Thursday, April 30, 2020

Lessons from the Renaissance – by Ian Lindquist

Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy
by James Hankins
Harvard University Press, 2019,$45; 768 pages.

As reviewed by Ian Lindquist

Education of the young presents the most important public policy challenge that any polity faces. This is not to say it is the most pressing—that designation would belong to the task of national defense, without which education could not occur. But if a polity wishes to last more than one generation, it must give considerable thought and attention to the way it forms its young people—to the skills, the knowledge, and, most importantly, the kind of character that children will need later, when they grow up and inherit the task of governance.

Education in this sense is not limited to the classroom. It occurs throughout society and at every level of a child’s experience, encompassing manners and morals taught in families and neighborhoods and communicated both explicitly and implicitly; values learned through participation in groups and organizations, from churches to fraternities and sororities to sports leagues; as well as education in the narrow sense of formal instruction and “classroom learning.” Political stability requires attention to how a society shapes its young people. When corruption or degeneration reigns in political life, it’s a safe bet that the task of forming the young has been neglected for some time.

Harvard historian James Hankins tells the story of one such age in his wide-ranging and magisterial Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy. The Renaissance humanists set out first to rectify the political disorder surrounding them in Italy. Quickly, however, the humanists learned that political rejuvenation would require educational rejuvenation. Because political life in the 13th and 14th centuries suffered from tyranny and corruption, the humanists believed that rectifying political life required the teaching of classical virtue, which would be passed on to the young—and, crucially, to those who would hold positions of political power—through a new educational program dubbed the studia humanitatis, or humane studies.

The scope of this task was wildly ambitious. The humanists sought to overturn the education offered by the scholastics of the High Middle Ages, which, in the humanists’ view, focused inordinately on technical legal education and a host of specialties that crowded out the traditional liberal arts. In politics and education, the humanists sought to do away with the scholastic focus on law, insisting that legitimacy of rule derived from “true nobility”—that is, virtuous character—rather than laws. The letter of the law is only as good as the character of those who enforce it and so the humanists placed education on a foundation of character formation.

To cast off the prevailing manner of education, the humanists looked to the age of ancient Rome and Greece. Not only was it the time when Italy’s greatness reached its height, but it was also an era when men practiced classical virtue. Access to classical virtue had been lost in the period between Rome’s decline and fall and the 14th century. The humanists set out to make Italy great again by emphasizing the practice of classical virtue and especially the reform of the character of those who governed. This shift required not simply a new manner of  education—classroom learning—but also a new institutio or, as Hankins puts it, “a fundamental reconstruction of the forms of culture used to educate and form its citizens.”

Hankins names this ambitious humanist project “virtue politics,” because it heavily emphasized political reform through what we would today call character education. Virtue politics, he writes, “focuses on improving the character and wisdom of the ruling class with a view to bringing about a happy and flourishing commonwealth.” This may seem like a reasonable enough goal, but in fact it constituted a radical approach to political reform: “The humanists saw politics, fundamentally, as soulcraft. Their overriding goal was to uproot tyranny from the soul of the ruler, whether the ruler was one, few, or many, and to inspire citizens to serve the republic.” Tyranny would not end unless the souls of rulers were rightly ordered.

A depiction of Petrarch, with a crown of laurels, appearing to Boccaccio in a vision.

A depiction of Petrarch, with a crown of laurels, appearing to Boccaccio in a vision.

The ambition of Virtue Politics doesn’t quite match that of the Renaissance humanists’ efforts to reform education and politics in Europe, but it doesn’t lag far behind. Hankins tries to interpret the entirety of the Renaissance. He does so by bringing an encyclopedic knowledge of Renaissance humanism to the table, and he includes both discussions of comparative literature and chapters on individual Renaissance writers, many of whom are not studied today except by specialists. The Renaissance and its treasures have much to teach.

Most important, they can teach us a lot about education. Renaissance education reform is in many respects the ancestor of a current education-reform movement in American that has been growing since the early 1980s. Like the Renaissance reformers, classical educators today introduce their students to classical virtue and classical authors. While there are internecine arguments about the ultimate grounds for and goal of classical education, practitioners by and large agree that liberal education—that is, an education based on broad reading and intellectual study that instills moral and intellectual virtue—is the right education in that it allows human beings the best opportunity to flourish. Today’s classical educators do not view their approach as an exercise in antiquarianism but rather as necessary for a life fully lived.

Similarly, Hankins does not view the Renaissance humanists as archaic museum pieces but as thinkers and political actors from whom today’s political and education reformers can learn. Three things stand out that bear consideration.

First, legal and policy fixes alone cannot achieve healthy political life. A polity’s health depends on its ability to cultivate virtue in the young, which is the true task of education. Education involves the formation of character—the ability to live a good life—and character is cultivated through the study of moral philosophy and history—“precept and example.”

Second, the formation of character includes and thrives on examples of virtue from the past. Especially in politically corrupt times, it is important to turn the gaze of the young toward examples of virtue. To those frustrated by the examples set by politicians today, the humanists would recommend putting a copy of Plutarch’s Lives in front of students and asking them to debate and discuss who is the most virtuous Greek or Roman. The past offers a treasury that helps to spur the young to excellent character. An education that neglects to bring students into communication with these riches is shrinking, rather than expanding, their worlds.

Third, the goal of liberal education is to allow human beings to become as fully human as possible. For the humanists, liberal education was “a training in humanity in the full sense of that word, the most effective form of soulcraft.” A liberal education provides the path to virtue, the most excellent exercise of the abilities human beings possess. Indeed, “the humanities were a prophylactic against the beast in human nature and a reminder of the goodness of which it was capable.”

Hankins is not optimistic that contemporary American society and culture will experience a return to the ideals of Renaissance humanism, and its commitment to character education, any time soon. But as his history teaches, a commitment to the formation of character often finds itself the odd man out in any given age. Even for the humanists, character education amounted to a counterweight to the excesses prevalent in souls and states in their age. That counterweight was provided partly through historical study and the attempt to breathe new life into texts and ideals, not for the sake of mere antiquarian interest, but rather to solve the challenges of the day.

If a greater focus on character education based on classical virtue does come about in our own time, it’s reasonable to think that this shift will take its bearings and example from the past. Hankins’s history of the Renaissance humanists offers a useful starting place for discovering what that kind of cultural rejuvenation might look like.

Ian Lindquist is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

By: Ian Lindquist
Title: Lessons from the Renaissance – by Ian Lindquist
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/lessons-from-renaissance-book-review-virtue-politics-james-hankins/
Published Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 09:00:52 +0000

Episode 39: The Effect of COVID-19 on Latino Families (ft. Lorena Lopera).

In this episode, you’ll hear from Lorena Lopera about why Latino communities are among the hardest hit by COVID-19 and about the steps that need to be taken to ensure that students in those communities receive the educational support they need.

