Andrea Gabor

An article based on my months-long investigation of the New Orleans charter school system is up on Newsweek. Please see:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/09/20/post-katrina-the-great-new-orleans-charter-tryout.html

And please stay tuned for some follow-up posts on the subject.

Five years ago, I found myself drafted onto a New York State Department of Education committee charged with revamping the English Language Arts standards. As a journalism professor at Baruch College/CUNY, I had the non-fiction expertise that were seen as so important to developing the new standards. Although I had no experience in public schools, I was on the receiving end of the abilities and deficits of kids graduating from the city’s high schools.

As a journalist who had spent much of my career writing about business and management issues, I also had become intrigued with the corporate education-reform movement; I couldn’t resist a chance to participate, even in a small way, in the sausage making of public education policy.

The work of our committee would take close to two years to complete, with multiple trips to Albany, at a cost that must have run to several hundred-thousand dollars—if not a few million. We debated how to balance literature and non-fiction, how to accommodate the needs of immigrant kids who are struggling to learn English and how to account for the radically different cultural experiences of the students who would be taking the tests–kids in remote rural areas, in suburbs, in New York City.

The committee’s work was eventually jettisoned when New York State decided to adopt the Common Core State Standards.

So, when an educator recently handed me an illicit copy of the controversial “common-core”-based New York State standardized tests, I was eager to see what the fuss was about.

The tests, which were developed by Pearson and administered to students in April, were so poorly received by both educators and parents, that veteran New York City principals mounted a grassroots campaign in opposition to what they say are “unfair” tests that take an“intolerable toll” on children. Now as New York City gets ready to develop even more tests in every conceivable subject—in response to the new teacher-evaluation system imposed this weekend by New York State, which calls for 20 percent of a teacher’s ratings in all subjects to be based on student test scores–this is an opportune time to reflect on the considerable flaws, and costs, of these most recent standardized tests.

I received full copies of each of the sixth, seventh and eighth grade tests (minus one eighth-grade booklet.) Grades 3 to 5 were also tested, though I did not see copies of these tests.

New York State is part of PARCC, a consortium that is developing a common core assessment. But it is one of the few states that have rushed to implement a common-core based test before PARCC itself is ready to roll out its own assessment in the 2014/2015 school year.

The most fundamental problem with the tests is that they were administered before teachers have had any meaningful training in the new standards, and before students have had much exposure to them; schools, kids and educators, in short, are being set up for failure.

A close reading of the tests given to grades 6 to 8 raised many concerns regarding their contents. I was especially surprised to see not only how heavily the tests were skewed to non-fiction, but also the nature of those non-fiction readings, which were dominated by scienc(y) writings, with very few readings that drew on civics, American history or the urban experience.

Others have commented on the grueling length of the tests. Diane Ravitch who saw a bootlegged copy of the 5^th grade tests noted: “Based on test questions I had reviewed for seven years when I was a member of the NAEP board, it seemed to me that the test was pitched at an eighth grade level. The passages were very long, about twice as long as a typical passage on NAEP for eighth grade. The questions involved interpretation, inference, and required re-reading of the passage for each question.”

Each of the tests for grades 6, 7 and 8 are completed in 90-minute segments over the course of three days. The seventh grade test, for example, is about 72 pages long (there are a few blank pages added for essay questions.) It includes 14 passages, the vast majority of which are one-to-two pages in length. There were also eight short-answer questions that require writing about one long paragraph each, as well as two essay questions. Then there were the endless multiple choice questions—over 100 of them, far more than the number on earlier test, according to education experts. (More on this later.)

Taken together, the 6 to 8 grade tests are weighted two-to-one in favor of non-fiction, far more than even the common core standards require for these grade levels. The common core calls for a 45/55 fiction-to-non-fiction ratio in the eighth grade. David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, lead authors of the common core, argue that this will not work against the teaching of literature because “the bulk” of the responsibility for nonfiction reading “will be carried by non-ELA disciplines” such as science and social studies. “Said plainly, stories, drama, poetry, and other literature account for the majority of reading that students will do…”

Even if you leave aside the small detail that only ELA teachers will be judged, VAMed and, perhaps, fired for poor performance based on the assessment, there is very little fiction or poetry in the NYS test.

