Diane Ravitch at PBS Site, on Occasion of Frontline Rhee Report and "How Do You Measure Success in School Reform?"

Diane Ravitch: Why Focusing on Student Test Scores Is No Panacea

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

I watched John Merrow’s documentary on The Education of Michelle Rhee with high anticipation. I wanted to see what she had learned from her experience, and what lessons there might be for the nation.

The documentary emphasizes her steely determination to do whatever she thought necessary to turn around the Washington, D.C. school system. She fired principals; she fired teachers; she closed schools. She told every principal that he or she must set a target for raising test scores. If they met it, their schools would win thousands of dollars; if they didn’t, they risked termination. She tied teachers’ evaluation to student test scores.

Rhee assumes that better test scores equal better education. She never once mentions literature or history or science or civics or foreign languages; she doesn’t talk about curriculum or instruction. She never calls out a teacher for poor instruction or a principal for a weak curriculum; she is interested only in the bottom line, and that is the scores.

The problem, of course, is that focusing obsessively on test scores has predictable results: narrowing the curriculum (some districts and schools have dropped the arts and other subjects to make more time for testing); cheating; teaching to the tests; and distorting the whole education system for the sake of scores. Our best public and private schools would never dream of making test scores their goal. They know that a real education includes the arts, history, science, literature, foreign languages and physical education. Their parents expect nothing less.

“Our best public and private schools would never dream of making test scores their goal. They know that a real education includes the arts, history, science, literature, foreign languages and physical education.”

Unfortunately, Rhee cared only about test scores, not a balanced curriculum. By the end of the documentary we learn that the public schools in D.C. improved “slightly” on national tests but “are still among the worst in the nation,” and its high school graduation rate is dead last. We learn that her relentless focus on test scores produced allegations of widespread cheating, not better education. Her policy of firing teachers and principals did not turn around the schools; it created turmoil and led many teachers and principals (including those she hired) to leave.

The only logical conclusion from this documentary is that states and districts should not do what Michelle Rhee did. It didn’t work. It failed. Rhee, however, remains unfazed. She’s taken her reform agenda to the national stage and is now urging states to follow her lead.

True educational leadership involves a commitment to children and to education (not just test scores), a dedication to improving curriculum and instruction, and the ability to recruit and develop a strong staff. That is the kind of leadership I saw when I visited Finland, a nation whose students never take standardized tests yet do very well on international assessments.

Thankfully, such leadership is hardly absent in the U.S. In schools all across the nation, I have come across countless unsung educators who build teamwork and a culture of professionalism. They create a climate of respect built on wisdom and judgment, not carrots and sticks.

BRIAN JONES on DEMOCRACY NOW!

REAL ACTIVIST (as opposed to the anti-education deformers) Brian Jones (Grassroots Education Movement or GEM) (updated: appeared) on Democracy Now, tomorrow, Friday, August 26, 2011,
along with Diane Ravitch.

Local radio broadcast time: WBAI, 99.5 FM, weekdays, 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM.
Click here for TV, radio, Internet broadcast times.

UPDATE
Click to this post of essential quotes on Education Notes.

Education book of the year

This is the education book of the year, after Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Sally A. Friedman's “The Education and Deconstruction of Mr. Bloomberg, How the Mayor’s Education and Real Estate Development Policies Affected New Yorkers 2002-2009 Inclusive”, at http://educationanddeconstruction.com/?p=143.

Check out the usual online stores for her book. It is pertinent reading, in the aftermath of the Joel Klein resignation, for getting a more realistic perspective on the tenure of Klein as chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.

Diane Ravitch to WNBC-TV: state tests a "Ponzi scheme"

Diane Ravitch, interviewed by WNYC-TV's Gabe Pressman, called dumbed down state tests a "Ponzi scheme."

Click to this MSNBC link for the full report on Pressman's reporting Ravitch's critical comments on state tests and charter schools.

She said that President Barack Obama's emphasis on state tests will undermine education, and Pressman adds Ravitch said that

the Obama administration wants states to create more charter schools but she insists the evidence to date doesn’t show they do any better than regular public schools.

And she warns that the creation of more charter schools could be "an invitation to corruption."

Data debunk Bloomberg administration claims of school failure and success

The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg / Schools Chancellor Joel Klein administration is in an unprecedented fury to close down large high schools, called comprehensive high schools in the education field. The city is working to replace the schools with small schools, also called small learning communities. While the city has touted the small schools as the panacea for problems in education, academic studies and actual city data show that the city has not made improvements in students' performance.