Lorena Lopera is the Massachusetts Executive Director at Latinos for Education.

Episode Details:

  • Why Latinos are among the hardest hit by COVID-19
  • How school districts can better support Latino students
  • Educational resources for Latino families
  • How COVID-19 will impact first-generation college students
  • How Latinos for Education is supporting students during COVID-19

Links Mentioned:

By: Education Post
Title: Episode 39: The Impact of COVID-19 on Latino Families (ft. Lorena Lopera)
Sourced From: educationpost.org/episode-39-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-latino-families-ft-lorena-lopera/
Published Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Bernie’s Volunteer Appreciation Call

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

EdNext Podcast: An Earthquake Followed by a Tsunami – by Education Next

The CEO of Chiefs for Change, Mike Magee, joins Education Next Editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss how schools are responding to challenges posed by the novel coronavirus.

“One of our members said to us on a call this past week that this is the earthquake and it’s going to be followed by a tsunami when it comes to district budgets,” Magee says. “Every district in America is going to have to significantly rethink the roles of adults in all of their school buildings.”

Listen to the podcast now.

The Chiefs for Change report, “Schools and Covid-19: How Districts and State Education Systems are Responding to the Pandemic,” is available now.

The EdNext Podcast is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Stitcher and here every Wednesday.

— Education Next

Colorado News https://coloradomedia.co

Don’t Let Them Fool You: The FCC Has Done Nothing New to Connect Kids

They almost had me.

After weeks and weeks of working and fighting for the FCC to guarantee the educational rights of low-income families by compelling internet providers to ensure all students have access to remote learning, the FCC finally released a statement.

Adorned with all the formality of a press release from the federal government, the memorandum from April 27 announces “efforts to promote the use of $16 billion in funding from the recently enacted CARES Act’s Education Stabilization Fund for remote learning.” These monies would take the form the block grants accessible via an application that demands details on how the dollars would be used “especially for students with disabilities and students from low-income families.”

I read the memo and my heart started to race.

16 billion dollars!?  

Billions for students with disabilities and students from low-income families!?

After all of these weeks of gathering nearly 15,000 signatures for a petition to galvanize the FCC to move on behalf of these students, after nearly dozens of articles and op-eds from educational activists across the country including former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, finally there was hope that all students would be able to access the remote learning that is their right.

I’m an idealist at heart, and it was this idealism that blinded me to the truth behind this memo.

It’s a paper tiger; a red herring; a house of cards; a sleight of hand. 

It does absolutely nothing to help kids.

How? Let’s take a look.

First, there are absolutely zero new dollars apportioned for remote learning or internet access. The billions of dollars so proudly extolled are the dollars already spoken for in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which is by now fully a month old.

While the FCC would have us believe that districts across the country are now flush with cash with which to plug the holes of internet access, those 16 billion dollars, already decried as woefully inadequate, are designed to hold up and support the entirety of America’s educational infrastructure. 

So much for bridging the digital divide. 

Furthermore, the press release has no teeth and amounts merely to a paper slip dropped into a suggestion box. The FCC will “promote” the use of already appropriated dollars to bridge the digital divide. Moreover, what they are really “promoting” is that someone else—anyone—deal with the staggering inequality of access to broadband internet. Maybe “promotion” would mean something if Chairman Ajit Pai was using his bully pulpit to actually influence the companies who currently control access to the internet, which by the way is totally his job. To “promote” that other people solve this problem without the FCC is the same as doing nothing, except that such “promoters” can claim they tried their best when in fact they did nothing.

So, why issue a formal press release that uses a whole lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing?

The FCC Wants to ‘Pass the Buck’

Because they are attempting to pass the buck, to shift the focus of educational activists, students, parents, and families from all across the country away from the FCC and onto the states, and Congress, and Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education. Onto basically anyone else.

Let’s be clear.

As the nation’s “primary authority for communications law,” internet access is firmly within the FCC’s jurisdiction. And right now, as 12 million students in America are tacitly segregated away from their digital classrooms, instead of fighting for these students, the FCC is shirking responsibility for “keeping Americans connected” so it can stay friendly to the business interests of enormous telecommunications.

If you are reading this and you have a loved one who is currently using the internet to access their education, you have a responsibility to fight for the millions of students who are not afforded the same privilege.

If the child you loved couldn’t go to school, you would not stand idly by.

So join us, and demand that the FCC do what’s right and just.

Demand internet access for low-income and marginalized American families now.

By: Zachary Wright 
Title: Don’t Let Them Fool You: The FCC Has Done Nothing New to Connect Kids
Sourced From: educationpost.org/dont-let-them-fool-you-the-fcc-has-done-nothing-new-to-connect-kids/
Published Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 16:45:12 +0000

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

In the News: A Coronavirus A for Everyone – by Education Next

A Wall Street Journal editorial, “A Coronavirus A for Everyone,” warns of “the potential for arrested educational development” related to decisions by some school districts, in response to the pandemic, to suspend or alter their usual grading policies. Says the Journal: “The pandemic will pass, but what used to be called the soft bigotry of low expectations helps no one but teachers who don’t want to be measured by what their students learn.”

An article by Seth Gershenson in the Spring 2020 Education Next, “End the ‘Easy A,’” reported that tougher grading standards set more students up for success.  The editor’s letter in that issue, “In Fight Against Grade Inflation, Those Rare Tough Teachers Are Champions,” expands on that point.

How this research translates to the unusual situation of distance learning in a pandemic is an open question, especially for students in younger grades, when, as a practical matter, a letter grade might be less an evaluation of a student or teacher’s skills, and more an evaluation of a parent or older sibling’s ability, or availability, to home-school a child. But the combination of school districts taking differing approaches to the grading question and the eventual return of state accountability testing (though even that may be in some doubt, according to another recent Education Next article, “Statewide Standardized Assessments Were in Peril Even Before the Coronavirus. Now They’re Really in Trouble”) may help to provide some answers a few years down the road.

By: Education Next
Title: In the News: A Coronavirus A for Everyone – by Education Next
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/news-coronavirus-a-for-everyone-grading-standards/
Published Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:42:55 +0000

Women’s Town Hall ft. Special Guest | Joe Biden For President

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Former Vice President Joe Biden is running for president to restore the soul of the nation. He believes it’s time to remember who we are. We’re Americans: tough and resilient. We choose hope over fear. Science over fiction. Truth over lies. And unity over division. We are the United States of America. And together, there is not a single thing we can’t do. Join Team Joe today:

The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on the Undocumented (7PM ET).

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday will host a virtual town hall on the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on undocumented immigrants. Sanders will be joined by Make the Road member Perla Silva, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center Marielena Hincapié and President of 32BJ SEIU Kyle Bragg.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Superintendent Drifts Fall Circumstance of "Hybrid" Resuming-- by Frederick Hess

Susan Enfield

Susan Enfield is the superintendent of Highline Public Schools, a district serving 18,000 students in Burien, Wash., not far from where the nation’s first coronavirus case was confirmed. I reached out to Susan to see how she’s dealing with the coronavirus challenge. Here’s what she had to say.