As I read through the tests, I also was reminded of Jackie Pryce-Harvey, one of the few New York City public school teachers who participated on the New York State ELA standards committee. A 50-something year old Jamaican-born educator, Jackie had spent most of her teaching career in the Bronx and Harlem. Once or twice a day, during those long sessions in Albany, Jackie, who was often the only African-American in the room, would explain why this or that idea wouldn’t work for inner city kids of color, or why certain readings—ones about happy families going hiking were among her favorites– do not make sense to many of her students. Jackie is now the assistant principal at Global Technology Preparatory, a middle school she helped found in Harlem. During test prep sessions at the school, she invariably tells her kids, only half joking: “You have to remember, white people are strange: They think hiking and camping are fun.”

About the same time, I was also reading Unafraid of the Dark, a wonderful memoir by Rosemary Bray, a reverend with the Fourth Universalist Society in New York City, who as a poor, African-American scholarship student attended Francis W. Parker, the elite private high school in Chicago that is my alma mater. In one passage Bray recalls being invited to a friend’s house after school. Upon arriving at the address, a four-story building, she became confused because she could not find a panel listing the tenants and apartment numbers. Eventually, her friend saw her outside and let her in; the friend lived in a single-family home, something Bray had not even considered a possibility.

You don’t have to be “culturally sensitive” to notice that the content of the New York State tests seem designed for non-urban kids. Only one of 14 passages in the seventh grade test, “The Harlem Renaissance,” by Lisa Beringer McKissak, deals with an explicitly urban subject. By contrast, one of the few fiction texts in the eighth grade test is a short-story, “An Uncomfortable Bed,” by Guy de Maupassant, which takes place in a French chateau. The rest—fiction and non-fiction alike—read like they had been culled from Field and Stream or Rock and Ice.

There are passages about long hikes, horse-back riding, travel via air-balloon and ship. There are stories for young naturalists—on meteorites, aquatic nurseries, octopuses and jelly fish. There are also readings about adventures in remote parts of the world, such as the hunt for gold in the Klondike region of Canada.

But there is little that speaks to the experience of kids who live in New York City and other urban areas—nothing about museum-going or hip-hop culture, riding subways or buses, living in apartment buildings. Of course, city kids should be exposed to readings about nature and the outdoors, just as rural kids should be expected to read and understand texts about the urban experience.

Interestingly, one of the test’s only passages on American history is the essay “Eight Hours and Nothing Less,” by Samuel Gompers. I wonder whether Pearson recognized the irony of including a text by one of the founding fathers of the American labor movement at a time when the education reform movement, including new teachers evaluations, has become almost synonymous with union busting.

As a journalist who has spent my professional life writing non-fiction, I confess that I am puzzled by the non-fiction mania reflected in the common core and in New York State’s test. I believe fervently that every high-school student should be able to read, and understand, The New York Times. For young people, the newspaper is not just a window on the world, it is also a way to learn about civics. (That is why my infamous news quizzes invariably include questions about the Supreme Court, important legislation and the legislative process, areas about which many of my students know little.)

Yet, this (over)emphasis on non-fiction strikes me as excessively utilitarian and, in the end, counterproductive. Here it is important to remember that the common core assessments are meant to test ELA, not history or civics or science. Moreover, I’ve found that kids who have read Fitzgerald, Twain or Doctorow, are the ones who are most likely to read, and understand, non-fiction texts like The New York Times.Yet, the emphasis on non-fiction in both the standards—and the assessments—already has put pressure on ELA teachers to deemphasize literature; in other words, less Fitzgerald, Twain and Doctorow…

Then, too, there is the question of how the new assessments are scored. Bill Heller, an expert in data and assessment at Teaching Matters, writes about the importance of having a reliable norming process. “Norming is the process of calibrating the use of a single set of scoring criteria among multiple scorers,” Heller writes. “If norming is successful, a particular piece of work should receive the same score regardless of who is scoring it.”

Heller describes how a good norming process works here.

The problem is that New York State assessments have not typically developed a common norming process, in part, perhaps, becuase doing so is expensive. Heller writes: “Different sections of the state have different norming procedures, which means the state as a whole has none. I’ve talked with many New York City teachers who have scored the exam, and they report that there was very little effort to norm. Different scorers had wildly different standards for interpreting the rubric, and even the same scorer could become more lenient as the days went on. The final scores, then, were as much of a function of geography, timing, and luck as they were of student performance. How can we possibly make use of this data to reliably identify student learning problems, let alone make high-stakes decisions about school, teacher, or student performance?”

