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It takes a little sleuthing to figure out what happened.
In a nutshell the game was up when Manuel Alfaro, who was the executive director of assessment design and development at the College Board went online at Linkdin and posted some cryptic messages. Over time this was his story.
Coleman brought him in a month after his takeover of SAT by Common Core. Coleman to meet test deadlines simply transferred Common Core’s material over to the SAT data base and had hired Alfaro to create a fake research and development operation to get around copyright laws… Basically his job was to make it look like it was not stolen.
The test was published and distributed before being proof read. Proof readers were eventually hired but after the test had been sent out… The May 2016 test was this test, it is the one Juniors took in Delaware to determine… whatever… Small problems in this test were wrong answers marked as right ones, or no correct answer available among the 5 options. Bigger problems involved the “fake” questions now regularly inserted in such tests which do not count towards the score and are only there to test their quality for use in future tests. These inserted questions were so difficult and time consuming, they prevented students from finishing the test. Hence the scores of May 2016 will be lower than years past.
However Alfaro though he lived through it, does not have the tests. Therefore he was appealing to several states including Delaware, to use the transparency clauses in their contracts to bypass the College Board’s proprietary restrictions and have them find the questions, answers, and details to back up what he lived through…
His computer has been confiscated by the FBI. Now, because of this court case, a gag order has been levied upon him and all involved and all relevant documents have been put under court seal.
Simultaneous to this, Reuters is reporting on an East Asian cheating scandal involving the SAT and PSAT Apparently there is only a small pool of questions which many firms-for-hire to boost scores, already have. They teach the questions and answers and their customers score very high on these tests. Sourced out of East Asia Reuters was given 400 of the current questions from an outside source and sent copies of them to the College Board to confirm they were legit. The College Board pleaded with them not to publish these actual questions and answers since they were the only questions in use this school year.
Bottom line: anyone looking for reassurance that the SAT is a better test under Coleman will be very disappointed.
As Reuters says… the test has never been worse….
“200 hundred items were sent to the Content Advisory Committee for review. Their feedback was scathing. One committee member wrote an 11-page document letting the College Board know that these were the worst items he had ever seen. In the past, he had not seen the worst items because they were rejected due to poor item statistics. In fact, the usual 15-20 percent of the items that are pretested and are rejected due to poor performance, were on the May 2016 test used to hold students and teachers accountable.”
I stated in a comment that if one took Newark Charter and Wilmington Charter and put them back under Christina’s watch and care, they would have the highest scores in the state….
I now want to test that hypothesis to see how correct that statement was…
Here is the data we used.
Newark Charter has 2140 students.
Charter School of Wilmington has 972 students.
The entire Christina District lists 15,553.
Average Proficiency Scores for Newark Charter in ELA were 95%.. (That means 95% were tested as proficient.)
(Rats! No data) For now will have to fake Wilmington Charters’. Tack in with 99%, they’re smarter than Newark.
Christina District averaged at 39%.
So to figure the cumulative weighted theoretical for all combined, our equation would look something like this…..
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15553 (39) + 2140 (95) + 972 (99) = X/ (15553+2140+972) or X/18635 = Average Score
606567 + 203330 + 96228 = 906125/18635 = 48.62
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48.62 would be Christina School Districts cumulative ELA score if there were no charters to siphon of top students and the district was then tested as a whole…. How does that compare?
It would be statistically tied with 7 other schools for spot 9 ….. (courtesy of Exceptional Delaware)
Those others which would be tied with Christina would be Capital, Colonial, Seaford, Woodbridge, Milford, and Red Clay (hmmm. which would drop lower by losing Wilm Charter.).
None of which give away the bulk of their top students as does Christina….
When people (some think Dave Sokola is an alien; just ask Sigourney Weaver) scoff and say Christina is failing as a district and that these charters are there only because the public schools can’t teach a bag of beans, it would be very appropriate to remind them that 1) beans are inanimate and have no brains, and 2) it is only because Christina has to give up its top students to charters, that it scores average so low in comparison. In other words it is doing as well as both of the other inner city districts (Red Clay and Colonial) as well as the poorer districts down south. It is definitely not failing as a district.
This is like blaming someone for running a slow race after you cut off their leg… Sew the leg back on, and there is NO problem…
This again, is one more piece of daily mounting evidence as to why Delaware needs to remove Charter Schools from the entire state’s education system The whole “education is failing scenario” has been a gross misrepresentation. All they did as to just move smart people around to raise some schools scores, and lower others, that’s all.
