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Those dreaded state tests are here again. All third-to eighth-graders in New York began Tuesday the first of three consecutive days of English Language Arts assessment, to be followed next week by three days of math tests. And those state tests have never been longer. A typical third-grader last year spent 150 minutes over three days taking the ELA test and 100 minutes over two days on the Math exam. This year, all students will spend 270 minutes in the ELA exam and 270 minutes in the Math test - 90 minutes over each of six days. The stakes also have never been higher, not for the pupils who take the tests or the teachers whose evaluations will be based on their students' performance or the schools that could face closure if pupil scores drop.

THERE is widespread alarm in the United States about the state of our math education. The anxiety can be traced to the poor performance of American students on various international tests, and it is now embodied in George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which requires public school students to pass standardized math tests by the year 2014 and punishes their schools or their teachers if they do not.

Using a statistical technique called value-added modeling, the Teacher Data Reports compare how students are predicted to perform on the state ELA and math tests, based on their prior year's performance, with their actual performance. Teachers whose students do better than predicted are said to have "added value"; those whose students do worse than predicted are "subtracting value." By definition, about half of all teachers will add value, and the other half will not. Carolyn Abbott was, in one respect, a victim of her own success. After a year in her classroom, her seventh-grade students scored at the 98th percentile of New York City students on the 2009 state test. As eighth-graders, they were predicted to score at the 97th percentile on the 2010 state test. However, their actual performance was at the 89th percentile of students across the city. That shortfall-the difference between the 97th percentile and the 89th percentile-placed Abbott near the very bottom of the 1,300 eighth-grade mathematics teachers in New York City. How could this happen? Anderson is an unusual school, as the students are often several years ahead of their nominal grade level. The material covered on the state eighth-grade math exam is taught in the fifth or sixth grade at Anderson. "I don't teach the curriculum they're being tested on," Abbott explained. "It feels like I'm being graded on somebody else's work."

The Boston Teacher Residency is an innovative practice-based preparation program in which candidates work alongside a mentor teacher for a year before becoming a teacher of record in Boston Public Schools. We find that BTR graduates are more racially diverse than other BPS novices, more likely to teach math and science, and more likely to remain teaching in the district through year five. Initially, BTR graduates for whom value-added performance data are available are no more effective at raising student test scores than other novice teachers in English language arts and less effective in math. The effectiveness of BTR graduates in math improves rapidly over time, however, such that by their fourth and fifth years they out-perform veteran teachers. Simulations of the program's overall impact through retention and effectiveness suggest that it is likely to improve student achievement in the district only modestly over the long run.

In a post over a year ago, I discussed the common argument that dismissing the "bottom 5-10 percent" of teachers would increase U.S. test scores to the level of high-performing nations. This argument is based on a calculation by economist Eric Hanushek, which suggests that dismissing the lowest-scoring teachers based on their math value-added scores would, over a period of around ten years  (when the first cohort of students would have gone through the schooling system without the "bottom" teachers), increase U.S. math scores dramatically - perhaps to the level of high-performing nations such as Canada or Finland.* This argument is, to say the least, controversial, and it invokes the full spectrum of reactions. In my opinion, it's best seen as a policy-relevant illustration of the wide variation in test-based teacher effects, one that might suggest a potential of a course of action but can't really tell us how it will turn out in practice. To highlight this point, I want to take a look at one issue mentioned in that previous post - that is, how the instability of value-added scores over time (which Hanushek's simulation doesn't address directly) might affect the projected benefits of this type of intervention, and how this is turn might modulate one's view of the huge projected benefits. One (admittedly crude) way to do this is to use the newly-released New York City value-added data, and look at 2010 outcomes for the "bottom 10 percent" of math teachers in 2009.