In New York City, the April test will be scored by New York City teachers who are pulled out of their classrooms for that purpose (one of the little discussed costs of high-stakes testing.) Presumably the same is true in other parts of the state. “Based on past experience with the New York State tests, I fear there will not be a rigorous state-wide norming process in place for this year’s exam,” says Heller.

It is hard to know anything for sure, though, as everything about the test is cloaked in secrecy. Each test comes with a bold warning against reproducing or transmitting the test in any form. As Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association puts it: “If these tests are never made public there is absolutely no way to hold the state accountable.”

It is easy to point the finger at Pearson, which has a five-year, $32 million contract to create tests for the state. The costs of the tests, though, are just the tip of the iceberg. There is also the cost of scoring them–especially if that process is done well. Then there are the opportunity costs–the time spent on test-taking instead of learning, the costs to schools that have to hire substitutes so their teachers can score tests.

This brings us back to all those multiple choice questions on the latest New York State assessments. One of the factors that is supposed to set the Common Core apart is that they are aimed at developing “authentic” learning experiences that help connect what kids are learning to the real world. For example, at West Side Collaborative, teachers developed an interactive assessment based on the Pacific Trash Vortex, a Texas-sized mass of garbage in the North Pacific; drawing on a range of documents that students need to study, including news stories, lab reports and maps of ocean currents, students are asked to propose solutions to the garbage problem.

On Sunday, Shael Polakow-Suransky, chief academic officer of the city’s Department of Education, told The New York Times, that he wants new tests that will challenge students to think critically and creatively. “We don’t want to just invent hundreds of new bubble tests in order to satisfy these requirements for teacher evaluation,” said Polakow-Suransky.

The problem is this: Developing better tests that assess “authentic” work, creativity and critical thinking will be complicated and expensive. Multiple choice questions, like the ones in such abundance on the latest Pearson test, provide a minimalist view of what children understand and do little to foster critical thinking skills; but they are cheap. As Polakow-Suransky once told me, when it comes to tests “you get what you pay for.”

As more subject tests and common core assessments are rolled out in the coming years, the costs of developing and administering those tests will soar. Without substantial increases in funding, it is unlikely that testing organizations like Pearson and PARCC will be able to resolve the tension between the demand for “authentic” learning experiences and the constant push for for ever more high-stakes standardized tests.

This is a follow-up to last week’s posts about two letters written by New York City principals critiquing the “Common Core” tests administered to kids in grades 3 to 8, in April, and calling on colleagues to opt out of using the new assessments as part of their admissions criteria.

The revised letter to John B. King, New York State Commissioner of Education, calls for a “constructive dialogue…to help ensure that moving forward our New York State Exams are true and fair assessments of the Common Core Standards.” While the new draft strikes a more conciliatory tone, the principals have sharpened their criticism of Pearson, the company that designed the tests, questioning “the efficacy of Pearson in this work.”

The new draft, , which is to be sent this week, includes the signatures of 47 principals. Here is the text of the new draft:

May 2013

Dear New York State Education Commissioner John King,

We New York City and Metropolitan Area Principals hold ourselves accountable to ensuring that all of our students make consistent and meaningful academic progress. Although we are skeptical of the ability of high stakes tests alone to accurately capture students’ growth, we understand a system’s need for efficiently establishing and measuring milestones of learning.

We have been encouraged by the new National Common Core Standards’ call for more rigorous work that encourages critical thinking, and many of us have been engaged in meaningful curriculum revisions as a result. We were hopeful that this year’s state exams would better represent the college preparatory-type performance tasks that Common Core exemplifies. Unfortunately, we feel that not only did this year’s New York State Exams take an extreme toll on our teachers, families and most importantly, our students, they also fell short of the aspirations of these Standards.

For these reasons, we would like to engage in a constructive dialogue with you and your team to help ensure that moving forward our New York State Exams are true and fair assessments of the Common Core Standards.  As it stands, we are concerned about the limiting and unbalanced structure of the test, the timing and length of the daily test sessions, and the efficacy of Pearson in this work.