The real "bible" for every education activist, whether the activist be a student, a parent or an educator should be NYC Schools Under Bloomberg, and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know. (Lulu, 2009, ISBN 978-1-56592-479-6) It has contributions by academics, education activists and journalists, Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Deycy Avitia, David C. Bloomfield, James F. Brennan, Hazel N. Dukes, Leonie Haimson, Emily Horowitz, Jennifer L. Jennings, Steve Koss, Maisie McAdoo, Udi Ofer, Aaron M. Pallas, Steven Sanders, Sol Stern, Patrick J. Sullivan and Andrew Wolf.

David C. Bloomfield, a professor of Education Leadership, Law & Policy at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, contributed Small Schools: Myth and Reality to the New York City Schools. The essay indicates how private foundation money has dictated public policy. During the 2000s the (Bill) Gates Foundation dispensed $100 million into the creation of small schools in New York City. That foundation has channeled money through intermediary private foundations, the largest of these being the New Visions Foundation, as the Gates Foundation channeled $61 million to the New Visions Foundation. (Bloomfield, p. 49, 50)

The city touted "college readiness" as the sure-fire product of these conversions. Yet, huge percentage of the school graduates require remediation courses when they enter CUNY schools. Bloomfield cited the following excerpt from a study, that shows that New Century High Schools (another of the private foundations that has reshaped New York City Schools):

Examination of the Class of 2006 graduates in the two groups of schools indicates that graduates of comparison-group schools were more likely to earn a Regents diploma or Advanced Regents diploma, however, than were NCHS graduates (67 percent versus 46 percent). When the unit of comparison is students rather than graduates, however, the difference is less stark, with 41 percent of comparison-group students and 36 percent of NCHS students earning a Regents or Advanced diploma. (Bloomfield, p. 53-54)

As Bloomfield noted, this difference indicates that the New Century school students performed worse than students in the traditional high school students, as measured by receiving a Regents diploma.
He added (p. 54):

Like their large-school colleagues, most New York City small schools graduates earned so-called "local Diplomas," rather than Regents diplomas; these are so deficient that New York Sate is eliminating them because they fail to meet accepted standards of college readiness. It appears that, counter to their stated mission, the small schools are putting graduation over education without the academic rigor that [small school] advocates claim.

Remember, we are ultimately concerned with the students' long-time interests; but Bloomberg / Klein have failed with these school conversions:

Small schools students, too, have suffered from their schools' focus on reaching the administration's self-defined benchmarks rather than providing a substantive, well rounded education preparatory to post-secondary [i.e., college] opportunities. (Bloomfield, p. 55)

From Diane Ravitch's introduction to the collection of essays:

In late 2008, the Gates Foundation announced that it was curtailing support for small high schools because its own research showed that students in these schools were mot making as much progress in reading or mathematics as their peers in large high schools.

(Ravitch, p. 3)
Bloomberg made the mission of transforming the schools with the goal of making students "college-ready." The facts show that his makeover of the schools has been a failure toward the goal of college preparedness.

Bloomfield noted a study indicating that the future of a new school school does not improve over the earlier large school "unless the academic profile of incoming students is improved, a DOE contrivance well documented by Jennifer Jennings [New York University sociology professor] and Aaron Pallas [Teachers College, Columbia University professor of sociology and education]." (Bloomfield, p. 55. He pointed to "Jennings writing as Eduwonkette, 'Why Has the Education Press Missed the Boat? The Case of Small Schools,' Education Week, vol. 27, no 39, June 4, 2008 and Jennifer L. Jennings and Aaron Pallas, 'Who Attends Small Schools?,' presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Diego, CA, April 13-17, 2009.")

The New York State Report cards indicate that small schools, broken from large schools do not perform better than the traditional large schools. I have presented performance on Regents tests. Now, I recognize that authentic sophisticated learning is more than performing well on a standardized test, the test performance comparisons provide a standard measure from school to school. It is interesting that the data of "the system" or "the education establishment" do not show the small schools as performing better than the larger traditional schools.
Let's focus on the two more difficult New York State Regents tests that are mandated for all students, the Global History test and the Living Environment test. The previous passing grade was 55; for the newest graduating cohorts of students the passing grad is 65. Students that entered the ninth grade in 2007 (the class of 2011) must pass four of the mandatory tests to receive Regents diplomas. (The mandated tests are English, Math, Global History, U.S. History and Living Environment.) Local diplomas will be eliminated, beginning with the cohort of students entering the ninth grade in 2008 (the class of 2012).

