According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the PISA scores released this past Tuesday were "a massive wake-up call." The scores show American students holding relatively steady in the middle of the pack of the developed nations taking the international exam.
I can't figure out what to make of Duncan's response. Certainly he knows that the 15-year-old Americans taking this exam grew up in schools dominated by the high-stakes testing of No Child Left Behind. He must also know that the other main trend in education during these students' schooling was a great increase in charter schools and other forms of school choice. One might think, then, that the massive wake-up call he's experiencing would sound something like Will Rogers' wisdom: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."
Alas, that's not what Secretary Duncan's wake-up call is apparently telling him. It sounds more like, "If high-stakes tests directed at schools didn't work, let's intensify the policy and add high stakes for teachers." He's apparently hearing a charter-school siren as well, telling him that lifting state caps on charters will somehow increase overall quality in a sector that segregates and stratifies but doesn't improve overall test scores.
There's a weird thing going on here with test scores, isn't there? We turn to them when they seem to support our pre-existing policy agenda. But we ignore or denounce them when we don't like what they have to say. So let me acknowledge that, to some extent, I'm being facetious. The United States' scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) don't represent a crisis. Yes, the scores do mean something, but we shouldn't blind ourselves to other information. Go down to your local school and judge for yourself whether you see students who are engaged and learning -- that'll tell you a lot more than the PISA. Similarly, the fact that charters don't outperform (and probably do underperform) other public schools on standardized tests should mean less to a parent than a visit to her local charters and neighborhood schools.
Before putting much stock in our new PISA scores, do yourself a favor and PLEASE go read a 2005 article from the late-great Jerry Bracey, called "Education's Groundhog Day." Then phone up Secretary Duncan and urge him to read it.
Whatever we think of these tests, however, there's a hypocrisy emanating from Washington, DC (yes, that's shocking news) that we shouldn't ignore. Secretary Duncan is telling teachers and schools that they should live and die by students' standardized test scores. But when it comes to charter schools and when it comes to the record of two-decades of test-based accountability reforms, he won't heed the clear wake-up call from those tests: It's not working.
Either the scores should be trusted, or not.
Stacie Nevadomski Berdan and Rebecca Weiner: Why the PISA Debates Are Misleading -- and Useful
Sabrina Stevens Shupe: How Do Successful School Systems Treat Teachers?
Also, what about what Bracey said about PISA in his 2009 book, Education Hell: PISA tests 15 year olds but it depends on "different placements of 15 year olds in different countries" depends on when students start school. Retention and acceleration policies also affect results.
Further, he notes the questions are long winding possibly testing students' attention span more than their knowledge or their ability to "separate the wheat from the chaff."
Bracey wasn't aware of any construct validity study of the PISA test.
And different countries treat the test differently: Scandanavian countries don't take it seriously, while Taiwanese parents gather on school grounds as their students approach for test day to the sounds of the national anthem. Glad I don't teach there.
The test is put out by the OECD, which has a free market agenda.
The same applies here. . .Repeatedly, the US DoE either shows itself to be incompetent or dishonest (and likely so focused on fulfilling an agenda, just trusting that the US public is too lazy or too easily led to see either). . .
There is no educational crisis (see the same claims in the 1950s, for example, that Golden Era longed for by Rhee—http://dailycensored.com/2010/12/02/the-education-celebrity-tour-legend-of-the-fall-pt-ii/), and the test scores never mean what the new reformers claim. . .but they certainly know how to change the claims when the numbers don't do what they want. . .
Duncan's approach can best be described as the beatings will continue until morale improves.
The status quo IS testing, and more "rigor" and "higher" standards. We have been going this route for several iterations of 'reform" and none of it has worked, but we are supposed to do more?
Why?
So hedge fund operators can make more money through charters?
So teachers unions and tenure can continue to be attacked?
So public education can finally be destroyed?
Go figure.
This is exactly the same strategy the dept of education and their allies in congress are using for language arts and literacy: Because intensive systematic phonics/reading first didn't work, let's do it harder. The LEARN Act calls for even more, with a skills and testing approach dominating language arts K-12.
Might the new Duncan/Gates framing -- "The days of schools being awash in money are now over" -- also be a good example of this. Yes, the RttT money was extraordinary, as was EduJobs. But those were (a) stopgaps/stimuli; and (b) in the case of RttT's discretionary funding, pulling resources away from needed activities. Meanwhile, how many (if any) states might legitimately be argued to be putting adequate resources into public education?
The hole that Duncan and his ilk are digging will be the very same one that teachers and students get buried alive in under the banner of pseduo-reform.
theschoolprincipal@inthetrencheswithschoolreform
www.inthetrencheswithschoolreform.com
http://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews-obama-administrations-six-research-summaries
www.inthetrencheswithschoolreform.com
Must be some kind of optical illusions. :D