In both their technical and task design, these tests do not fully align with the Common Core.  The ELA test was narrowly focused, requiring students to analyze specific lines, words and structures of mostly informational text and their significance. In contrast, the Common Core emphasizes reading across different texts, both fiction and non-fiction, in order to determine and differentiate between central themes—an authentic college practice.  Answering granular questions about unrelated topics is not. Because schools have not had a lot of time to unpack Common Core, we fear that too many educators will use these high stakes tests to guide their curricula, rather than the more meaningful Common Core Standards themselves.  And because the tests are missing Common Core’s essential values, we fear that students will experience curriculum that misses the point as well.

Even if these tests were assessing students’ performance on tasks aligned with the Common Core Standards, the testing sessions—two weeks of three consecutive days of 90-minute (and longer for some) periods—were unnecessarily long, requiring more stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam. Yet, for some sections of the exams, the time was insufficient for the length of the test.  When groups of parents, teachers and principals recently shared students’ experiences in their schools, especially during the ELA exams with misjudged timing expectations, we learned that frustration, despondency, and even crying were common reactions among students.  The extremes were unprecedented:  vomiting, nosebleeds, suicidal ideation, and even hospitalization.

There were more multiple-choice questions than ever before, a significant number of which, we understand, were embedded field-test questions that do not factor into a child’s score but do take time to answer and thus prevent students from spending adequate time on the more authentic sections like the writing assessment.   Further, the directions for at least one of the English Language Arts sessions were confusing and tended to misdirect students’ energies from the more authentic writing sections.

Finally, we are concerned about putting the fate of so many in the education community in the hands of Pearson – a company with a history of mistakes, most recently with the mis-scoring of the NYC test for the gifted and talented program. (Thirteen percent of those 4 to 7 year olds who sat for the exam were affected by the errors; Pearson has a 3-year DOE contract for this test alone, worth $5.5 million.)  There are many other examples of Pearson’s questionable reliability in the area of test design:  In Spring 2012 only 27% of 4^th grade students passed a new Florida writing test.  Parents complained, the test was reevaluated, and the passing score was changed so that the percentage of students who passed climbed to 81%.  The Spring 2012 NYS ELA 8^th grade test had to be reevaluated after complaints about meaningless reading passages about talking pineapples and misleading questions. (See Alan Singer, Huffington Post, 4/24/13; John Tierney, The Atlantic, 4/25/13.)  Parents and taxpayers have anecdotal information, but are unable to debate the efficacy of these exams when they are held highly secured and not released for more general analysis.

These exams determine student promotion.  They determine which schools individual students can apply to for middle and high school.  They are a basis on which the state and city will publicly and privately evaluate teachers.  The exams determine whether a school might fall under closer scrutiny after a poor grade on the test-linked state and city progress reports or even risk being shut down.  These realities give us an even greater sense of urgency to make sure the tests reflect our highest aspirations for student learning.

So, we respectfully request a conversation about the direction of New York’s Common Core State Exams.  As the state is in its early phases of Common Core assessment, we have a wonderful opportunity to align our efforts towards learning that best prepares our children for their future lives.  We believe we can do better – and we are committed to helping New York realize the full promises of Common Core.

