Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli drops a bombshell. He was on a talk show this morning with, among others, Greg Toppo of USA Today and Melody Barnes of the Obama campaign.
We discussed the candidates’ education proposals, and all went according to plan until about halfway through the segment when Melody said that Obama wanted to look at different kinds of student assessments, including portfolios. Portfolios? As Greg and I said on the air, this was news. We’re not aware of the Obama camp ever saying before that portfolios might be part of the mix. I’m pretty sure I could hear Kati Haycock screaming from a few miles away.
As Mike points out, portfolios were found to be completely unreliable as large-scale accountability measures years ago. “Let me make a prediction,” writes Petrilli, ”either the Obama campaign will clarify that the Senator would consider portfolios on top of tests, not instead of them, or the McCain campaign will pounce on this issue and argue that it shows Obama to be weak on reform. Because one thing is for sure: embracing portfolios is a clear signal of an intention to roll back accountability.”
Portfauxlio Update: Michele McNeil at Campaign K-12 says Obama talkin’ about alternate assessment is nothing new and no big deal.
Update II: More from Petrilli. “I respectfully disagree with McNeil,” he notes. ”It still sounds to me that Barnes is talking about portfolios instead of standardized tests..” He suggests the Obama campaign could clarify: are you in favor of continuing standardized testing under NCLB, or not?
Update III: Over at TWIE, A-Rus has a fairly persuasive Obama quote from earlier in the campaign that sheds light on the Portfauxlio affair: “This doesn’t mean that we won’t have a standardized test, I believe children should master that skill as well and that should be part of the assessments and tools that we use to make sure our children are learning. It just can’t dominate the curriculum to the extent where we are pushing aside those things that will actually allow children to improve and will accurately assess the quality of teaching that is taking place in the classroom. This is not an either/or proposition, it is a both/and proposition, and that’s what we will be working on by fixing NCLB.”
More than 90,000 of New York City’s elementary school students–20 percent–missed at least a month of classes during the last school year, according to a new report from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.
In the early grades, attendance is a strong predictor of long-term success. National research suggests that chronic absenteeism in the early grades sets the stage for school failure later on. Children who miss a large number of school days in kindergarten or first grade tend to have lower levels of academic achievement throughout their school careers. Sadly, there are high levels of chronic absenteeism in New York City elementary schools, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
It’s great to see this issue getting some attention, but forgive me if I’m utterly unsurprised, and a little disgusted. The New York Times calls chronic absenteeism an “invisible problem” but it’s anything but to teachers in New York’s most blighted inner city neighborhoods. Frankly, it’s also another unintended consequence of system in which The Test is the alpha and omega. In my South Bronx elementary school we regularly promoted students who missed dozens of school days, as long as they passed — or even came close to passing – a single standardized test. In a particularly acute case, I fought unsuccessfully to have one of my 5th graders held over who missed nearly 100 school days. He received a 1 (below grade level) on his state math test and a 2 (”approaching” grade level) on his ELA exam and was passed without even having to attend summer school. As long as he scored a 2 or better on either of the tests, I was told, he had to be promoted. God help that kid. Three years later, I still get angry thinking about it.
In theory, I asked an administrator, could a child come to school only on the day of the state test, pass, and still be promoted? It was a rhetorical question. The answer was sitting in my classroom. Occasionally.
According to the Center on Education Policy, 23 states engaged in some form of “backloading” their NCLB proficiency targets–requiring small gains in the first few years of implementation, with more aggressive goals later on. Later on has arrived, notes Thompson Publishing’s Andrew Brownstein.
Some educators rolled the dice and hoped for relief from a new president or, at the very least, a reauthorization that would eliminate some of the law’s more onerous mandates. Others, like Delaware education secretary Valerie Woodruff, merely wanted to give their school districts time to adjust their curriculum and instruction to get in sync with the law. “We knew this might happen, but we were also hoping there’d be some adjustments and a little more reality along the way,” said. “It’s like avoiding going to the dentist. There’s always part of you that hopes the problem will go away.”
Reauthorization is not on the agenda at present, and the new president will have his hands full with the econony and two wars. Comparisons to the financial crisis are inevitable. “Just like over-optimistic homebuyers, states chose to defer payment until later, hoping that some miracle would bail them out before the bill came due,” Brownstein notes.
At a recent meeting at the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Scott Marion, vice president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, warned, “The Fannie Mae of NCLB is about to hit.”
Bailout? What bailout?
Economic uncertainty has proven to be great for business at local libraries. In Haverhill, Massachusetts “usage is through the roof,” reports the assistant library director. The Boston Globe finds similar trends in libraries throughout its region.
People don’t have as much disposable income, so the library provides an easier resource for books,” says North of Boston Library Exchange executive director Ronald Gagnon, noting other materials, such as DVDs and CDs, that libraries offer. “It just flies in the face of people who say, ‘Who needs libraries anymore?’ Book prices are $25, $30 for hard covers nowadays, and people just can’t afford it. So it’s not that the library ever went anywhere, but people are rediscovering the services provided.”
Not everyone is weathering hard times by curling up with a good book, however. A recent NPR piece notes video games continue to increase in popularity since they offer more bang for the entertainment buck. “Though video games initially earned a bad rap for being something of a loner activity, gaming has become an increasingly sociable event,” notes NPR.
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