Rick: You’ve noted that all the PR pitches you’ve received are a distraction from an already very busy load. What’s taking up most of your time right now?

Susan: The technical work of transitioning our system to distance learning for an unknown period of time is definitely time-consuming, as is ensuring we are communicating with staff and families as quickly and accurately as we can. I am also spending a tremendous amount of time supporting—and worrying about—our team, from both a professional and emotional standpoint. Professionally, I am working to help my colleagues understand that we cannot rely on what we know and have always done—this is a time for radical problem solving. I am also checking in with them to be sure they are pacing themselves and caring for their families and one another. The phrase “this is a marathon not a sprint” has never been more true.

Rick: Can you walk us through some of the challenges you’re dealing with that people might not be aware of?

Susan: In Highline, we have made the promise to know every student by name, strength, and need so they graduate prepared for the future they choose. It is a promise we all take deeply seriously and strive to deliver on daily. Not being able to see our students each day makes it harder to maintain the relationships we have built, much less engage them in meaningful learning. This is even more of a concern—and a reality—for our most vulnerable students. I think we all fear that the achievement and opportunity gaps that exist will be exacerbated by school closure.

Rick: What percentage of your students have internet access and how are you trying to help those that don’t get online?

Susan: We estimate that before this started, roughly 65 percent of our students had at-home internet access, but now with companies offering free internet for those who need it, that number is likely closer to 90 percent or higher. We are surveying to find out the actual number. Our partnership with Sprint1Million has provided 1,000 hotspots, but that is not enough. When I am asked what we need donations for, I say hotspots. Our goal has to be 100 percent of Highline homes connected to the internet.

Rick: OK, so what are you hearing from the field about how educators are dealing with all these adjustments?

Susan: I think it varies wildly depending on where you are. The inequities within and across our school systems have never been more glaringly apparent. But regardless of location, what I see my colleagues locally and nationally doing is inspiring. Yes, we are all overwhelmed and working as hard and fast as we can to find ways to support our students and their families, but as social media is demonstrating daily, we’re doing so in nimble and creative ways that we have not tried the past. From schools partnering with local coffee shops to provide food for students and families to districts using their local television channels to broadcast lessons and then sharing those with other districts, there are many reasons to take heart and be hopeful.

Rick: How much confidence do you have that distance learning is a meaningful substitute for all the benefits kids get from being in school?

Susan: I have zero confidence that distance learning is, or will be, a meaningful substitute for school for many of our children. I believe there is no substitute for the relationship between teachers and their students and students with one another. In addition, there will be serious limitations to the level of quality and consistency in the learning opportunities our students have. These limitations include our ability to provide access for all students, particularly those with disabilities and those for whom English is not their first language. There will also be limitations to how much families will be able to support learning from home, which I heard loud and clear last week when I met virtually with our Family Action Committee. To be clear, I am not saying we should not do all we can to provide distance learning; we absolutely should and are. We must, however, be honest in what it will achieve and be prepared to remediate, in academics, behavior, and socialization once schools reopen.

Rick: All right, and what’s involved with reopening schools? How likely is it that some districts reopen this spring?

Susan: We have never had to do this before, and to be honest, those of us responsible for leading school systems have been focused on how we respond to what our challenge is now—and that is caring for and educating our students in an entirely different way. In the first few weeks of closure, I was so focused on the day-to-day decisions I had to make that I could not think long term, but I am definitely doing so now given that schools will not be reopening this spring.

We are currently scenario planning for the fall. There are several options in play: 1) continuing with full-time distance learning, 2) providing a hybrid model where students attend school certain days of the week and learn from home on others to promote social distancing, and 3) returning altogether but different from before. While we likely won’t know what the fall will look like before we end the school year in June, my goal is that our students, staff, and families know that we have a plan for whatever that may be. Honestly, the logistics of reopening concern me far less than responding to the impact closure will have had on our children, from learning loss to loss of routine to trauma. The need for remediation in academics, social-emotional learning, and socialization will be profound, and I don’t believe any of us really knows how we will meet those needs at this scale.

Rick: What should Washington or the states be doing to help right now? What can they provide that’s most helpful, or what rules or requirements would it be useful to relax?

Susan: We have received flexibility in many ways already from elimination of state tests for this school year to how we can provide meals for our students. Where we absolutely need help is with connectivity and access. This is paramount right now, and we need action from the Federal Communications Commission, which can, and must, institute changes to the E-Rate program to make it possible for all of our students who need access to get it. Now is the time for all of us to advocate for this by pushing the FCC to provide solutions beyond what we have in regulation. In addition, we need flexibility with the timelines for supporting our students with special needs. What was written into students’ IEPs prior to closure in many cases may not be feasible in our current reality. To be clear, I am not saying that we waive any of the requirements of IDEA, but we need to be realistic and flexible in what we can do in the context of remote learning and social distancing.

Rick: OK, last question. What are you seeing that’s most promising or heartening?

Susan: I am not sure we are celebrating those public school employees who are deemed essential and, in the midst of stay-at-home and self-isolation orders, are showing up each day to provide our students with meals, technology, and child care. I have the honor of seeing them, from a safe distance, almost every day and am inspired. They demonstrate service above self, which our nation needs far more of today, and I hope this is one of the greatest lessons our children learn from this chapter in history.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

Colorado News https://coloradomedia.co

Challenging Coronavirus: Resolving Impacts

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Former Vice President Joe Biden is running for president to restore the soul of the nation. He believes it’s time to remember who we are. We’re Americans: tough and resilient. We choose hope over fear. Science over fiction. Truth over lies. And unity over division. We are the United States of America. And together, there is not a single thing we can’t do. Join Team Joe today:

Sunday, April 26, 2020

A Year To The Day | Joe Biden For President

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#JoeBiden #Joe2020 #BidenForPresident

Former Vice President Joe Biden is running for president to restore the soul of the nation. He believes it’s time to remember who we are. We’re Americans: tough and resilient. We choose hope over fear. Science over fiction. Truth over lies. And unity over division. We are the United States of America. And together, there is not a single thing we can’t do. Join Team Joe today:

Friday, April 24, 2020

“Existential Fear and Constant Worry” – by Frederick Hess

John Deasy

John Deasy is superintendent of Stockton Unified school district. Previously he gained recognition and awards for his work as superintendent in districts including Los Angeles Unified and Prince George’s County. I reached out to John to see how he is dealing with the coronavirus and if he has any advice to share. Here’s what he had to say.

Rick: Can you walk us through some of the challenges you’re dealing with that people might not be aware of?