Respectfully,

Ellen Foote

Principal of Hudson River Middle School, I.S. 289

Mark Federman

Principal of East Side Community High School, H.S. 450

Stacy Goldstein

Principal of School of the Future, M413

David Getz

Principal of East Side Middle School, M114

Laura Mitchell

Principal of Young Womens’ Leadership School of Astoria, Q286

Rhonda Perry

Principal of The Salk School of Science, M.S. 255

Kelly McGuire

Principal of Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, M896

Jeanne Rotunda

Principal of West Side Collaborative Middle School, P.S. 250

Ramon Gonzalez

Principal of The Laboratory School of Science and Technology, M.S. 223

Paula Lettiere

Principal of Fort Greene Preparatory Academy, M691

Amy Andino

Principal of The Academy of Public Relations, X298

Maria Stile

Principal of Heathcote Elementary School, Scarsdale Public Schools

Rex Bobbish

Principal of The Cinema School, X478

Elaine Schwartz

Principal of Center School, M.S. 243

Liz Phillips

Principal of William Penn Elementary, P.S. 321

Chrystina Russell

Principal of Global Technology Prep, M406

Giselle McGee

Principal of The Carroll, P.S. 58

Elizabeth Collins

Principal of University Neighborhood High School, H.S. 448

Jennifer Rehn

Principal of Wagner Middle School, M.S. 167

Anna Allanbrook

Principal of Brooklyn New School, P.S. 146

Henry Zymeck

Principal of The Computer School, M.S. 245

Julia Zuckerman

Principal I.A. of Castle Bridge School, P.S. 513

Alison Hazut

Principal of Earth School, P.S. 364

George Morgan

Principal of Technology, Arts and Sciences School, M301

Alicia Perez-Katz

Principal of Baruch College Campus High School, M411

Sandra Pensak

Principal in Hewlitt-Woodmere Public Schools

Peter Carp

Principal of Institute for Collaborative Education, M407

Sharon Fiden

Principal of Doris Cohen Elementary, P.S.230

Alyce Barr

Principal of Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, K448

Christina Fuentes

Principal of Spuyten Duyvil School, P.S. 24

Naomi Smith

Principal of Central Park East II, M964

Rebecca Fagin,

Principal of John M Harrigan, P.S. 29

Bernadette Fitzgerald,

Principal of The School of Discovery, P.S. 503

Alex White,

Principal of Gotham Professional Arts Academy, K594

Maria Nunziata,

Principal of Hernando DeSoto School, P.S. 130

Lindley Uehling,

Principal of Central Park East I, M497

Christine Olson,

I.A. Principal of James Baldwin School, M313

Robyn J. Lane

Principal of Quaker Ridge School, Scarsdale

Robert Bender

Principal of The WIlliam T. Harris Schhool

Lauren Fontana

Principal of The Lillie Devereaux Blake School

Erica Zigelman

Principal of MS 322

Sharon Fougner

Principal of Em Baker School, Great Neck Public Schools

Kelly Newman

Assistant Superintendent, Great Neck Public Schools

Ron Gimondo

Principal of John F. Kennedy School, Great Neck Public Schools

Lydia Bellino

Assistant Superintendent, Cold Spring Harbor Public Schools

Eric Nezowitz

Principal of Saddle Rock Elementary, Great Neck Public Schools

Arthur Brown

Principal of The Museum School, P.S. 33

This is an update of a story posted yesterday.

In response to widespread anger among both parents and educators over the new high-stakes tests administered to kids in grades 3 to 8, a group of veteran New York City principals is mounting a grassroots campaign in opposition to what they say are “unfair” tests and the “intolerable toll” they are taking on children. The group is calling on fellow principals not to use the new assessments as part of their admissions criteria.

On Monday, the principals drafted a letter to John B. King, New York State Commissioner of Education, offering a scathing critique of the tests, and collected signatures from about 40 principals.

Last night, the group sent the critique along with a second letter addressed to elementary and middle-school constituents–including families, educators and “concerned citizens”–requesting signatures from middle school principals throughout the city. The letter explicitly states that the schools that sign onto the letter “will not use tests as part of the criteria for admissions.”

“The hope is that this will send a strong message against unfair testing,” wrote Mark Federman, a veteran principal at East Side Community High School on East 12^th Street in Manhattan and one of the principals organizing the campaign, in a brief email circulating the two letters.

So far about a dozen principals have signed the second letter. Not all New York City schools have selective admissions.

The letter-writing campaign follows two weeks of high-stakes testing in April. The tests were developed by Pearson, which the principals note has “a history of screw-ups,” most recently on tests for New York City’s gifted and talented program.

The principals charge that the tests, which were designed to align to the Common Core State Standards, are, in fact, “the antithesis” of the common core’s original intent and are needlessly traumatizing kids. The letter to Commissioner King notes: “When groups of parents, teachers and principals recently shared students’ experiences in their schools, especially during the ELA exams, we learned that frustration, despondency, and even crying (yes, in middle schools) were common reactions among students.  The extremes were unprecedented:  vomiting, nosebleeds, suicidal ideation, and even hospitalization.  Is it necessary to subject children to an inhumane experience in order to assess their learning?”

While cautiously optimistic about the aims of the common core, especially its efforts to foster “critical, flexible thinking”, the principals warn that the Pearson tests do not align with the common core. Too many of the questions were overly narrow; they also overemphasized nonfiction texts, including “authors’ choices around structure and craft in informational texts,” and gave short shrift to literature.

But because everything from the placement of students in ongoing schools to teacher evaluations are likely to hinge on how well kids do on the tests, the principals warn that educators might build their curricula on the ill-founded tests, instead of the common core.

Much of the criticism of the tests, so far, has centered on the fact that it included material that is not part of current school curricula and that students had not covered.

