For the past week, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch has made it her mission to attack Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein based on what she views as a revelation -- that when the New York State Department of Education made how they grade students tougher, fewer New York City students qualified as "proficient" under the higher bar.
The news, which was tough for anyone who cares about our students to hear, was in no way mind-blowing. But that didn't stop Ms. Ravitch and others who oppose testing and accountability systems from falling all over themselves to trumpet our kids' lower scores.
But this is nothing new from Ms. Ravitch. Three years ago she wrote in the New York Sun that we need to look at why so many of our kids are "slackers."
It is easy to hurl insults from the sidelines. It's much harder to change the status quo.
Over the past eight years, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have attempted to better prepare our kids for the rigor and demands of a 21st century economy. One of the ways we are able to measure that progress is with tests, however imperfect a science.
But if Ms. Ravitch had her way, she'd probably do away with tests all together -- she doesn't believe in a system of accountability because, in her words "children arrive in school with poor attitudes toward learning" and even the best teachers are "not going to make them learn."
Have our students made enough progress? No. But under our critics' logic, the State's decision to make it harder to achieve a grade of "proficient" means all of the progress City students have made over the years is bogus.
That's like saying Phil Mickelson is a bad golfer if they make the 8th hole at Pebble Beach 50 yards longer, change it from a Par 4 to a Par 3, and he only scores a 4. Oh, and no one told him they were changing it until after he finished his swing, so he's stuck with his Bogey and the label of sub-par.
Crazy, right? But that is exactly what Ms. Ravitch is trying to say about New York City students and consequentially, the leadership of the Mayor and Chancellor.
But the facts don't lie: If we applied the new, higher cut scores to our students' raw results for the last 5 years, it would show that in Math, our students went from 31.9% proficient in 2006 to 54.0% proficient in 2010. In English, our students went from 36% proficient in 2006 to 42.4% proficient in 2010.
Is Ms. Ravitch really saying that a 6 point increase in English and a whopping 22 point increase in Math isn't a gain? If so, she is the one who should have been held back in school.
It's also worth noting that when you compare New York City to the State's four other biggest school districts -- Rochester, Buffalo, Yonkers and Albany, you see that City students fared much better than their peers under the higher standards, as they have since 2002.
Ms. Ravitch also dismisses the City's gains on the highly respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as "garden-variety." This is in contrast to last year, when she told the New York Times that the NAEP scores showed "schools long-term have made significant progress."
The truth is that New York City students have made substantial gains -- up 11 points in fourth-grade reading, 11 points in fourth-grade math, and 7 points in eighth-grade math.
We can argue over the numbers all day, and Ms. Ravitch has a right to her opinion. But it is unfortunate that, as someone who claims to value what happens to our children, she continually chooses to disparage their accomplishments.
The tests aren't perfect, but they are a measure of the progress made, and we aren't going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's one thing to tell a kid that they are going to have to work harder to make it in the world. It's another to say that everything they have accomplished thus far is meaningless.
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Charter Schools Face New Proficiency Standards in New York - WSJ.com
Confusion on Where New York School Performance Stands - NYTimes.com
Natalie Ravitz is nugatory.
Diane Ravitch had her chance at improving education, and look how well that worked out. I say it's time for NEW and RADICAL ideas. The old way of doing things is obviously NOT working any longer.
Points of Clarification:
(1) Diane Ravitch has been trumpeting warnings of institutionalized fraud for some time now. She has been warning about all of the false positives ("done good"), and that is exactly what's been happening! She wants higher standards and REAL learning, as opposed to meaningless and fraudulent test prep.
(2) Only a grossly distorted version of Diane Ravitch's original reform ideas have been put in place. That is what's failing now, and this distortion shouldn't be called education reform; it is managerial, not educational at all. Her current ideas were NEVER tried, but should be. They are our best bet.
Joel Klein is neither NEW or RADICAL. He and Bloomberg are the status quo; they have had their way for nine long years and it hasn't worked. Time for a change. Their supporters are defending the status quo.
How do they spend their time? Throwing autistic kids out of their school to accommodate their charter buddies and trashing Diane Ravitch for daring to speak the truth. That's what they call leadership.