“Let’s take those smart one and put them here… and lets leave the impoverished ones right there…”
Then,
“Holy Crayola!!! Look how bad this district is doing!!!… such low scores!!!. We have to take it over (and put our friends in to run each school at $160,000 a pop..)!!!”
Remember this.
As you view the results posted saying how Common Core has improved our teaching over the past year between the first taking and second taking of the tests…. these tests are graded on a curve…
One cannot compare one year’s test to another because the curve is set each new year to show a different result..
In plain language, this means the level of proficiency is NOT set by the number of right answers…. but is set by how your right number of answers compare to everyone else…
I have seen nothing regarding the cut scores setting remaining consistent between 2015 and 2016. Being changed by the committee overseeing them, results in better scores (although we can see they were not set much better)…
This was predicted when we first debated Common Core and the Smarter Balanced. It has now come to pass.
Secondly.
If this overall program were working, we should have seen far greater positive results than what we did. There are political reasons as well as financial reasons for this slow improvement… (If you show too much improvement too fast, no one will invest to gain greater improvement..)
Showing one or two percentages of people doing better is not glowing results. Not after two full years of teaching to the test…
The real result is how these same children will do on the next NAEP, the nation’s report card. Overall in both Delaware and the nation, ever since Common Core was affected, those scores (which since the 80’s had always climbed), have gone down…
If you brag about increased Smarter Scores, yet your real report card score goes down, you are no better than those teachers denigrated as passing people into the next grade who failed to meet the expectation…
In conclusion, all of this is completely meaningless. The scores show us nothing for they are arbitrarily made up. The tests show us nothing because they too are made up. The grading shows us nothing because it is made up… Only the NAEP shows us anything now, because it is a test not curved which has been consistent for years… If it shows improvement then this program is indeed working; if it doesn’t, then we need to pull the plug and return to what once worked so well.
What we DO have (since these tests do not show us anything) is a big waste of money… Make that a huge waste of money…. Money that could have been spent on???
Something like an 11:1 student teacher ratio in all schools over 50% poverty levels….
So do not be persuaded by appeals that improvement is at hand.. For the data included has some rather darkening and troubling implications… The Science and Social Studies DCAS scores have dropped consistently since Common Core was invented and put into practice…
Our Delaware kids ARE becoming dumber and dumber..Our solitary focus on math and ENGLISH has eclipsed time for civics and science. Everyone knows how to understand and speak English, even if they don’t know what an indecent participle is. But science and social studies are the determiner of an ignorant society or a knowledgeable one.. Delaware is becoming more and more ignorant the more we embrace Common Core… readily seen because those two scores are not arbitrarily set on a curve; they are based on the number of right and wrong answers. More Delawareans are getting the answers wrong consistently every year since Common Core was enacted.
So let’s grade Markell’s administration….
Our English(reading) scores have gone down over his administrations (due to test change).
Our Math scores have gone down over his administration (due to test change).
Our Social Studies scores have gone down over his administration.
Our Science scores have gone down over his administration….
Our NAEP scores have gone down over his administration….
How can that be called a success?
You may remember… Only two states were accepted in the first Race to The Top Competition… Delaware..*yay* and Tennessee. Same agenda. Same connections to the Governor’s Association and Chiefs For Change… Same influences, etc…
Let me tell you where Tennessee is now…
In three weeks, they start their school year… yes, August 3rd. This past year they instituted a non-renewal policy that said if you’re scores were not above standard, your contract would not be renewed… AND you would be marked as ineligible for rehire.
(Someone thought the threat of firing would cause scores to rise.)
One of their larger districts is undergoing some pain right now…
The Metro- Nashville Public School system is experiencing a teacher shortage…
- So far, 320 new teachers have been hired- 42 are TFA ( which is the maxamim limit of them which MNPS is allowed to hire)
- The average # of new teachers hired each year (based upon the last 5 years) is 574
- 19% of schools will have new principals
- Currently, MNPS needs to hire 189 new teachers before school starts in three weeks
- MNPS still needs to hire 7 principals.
- There are 74 (out of 153) schools with major teacher vacancies
- The top needs are: Exceptional Ed (22), Math (19), English Learners (10) and Spanish (9)
- Just 21 (15 working) days to the start of school.