The letters include some of the following charges:

–The tests were “narrowly focused,” often calling for right or wrong answers where they do not exist.

–They were “inhumanely long, requiring more stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam.”

–They were replete with more multiple-choice questions than ever before.

–They were unnecessarily confusing.

The text of the two letters is below:

May 2013

Dear Elementary and Middle School Families, Students, Teachers, Parent Coordinators, Counselors and Principals; New York City and New York State Department of Education Officials; and Concerned Citizens:

We are writing to communicate with you a change of policy in our admissions criteria brought on by the great concern we have about the recent new “Common Core” state tests in grades 3-8. Historically, most of us have used test scores in one way or another as part of the criteria to enter our middle schools and high schools.  For the incoming 2014-2015 classes and beyond, we will no longer be using test scores as part of our criteria for selecting students.  Although we do believe that state test scores provide us with some information about children’s skills and capabilities, we have always known they were just one piece of a much more complex puzzle.   The introduction of the Common Core Learning Standards (although far from perfect) and news that the tests would be more aligned to the CCLS made some of us more hopeful about the role that testing might play in capturing student learning.  The Common Core Learning Standards themselves, PARCC’s information, and the NYC DOE’s information about the Common Core represent a deeper and more meaningful understanding of what students should learn, know and be able to do in order to be ready for college, career and citizenship.  Unfortunately, the new tests that are masquerading as assessments of Common Core are the antithesis of our understanding of the Common Core’s original intent.  We welcome rigor, high standards and accountability, but demand that these three crucial words and concepts not be thrown around loosely; and, even more importantly, we demand that they be implemented in a proper, respectful and effective way.   Therefore, we cannot grant these recent tests the value others claim they have until the following four concerns are addressed.

1.     The length, time and structure of the test:  Even if these tests were assessing the Common Core Standards and valuable information, the length, structure and timing caused many students to rush through the tests in an attempt to finish; get stuck on confusing questions; and not complete the test or even get to more authentic parts like the writing assessment.  Moreover, the inappropriate length and structure induced unnecessary anxiety, causing many students to second-guess themselves or randomly bubble in answers.  As a result, we fear that in many instances students’ scores will not represent their true abilities.  Indeed, the test will, in fact, penalize students who attempted to practice many of the Common Core skills we emphasized to our students, such as close reading, rereading, critical thinking, and crafting nuanced claims. In English, the standards themselves and everything we as pedagogues know to be true about reading and writing say that multiple interpretations of a text are not only possible but necessary when reading deeply.  However, for several multiple choice questions the distinction between the right answer and the next best right answer was petty at best.  The fact that teachers report disagreeing about which multiple-choice answer is correct in several places on the ELA exams indicates that this format is unfair to students.  The math tests contained 68 multiple-choice problems often repeatedly assessing the same skills.  The language of these math questions was often unnecessarily confusing.  These questions should not be assessing our students’ ability to decipher convoluted language.  Instead, they should be assessing deep understanding of core concepts.   Even in cases where students with IEPs had extended time, the mere length of the test made it very difficult for students to maintain the stamina for three hours.  We know very few competent, professional adults who can sustain focus and maintain quality work for three straight hours on extremely difficult tasks without proper breaks. Kids as young as 8 have to sit for longer than people taking the SAT, teacher certification tests, or the bar exam.  Testing kids for this amount of time is completely unnecessary, as their basic skill level should not change across days.  Kids without ridiculous stamina, however, will tend to do more poorly.  We recommend:

a)      Shorter, untimed tests

b)      Questions that are designed to test students’ critical reading and writing skills and not their ability to analyze inauthentic test questions.

c)      Fewer multiple choice math questions testing isolated skills and more open-ended problems that can be solved using various solution pathways. These open-ended problems should focus on the critical areas emphasized in the Common Core.

d)     For students with IEPs, we also recommend less rigid rules around students taking breaks and the possibility of schools breaking down or chunking the time students spend on the tests.

