pawtucket, 63% to 52%; Westerly, 29% to 17%.
But a other districts saw increases in students not meeting the requirement since last year: Exeter-West Greenwich, +9%; Newport, +4%; South Kingston, +3%.

I should hasten to note that my point here is not to do the typical blame and shame. What seven years of 11th grade NECAP math scores tell me is that nobody has figured out how to increase them, especially among disadvantaged students, to an degree comparable to the MCAS and by enough to make the test an appropriate graduation requirement.

This is not supposed to happen. Two of the fundamental premises of contemporary school reform are that students will rise to the level of expectations, and that incentives drive results. We’ve got the expectations, the incentives could not be clearer or higher stakes to students and all the adult stakeholders and… the results are just not there.

To replicate the MCAS success story, North Providence’s 18 point improvement would have to be the average gain statewide, not an outlier. When your highest flying low-income charter still has a third of its juniors not on track to graduate because of a single test, that’s not normal. If RIDE knows how to increase 11th grade math NECAP scores, why haven’t they told Central Falls? We’ve been paying outside consultants, too, like The Dana Center, who know as much about aligning math curriculum to standards as anyone. Apparently they don’t know the answer either.

Exactly why we — and New Hampshire and Vermont — don’t seem to be able to raise 11th grade NECAP math scores is beside the point. My theory is that 11th grade NECAP math scores reflect “fluid intelligence” more than the MCAS and other standardized tests, and teaching “fluid” skills like analyzing abstract problems and thinking logically in school is difficult and poorly understood.

Or perhaps the difference is simply that the MCAS was a problem designed with its own solution in mind. The test was developed in parallel with a curriculum framework. For schools to raise their MCAS scores, they needed to do a better job of delivering the state curriculum, which was not necessarily easy, but it was straightforward and achievable. There is no equivalent map for increasing NECAP scores.

At this point, the burden of proof should pass to the proponents of the NECAP graduation requirement to lay out an evidence-based strategy for increasing the “pass” rate for NECAP math statewide by 20% that amounts to something other than “stay the course.” We can’t have a third or more of seniors not knowing if they’re going to graduate in February or scrambling for waivers. For this to work, we need Barrington at 99% pass, Westerly and Blackstone Academy at 95%, and Central Falls and Providence need to nearly double the number of students getting over the bar. Maybe it is possible. Tell me how. I don’t see it.

And of course, it is a moot point since RI is moving off the NECAP as soon as possible anyhow. So… seriously, why are we doing this to ourselves?

February 3, 2014

Did the NECAP requirement make a positive difference?

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What’s likely to happen to the number of students receiving diplomas in Rhode Island at the end of this year?

Even after RIDE’s release of the latest NECAP results, it’s hard to accurately predict the impact of the standardized test requirement for graduation. Historically, we know that over the past four years the percentage has averaged out to slightly less than 92%, with approximately 1,000 seniors dropping out, opting for the GED, or transferring out of state.

But last year 4,159 students failed the NECAP and needed to retake the test to try to get a passing score. Of those students, RIDE reported 1,370 succeeded. Of the remaining 2,789, RIDE reports 154 dropped out. Regardless of these drop-outs, the fall enrollment count for this fall was 10,403, which seems in line with previous fall enrollments. In other words, as RIDE stated, the impact of the testing requirement on grade 11 drop-outs was not much.

If 4,195 students failed last year and 1,370 passed this year, our best guess is that 2,789 students in this class of seniors will not graduate with diplomas. For the sake of simplicity, this number assumes that all students dropping out, moving away from the state, or getting a GED are also students who failed the NECAP on their first try.

This is what that number does to the number and percentage of seniors graduating with diplomas: it decimates them.

[* Estimates based on number of students from the class of 2014 failing NECAP for the second time (2,789)]

Of course, 2,789 is the number before students begin to take the numerous alternative tests available, including the “min-NECAP”, and activate whatever waiver process their districts have in place to compensate for a failing NECAP score.

Hopefully, the 2,789 number will go down. If districts adopt liberal waiver policies, if could go down considerably.

But from this point on, the picture for these 2,789 students looks like a form of mayhem—they will be searching out opportunities to take a variety of tests, only one of which (SAT math) has its cut-score connected to the NECAP by more than air-thin logic. Or they will be trying to get admitted into a “non-open enrollment college”. Or they will be navigating whatever waiver requirements their district has put in place, which requires them to assemble whatever evidence of academic achievement their district has decided to accept.

It’s not a pretty picture for students from here on, and that’s the larger point.

Students who come from organized, well-resourced districts and have organized, well-resourced parents will do best of all and from there on it’s downhill until the devil take the hindmost.