Obviously the strict discipline enforced on teachers has made the upcoming year to be one of survival; not excellence…. Just keeping open the doors will be a challenge, heaven help the test scores of 2017…
Also keep in mind that many of those teachers whose contracts were not renewed, were once considered excellent teachers before we started using Common Core’s tests. from the district’s website:
- Sixty-one percent of MNPS teachers hold a master’s degree or higher and 99.75 percent are highly qualified in at least one subject area
That 0.25 % not qualified matches up with the TFA candidates…..
Which proves as all have said, the folly of putting all education’s blame on teachers… Now, you have no teachers so what are you going to do?
Well the MNPS plans to contract out to a computer teaching service for its classes having no bodies in front of it… as well as wave all certification requirements for anyone willing to stand up in front of a class.
Yes.
NOW FOR THE GREAT NEWS…………………………………………………………………………..
This isn’t happening in Delaware.
Why?
Mostly because of you, who objected to insanity and would not be silenced… Though corporate money could buy out Earl Jacques, corporate money could buy out Dave Sokola, it could not buy out parents, it could not buy out teachers, and it could not tamper with the communication system set up between them…..
As a historian I am prone to look for those important moments and speculate had they gone differently, what the new outcome would be… I know that is a weakness of mine. But saying so, if one were to ask this historian where Delaware avoided the train wreak its sister is now going through, I would have to point to the pivot as being John Young of Christina’s Board of Education…
Keep in mind we are a small state. The Metro-Nashville school district alone has 80,000 students. That is two thirds the size of our entire state school system and they are but one district. Therefore each citizen here has a larger percentage of a voice in their government than do almost everyone else.
We also do not have a television station all turn to for local news. There is a definite knowledge gap which most smart people have found is best adequately filled through the blogosphere. Our blogosphere has more investigative reporters then the entire state’s news conglomeration of radio stations and newspapers combined…
As a result of all of this, here it was hard to only give “one side” of the story (though Dave Sokola certainly tried). The other story got out, sometimes too late to change legislation, but not to late to now hold those perpetrators who pushed it, accountable for the damage they have caused Delaware’s children in lost opportunities…
(Remember how our educational measurements soared, up until they hit the Common Core legislation these crooks pushed through?)
With all those kept in mind, it was John Young who pointed the direction long before anyone else publicly, that corporate schemes were behind this new “push” for improving education… I confess, I remember glossing over Kilroy’s exclamations of Markell’s Wall Street connections with glazed eye before John passed on an illuminating tidbit on what was wrong with American education…
What struck me in that video was how on a map, it was very obvious that the diagnosis of ADHD in children starts in Oklahoma and grows exponentially as it heads to the east Coast. Pretty much mirroring the graph for average amounts of extra disposable income after necessary expenses have been met on a state by state basis….
That and the failure Common Core was having among children who were in the test classes for it… Failures as high as 85% in those test classes, which the DOE still as yet has not divulged. These failures included some of the previous years’ top students… Something was seriously wrong.
Bottom line, Delaware did not go down the path as did Tennessee because the people exerted enough pressure here to slow the process and force the inclusion of parents, teachers, and “active” administrators in the formulation of policy….
No, we still do not have a perfect solution… we still need to fight on… But in all glaring truth, we also do not have Tennessee…..
And that, is a victory for truth, justice, and the will of the American people…. We should be proud of ourselves for what we stopped…. and we should tip our hats to John Young in congratulatory thanks for first sounding the alarm which mobilized us into action….
In a great measure due to him, we are much better than Tennessee.
Emerging studies presented recently at the American Educational Research Association national conference suggest new ways to emotionally support students during transitions—and how badly things can go wrong when students don’t feel supported.
2,119 students in 10 middle schools were interviewed across the country, with about 60 percent of students in poverty.
Students who frequently distracted themselves, accepted their emotions, asked for help, and reappraised the situation to change their perspective had higher levels of what the researchers called “school and general well-being.” Students who felt they had more internal control were coping in healthier ways. By contrast, students who mentally rehashed the stressful situation—called “ruminating”—fared worse.
Results of which were a no-brainer to real parents… A revelation to “corporate educational “experts””.
The “test” applied strategies used to alleviate stress among college students, to those in middle school.