John: Some of the most serious challenges are with the youths that require and had been getting one-to-one contact with adults—things like physical and occupational therapy, speech therapy, and mobility and physical support for immobile youths. We are also trying to figure out what individual and group counselling looks like in the age of distance. And then there’s the issue of honoring all the laws of confidentiality while attempting to provide this type of support. Another very emotional issue that we’re grappling with is providing support when a student dies. Grief counseling and individual counseling are all different now; we simply can’t send out a crisis team to a school and a home right now. These are just a few examples.

Rick: How much confidence do you have that this distance learning is a meaningful substitute for all the benefits kids get from being in school? Is it a pretty close approximation or a pale imitation?

John: We actually do not know right now. This will take time to ascertain. It certainly is not a meaningful substitution for human connection. There are many skilled components to the acquisition of new knowledge—that is appropriately scaffolded and then used to solve new problems—and chief among them is that this has always been a communal and convivial event. Just think about how many times a teacher says: “Now turn to your elbow buddy and work together on this problem.” Or how many times do we see a teacher kneeling aside a student demonstrating a skill on the paper? The loss of this type of interaction and so many other intangible experiences of proximity will be felt, just not immediately understood. Another point I want to raise is that the development of executive function in early years is modeled and practiced in community, not at a distance. Students need to actually see and witness older students and adults use the skills found in a developed executive function in action so that they can apply these and model these skills. It is a set of skills that are unlikely to be developed and mastered in isolation or by reading. An analogy is trying to teach someone to swim by never entering the water. This will certainly need to be addressed.

Rick: What are you hearing from the field about how educators are dealing with the adjustment?

John: At the moment, my colleague superintendents across the country are dealing with too many variables to sufficiently catalog them all. However, among the commonalities of all these variables are:

1. We are at the center of both school and community responsibility nearly 24 hours a day. This is exhausting and emotionally draining in a way we have never faced.

2. The fact that decisions are now affected by so many external entities makes things very complex. We’re having to balance the advice of county and state health agencies, federal agencies, local emergency centers and their leaders, mayors and governors, and, as always, state departments of education.

3. Unlike other crises—a hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, and worse, violence—here was no emergency plan, “playbook,” or set of well-practiced drills for a global pandemic. What’s more, amid concern about serious threats to physical health and safety, the guidance we’ve been given has been shifting constantly. And furthermore, this event, unlike nearly all other emergency events, had no clear beginning and does not seem to have a clear end. When there is an earthquake, it strikes, it ends, we clean up, and we move forward. Disruption is usually temporary, and we can typically count on things going back to normal in the near future. Not so with this pandemic.

4. Finally, this is an invisible threat. All other crises can be seen. This kind of context is missing with the pandemic. Taken in total, this has led to a sense of existential fear and constant worry. The daily death rates and new case announcements are very difficult to wrap your head around. It is like the shock of 9/11 every week. We are being told that after the pandemic subsides dry up, we will face a historic shock to the economy. Leaders are being called upon to be models of assurance with positive and clear direction, and to create a sense of normality. Needless to say, this has and will continue to be very difficult.

Rick: How are you thinking about grading and promoting kids to the next grade?

John: We immediately established an executive team to deal with this problem and make proposals so that we can issue guidance soon. Like everything else with this crisis, it is complicated. High school students, and seniors in particular, have had a long understanding of a universal concept of grades and their importance. It goes far beyond the classroom. Car-insurance costs can be positively affected by grades, employers rely on report cards and transcripts during hiring, obviously colleges and universities rely heavily on grades (especially the final grades after acceptance), and the military relies on grades for making their acceptance decisions. All of this is now in flux. And I have not even mentioned things like English-learner reclassification and special education identification. We very well may be in the place where we will need to temporarily move to pass/fail for grading during the shutdowns. Obviously, there is more to come on this issue over the next month.

Rick: What percentage of your kids have internet access? And how are you trying to help those that don’t get online?

John: About 60-70 percent have home connectivity. We are lucky because we’ve been providing youths with hotspots to help with this for two years. So we were almost there already, and it has been more manageable to deal with the remaining families that don’t have internet.

Rick: Your schools serve a lot of kids who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Can you talk a bit about efforts to continue serving those kids and how they’re going?

John: We are providing lunch every day. Families drive up to their own school and receive a hot lunch and breakfast for the next morning. This has gone excellently so far, and we will be continuing it. We are now discussing how we might provide one meal over the weekend as well.

Rick: Similarly, some of your schools have high rates of poverty and homelessness. What can you tell us about efforts to help those kids?

John: We had established a remarkable program and support network for our youths and families in transition. Now we are very worried about those that we have lost physical and electronic contact with. We can still make contact by driving by and speaking to individuals who are homeless, but we need to know where they are. There are many supports and services that we can provide or help them understand what other supports they can have and where to find them. For example, where to take showers and obtain personal-hygiene products, food and meal services on the weekends, and free medical clinics. The main problem is maintaining contact with our more than 1,100 homeless youths and their families.

Rick: If a governor determines that schools can reopen in a state, how much lead time does a district need to actually make that happen? What’s involved?

John: Honestly, it will only take us about three days to open when we are given the green light.

Nothing is really involved that we wouldn’t have to do if we were opening back up after a summer or winter break anyway. Our janitorial staff have been great about ensuring the buildings have stayed sanitized and ready to go.

Rick: OK, last question. What should Washington or the states be doing to help right now?

John: Well, some leadership from the Department of Education be helpful. We are experiencing a significant lack of specific, actionable, and helpful guidance in dealing with: special education, migrant education, grading and our immediate future relationships with universities across the county, and since we have waivers from state testing regimes, what guidance do we have on language- learner progress and reclassification.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

Colorado News https://coloradomedia.co

CHIEF LAW OFFICERS DISCUSS MENTION REACTIONS TO THE PANDEMIC (7PM ET).

WORKING TOGETHER STATE BY STATE: In this time of crisis it is up to us to stand up for working people everywhere. Join our virtual town hall with state attorneys general on how we must handle the coronavirus pandemic.


BURLINGTON, Vt. – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday will host a virtual town hall with state attorneys general to discuss their response to the coronavirus pandemic and the effect of the crisis on the lives of working people.

Sanders will be joined by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

The livestream can be seen at live.berniesanders.com.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

A Virtual Climate Modification Town Hall with Special Visitor Al Gore|Joe Biden For President

In honor of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, join Joe Biden for a virtual town hall to address one of the most pressing issues facing our country and the world with special guest Vice President Al Gore. Join our campaign:

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Midday Yoga, The "Mute" Button, and Easier Distinction: Why One Teacher Likes the Unique e-School-- by Kerry McKay

When the school district for which I teach announced a shift to synchronous e-learning, I did a dance of joy and then felt guilty.