Okay, this career political aide's indignant defense of Klein and Bloomburg's political domination is cloaked in mealy-mouthed concern over the supposed disparagement of children. Her argument is the reverse - she is trying to help the self-dealing mayor and his accomplices in the "data-driven" accountability industry hide behind the very children they exploit, rob, and disparage.
If we ever expose their multimillion dollar edufraud schemes, they will hide behind all the children of the New York City public schools, who they have shown no cpmpunction whatever in disparaging, whenever a buck could be made out of it. They have buildings full of hostages.
This primitive and uninformed piece doesn't add anything to the desperately needed open discussion of what is being done, and by whom, with the educational resources of New York City. It distorts and mischaracterizes the careful and detailed analysis the real Ravitch has presented, so it is in no position to argue against anything the real Ravitch has actually written or said. It offers a really weak and addled defense of her adored mayor and chancellor.
Why on earth did Huffington Post promote such a worthless piece of political hackery? "Consequentially" is probably the clincher - this is up for the Sarah Palin Award for Journalistic Disingenuousness, right? And somebody is on the mayor's bloated payrolls?
The PEP has become a rubber stamp for the Mayor, CEC's have been totally ignored and any parent input is completely dismissed by the Chancellor...
We need to get educators back into Tweed, not arrogant corporate lawyers and more public relation types...
We need music, arts, and basic civics back into the classrooms to develop and prepare a whole child, ready to face the challenges of the 21st century...
We need to keep public education alive in this City, not allow the privatization of our schools...
I ask, when was the last time a Wall Street hedge fund operator did anything good for you or me that didn't benefit their bottom-line..?
In my opinion, Ms Ravitz is just the latest addition to an already over-bloated press operation at Tweed...The mission @ DOE to me seems to be to put the best spin on the absurd policies and misinform the general public...
How can so many NYC residents have the mis-perception that somehow Bloomberg is the "Education Mayor"...It's an out and out lie to me...
It would be a good start to abolish the press shop and put their salaries directly into the classrooms where it's needed most...Tweed needs to Stop the Spin..!!
Oh yeah, welcome to NYC DoE, Natalie...
http://southbronxschool.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing-tweeds-new-minister-of.html
Much easier from a $150k or so taxpayer-funded position at City Hall.
Got it.
There is a distinct possibility that this recalibration will just start a new round of inflation from this adjusted baseline. A State or independently-organized committee should be formed to monitor testing in an institutionalized way instead of having to blow our individual whistles next time.
I'm waiting for.... 'Our Mayor's Progress Should be Examined, not Exalted."
Lets be clear: NO ONE knocking these tests, NO ONE knocking the watered-down threshold of "proficient", NO ONE noting that NYC DOE has sent a record number and percent of its recent high school grads into CUNY's r-e-m-e-d-i-a-l courses, and NO ONE outside the Bloomberg/Klein circle (including the local rags' editorial boards) buys the above headline for a New York minute.
So let's put the spotlight back on the DOE's religious adhesion to the bogus tests and bogus test scores that were the foundation, not of childrens' true progress, but of Kleinberg's third term.
Fercrissakes.
And for a minute there, the former senior adviser for Senator Boxer credential impressed me. The pertinent progress here is a resume upgrade betting on Bloomberg's future over Boxer's.
Darn public school edumacation.
The tests have become predictable - that's what Steiner and Tisch said - and adjusting the cut scores does not make them comparable. They are, indeed, lousy tests. Ravitz thinks that applying an adjustment to the older scores fixes that. She is wrong.
Ravitch, and other commentators, point out Bloomberg's faked accomplishments.
Ravitz twists that into an attack on "kids' progress" - but no student was in 4th grade in both 2005 and 2009. She and her cowardly bosses hide behind children, use NYC's children as a shield from legitimate criticism, criticism they invited.
If a commentator compared scores from 30 years apart, they would be using those scores to rate the system, not the test-takers. It's not really a reasonable exercise. But when Bloomberg and his employees, including Ravitz, use scores from 3 years apart, they pretend that it is the kids, not the system, under inspection. It's a lousy way to rate the system, and it certainly does not measure the learning that the individual children do as they progress through school.
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/08/whats-in-name.html