This is as vivid a picture as possible of why the testing policy fails the mission of our education ideal—to educate all children well and to provide an education that will be the entrée to a productive life and career. Our education system has slowly been moving in this direction by including more and more academically vulnerable students into our enrollments–students with learning disabilities, students who do not speak or write English well, students from families with little of no literacy background.

These students pose a challenge to our traditionally structured education system.

They require especially skilled teachers, special lesson plans, more time, smaller classes and, in general, more resources. But, with more adequate and equitable funding, better teacher professional development, and innovative programming, we have slowly been learning how to help these students be more successful in our schools.

The testing requirement threatens to erode this progress. The scenario most likely to emerge in the next few months–as students try to save themselves–will probably be what happened on the Titanic—most of First Class is saved and most of the others go down with the ship. The irony, and it’s bitter, is that all this is being done in the name for what’s good for kids. Anyone who speaks out against it is branded as being against high standards.

This is truly an Orwellian twist, where what is disastrous for many kids is labeled as good for all kids and where condemning some kids is the prerequisite for saving the rest. And we know who those sacrifices will be, our already vulnerable kids. Go get the low hanging fruit.

January 30, 2014January 30, 2014

Providence Student Union says the state is using kids as lab rats for testing policy

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Mining a tradition that stretches back to Athenian democracy and probably much earlier, members of the Providence Student Union (PSU) engaged in political theater to protest the “the ill-conceived experiment” of “Rhode Island’s new high-stakes testing graduation requirement” yesterday in the State House rotunda.

The event was timed to occur two days before the release of the NECAP results which will reveal which students will not be earning a diploma and graduating this year.

In “Operation: Guinea Pig” students dressed as guinea pigs and lab rats because, as PSU member Jose Serrano said, “that is how we are being treated.” Serrano continued, “The Department of Education hypothesized that high-stakes testing alone, without the extra resources our schools need, would solve our education problems. But this was an unproven gamble, which is becoming clearer with every exemption and waiver and backtrack that RIDE releases. This crazy experiment is playing with our futures, and we are here to say this needs to stop!”

State Representative Teresa Tanzi also spoke at the event, urging her fellow legislators to pass bills that would change the NECAP from a requirement for graduation to a diagnostic tool, or put aside the NECAP requirement pending a five year study of its efficacy. “I have spent time in five different schools in my community,” said Tanzi, “The themes that appeared through all of these hours of conversations have been stark. Learning has taken a back seat to test preparation, the culture of the classroom has changed dramatically, and the quality of education suffers.”

Rounding out the speakers was PSU member Sam Foer who lead the students and their supporters in chants of “High stakes testing is not right! That is why we have to fight!” after telling legislators, “You have the final say: do you support treating students like nothing more than guinea pigs in an experiment, or do you want to put an end to this gamble with our lives? We leave it up to you.”

January 24, 2014

ACLU’s Steve Brown on the NECAP graduation requirement waiver

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RI ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown has been a huge critic of the state’s high stake test high school graduation requirement and the exemptions to the policy prove it hasn’t been properly implemented. Brown said several school districts from around the state still don’t have policies in place, and others left important areas blank. Listen to our conversation here:

January 24, 2014January 24, 2014

RIF Radio: ACLU’s Steve Brown on NECAP waivers, Tiverton’s Rep Canario on GMO labeling

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Friday Jan 24, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State Futurists. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Later on in the show, we’ll be checking in with we’ll be checking in with Steve Brown of the ACLU on Waivergate, the latest fiasco with the NECAP graduation requirement. We’ll also here from Rep. Dennis Canario, a legislator who represents Sakonnet and parts of Portsmouth, on why he is pushing a bill this session to label genetically modified foods.

Our show today is brought to you by Largess Forestry. Preservationists and licensed arborists, no one will care for your trees better than Matt Largess and his crew. If you’ve got a tree or a woodlot in need of some sprucing up, call Matt today for a free consultation at 849-9191 … or friend them on Facebook.

It is Thursday, January 24 and the unemployment rate is up, but so is our population. And, if you ask me, so is our collective psyche. I can just kinda feel it everywhere I go that Rhode Islanders are feeling better about the biggest little state in the union … And I give major credit to Linc Chafee, the Rhode Island Foundation and all the other folks who work tirelessly to focus on what’s great about Rhode Island and pick us up by our bootstraps. Seriously, if we can break the inferiority complex that the Ocean State has long suffered from, we’ll have done something a lot more important than simply created some wealth and maybe a couple jobs…

There were 400 more unemployed people in Rhode Island in December than the previous month bringing the total number to an almost eerily even 49,900, reports the Providence Journal this morning. This has become our monthly box score and reporters, politicians and pundits comb through these monthly numbers the way I poured over NBA agit in the ProJo when I was a kid…

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