2.     The tests were NOT “Common Core” tests.  New York State, New York City and the media continue to refer to the recent tests as “Common Core” tests.  The simple but most important fact that must be stated is that these tests may have been more rigorous and challenging in some ways, but were in no way Common Core assessments.  The ELA tests assessed and covered a very narrow interpretation of the Common Core.  If one was to look closely at the Common Core Learning Standards (www.corestandards.org) and compare them to the tests, it is evident that the tests focused mostly on analyzing specific lines, words and structures of information text and their significance rather than the wide array of standards. As a result, many students spent much of their time reading, rereading and interpreting difficult and confusing questions about authors’ choices around structure and craft in informational texts, a Common Core skill that is valuable, but far from worthy of the time and effort.  We read informational texts for research and background knowledge from which to craft our perspective on important issues.  We spend far less time analyzing specific lines of non-fiction as we do poems or literature; rather we analyze non-fiction for central ideas and specific evidence for claims.  Spending so much time on these questions was at the expense of many of the other deep and rich common core skills and literacy shifts that the state and city emphasized.  Common Core emphasizes reading across different texts in order to determine and differentiate between central themes.  This is an authentic adult practice.  Answering granular questions about unrelated topics is not.  It is difficult to imagine how the recent ELA tests that our students took will be an indicator of how ready they will be for middle school or high school, let alone how they assess a student’s progress on a trajectory toward college, career and citizenship, unless of course it is a college, career or society that values tricky, difficult multiple choice questions being answered with little time to process or think.   We demand that if the Common Core Learning Standards are what we are expected to teach and value in our schools, that the highest stake assessments for students, teachers and schools actually and authentically assess the Common Core Learning Standards, not undermine them.

3.     This leads us to our third point: transparency.  Unfortunately, most families, students, educators, journalists, politicians, and policy makers will not be able to have any meaningful reflection, analysis, discussions or debates around the issues mentioned because the tests—although paid for by the public and used to make high stakes decisions about public school students and public employees—are highly secured and not released to the public.  The number one skill that the Common Core Standards seem to value—looking closely at evidence in order to make claims—is not able to be practiced here because the most important evidence, the tests themselves, are under lock and key.  We are all for holding students, teachers and schools accountable, but there seems to be very little accountability on the part of Pearson, the testing company taking millions of dollars of public money, or the state officials approving and administering these tests.  We demand that the tests be made public immediately so that meaningful, evidence-based discussions can take place and the testing company and decision makers are held accountable as well.

4.     Inauthentic tests and test prep are taking away time for quality instruction and authentic learning and testing.  We fear that even the schools and teachers with the best intentions will continue to move away from authentic forms of reading, writing, speaking, listening, problem solving, thinking—and ironically away from the Common Core—after seeing these recent tests.  If these tests remain at the heart of student, teacher and school “accountability” and masquerade as “rigor,” teaching and learning will suffer and students will lose out.  We demand that students, teachers and schools be held accountable in a way that promotes real learning and increases authentic rigor, not undermines it.

When these arguments and demands are addressed and met, we will consider using state test scores as valuable criteria for admission. Until then we must truly put children first—ahead of testing.

Sincerely,

Principals and schools will be listed here.

Mark Federman, Principal of East Side Community School

Rex Bobbish, Principal of The Cinema School

Sonhando Estwick, Principal of Tompkins Square Middle School

Rosemarie Gaetani, Principal of MS 104

Stacy Goldstein, Principal of School of the Future Middle School

Ramon Gonzalez, Principal of MS223

Peter Karp, Principal of Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE)

Kelly McGuire, Principal of Lower Manhattan Middle School

George Morgan, Principal of Technology, Arts and Science Studio (TASS)s Middle School

Lisa Nelson, Principal of Isaac Newton Middle School

John O’Reilly, Principal of Arts & Letters

Dear Commissioner King,

We New York City and Metropolitan Area principals, hold ourselves accountable to ensuring that all of our students make consistent and meaningful academic progress. Although we are skeptical of the ability of high stakes tests alone to accurately capture students’ growth, we understand a system’s need for efficiently measured milestones of learning. In general, believing that the NYS exams have been fair, we have kept the demands on preparation for, and the anxiety associated with, high-stakes tests in proper perspective.

However, this year’s NYS exams have taken an intolerable toll on every stakeholder in our education community, most important, on our children.   We fear that the credibility of the New York State Education Department, one of the most influential bodies in determining the direction of our children’s learning, has been sorely compromised.  We respectfully ask that you address these four primary concerns:

1. The length, time, and structure of the test.  Even if these tests were assessing students’ performance on tasks aligned with the Common Core Standards, the testing sessions—two weeks of three consecutive days of 90-minute (and longer for some) periods—were inhumanely long, requiring more stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam. Yet, for some sections of the exams, the time was insufficient for the length of the test. There were more multiple-choice questions than ever before, a significant number of which, we understand, were embedded field-test questions that do not factor into a child’s score but do take time to answer and thus prevent students from spending adequate time on the more authentic sections like the writing assessment.   Further, the directions for at least one of the English Language Arts sessions were confusing and tended to misdirect students’ energies from the more authentic writing sections.