Let's look at a sample of schools that have been broken into smaller learning communities, and then let's look at larger, comprehensive schools:
(The New York State Regents test data come from: https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008)
*Sampling of small schools, created in the 1990s and 2000s from large schools:
*Erasmus Campus (in the former Erasmus Hall High School, Flatbush, Brooklyn) Business/Technology:
(This small school-within-a-school academy is itself moving to closure; it does not have figures for the latest available year, 2007-2008)
percentages of students getting 55 and 65 scores, respectively, on tests:
Global History, 2006-2007: 66, 26
Living Environment, 2006-2007: 76, 35
*Erasmus Campus Humanities:
Global History, 2008-2008: 64, 18
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 60, 20
*(in Erasmus) Academy for Hospitality and Tourism:
Global History, 2007-2008: 60 48
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 63 37
*(in Erasmus) High School for Service and Learning:
Global History, 2007-2008: 65 48
Living Environment: 80 62
*(in the former Andrew Jackson High School, Cambria Heights, Queens) *Business/Computer Application High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 49 29
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 85 57
*Humanities and the Arts:
Global History, 2007-2008: 80 66
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 73 46

*Traditional, larger, "comprehensive high schools" in comparable communities, central Brooklyn and east-central Queens:
*Boys and Girls High School, Bedford-Stuyvesant:
Global History, 2007-2008: 69 62
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 76 44
*Clara Barton High School, Crown Heights:
Global History, 2007-2008: 68 35
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 75 56
*Jamaica High School:
Global History, 2007-2008: 66 52
Living Environment, 2007-2008: 71 48

So this settles the issue. It will be necessary to pass four of the Regents exams with at least 65 to get high school diplomas in a few years. By New York State's own requirements, the performance scores in the small schools are not stronger than those in comprehensive high schools in comparable neighborhoods. The small schools are not meeting the challenge. So, why is there the tremendous urgency to shut down comprehensive schools and replace them with small schools? The city is publicizing so-called failures of the comprehensive schools. Why are large schools over-whelmingly the targets? Why are they not treating the small-schools or the academies-within-the schools not receiving comparable scrutiny? As I have just documented, the small schools are "failing" by New York State's own Regents requirements. Even the private foundation that engineered the makeover for small schools (the Gates Foundation) has abandoned the trend of breaking apart large comprehensive high schools.

As I have noted elsewhere on this blog, large schools afford benefits of economies of scale: music, art, performing arts, physical education facilities, including full size basketball courts or competition-ready pools, diversity of foreign languages of study, electives in English and senior year social studies, honors classes and advanced placement classes. Conversely, as Bloomfield noted, "Because of their size, small schools usually lack diverse curricula; depth in specialized faculty, particularly in math and sciences; professional guidance and college counseling; another strengths of comprehensive schools." The break-up of schools entails undue uneconomical duplication of administrative staff, not the least of which is the hiring of multiple $100,000+ principals per school building.
This break-up of comprehensive high schools is a civil rights issue; the break-up of schools has not been forced upon white or Asian communities. These school-break-ups are not happening in Forest Hills, Bayside or Midwood. These school break-ups are exclusively in African-American and Latino neighborhoods: eastern Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.

Coordinated media campaign against ATRs; separate, unequal schools in minority neighborhoods

Is anyone noticing that after a lock-step media campaign (particularly among the newspapers of New York City) on certain topics: about a year ago, against the Teacher Reassignment Centers / a.k.a. "Rubber Rooms" and their detainees, this summer, the imperative for renewing mayoral control for Michael Bloomberg, and most recently, the imperative for a) ending teacher tenure and b) eliminating the ATRs, the new cancer on New York City public education?

Additionally, where is the outcry among activists or the UFT over the DoE strategem that produced the ATR mess? Namely, I speak of the school decommissioning in minority neighborhoods, a school closure process that has eliminated access to a range of programs that continue to be available in schools in white and Asian middle class neighborhoods. From the break-up of established schools comes the creation of over 1,000 ATRs.

Generations ago, noble, principled activists put Plessy to challenge the segregation laws in transportation, backed legal challenges in Topeka, Kansas to end school segregation. Today, who is challenging New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein for his clear segregation of schools, most glaringly, the charter schools and the high schools? Worst served by these two systems are the special education students and the English Language Learners / a.k.a. English as a Special Language students. (I addressed this issue at greater length in an October posting.)