The students in the test were given made-up quotes allegedly written by real students the year before which showed they too had apprehensive stress. “I felt like I had a knot in my stomach the first four months,” read one such quote..
At the year’s end, the results including grades, test scores, and surveys of general well being, were considerably higher in those classes who were led to believe that stress was a temporal factor, that teachers were there to help, and given the inceptional idea that “the knot” would disappear. It acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Also important, an additional study focusing on those students who DID NOT get any well-being treatment. found that district policies can backfire when leaders don’t take students’ emotions into account.
In the 2016 book When School Policies Backfire: How Well-Intentioned Measures Can Harm Our Most Vulnerable Students, researchers found the school community felt betrayed by the closure—it had been assured the school would not be closed before the school board voted to do so—and students felt blamed for the closure even a year later.
It is obvious to all, that the push for testing has destroyed any emotional well being in students and therefore is the anathema to real learning and successful graduations.
Every parent and grown up adult, knows by experience in life, that learning and emotions are intermittently mixed.
Now, if we could only get some grown up adults in charge of the Delaware House and Senate Committees, on the state School Board, into the Delaware Department of Education, and even into Rodel, we as a state might begin the process of returning Delaware’s schools back to the progress they were making before “Corporate Reforms” came in and ruined absolutely everything….
They did, you know, ruin everything…
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If you didn’t first see the legal expert’s video go here and then come back….
It is not a warning, but just a reality check as to what “could” happen you you as a parent if you allow your child to take the Smarter Balanced Assessment…
Moving forward now, here is what that new legislation should address.
Whereas behavioral, class attendance, class performance and traditional forms of data like grades have been collected, now there is greater interest in collecting metadata which is information about how a child is interacting with the program, interacting with the software, data which is highly marketable and a lot of companies are scrambling to obtain that data. They are looking at it to assess school products, to assess teachers’ teaching methods, and to assess a child’s future in order to open and close doors long before a child reaches the hallway those doors are on.
The question hereto unasked, unsolved and unanswered, is how are we going to structure that access to data… so it is fair to children, to parents, to teachers, to schools….
The worst-case-scenario is abuse of these to harm children.. instances where they are improperly tracked and improperly labeled and improperly sent down wrong pathways they shouldn’t be sent.
All because of bad data practices….
Before going forward, we need to have “good” data practices implemented and have teeth in the law so even bad people will want to do good…
Necessary to this is a blanket protection on ALL data acquired on a child… All data is unavailable to anyone outside those directly involved. The scope of protection…. has to be very broad….
Next step is to establish very clear use restrictions…. as in what can this data be used for?… Make it open and shut… “Can this data be used by Skippy Peanut Butter?” “Let us check the clear use restrictions.” “No, it does not allow transference of data to Skippy Peanut Butter”…. Open and shut.
Then we need to add a flexible option, so educated parents can choose to “opt in” on having other sources of information disseminated about their child… It becomes the parent’s choice whether their child’s data can be used and to whom those additional users may be.
And finally to all of these there should be added some type of repercussions, which are strong enough to make violating any of these tenants, financially risky.
Currently there is none. Nada. The only restriction is in FERPA The Federal government can withhold money from a school district if there is a violation of FERPA. In the 41 years of FERPA, that has never happened. If a school district violates your child’s privacy, if the State violates your child’s privacy, if a vendor violates your child’s privacy, as a parent, you have no private right of action.
In this environment, your child’s data once acquired, is available to all. John Carney can even acquire a list of marginal students and call their parents to get their votes. Everything is wide open.
As a society we often venture into new territory first, learning as we go. The first cars didn’t have brakes because you just previously told the horse to slow down; the thought did not cross their inventor’s minds until racing down the road. When we went into Iraq, we didn’t have a plan on how to govern once we took over. Dick Cheney didn’t think of it. We’d just take it and suck out their oil.
Today, we don’t let just anyone drive. They have to demonstrate they know how. Likewise today we don’t let anyone set up and operation room and extract live organs. They have to prove they are capable in knowledge and ability.
Therefore we really shouldn’t allow the Smarter Balanced to go forward until we fix these problems it leaves in its wake. Should we?