1. The lack of alignment with Common Core Learning Standards.  Not one among us takes issue with the state’s and city’s efforts to bring more rigor and coherence to teaching and learning.  In general, although we take exception to aspects of the Common Core Learning Standards, we have welcomed the opportunity to re-energize curriculum with greater emphasis on the kinds of critical, flexible thinking that our students must develop to meet the demands of their current and future lives.  Unfortunately, in both their technical and task design, these tests do not align with the Common Core.  The ELA test was narrowly focused, requiring students to analyze specific lines, words and structures of mostly informational text and their significance.  In contrast, the Common Core emphasizes reading across different texts, both fiction and non-fiction, in order to determine and differentiate between central themes—an authentic adult practice.  Answering granular questions about unrelated topics is not. Because schools have not had a lot of time to unpack Common Core, we fear that too many educators will use these high stakes tests to guide their curricula, rather than the more meaningful Common Core Standards themselves.  And because the tests are missing Common Core’s essential values, we fear that students will experience curriculum that misses the point as well

1. Impact on children, teachers, and schools.  Granted, with all of the messaging about the difficulty of this year’s exams, our children came into the exam sessions with greater anxiety than ever before.  However, does this justify their reactions?  When groups of parents, teachers and principals recently shared students’ experiences in their schools, especially during the ELA exams, we learned that frustration, despondency, and even crying (yes, in middle schools) were common reactions among students.  The extremes were unprecedented:  vomiting, nosebleeds, suicidal ideation, and even hospitalization.  Is it necessary to subject children to an inhumane experience in order to assess their learning?

These exams determine student promotion.  They determine which schools individual students can apply to for middle and high school.  They are the basis on which the state and city make or break the reputations of teachers and even impact educators’ job security.  The exams determine whether a school might suffer disgrace after a poor grade on the draconian test-linked state and city progress reports or even risk being shut down.  These exams carry enormously high stakes yet we have so little information about them.

Which brings us to a final point:

1. The lack of transparency.  Common Core Standards for ELA and Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects, Writing Standards 6-12, Standard 1 requires that students:  “Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence…using credible sources…”

Yes, we educators actually viewed the exams and were in classrooms with children as many struggled through them.  Parents heard and saw their children’s reactions when they came home from school after many grueling days.  We have anecdotal information, but how will the public—the taxpayers who have paid tens of millions of dollars for this contract with Pearson—be able to debate the efficacy of these exams when they are held highly secured and not released for more general scrutiny?  The Common Core Learning Standards have placed great emphasis on the craft of argument, a primary tenet of which is that one must find and bring solid evidence in order to make a credible claim.  We cannot give the New York State Education Department and Pearson a pass on this shameful hypocrisy:  you claim these tests are a valid measure of teaching and learning, and yet you fail to make public your evidence, the tests themselves.

How do we put the fate of so many in the education community in the hands of a company with a history of screw-ups, most recently with the mis-scoring of the NYC test for the gifted and talented program. (Thirteen percent of those 4 to 7 year olds who sat for the exam were affected by the errors; Pearson has a 3-year DOE contract for this test alone, worth $5.5 million.)  There are innumerable other examples of Pearson’s questionable reliability in the area of test design:  In Spring 2012 only 27% of 4^th grade students passed a new Florida writing test.  Parents complained, the test was reevaluated, and the passing score was changed so that the percentage of students who passed climbed to 81%.  The Spring 2012 NYS ELA 8^th grade test had to be reevaluated after complaints about meaningless reading passages about talking pineapples and misleading questions. (See Alan Singer, Huffington Post, 4/24/13; John Tierney, The Atlantic, 4/25/13.)

You cannot ask us educators and parents—we taxpayers—to abnegate our responsibility to childrens’ learning and allow the privatization of America’s schools without more public oversight.  We respectfully request an open, public debate on the direction the NYS Education Department appears to be leading us.  If you are as committed as you claim to the development of our children into informed, critical thinkers, allow them to witness authentic  “argument” around testing.  And give us all access to the same evidence.

Respectfully,