Policy-makers would be wary of constructing a school assignment pattern that explicitly excluded black students. But with the charter school system and the free-for-all competition pattern that the Department of Education has set forth in the 2000s in the Klein era, charter schools are starkly skewed in their demographics (more middle class families, exclusion of special education students and ELL (ESL) students by the exclusion of services for these students).

But here is where the paradox appears: the city has broken up schools, cast off teachers as ineffective, and has overwhelmingly transformed the curriculum of schools, all-the-while masking the failed curriculum with invalid increases in graduation. The flip-side of the tricky game of watered down Regents tests and increases in students' scores, as detailed by NYU education professor Diane Ravitch is a dirty secret of a failure to properly educate students.
Test results that are more properly fitting for contrast against test results in states beyond New York State, those from the NAEP, indicate flat performance rates in English and math.
(News late in the week just ended indicated that New York State students are performing worst in GED pass rates are the lowest in the nation.)
Throughout the curriculum there are profound flaws: in English the city pushes watered down standards of literature and student writing, teachers interested in teaching grammar are derided; in mathematics constructivist math is in vogue, whereby pre-adolescents are expected to create theories for math operations, teachers interested in emphasizing memorization of times tables are derided.
The result? High school graduates Johnny and Jane cannot perform at authentic eighth grade level standards. You want proof?: just see the reports on how the vast majority of New York City graduates in the CUNY colleges require remedial courses in English and math. (As WNYC's Beth Fertig reported last week, these courses actually deal with math at a level of the later years of middle school.)
In sum, the city breaks up schools and places blame on teachers; the city's curriculum fails the students, it gets away with blaming the teachers. The UFT and real education reform advocates (not the expensive consultants at Tweed) need to make the real case for education equity and they ought to oppose the castigation of experienced teachers for the hasty mistakes of the Department of Education. The media need to do a better job of speaking to people outside of the city administration and ill-informed think-tanks; they need to do a better job of connecting the dots to recognize the city's role in short-changing school-children's opportunity for a quality education (across the board, in Canarsie as well as in Bayside).

Haimson, Ravitch et al 180 pp e-book on reality of Bloomberg / Klein's NYC schools

The stars of academic critique of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have authored a book, available in $12 form from Lulu.com
"NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein:
What Parents,Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know"
This excellent 180 page book is a valuable resource for parents, teachers and other activists pulls the wool away from the eyes about the reality of the Bloomberg / Klein changes imposed, unilaterally, without transparency (openness to the public -or other elected officials for that matter) upon the New York City Department of Education.

The report has hard facts and solid analysis that dispels the notion that the changes have been productive for New York City schools. This fills the gap that has resulted from the New York Times' ignoring problems, or repeating Klein/ Department of Education spin and distortion.

Educators, parents, and scholars challenge the Bloomberg administration’s claims of progress in the New York City public schools. Seventeen writers argue that under Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein NYC schools have stagnated or lost ground in achievement, class size, curriculum and instruction, overcrowding, transparency, and equity. Authors DIANE RAVITCH and DEBORAH MEIER are respected scholars; JENNIFER JENNINGS, AARON PALLAS, DAVID BLOOMFIELD, and EMILY HOROWITZ are academics who have researched NYC schools extensively; STEVE KOSS is a former public school mathematics teacher and parent; STEVEN SANDERS and JAMES BRENNAN are former and current NY State Assembly members; HAZEL DUKES, UDI OFER, DEYCY AVITIA, and LEONIE HAIMSON are education advocates; SOL STERN, ANDREW WOLF, and MAISIE MCADOO are journalists covering education; PATRICK J. SULLIVAN is a public school parent serving on the Panel for Educational Policy, the city’s central school board.

Diane Ravitch's sterling analysis of mayoral control

Diane Ravitch wrote a moderate length piece in "Huffington Post" on mayoral control in New York City. She debunked the mayor's myths on the efficacy of mayoral control, and she pointed out has Mayor Michael Bloomberg has played loose and fast with statistics on student performance. She conceded that gains had been made; but she strongly disputed the claims of miraculous double-digit increases in performance. (Her piece was in response to a glowing report in "USA Today" that addressed the national trend toward mayoral control. OK, it is exactly two years old. But the point remains: the mayor has pushed a myth that mayoral control has produced miraculous improvements in student performance. Note the paragraph that I have given bold type: it argues that improved student performance has been the result of reforms implemented under the Chancellorships of Rudy Crew and Harold Levy.)

