Is a Repackaged Failed Solution the Solution?
Hint: No
Peter Greene takes a look at the latest way education reformers are padding their pockets while purporting to offer solutions that will help schools (and the students in them).
This “answer” to all of education’s problems: One big, national test. And, since we already have the NAEP - just use that. But for every kid. Every year.
This will finally give us that comparative data everyone is looking for - except no one is really looking for it.
Peter’s digression really gets to the central point of “ed reform madness.”
Let me digress for just a moment to note the oddness of that idea of stagnation--as if test scores should keep rising like stock prices and property values. Each cohort of students should be smarter and better than the one before, a thing that would happen... why? What's the theory here? Each year's children will be genetically better than those that came before? That every teacher will significantly up her game with every passing year (because the students rotate out at a much higher rate than the teachers)? Schools get better at gaming the tests? If the expectation is that each successive group of students will score higher than the group before, what is supposed to cause that to happen? And how does it square with the people who think that education should be going "back" to something like "basics"? I mean, doesn't the vision of non-stagnating test scores include students who are all smarter and more knowledgeable than their parents?
Greene calls out this line from the advocates of SuperNAEP:
This reform (annual NAEP for all 4th and 8th graders in the U.S.) would offer a shared benchmark to evaluate progress across states and districts. At a time when parents, educators, and policymakers are calling for both accountability and flexibility, a restructured NAEP provides a rare opportunity to deliver both.
As Greene notes, this is a reform no one is asking for. And it is not clear how it would help.
We already have a random sample NAEP. We already get scores on an interval basis. We can already make comparisons - both among states and among various groups of students.
I guess the question is: If every 4th and 8th grader took the NAEP and it was administered annually, then what? What happens next? What will states be motivated to do? Or not do?
It probably doesn’t matter - this quest gives ed reform “advocates” a few more years of work - and a new opportunity to pursue funding.
Vouchers Killing Schools in Arizona
Save Our Schools Arizona reports that school vouchers are having a devastating impact on public schools:
The Sierra Vista Unified School District is the next in a long line of districts to consider school closures. The district is facing a $2 million financial shortfall — far less than the almost $8 million drained for school vouchers in that district alone (check out our tracker to see how much vouchers are draining your school district). The proposed plan would close two of the district's six middle schools, and shift all 6th graders to their middle school campus.