Here is the approach which should be taken. WE need a figurehead bill put up that WHEREAS’s all the facts listed above, to preface a bill advocating the immediate eradication of the Smarter Balanced for security reasons, as our one test in Delaware. This won’t pass nor is it intended to.. It’s purpose is to create a lightning rod for all educational wonks on both sides to focus their attention upon. Despite a probable prognosis for failure, the full-press floor fight for its passage should be passionate, since that is what drives public scrutiny and shapes public opinion.
Then invisibly, under the radar, 4 new bills need to be quietly slipped through, addressing the plugging of each of the 4 holes illuminated above… Bill 1) We need state blanket protection of all data. Bill 2) We need to determine exactly who, what, where that data will be allowed to go. Bill 3) We need to allow parents the right to “opt in” into allowing further data to be disseminated. And finally Bill 4) we need some type of gigantic bankruptcy-causing-punitive-damage and jail for anyone violating a child’s privacy without the express permission of his parents.
By then (if our crystal ball is correct) the Smarter Balanced will most likely have been replaced with another test (unless it scores a magnificent save this year) and the above protections will be in place long before any new test (if any at all), materializes…
There is now no protection of children’s privacy and therefore by implication, their parents’ privacy…
As a parent if anyone violates your child’s privacy, such as putting your child’s data on a porn site, you the parent have no private rite-of- action….
We cannot emphasize it more clearly… Opt Out Your Child Today…….
Big items in the ESSA:
States will no longer have to do teacher evaluation through student outcomes, as they did under NCLB waivers. The NCLB law’s “highly qualified teacher” requirement is officially a thing of the past….
States are required to adopt “challenging” academic standards. That could be the Common Core State Standards, but doesn’t have to be. The U.S. Secretary of Education is expressly prohibited from forcing or even encouraging states to pick a particular set of standards (including the common core)…
States can create their own testing opt-out laws, and states decide what should happen in schools that miss targets….
Up to seven states can apply to try out local tests for a limited time, with the permission of the U.S. Department of Education….
Districts will work with teachers and school staff to come up with an evidence-based turnaround plan.States will monitor the turnaround effort.If schools continue to founder, after no more than four years the state will be required to step in with its own plan. A state could take over the school if it wanted, or fire the principal, or turn the school into a charter.
Only 1 percent of students overall can be given alternative tests. (That’s about 10 percent of students in special education.)
Districts that get more than $30,000 have to spend at least 20 percent of their funding on at least one activity that helps students become well-rounded, and another 20 percent on at least one activity that helps students be safe and healthy.
The current Title I funding formula remains intact, but there are some changes to the Title II formula (which funds teacher quality) that will be a boon to rural states.
A pilot program will let 50 districts try out a weighted student-funding formula, combining state, local, and federal funds to better serve low-income students and those with special needs.
States have to figure in participation rates on state tests. (Schools with less than 95 percent participation are supposed to have that included, somehow.) But participation rate is a stand-alone factor, not a separate indicator on its own.
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Recommended new State Actions to deal with the new law.
A. General Assembly: create bill prohibiting linking teacher accountability with test scores in the state of Delaware.
B. General Assembly: remove Delaware from the Smarter Balanced Assessment and come up with State test designed by real educators.
C. General Assembly: pass bill that says all those applying for OPT OUT before March 1st, will not be counted in the participation rate of test takers. They will be a separate class removed from the formula in figuring participation rates. Participation rates will be figured based on those students who did not opt out before the deadline.
D.
Charts courtesy of Education Reform Now
Delaware’s Rankings by Grade Levels in ELA Among Smarter Balanced States
Grade 3: 2nd (Tied with Connecticut)
Grade 4: 4th
Grade 5: 5th
Grade 6: 7th
Grade 7: 7th
Grade 8: 7th
Grade 11: 7th
And in math:
Grade 3: 2nd
Grade 4: 3rd
Grade 5: 5th (tied with I da ho)
Grade 6: 8th
Grade 7: 7th
Grade 8: 7th
Grade 11: 7th
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But before one can jump on Delaware’s poorer showing, one must take into account a very glaring factoid totally ignored by those intent of foisting corporate reforms on public schools….
That is:
Delaware has one of the highest proportion of its students (all the highest quality) in private schools; completely outside of public education….
Map and Charts Courtesy of The Atlantic CityLab.com
Over 15% of all our state’s children are taught in our private schools. That has to suck a lot of cream off the top of overall test scores…. Kids whose parents have a college or graduate degree are much more likely to go to private school. Their lack of impact in the public school system, should hit Delaware hard when comparing scores across states.
