(spoof)Unstoppable U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is at it again. On hand today with representatives from top toy manufacturer Mattel, Spellings curtailed her trips around U.S. cities promoting charter schools long enough to announce the launch of a distinctive new line of Barbie dolls and accessories being manufactured specifically to appeal to poor and minority children as well as poor white trash children.
"From the Projects and Trailer Parks to the Ivy Leagues" is the motivational theme of the new line, which promotes the bright line testing and accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's signature domestic achievement.
Spellings, sporting rectangular tortoise shell glasses and her trademark sassy blond haircut, raved over the line's distinctive Ivy League Apparel, an array of t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, caps, polos, totes, and backpacks, along with tiny digital cameras and chat-with-me picture phones. In Spellings' honor the new Barbie line offers a selection of fashion eyeglasses in assorted colors, including half-frames.
Accessories include Charter Heights Dream School complete with awesome school house furniture and tiny test taking paraphernalia: standardized test booklets, practice test booklets, scantrons, test preparation flash cards, and number 2 pencils.
Test marketing indicates that by far the most compelling accessories are the tiny interactive computers (including laptops!) which actually allow children to listen, learn, and interact while Barbie and friends practice their test-taking skills. Spellings appeared to get a special kick out of pressing Barbie's tummy and hearing her recite the components of the six step writing process in addition to other vital test-taking tips.
"Well, this is the cutest Barbie stuff I've ever seen!" marveled Spellings. "Enough with curvaceous plastic molds who don't know the flippin' main idea from the supporting details!"
The new Barbie line will feature both Black and White dolls and will debut in the fall in selected Walmart stores around the country.
The 21st Century Global Economy?
Standardization.
No.
Children. Each a unique individual worth more than all the material possessions in the world. And wonderfully resistant to being standardized.
Keep on loving the children and keep on swimming upstream!
(spoof)Press ReleaseWith standardized test security a national priority and triumphal ticker tape parades almost a thing of the past, multi-tasking Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced today an unusually practical, innovative, and culturally meaningful solution to both problems.
Faced with the pressing need for secure disposal of the estimated 2,583,440,250 standardized tests taken annually in the nation's k-12 schools as a result of the yearly testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal Department of Education has contracted with D C Shredding and Baling Services, a document destruction company formerly owned by Vice President Dick Cheney. A world leader in information destruction and reduction, the company's U.S. team boasts an impressive fleet of mobile shredding trucks that will service all 50 states. The units will transport the shredded waste to centralized processing facilities housing industrial balers, with final transport of the 25 lb. confetti bales to New York City for use in annual televised "ticker-tape" parades to celebrate the march toward all children performing average or above on standardized tests.
Preparing students for their roles in the 21st Century Global Economy has been my highest priority as Secretary of Education. With only months before my term as Secretary expires, what better way for me to leave office than with the inauguration of an annual cultural event to celebrate and commemorate the achievements taking place in education since the ascendancy of my friend George Bush to the presidency.
Asked to comment, an obviously delighted mayor Bloomberg added, "We also envision showering test confetti over the financial district from hot air balloons."
Pressed by a reporter about the unthinkable, Spellings was asked about the potential for leaks to the public about what is on the tests.There will be no Shreddergate. All D C Shredder employees undergo scrupulous background checks and weeks of intensive security training.
Seattle public school teacher Carl Chew has refused to administer the WASL test to his students. You can find his story and other links here.
- Thank you sir for acting upon the strength of your convictions. May the floodgates open to further acts of civil disobedience against the oppression, malpractice, and corporate-serving opportunism of high-stakes testing in our children's public schools. Like so many, I wish I could join you but I'm in no position to risk my job. Still, if enough of us band together...I long for the day and I believe the storm is gathering....
Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't
see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Who will listen?? As you read this study, know that the consequences of high-stakes testing are occurring all over the country and that these consequences were entirely predictable.
High-stakes testing is a national scourge and it is educational malpractice in the extreme. Accountability? You bet. It is time to hold our nation's policymakers accountable.
Link to the study is here.
L. M. McNeil, E. Coppola, J. Radigan, J. Vasquez HeiligExecutive Summary
A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin, finds that the Texas public school accountability system contributes directly to low graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation. A disproportionate number of these are African American, Latino, and English Language Learners. This study has serious implications for the nation’s schools under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which was modeled on the Texas accountability system.
By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students in a large urban district the researchers call Brazos City, the study found that 60 percent of the African American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years. The researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.
The accountability system uses student test scores for rating schools and rewarding principals. The logic behind the system was that holding adults in the system accountable for student achievement would lead to improved test scores. The requirement to disaggregate and report student test scores by race, with no school permitted to rise in the ratings without increases in the scores of Latino and African American youth, had the stated intent of narrowing the persistent gap between the scores of these historically underserved subgroups and their Anglo counterparts.
“Avoidable Losses” investigates the disparity between these claims of improving achievement and closing the achievement gaps, and the persistent losses of thousands of young people from the system under the high-stakes accountability system.
The study finds that high-stakes test-based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of thousands of youth from the schools. These losses occur not as administrators cheat or fail to comply, but as they comply with the system as it was designed: that is, in the production of rising test scores for their schools. The study shows that as schools came under the accountability system, which uses test scores to rate schools and reward or discipline principals, large numbers of students left the school system. The exit of low-achieving students created the appearance of rising test scores and of narrowing the achievement gap between white and minority students, thus increasing schools’ ratings.