"Our schools can be laboratories of democracy, controlled by local citizens, connected to the life blood of the community, preparing children to engage with and transform the world they are entering. The documentary series, A Year at Mission Hill shows what such a school looks like, and how it cares for the students, and nurtures their dreams as they grow. Most of us entered teaching with this vision in mind. But our schools can also be the place where dreams are squashed. A place where students are sorted into winners and losers based on their test scores. Students who are given academic tasks that are beyond their ability or developmental level become frustrated and discouraged. When I taught 6th grade math in Oakland, one of my greatest challenges was the many students who arrived and would write on my introductory survey, "I am bad at math." These self images form early, and the scientific precision of our tests creates a false portrait that becomes indelible when reiterated time and again come test time. What we are creating is a system that says "If you are bad at math, and these many other difficult things on our tests, you are not prepared for college or career, and you are worthless." Why do we have a system that compels us to label and sort our students in this way? "

"Congratulations to Carol Burris, co-author of the principal letter critiquing the APPR, the new NY state teacher evaluation system. Her school, South Side HS in Rockville Center, was just named the second best high school in the state, according to US News and World Report, and it is one of few non-selective relatively diverse schools on the list. Here is her explanation: "We do great things by challenging all kids, supporting them and not sorting them." It also can't hurt that her school has average class sizes of 17 (in math) to 23 (in social studies), according to its NYS report card. Carol adds: The typical class sizes for math, science and English are a bit higher than shown because we have every other day support classes in those subjects for kids who need them and those are twelve or fewer. We also keep our repeater classes (kids who failed Regents) under 12. You will never find an academic class in my school over 29 and 29 is rare. Last year we were 16% free and reduced price lunch, and when kids have small class sizes, lots of support and high expectations they do very well. Below, see her recent letter to the NY Board of Regents, regarding their new proposal to create three different kinds of diplomas: CTE (vocational), regular and STEM. Carol explains: "No matter how you cut it, it is tracking and we have a history of segregated classrooms that resulted from that practice. This is not an argument against CTE programs or STEM programs. This is an argument for preparing all of our children for college and career, and not watering down expectations and hope by forcing kids prematurely down different paths""

The recent Pineapple and the Hare fiasco does more than identify a daft reading passage on New York State's 8th grade English Language Arts test. Education Commissioner John King scrapped the selection and its six multiple-choice items, admitting they were "ambiguous," when the questions became public last week. The episode opens the door to discussing how the 2012 exams were put together. The State Education Department signed a five-year, $32 million agreement with NCS Pearson to develop English Language Arts and math assessments in grades three to eight. In fact, math testing was administered over three days this week for 1.2 million students. Pearson has grown immensely over the last decade, securing contracts with many states required to test students under the No Child Left Behind Act. This year it succeeded CTB/McGraw-Hill as New York's test vendor.

After months of studying, stressing and - yes - some crying, our kids are finally done with this year's state English Language Arts and math exams. This happens every year, and each year seems more intense than the last. But after all the fuss and agony to rate our kids, their teachers and their schools, what have our children really learned? If your kids are anything like our kids, they've learned more about pressure and bureaucracy than math and English.

Under the existing high-school testing system, students have to pass a single test that covers math and English. The new tests would also cover math and English, and the administration is reviewing recommendations that students pass tests in social studies and science, for a total of 12 tests.

I utilize longitudinal data covering all public school students in Florida to study the performance of charter schools and their competitive impact on traditional public schools. Controlling for student-level fixed effects, I find achievement initially is lower in charters. However, by their fifth year of operation new charter schools reach a par with the average traditional public school in math and produce higher reading achievement scores than their traditional public school counterparts. Among charters, those targeting at-risk and special education students demonstrate lower student achievement, while charter schools managed by for-profit entities perform no differently on average than charters run by nonprofits. Controlling for preexisting traditional public school quality, competition from charter schools is associated with modest increases in math scores and unchanged reading scores in nearby traditional public schools

Changes to the state's testing program could leave public- schools kids in grades 3 through to 11 taking as many as nine exams per year in English and math - more than four times the current number, officials said yesterday. The potential jump comes from New York's participation in a federally funded consortium of 25 states that's seeking to make exams computer-based, more challenging and administered several times per year. The latest consortium plan calls for students to be tested as many as four times annually in math and five times a year in reading, starting in 2014.