Particularly when Greater Wilmington Metro Area
…. is ranked 6th in the nation for highest private school enrollment and we have one zip code, 19807 = Greenville.………..
…. fourth highest in the nation at a whopping 78%..….
I’ll do the calculations at another time but with math we can begin to predict based on some assumptions, where if we had fewer of our best in private schools how that would stack our state up against other states.
Bottom line: if you trim a tree at its first branch, it will not be as tall as those allowed to grow naturally….
A common sense explanation for Delaware’s low scores. (And none of these private schoolers have to undergo Common Core) None.
The entire nation was set on the course of Common Core … Delaware raced to be first… Filling out applications to “Race To The Top” it was accepted first and there Common Core had an extra year of implementation. Therefore seeing how Delaware is functioning is good for showing how the rest of the nation shall fare when it too reaches that level Delaware now is …
Fact is, in very many areas, solely because of Common Core, Delaware is less better than it was before “Race To The Top” became a priority. We as the first state, are now fighting for survival in a race to the bottom because of our state’s enthusiasm to embrace an untried, untested, and unproven strategy to implement better learning processes….
This can be seen no better than our failure to improve ELL in Hispanics here in Delaware…
Again charts show this better than do words…..
One can see from the above grade 4 score-chart, gains have been made nationally on the NAEP since 2005 to 2015, a rather impressive achievement, and something which would be celebrated if it were not completely overshadowed by the current focus on achievement gaps.
Same with the national Grade 8 scores on the NAEP. All segments trend upward over ten years, an amazing feat worthy of celebration. Meaning we are doing a much better job in taking children who have never heard English and do not have it reinforced at home, and giving them the ability to survive in our English speaking country.
But instead of celebrating this good thing, we beat up ourselves over a self-imposed restriction called “the achievement gap”…
So we are complaining and trying to develop a process which makes children who don’t know English and don’t have it reinforced at home, catch up and surpass those who grew up learning English and always have it reinforced everywhere they go…
It is pretty silly really, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we concentrate on the big picture and improve the reading rates for all Hispanics and ignore the fact that the achievement gap will always be there and possibly grow larger due to natural selection? The only way to REALLY improve the Hispanic achievement gap is to pull them out of their families and put them in English speaking ones of higher incomes… Something that will never happen.
It should also be acknowledged here, that before we were worried about testing, Hispanic scores rose much higher than after we began to worry about them. This should be no surprised to anyone who’s followed what goes on in education lately because of the testing requirements placed on teachers and students.
Because WE are focusing only on closing achievement gaps, we are teaching only the test to our Hispanic students. All they learn is how to take the tests. This readily explains the slumps from 2013 to 2015 in the charts above. This slump comes about because of pressure top-downward. Teachers are told they have to get scores up on their Hispanic children. And the only way to do that is to teach them how to fill in the bubbles of the test, how to accurately guess the right answers, and when and when not just skip a question. Strategy outranks knowledge of language….
And make no mistake! All children are suffering from this strategy that Common Core forces on every single school required to be evaluated by these tests. It is just that with students who learn one language at school and another at home, the differences are wider and more pronounced. One can immediately see the impact without other issues clouding the picture.
And so if you are astute, (I’m very lucky, most of MY readers are) you are probably putting two and two together and saying to yourself that 1) if the national average score has risen for all Hispanics over the past ten years, that 2) if Common Core and its tests negatively impact the learning process for all students, that if 3) Delaware has a year more of Common Core under its belt than other states, then probably Delaware is near the NAEP’s bottom rank of all states when one compares the gains or losses Hispanics have faced during the Markell administration’s second term. If you are astute, that is what you should be thinking right now…..
Delaware, 2nd to last of all 50 states in gains made by Hispanic 8th graders ….. Thanks, Jack Markell and Mark Murphy.
WE went the wrong direction in Race To The Top and corporate reform… Today it is very obvious that the test has got to go. We already have great overall accountability in the NAEP… These calls from lobby shills saying we need to keep the Smarter Balanced to make schools accountable, are exactly who and what is ruining education for all of 130,000 + of Delaware’s children in public schools.
Nothing wrong with accountability.. it worked very well until we started focusing on the Smarter Balanced Assessments. Again, don’t take my word. Just look at the charts.