USA Today Gets It Wrong on Mayoral Control of Schools
Posted March 23, 2007
I don't know why. I can't help it. I just can't tolerate inaccuracy and misuse of facts. I do my best to get the facts right when I write something, and I expect others to do the same. Ordinarily, when I read something in the newspaper that I know is wrong, I have to forget about it because I don't write letters to the editor (by the time the letter appears, no one remembers the original story). But the beauty of the blogosphere is that I can nail the errors and do it fast.

My latest beef is with USA Today, which ran a cover story on March 21 with the headline "More Mayors Are Moving to Take Over School Systems." The article correctly contended that there is a movement in which mayors are taking control of urban school systems. There is indeed. But the article was accompanied by a misleading and inaccurate graphic called "How school takeovers have fared." The data referred to changes in test scores in Chicago and New York. I am not familiar with the Chicago numbers, but the New York numbers (supplied by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Department of Education) are grossly misleading.

The chart showed that New York City's test scores had soared from 2000-2005 in fourth grade English language arts (from 42% to 54%), in fourth grade mathematics (from 46% to 78%), in eighth grade mathematics (from 23% to 41%), while remaining flat in eighth-grade English language arts (from 33% to 33%).

It is strange, however, to use the data from 2000, since the State Legislature granted the mayor control of the schools in 2002, and he did not install his reforms in the schools until September 2003. So the first state test results that reflect the mayor's reforms were reported in 2004. Since the mayoral reforms began, there have been three state tests from 2004 to 2006.

So what has happened to scores since the mayor's package of reforms was installed? Instead of a 12 percentage point gain in fourth grade English arts, the gain was 6.4 percentage points (from 52.5% meeting state standards to 58.9%). Instead of a 32 percentage point gain in fourth grade mathematics, there has been a gain of 4.2 percentage points (from 66.7% to 70.9%). Instead of an 18 point percentage gain in eighth grade mathematics, there has been a gain of 4.5 percentage points (from 34.4% to 38.9%). Only in eighth grade English was there an appreciable gain, from 32.6% to 36.6%, but the score is only 1 percentage point higher than it was in 1999.

The gains since mayoral control are thus respectable but modest, not the miraculous double-digit increases portrayed in USA Today's graphic. For sure, there have been no historic gains since the mayor took charge. Maybe some day there will be, but not yet.

None of the gains, by the way, match the test score gains in the city schools that occurred the year before mayoral control began. In that year, 2002-2003, fourth grade math scores leapt by nearly 15 points, and there were double-digit increases in some of the city's poorest neighborhood schools. Also that year, fourth grade English scores went up by 6 points, which was equal to the increase recorded in the next three years of mayoral control.

The intriguing question, therefore, is what happened in the year before the mayor put his programs in the schools, because that was the year that achievement went up dramatically, especially in historically low-performing schools. Most experts at the time credited the improvement in test scores to the reforms initiated by the previous two chancellors of the schools, Rudy Crew (now superintendent of schools in Miami) and Harold Levy (now at Kaplan Learning).

The story also implied that New York City had eliminated an elected central school board, which is not true. New York City has not had an elected central school board for more than a century.

The story rightly pointed out that the elimination of all school boards--both central and community-based--has left many parents feeling disenfranchised and angry. Anyone wanting to see what New York City's parent leaders think about mayoral control should take a look at the NYC public school parent blog, where parents express their frustration about overcrowded schools and overcrowded classes (the largest class sizes in the state) and their anger at being marginalized and excluded in a school system that has no lay boards at all. (I blog there too, having been named an honorary NYC public school parent by the parent activists who created the site.)

Two months ago, in late January, the Department of Education inexplicably reorganized the school system's vast school bus routes, leaving thousands of children without bus service during the coldest days of the year. The uproar that followed ignited a parent protest movement against the mayor's Department of Education. Parents became aware that this hare-brained scheme was concocted by a team of highly paid consultants from a firm called Alvarez & Marsal, which received a $16+ million no-bid contract; half a dozen of the consultants are paid $1 million each per year to advise the Department on cost-cutting. This is the same firm, by the way, that previously managed the St. Louis school district, which was just taken over by the state of Missouri because of its academic and financial condition.

One of the great claims for mayoral control is that it establishes clear accountability. But regarding the school bus fiasco, no one was held accountable; no heads rolled. Outraged parents haven't calmed down since then.

If there were a school board, the parents would have been lining up to make their voices heard, face to face. But the mayor brushed off the critics and hired a "family engagement officer" at $150,000 a year, hoping to mollify the parents. The protest movement seems to be growing. It turns out that education requires some form of democratic governance, and that is the role of a school board, whether it is appointed or elected.