Methods: The study steps outside the system’s own indicators, the student scores on the state test and the school ratings. The study’s shift away from reliance on school-level data to student-level data across multiple years permitted analysis of the effects of the accountability system on the youth themselves. The research employed multiple methodologies in order to track the policy through the system to the children. The studyanalyzed student-level data on more than 271,000 students in a large urban district over a 7-year period. It included analysis of the accountability policy and its implementation down through the system to the school level; extensive observations in high schools in the Brazos City school district; and interviews with administrators, teachers, and students, including students who had left school prior to graduating. It also included a multi-year case study of a high school attempting to comply with standardized accountability while undertaking reorganization and curricular reforms, and its resulting inability to hold onto many of its students.
Findings:
* Losses of low-achieving students help raise school ratings under the accountability system, thus accruing rewards to their principals in the form of bonuses and job security.
* The statistical analysis of a sample of high schools serving poor and minority youth revealed a pattern of rising school ratings in schools that retained a large percentage of their students in 9th grade. Many of those retained in grade did not go on to complete high school.
* This pattern of 9th grade retention (often up to 30 percent of the class) was traced to a legal waiver that allowed principals to adjust grade promotion standards to retain in grade students deemed to be at risk of reducing the school’s scores on the state test; this practice has become commonplace, beyond the waiver provision.
* The reporting of student test scores by racial categories resulted in the singling out of the lowest-achieving students in these historically underserved subgroups as potential liabilities to the school ratings, increasing the incentives for school administrators to allow these students to quietly exit the system, rather than to provide them with the quality education necessary for them to succeed.
* The case study revealed the difficulty of undertaking substantive, long-term improvements under the pressure to produce immediate spikes in test scores to raise school ratings and achieve acceptable Annual Yearly Progress.
* The degradation of the curriculum into test drills, which have little relevance beyond the state test, distances students who otherwise wish to persist to graduation, exacerbating the likelihood they will leave school.
* The accountability system’s zero tolerance rules for attendance and behavior, including rigid regulations which shift youth into the court system for minor offenses and absences, alienate students and increase the likelihood they will drop out.
* Students experience the degradation of curriculum, zero tolerance policies and 9th grade retention as confusing and arbitrary, each which multiplies and magnifies the potential negative impact of the other on student decisions to persist or leave.
In summary, the study found that there is a strong association between high-stakes accountability and dropping out. This is in large part owing to the system’s internal administrative incentives, which reward increased school ratings, even if they are produced at the expense of youth whose test scores are not likely to contribute positively to the production of these indicators. In such a system, students come to be seen as assets or liabilities to their schools’ ratings. The triaging of thousands of youth out of our schools becomes not a side effect of standardized accountability, but an avoidable loss to make the system look successful.
There are many causes behind students’ dropping out of school, from poverty and unstable families, to pregnancy or the need to earn money. What this study shows is that standardized accountability not only does not aid in overcoming those barriers to school completion; it adds to them. Unreliable official statistics on student mobility and transfers, as well as understated official dropout figures (often reported as only 2-3 percent), make it difficult to assess the exact losses from our schools. Even if the figures generated in this study (for example, 75 percent of Latino youth in Brazos City not graduating) were adjusted downward by 10 percent to include possible transfers to other educational settings, the scale of the losses would still be unacceptable, and the numbers attributable to the impact of the accountability system would bear serious reconsideration of its claims.
This study has serious implications for the nation’s schools under the NCLB law. It finds that the higher the stakes and the longer such an accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or assets for the school’s performance indicators, their own careers, or their school’s funding.
(spoof)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
U. S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, joined by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, announced today the creation of a new strong-arm agency of the Department of Homeland Security to be charged with the task of protecting and defending the security and accuracy of the nation's standardized test data. The Test Security Operations Center will train security officers to patrol our nation's K-12 schools during the administration of standardized tests.
The agency will be headed by former drill sergeant and part-time mud wrestler Brunhilda Briarballs. "She'll serve us well," mused Spellings, noting that Briarballs is notorious among military insiders as having 'scared the crap' out of many strapping young military recruits. "They don't call her Bulldozer for nothing," quipped Spellings, "and there's no doubt we can expect her to take a hard nosed approach when addressing testing irregularities which can potentially impact the security of the tests or the accuracy of the data."
Any event which might be construed as having the potential to compromise the security or accuracy of the test data will constitute a security breach and will result in a school's failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the federally mandated target of 100% proficiency of all students by the year 2014. A teacher who is involved in a compromising event, such as administering an encouraging pat on the back to a struggling student during testing, will be subject to stern disciplinary measures. Spellings explained that such a gesture, while seemingly innocent to the untrained eye, could actually be a signal to the student that they have answered an item incorrectly.
As part of her dual capabilities, Briarballs will also head the Office of Testing Emergency Preparedness. In the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack occurring during the administration of The Tests, first responders will be dispatched to herd and guard students and teachers while the tests are being gathered and propelled to underground shelters for safekeeping.
Spellings became visibly irritated when a reporter asked if the practice of high-stakes testing itself didn't actually encourage cheating, given that educators' jobs and the survival of their schools depend on their reaching a goal that is neither mathematically nor humanly possible to achieve. She responded, "We know that the very vast majority of teachers do not cheat. However, only with the implementation of these measures can we be guaranteed that we have objective proof of whether public schools are doing their job of ensuring that all children are average or above by 2014."
"Too many public schools are getting away with not failing ...with failing," said the President. (laughter) "We must close all AYP loopholes to make sure all our nation's poor children, regardless of income or life circumstance, is reading and doing math at grade level. It's not right for there to be an achievement gap between some children and some other children."