After the first week of e-teaching, colleagues were frustrated. A few were getting headaches after toggling for hours from one application to the next. Others said it was impossible to keep up with the workload while trying to learn all this new technology on the fly and look after their own young children. One colleague said to me, “I’ll never again complain about having to go to work.” I have sympathy, but so far, for me, at least so far, it’s all working out pretty well. I am one happy introvert.

To keep my e-instruction simple these first weeks, I’ve continued with the silent, sustained reading familiar to my students. Anticipating school closures, I had students take home a book of choice from our classroom library. At the start of each e-class, after we check in on Zoom, students read their book for 20 minutes and then write a response that they submit on Google Classroom. Many students seem to be really engaging with their books. I’m hearing voices in their writing that didn’t get expressed in the traditional classroom. One student who early in the school year said that she hates reading, now writes about finding a place in the sun and reading for well over the required 20 minutes because she gets lost in her book. I like getting to know kids this way. The quietest ones are now the loudest.

In the traditional classroom, it’s nearly impossible to conceal differentiation because students notice if I give out different levels of an article or ask a few students to do more rigorous work. Online, students can be in the same class but participate in different tasks without knowing one another’s business. And students can stay on Zoom after a mini lesson to ask questions without other students hearing their confusion.

In e-teaching, misbehaviors can be turned off. Predictably, on the first day of e-learning two lunkheads thought it would be funny to invite buddies onto our Zoom, under aliases, and then shout out profanities during the seconds it took me to find the mute button. Yes, in a traditional classroom these students wouldn’t be so emboldened. However, it is easy as the commander of Zoom, especially once you enable the “waiting room,” to simply remove a student from a class session with the touch of the screen. Tap. You’re gone. Misbehavior no longer needs to waste other students’ time.

Synchronized e-learning provides students and teachers with a schedule but a flexible one. Between classes, I can hop onto my yoga mat and do a few poses when I need to stretch. When I have a block of time on the schedule for preparation, I can go for a walk and do the prep work in the evening. And so can students. Both of my own teens have fit a run into the middle of their online school days.

My students with ADHD have been more productive. Maybe it is helping to be able to move around and separate from distracting classmates? Perhaps the privacy built into e-learning allows students to avoid negative peer pressure too. Kids with organizational challenges who I had urged prior to Coronavirus to use a planner are now writing down their assignments and keeping track of them. I asked a student why he’s now keeping the planner I had encouraged him to keep all year, and he said it doesn’t feel embarrassing anymore. One parent told me that her 17-year-old son is thriving—earning higher grades than when he was in the school building and restricted by the role he plays. At home, he can be himself, a curious intellectual.

For years sleep experts have espoused that the circadian rhythm of the teenager doesn’t match the start times of high schools. Since schools don’t have to juggle a bus schedule, many school have started their days later. The students I surveyed reported getting enough sleep for the first time since beginning high school. Furthermore, students have time to do their work. They don’t have to wait until 9:45 p.m., after a full day of school, piano lessons, driver’s education, and club volleyball practice.

E-learning is not for everyone. My students with individualized education programs are struggling more than ever despite individual Zoom sessions with teachers.

Once we’ve weathered the coronavirus storm, I hope that we will let today’s lessons enact positive culture shifts. I hope we will remember how good it feels to slow down, spend time with loved ones, and breathe cleaner air. I also hope that educators will recognize that there is great promise and possibility with e-learning. Students can have more autonomy. And so can teachers.

Kerry McKay is a public-school teacher in Darien, Connecticut.

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Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Play Is Vital for All Children, Pediatricians Insist-- by William Doyle

Chester E. Finn Jr.’s review in the Winter 2020 Education Next of our book Let the Children Play reveals a startling lack of knowledge of medical guidelines for children in school, including children in poverty.

Finn contends that our policy message, the need for more intellectual and physical play in school, “portends damage to children and society at least as severe as the practices the authors rightly deplore.” The reason, Finn asserts without evidence, is that playful teaching and learning “does little harm to middle-class kids,” but “for children from troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure.”

In fact, the exact opposite is true, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, which declares in its 2012 clinical report on play and children in poverty that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”

In the report, the AAP says that “play should be an integral component of school engagement,” and “for children who are underresourced to reach their highest potential, it is essential that parents, educators, and pediatricians recognize the importance of lifelong benefits that children gain from play.” The doctors added: “It could be argued that active play is so central to child development that it should be included in the very definition of childhood. Play offers more than cherished memories of growing up, it allows children to develop creativity and imagination while developing physical, cognitive, and emotional strengths.”

Some self-styled education reformers may see playful learning and teaching as a “recipe for failure,” but the nation’s children’s doctors believe that “play, in all its forms, needs to be considered as the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children,” including children in poverty. The power of play is also well understood by our teachers. Unfortunately, their views are often overruled by the assumption by some non-educators that play somehow threatens discipline and achievement.

Play is the learning language of children, and a critical foundation of life success. Teachers and pediatricians know that in school it can take many forms, including recess, free play and guided learning through play, playful teaching and learning and experimentation without fear of failure, and creative physical and intellectual expression through the arts and high-quality physical education. All children need it in regular doses, including and especially children in troubled circumstances.

An argument against play in school for any group of children is a reckless violation of the clinical position of America’s pediatricians and an insult to our teachers and students, and should be dismissed as such.

William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg are authors of Let The Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive (Oxford University Press, 2019).

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When Schools Closed by Coronavirus Will Reopen: a State-by-State List – by Melissa Fall

Since we most recently updated this graphic, even more states—including Massachusetts, Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia—have announced decisions to close school buildings for the remainder of the academic year, bringing to 36 the total number of states with schools physically closed until August or September. Washington, D.C., will also keep school buildings physically closed to students through the end of this school year.

U.S. school closures because of the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 began in New York private schools March 3, expanded to some Seattle-area public schools on March 6, and have rapidly swept the country. Education Next published its first article on the issue, “Closing Schools To Slow a Pandemic,” March 9. A March 25 article, “Covid-19 Closed Schools. When Should They Reopen?” included then-current information on the duration of announced school closures, along with a discussion of the factors to consider in deciding whether to resume. The current timetable for schools to reopen is updated in the infographic below. If the pattern holds, some of the reopening dates may get pushed back even later. While schools are closed physically, many, though not all, are providing some kind of distance learning or online programming.

 

Statewide School Closures

Source: Council of Chief State School Officers; Education Next research
Note: * Recommendation only.
**Recommendation only, districts are allowed to reopen if local social distancing requirements are lifted.
All data as of April 21, 2020. New York City’s mayor has announced that the city’s public schools will be closed for the remainder of the academic year, though the governor of New York has insisted that no such decision has been made and has denied that the mayor has the authority to make it.

