NAEP Outside NYC and George Schmidt Response

From a contact embedded in an urban school system administrative operation:

Hi Norm,

I mentioned several months ago that I might be helpful in preparing some analyses from the NAEP TUDA math results. Here are some bits from NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago.

It seems like the NYC story has been pretty well covered by the media, but the DC and Chicago stories have not. In both DC and Chicago, there are significant racial disparities in test score gains, with black kids making the least progress in both cities. In DC, the scores of 8th grade black kids dropped, and black 4th graders in DC made much smaller gains that whites. The Chicago story is similar.

Given how both Rhee and Duncan (like your own dearly beloved Joel Klein) love to rhapsodize over "closing the gap," these results seem to be fairly damning.

I sent it to George Schmidt who sent this response:

12/9/09

Norm and friends:

You can share this as widely or narrowly as you want. As usual, you can "use my name."

Thanks for the NAEP heads up. We can run it if someone makes it into a more coherent article, without mentioning any "names." Let me know.

There is enough craziness here in Chicago to fill the rest of the Obama term, only now it's being exported to the entire USA. By the way, as I've already reported, the destruction of Chicago's public schools, which is much further advanced than New York or D.C. based on the same master plan, has also included so much simple old fashioned political corruption that it will take us ten years just to dig out the Arne Duncan era. You can re-read Susan Ohanian's final version of Jerry Bracey's investigation of the "Save-A-Life Foundation" (SALF) at Substance or at Susan's Web site, but remember, that's the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

By my estimate, during the Duncan years Chicago Public Schools doubled the number of no-bid contracts for everything from simple commodities to the most expensive (privatized) computer systems. "Save-A-Life..." was just almost a sideshow. The Big Show is massive privatization.

And of course it was all done behind the smokescreen of the "emergency" in the school system (now 14 years old, since the Amendatory Act established mayoral control here in Chicago) that required special ongoing anti-democratic powers for the mayor and his appointed schools chief and school board.

The (probably a suicide) death of our school board president (Michael Scott) less than a month after President Obama dispatched Eric Holder to Chicago to try and keep the lid the growing Chicago scandals (that's a plural) ranging from simplistic old style corruption like SALF all the way to the surrender of large chunks of Chicago (and the schools, especially high schools) to the drug gangs (you can Google "People" and "Folks" to get some idea of how deep the problem now is here; Mexico is comparable) dramatized the situation again. Holder ordered that Michael Scott (President of the Chicago Board of Education) not be photographed with him (the Attorney General of the USA) while he was in town. Scott, for all the crocodile tears after his death, was one of the most pernicious servants of corporate "school reform" right up to his death, promoting school closings and charterizations at levels New York is just beginning to experience.

Here is the latest big thing to watch out for as they close more high schools in New York and bash more veteran teachers: the lifeboat effect.

As (middle class, usually white) parents begin to believe that a regular public school is a terrible fate for their children, and traditional public schools are starved of resources, one logical step (as soon as I say this, you'll say "Of course") is to try and bribe some public official into getting your kid into one of the remaining "good" public schools. After all, a couple of thousand bucks in hundreds in an envelope is cheaper than tuition to one of the major private schools (unless you're a Hedge Fund manager and don't remember when a drawer full of $100 bills was real money).

Coming soon to a major urban school district near you.

And The New York Times thought they had seen "corruption" when you had those old community school districts. My bet is you're already in the midst of the same kind of privatization and charterization corruptions we had reached here by the final years of Arne Duncan's Kleptocracy, but haven't dug it out yet.

Can't wait to read more about NAEP.

As always,

Solidarity Forever,

George N. Schmidt

Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

More on NAEP from Steve Koss

Koss to the NYC Education News listserve:

In Jennifer Medina's NY Times story today ("No Gains by New York Students on U.S. Math Tests, Unlike State Scores" -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/education/15scores.html?hpw), she cites Joel Klein as saying that, as she puts it, "the city has no choice other than to use the state exam to reward and penalize schools, because it is the only test that measures all city students."

Of course he has always had another choice, and that was not to "reward or penalize schools" based on a narrow, standardized, and predictable exam in which the bar for passing is being consistently lowered year after year. To argue otherwise is no different than a street thug who murders an old lady for her handbag and defends his actions on the grounds that there was no one else around at the time for him to rob and there were no gas stations handy. It's the same sort of false dichotomy that Klein and Bloomberg have been practicing for eight years, the type first inspired by George Bush with his infamous, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." We're not talking terrorists any more, but Klein's policies have been, in their own way, nearly as devastating for our schools and children as terrorism.

Ms. Medina's article goes on to quote Mr. Klein's self-defense in light of the extraordinary embarrassment of the just-released NAEP results, the ones that show the world just what the emperor's new clothes have really been all along. “I have said many, many times that we should raise the bar,” Mr. Klein said. “The state’s definition of proficiency needs to be tethered to a more demanding standard.”