 

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Tuesday, April 21, 2020

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Statewide Standardized Assessments Were in Peril Even Before the Coronavirus. Now They’re Really in Trouble. – by Lynn Olson

In February, before the coronavirus pandemic upended the nation’s education system, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian P. Kemp, announced plans to cut state-mandated high school end-of-course tests by half, confine state elementary and middle school testing to the last five weeks of the school year, shorten tests, and encourage school districts to work with the state’s education agency to reduce local testing. “When you look at the big picture, it’s clear,” Kemp declared. “Georgia simply tests too much.”

Governor Kemp’s announcement expressed a backlash against standardized testing in public education that has left the future of state testing, a cornerstone of school reform for nearly three decades, in doubt.

Pressure to reduce testing has come from many, often confounding sources: teachers’ unions and their progressive allies opposed to test-based consequences for schools and teachers; conservatives opposed to what they consider an inappropriate federal role in testing; suburban parents who have rallied against tests they believe overly stress their children and narrow instruction; and educators who support testing but don’t believe current regimes are sufficiently helpful given how much teaching time they consume.

School reformers and state and federal policymakers turned to standardized testing over the years to get a clearer sense of the return on a national investment in public education that reached $680 billion last year, to spur school improvement, and to ensure the educational needs of traditionally underserved students were being met. Testing was a way to highlight performance gaps among student groups, compare achievement objectively across states, districts, and schools, and identify needed adjustments to instructional programs.

But the pushback against testing in recent years has led to a substantial retreat on testing among state policymakers. A new national analysis by FutureEd has found that between 2014 and 2019, lawmakers in 36 states passed legislation to respond to the testing backlash, including reducing testing in a variety of ways, a direction also taken by many state boards of education and state education agencies.

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden expressed concerns about standardized testing during a national debate in December. And in the wake of mass school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced on March 20 that her department would waive federal standardized testing requirements for the 2019-20 school year in states requesting testing relief. The move, and the consequent loss of a year’s worth of longitudinal data, could further reduce the standing of state tests. The chances are strong that there won’t be any end-of-year state testing anywhere in the nation for the first time in half a century.

Already, teacher union leaders, like the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, are signaling the suspension could provide an opening to cancel the state tests permanently. In a Facebook post, the union president, Merrie Najimi, wrote,  “Onward to cancelling MCAS PERMANENTLY and reclaiming our schools as joyful places, where our curriculum returns to being developmentally appropriate as it was before we were shackled by MCAS, and where ALL kids can have their recess back since they won’t have to spend their days preparing for MCAS.”

Given the testing climate in recent years, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act has become a bulwark against further reductions in the measurement of school performance, even as DeVos suspends the law’s requirements for 2019-20. The law requires that every state test every student in seven grades annually and report the results in a way that bars school districts from masking the performance of disadvantaged students.

But a close analysis of the political landscape of standardized testing makes clear that unless a new generation of tests can play a more meaningful role in classroom instruction, and unless testing proponents can reconvince policymakers and the public that state testing is an important ingredient of school improvement and integral to advancing educational equity, annual state tests and the safeguards they provide are clearly at risk.

Toward Transparency

Before the 1960s, states had scant information about how well their students were performing. But in 1965, as part of the War on Poverty, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act poured millions of dollars into schools and required studies of the impact of those funds. In 1969, Congress mandated a federally funded snapshot of student performance, the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

State governments, meanwhile, began requiring tests to determine if students were making progress in core subjects. Michigan launched the first statewide testing program, also in 1969. But there were no state achievement standards for how well students should perform and no explicit consequences for schools if students performed poorly.

In the 1970s, concerns about the performance of high school students, in particular, led to the “minimum competency” movement and expanded state testing to ensure students graduated with the requisite basic skills. By the 1980s, there was growing alarm about student performance as the nation transitioned to a knowledge-based economy. Gaps in the achievement of long-neglected student populations gained prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement. The concerns spurred the publication of A Nation at Risk and a host of other reform manifestos that urged a more demanding curriculum and more rigorous graduation requirements for every student.

In the ensuing years, policymakers became increasingly frustrated as local districts watered down those requirements with courses like “business math” and “the fundamentals of science.” So, in the late 1980s and 1990s, Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as the nation’s governors, began to push for higher educational standards and national goals, as well as more student testing and efforts to hold schools and districts accountable for results. The Clinton Administration’s reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1994 required states, for the first time, to adopt state standards that would be the same for all students and to test all students’ progress against those standards in at least three grades.

But not all states responded to the requirements with equal rigor. When George W. Bush took office, he decided to place significantly more emphasis on tests and test results in the next reauthorization of the law, with the goal of ensuring that the needs of students furthest from opportunity were being addressed. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated that states test every student every year in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and test them in science at least once in elementary, middle, and high school. NCLB also required states, districts, and schools to publicly report test data by race and income. And it set strict timelines for schools to get every student to the proficient level on state tests or face an escalating series of supports and sanctions. The law effectively tripled the size of the state testing market over the six years after it was passed.

The increased requirements reflected a belief that for every child in America to achieve high standards, schools needed to track the learning of every student every year against those standards and be held accountable for the results—a fight against what then-President Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” National leaders simply didn’t trust local educators to do the right thing for low-income students and students of color, so they tried to force them to act, in part, by imposing far more transparency and accountability via testing.

“It has been clear to the civil rights community for a very long time that without comparable, annual statewide assessments, it is very difficult to know whether there is equal opportunity in education,” said Liz King, director of Education Policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Even if you don’t care about equity or remedying discrimination, I think there are a lot of people who care about knowing whether the education system is working, whether expenditures are supporting the outcomes that families expect.”

But if NCLB was designed to shed a bright light on educational inequities, states, districts, and schools frequently responded to that pressure in ways that jeopardized student learning and kindled anti-testing sentiment. Schools emphasized instruction in tested subjects at the expense of untested subjects and stressed test-taking skills. School districts piled on new benchmark tests to gauge how students would perform on end-of-year exams. States began to rely heavily on simplistic multiple-choice tests because they were cheaper and easier to administer in the face of NCLB’s tight testing timelines. And many states lowered their testing standards to get more students over the proficiency bar.

The Backlash Builds

Many states’ indifferent commitment to higher standards and counterproductive responses to NCLB led national leaders to push harder. In 1996, a bipartisan group of governors and business leaders had founded an organization called Achieve to help states ensure all students graduated high school ready for college and careers. In 2001, the same year that NCLB became law, a group of states began collaborating with Achieve to identify the “must have” knowledge and skills needed by higher education and employers. The work laid the foundation for a 2009 agreement by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to jointly develop demanding voluntary standards in English language arts and math—what became the Common Core State Standards.

As a result, the two organizations were finishing work on the Common Core standards at the same time the Obama administration was drafting the Race to the Top initiative, which provided billions of dollars in education funding to states to help address the 2008-09 economic crisis.

Governors asked that states be allowed to use some of the federal funding to implement the Common Core and to develop aligned tests, an expensive undertaking. In the end, the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program incentivized states to adopt tougher academic standards and more rigorous tests aligned with those standards, by making the grants  contingent on states adopting the reforms.

Spurred in part by the prospect of federal largesse, most states quickly embraced the Common Core standards and they joined one of two voluntary state consortia to develop Common Core-aligned tests with federal funding, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

The Obama administration also made competitive Race to the Top grants contingent on states creating new teacher evaluation systems that judged teachers “in significant part” on the basis of their students’ test scores, even though the tougher standards and tests wouldn’t be fully in place before the new evaluation systems were launched—a demand that Kate Walsh, the director of the National Council on Teacher Quality and a proponent of the move at the time, now calls “a strategic blunder.”

The administration’s decision to leverage billions of dollars in federal funding on behalf of higher standards, harder tests, and test-based consequences for teachers brought the national teachers’ unions and Tea Party conservatives to the barricades, if from opposite directions. The Tea Party and its Republican congressional allies condemned the Common Core as a federal usurpation of traditional local control in public education (even as state organizations led the development of the new standards). The unions targeted the new teacher evaluation systems and the increase in teacher accountability they represented, spurred by rank-and-file members outraged that their livelihoods suddenly depended on how well their students performed on brand new standards and tests.

In 2014, the three-million-member National Education Association launched a national “Campaign to End ‘Toxic Testing’” that would “seek to end the abuse and overuse of high-stakes standardized tests and reduce the amount of student and instructional time consumed by them.”

The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers pumped millions of dollars into state lobbying campaigns. They channeled money to outside organizations like FairTest to attack testing. And they launched grassroots efforts to encourage parents and their children to boycott state testing.

In 2015, the NEA’s Maryland affiliate launched a “Less Testing, More Learning” campaign to scale back testing and water down accountability—a lobbying blitz that included 50,000 e-mails, 4,000 phone calls, and 2,000 letters and postcards from MSEA members to their representatives, working alongside groups like the PTA, the ACLU, and the NAACP, organizations that have championed the reporting of test data by race and class to uncover educational inequities, but have opposed the use of state tests to make high-stakes decisions about schools and students, often out of concern about racial bias in standardized testing.

“I would urge parents…to opt out of testing,” Karen Magee, the then-president of New York State United Teachers, told an Albany public affairs show in 2015, after thousands of vocal parents and students, many of them in more-affluent suburban school districts, refused to take New York’s standardized tests on the grounds that the tests were too long, too stressful, and sidetracked instruction.

As the opt-out movement spread, generating a squall of sensational headlines, the U.S. Department of Education was compelled to warn a dozen states that they risked federal sanctions for not having enough students take their standardized tests.

At the same time, several book-length critiques of testing added fuel to the anti-assessment fires, including The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed with Standardized Tests, by Anya Kamenetz, an NPR reporter; The Testing Charade, by Daniel Koretz, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Beyond Test Scores, by Jack Schneider, an assistant professor in the college of education at University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

The Obama Administration Retreats

The avalanche of opposition forced the Obama administration to retreat on testing. In August 2015, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced in the blog post “Listening to Teachers on Testing” his department’s decision to grant states with NCLB waivers a one-year delay in incorporating scores into teacher evaluations. Duncan, who had pressed for test scores to be part of Race to the Top teacher evaluations, said he shared teachers’ concerns that “testing—and test preparation—takes up too much time.”

Even so, testing opposition remained strong, and the White House pressed for a more substantial response after the president told his advisors that testing was coming up in conversations as he traveled the country. In October, the administration announced a Testing Action Plan “to correct the balance” between the “vital role that good assessment plays … while providing help in unwinding practices that have burdened classroom time or not served students or educators well.” The administration announced grants for state and local testing audits, based on the recognition that state- and district-required tests, many of them not mandated by the federal government, had piled up over time and lost their strategic value. The administration also recommended that states cap the percentage of instructional time students spend taking required statewide standardized assessments, “to ensure that no child spends more than 2 percent of her classroom time taking these tests.”

That same month, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of Great City Schools, representing the nation’s large urban school districts, announced a joint project to throw “their collective weight behind an effort to reduce test-taking in public schools, while also holding fast to key annual standardized assessments.”

In December 2015, the president signed the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act. The new federal law gave states and districts far more power to craft their own education solutions than they had wielded under NCLB.

State Legislators React

State legislators responded to the testing backlash and the easing of federal mandates with a wave of legislation to restrict testing within their borders. FutureEd conducted a comprehensive analysis of state legislation and resolutions from 2014 through 2019.

Lawmakers introduced 426 bills and 20 resolutions in 44 states in response to critics’ claims of over-testing. Measures were adopted or enacted in 36 states. There were more bills in 2019 than in 2018, an indication that anti-testing sentiment remains strong in state capitals five years after the signing of the Every Student Succeeds Act. This is especially true in southern states such as Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Brian Kemp’s Georgia.

The FutureEd analysis excludes dozens of parental “opt out” bills that in most instances granted students unrestricted rights to sit out state tests. And it doesn’t reflect moves to reduce testing in many states in recent years by governors, state boards of education, and state departments of education.

Lawmakers’ most common legislative response was to reduce the number of state tests students must take. In other instances, they shortened the length of tests, capped standardized testing time in schools, required public reporting of testing time, or directed state agencies or local school districts to limit testing.

A quarter of the 167 bills to reduce state testing demanded the discontinuation of every test not required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and the No Child Left Behind Act before it. Others targeted tests in grades and subjects not covered by ESSA—particularly social studies. More than half the test-reduction legislation involved at least some social studies tests or high school exams in social sciences such as history. And half targeted high school end-of-course tests.

North Carolina’s Testing Reduction Act of 2019, signed into law by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, captures today’s state testing climate. The legislation eliminates nearly two dozen statewide exams used primarily for teacher evaluations. It directs the North Carolina department of education to report the numbers and types of state and local tests every year and publish state and local testing types/calendars on the agency’s website. It compels local school boards to cut local standardized testing if the number of tests or hours of testing exceed the state’s two-year average. And it establishes the intent of the North Carolina legislature to move away from a single long testing event at the end of the year and toward multiple short testing events throughout the year.

Policymakers’ pushback against testing is reflected in recent declines in state testing sales after years of expansion. The market shrank by 3.5 percent from 2017-18 to 2018-19, according to a recent analysis by Simba Information, a marketing research firm. “The pendulum has swung from developing new tests to reducing the number of exams that are required and shortening the length of existing exams,” according to Simba.

FutureEd’s analysis confirmed the bipartisan nature of the legislative action against standardized testing. Sixty-eight of the measures enacted between 2014 and 2019 were sponsored by individuals rather than legislative committees. Of those, Republican legislators authored 41 percent, Democrats authored 44 percent, and 15 percent were bipartisan.