In these two sentences, the chancellor of over one million children in NYC's public schools proved just how badly he doesn't get it. Let's just leave aside for the moment the fact that over the past six years, Klein and Bloomberg have positively crowed over the grade 3-8 NY state exam results, preening like peacocks over the numbers without ever suggesting in those moments that they found fault with the standards or the exams or worried that NYC schools' extraordinary results might be overstating students' real gains. Instead, they and their crony owners of the NY Daily News and NY Post have consistently used the results in furtherance of their own political careers and/or agendas at the expense of NYC's children and their families.

What Klein's statement above shows, most significantly, is that even at the height of his regime's biggest embarrassment to date, he's not calling for a rethinking of his strategy. Instead, he's essentially asking for more of the same, and simultaneously blaming unidentifiable others for his failure! "We just need to change the tests," he's implying. "Make them more demanding."

Never mind that his policies have subverted the educational process, converting classrooms into test prep mills and teachers into Kaplan-style advisors on test-taking-strategy, demotivating students and removing exploration and creativity from the classroom, narrowing the curriculum, shoving aside other subject areas like science or social studies (and art and gym) because schools are not measured on them and principals and teachers are not incentivized with bonuses on them, and threatening principals and schools with closure if they did not "get on board" with their exam scores. No, if only the NY State exams were made a little more difficult, then all would be well and NY students would be champions on the NAEP and truly well-versed in their understanding and use of mathematics. Yes, that's it, it must be the tests that are at fault.

Clearly, this man does not, and never will, get it. Nor will he ever admit that, just maybe, he has been wrong.

If someone wanted to devise a strategy for destroying the efficacy of America's pre-high school public education system, they could not have developed anything more devious than the one Chancellor Klein has imposed on NYC schools with Michael Bloomberg's blessing and the encouragement of many others who should have known better (and probably did).

Steve Koss

P.S.: Interesting as well to note how quickly Mr. Mulgrew (UFT) jumped on the "the NYS exams are no good" bandwagon. Yes, let's all blame the amorphous NYSED rather than look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "What have we done?" Where has the UFT been the last six years other than teaching to the tests when they knew better while shoveling multiple pay raises into their collective pockets. They've allowed themselves to be bribed into looking the other way.

For me personally, the latest NAEP results mark a new low in the saga of NYC public education.

See Ed Notes' posting on NAEP results earlier in the day:

Proof of NY State Grade Inflation: NAEP math scores just released; no gains for NY State

Proof of NY State Grade Inflation: NAEP math scores just released; no gains for NY State

Watch BloomKlein spin themselves into the ground. Thompson, of course, will take little advantage because he hasn't hit Bloomberg hard on the phony ed gains. Even better, watch the UFT spin since it has tied itself to the BloomKlein phony test gains.


This just in from Leonie Haimson.

http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/

No significant change since 2007 for NY State in either 4^th or 8^th grade math. Since NYC is such a large part of NY State, this means it is very likely the same for NYC – ie no significant improvements since 2007.

This is yet more compelling evidence that the NY state exam scores, which showed big jumps statewide at both levels, were badly inflated.

See http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/gr4_state.asp for 4^th grade math.

Esp. map: NY state surrounded by states with significantly higher results in 4^th grade math.

http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2009/gr8_state.asp for 8^th grade math.

In both 4^th and 8^th grade math, the big increases in scores occurred between 2000-2003 ; before the Bloomberg/Klein policies put into place.

Webcast of results starting shortly.

Follow-up from Leonie:

Let’s see how Bloomberg/Klein et al, and the editorial boards that are in their thrall, try to spin this one!

Gotham Schools' Anna Philips reports:

No improvement for New York state on national math exam

by Anna Phillips

Math scores for students in New York state have hardly budged in the last two years, challenging results from the state’s own exams that show significant score increases.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, is out today and New York’s results on the math exam have changed little from 2007.

Two years ago, 43 percent of the state’s fourth graders were proficient or higher in math, while this year, that number is 40 percent. In 2007, 31 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient, and in 2009 it was 34 percent.

While the NAEP scores, released this morning, show no significant changes, the state’s yearly math exams tell a different story. Between 2007 and 2009, fourth graders gained nine scale score points and eighth graders gained 18 points. According to the NAEP exam, fourth graders’ average scale scores decreased by two points and eight grade students’ scores rose by three points.

NAEP This

Stories this week about NAEP results bringing into question the impact of NCLB make this article on Susan Ohanian's web site a must read. We DO NOT NEED ANOTHER TEST!

How Does NAEP Label a Reader Proficient?
An Inside Look at Children's Responses Labeled "Inadequate"

Susan Notes: This research provides the inside dope on media headlines screaming, "NAEP Finds 71% of 4th graders score below the proficient level." This is important because corporate politicos are pushing for NAEP to become the national test.

Down the Rabbit Hole with the Reading Passages
Read it at
http://susanohanian.org/show_research.html?id=103