In addition, some states have backed away from using student test scores to rate teachers since the 2015 passage of ESSA. The National Council on Teacher Quality reports that 26 states now use results from state standardized tests as part of their teacher evaluation systems, down from 37 states in 2015.

Teachers’ take on testing is complex. In general, teachers want measures of student progress and support standardized testing, but many don’t think the existing tests are doing the job, particularly when it comes to informing instruction and reflecting their curriculum.

Teacher union leaders are forthright about not wanting their teachers held accountable for their students’ achievement on standardized tests, and about their opposition to high-stakes school accountability more generally. That’s why they often sided with the opt-out movement. “We have actually pushed for appropriate testing and we’ve pushed for reductions of extraneous tests, extraneous paperwork,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, says. “The reason we were part of the opt-out movement, in some places, was because of the high-stakes nature of standardized testing. It wasn’t a snapshot to see where kids were at any point in time … Basically, there was a fixation on the teachers and the consequences for the teachers rather than a fixation on what children needed.”

Weingarten says she leans toward the type of sample testing in key grades that many high-performing countries use and away from testing every student every year, as required under ESSA—a move that would reduce transparency into school performance and eliminate the use of test results in teacher evaluations. The National Education Association advocated for such a shift during congressional drafting of ESSA.

Figure: State legislative activity on over-testing concerns, 2014 through 2019

A Tale of Two Tests

One reason for the perception that there’s too much state testing is that both parents and the public more generally often conflate state-mandated testing with the many interim, benchmark, and diagnostic tests that school districts deploy. Even as policymakers decrease time devoted to state testing, it’s difficult to rein in local assessments, which comprise an increasing share of the testing market, according to Simba.

“When we asked teachers, ‘What would you get rid of?’ they wanted to get rid of the state assessment because they didn’t find the state assessment immediately useful to their instruction,” says Rachel Cantor, executive director of Mississippi First, a state education advocacy group. “But the state assessments are not what actually takes all their time. It’s district assessments.” For their part, “Parents make no distinction whatsoever between state tests, district tests, teacher-made tests,” Cantor says. “It’s all just, ‘Why do you have so many tests?’”

Studies have found that the average classroom spends about 2 percent of instructional time taking mandated tests, a small fraction of the school year. But some schools and school districts spend much more, contributing to perceptions of “over-testing.” A 2014 study of a dozen urban districts by the non-profit organization Teach Plus found that test-taking ranged from three days in one district to two weeks in another. Test preparation ranged from 16 to 30 school days. The report was especially critical of the time spent on low-quality local benchmark tests that were often misaligned with state standards.

An inventory of standardized testing in 66 urban districts the following year by the Council of Great City Schools found that testing was most prevalent in the eighth grade, where students spent just over 2 percent of school time taking standardized tests. To the council’s executive director, Michael Casserly, the biggest problem wasn’t excessive testing time. It was results that weren’t coherent and useable: “I haven’t seen a lot of states, or anybody else, ask themselves the question, ‘Does this portfolio of standardized tests we’re using really measure what we want to have measured?’”

The Obama administration funded the development of the PARCC and Smart Balanced tests to address the mismatch between higher standards embodied in the Common Core and the superficiality of the standardized tests that emerged in many states under NCLB, though the consortia tests were typically longer than the tests they replaced. So as states abandon the consortia assessments, the risk of tests driving down classroom standards is reemerging.

A New Testing Landscape

The contours of a new generation of statewide standardized testing that promotes both accountability and instructional improvement has emerged from the testing debates of the past several years and from teacher surveys.

Teachers identify “capturing student learning over time, rather than a single snapshot at the end of one year” as a key way to make standardized testing more useful. Georgia, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina are piloting moves in that direction under the federal Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority, exploring ways to give more frequent, instructionally useful assessments that can roll up into a summative, year-end score. Similarly, Nebraska is working with the testing company NWEA to roll up the state’s computer-adaptive tests, given periodically throughout the year, into a cumulative result. In January, the U.S. Department of Education proposed to expand experimentation by increasing federal funding for such work.

To Emma Vadehra, former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration, that means developing more helpful tests, but also new measures to be used alongside tests in gauging school performance and supporting teachers’ work. Teachers agree. More than 7 in 10 teachers in the Educators for Excellence survey favored multiple measures of school performance that included district or state standardized tests.

The Every Student Succeeds Act incentivizes states to develop new measures by requiring them to include non-academic factors in judging schools’ performance. So far, 36 states have added student absenteeism to their accountability systems, making it by far the most popular measure. A dozen states have moved toward measuring school climate and student engagement through annual surveys of students, teachers and parents, in some cases holding schools accountable for the results. Though researchers warn that surveys shouldn’t yet be deployed in that way, school climate and student engagement are emerging as important aspects of student success.

Meanwhile, the layering of many local tests on top of state testing regimes, and the conflating of state and local testing in the minds of many parents and policymakers, points to the importance of more effective coordination on standardized testing between state and local education leaders. This could help reduce the level of standardized testing in the nation’s classrooms. As the executive director of the Michigan Assessment Consortium, Ed Roeber, put it: “States, with the cooperation and collaboration of local districts, need to develop systems of assessment that balance the state program with assessments that actually help kids learn.”

Ary Amerikaner, a former Obama administration education official and now a vice president at the Education Trust, also points out that school improvement continues to be a component of federal standardized testing mandates under ESSA, and “that requires actually getting the school-improvement side of state accountability systems right.” Emerging tests and testing systems also need to be developed with much more teacher involvement than has been the case so far. Testing systems must also stay attuned to the needs of parents, who tend to value their children’s progress more highly than the performance of the school systems they live in or even the schools their children attend.

A Race Against Time

There is not a tremendous amount of time to address these challenges.

The Georgia governor’s recent move to slash the state’s testing system suggests the issue is very much alive among conservative policymakers. Testing critics on the left have kept up a relentless drumbeat against high-stakes testing, supported in recent months by Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as by Biden.

Given the political gridlock in Washington and the current pandemic, it’s likely to be several years before ESSA is reauthorized. But the depth and breadth of the backlash against statewide standardized testing in recent years and the attacks on testing from both the left and the right suggest there’s a real chance that Congress could abandon the ESSA testing mandate when it next rewrites the law. That, in turn, could mean the end of annual statewide testing in many parts of the country and an end to the transparency and civil rights protections it was designed to produce.

That leaves school reformers in a race against the clock to create testing systems that are more valuable to educators and parents and that offer meaningful windows into school and student performance without overwhelming teachers and principals.

Adapted from the FutureEd report, The Big Test: The Future of Statewide Standardized Assessments.

By: Lynn Olson
Title: Statewide Standardized Assessments Were in Peril Even Before the Coronavirus. Now They’re Really in Trouble. – by Lynn Olson
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/statewide-standardized-assessments-were-in-peril-before-coronavirus-bipartisan-backlash/
Published Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 04:01:59 +0000

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