In the years since the publication of "Silenced Dialogue" and the 1995 book it inspired, Other People's Children, the standards-and-accountability school reform movement rose to prominence. Its focus on closing the achievement gap through skills building echoed many of Delpit's commitments, but she found herself troubled by the movement's discontents. Many low-income schools canceled field trips and classes in the arts, sciences and social studies, for example, in order to focus on raising math and reading standardized test scores. Now Delpit is responding in a new book, "Multiplication is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children. (The title quote comes from an African-American boy who, bored and discouraged by the difficulty of his math assignment, proclaimed the subject out-of-reach for kids like himself.) "I am angry that the conversation about educating our children has become so restricted," Delpit writes in the introduction. "What has happened to the societal desire to instill character? To develop creativity? To cultivate courage and kindness?" Here, in an interview with The Nation, Delpit discusses the intelligence of poor children, how she would reform Teach for America, and why college professors should be as focused on closing the achievement gap as K-12 educators are. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"I received my 'growth score' today from the New York State Education Department. I know,  I really shouldn't care what my score is. I know 100% of my students tested at or above grade level in Math and English Language Arts.  I know my class' scores were near or at the very top of my district's scores. I know my district is also at or nearly at the top of the region's and states' scores. I know I work my heart out and push my students to excel. My students always, ALWAYS  succeed. Yet according to the NYSED my growth score is so so. I'm rated effective with a growth score of 14 out of 20. Keep in mind, my student's mean scale in math  is 708.4 and ELA it is 678.  I'm confident both scores are well above that state mean. So why did I get a mediocre growth score? The state's explanation of it's calculation should be a eye opener for all  of us."

The software program unleashed in this classroom is the brainchild of Salman Khan, an Ivy League-trained math whiz and the son of an immigrant single mother. Mr. Khan, 35, has become something of an online sensation with his Khan Academy math and science lessons on YouTube, which has attracted up to 3.5 million viewers a month. Now he wants to weave those digital lessons into the fabric of the school curriculum - a more ambitious and as yet untested proposition. This semester, at least 36 schools nationwide are trying out Mr. Khan's experiment: splitting up the work of teaching between man and machine, and combining teacher-led lessons with computer-based lectures and exercises.

The New England Common Assessment Program is on its way out in New Hampshire. The state Department of Education is planning to implement a new standardized test system to measure reading and math proficiency starting in 2013-14, said Paul Leather, deputy commissioner of education. The state will discontinue using the NECAP for reading and math after one more round of testing in October, and then roll out the Smarter Balanced Assessment the next school year. Leather described the new test a stronger assessment with no increased cost.

The narrative surrounding Khan Academy has, it seems, gotten a bit out of hand. It's not Sal's fault. He didn't set out to become one of the biggest celebrities in education but simply to help his cousins with their math homework. But Ann Doerr, wife of venture capitalist John Doerr, picked up on it. Then Bill Gates. Then the San Jose Mercury, 60 Minutes, the New York Times ... and all of a sudden Khan Academy, a collection of low-res videos offering step-by-step instructions for how to solve math problems, was being hailed as the Next Big Thing in education. And big it is: Khan Academy boasts almost 3,300 videos that have been viewed over 160 million times. That's a heroic achievement. But there's a problem: the videos aren't very good.

Mayor Bloomberg turned the announcement of the 2012 state test results into a promotional event for his "reforms" on Tuesday, despite the fact that an honest appraisal of the scores showed that city students as a group made only modest progress in both math and ELA.  The mayor's presentation ignored or downplayed results that didn't fit in with his triumphal narrative, including the fact that the racial achievement gap widened last year in a number of categories. State officials, by contrast, didn't even hold a press conference, and said publicly only that the statewide results (which mirrored the city's) showed "some positive momentum" but left too many students unprepared. The mayor, however, orchestrated a big press function and handed out a shameless PowerPoint that reported highly selective numbers and featured a comparison of charters and new schools founded during his tenure with "traditional" city schools - i.e. the vast majority of schools in the city system. But the numbers are there for all to see. "His" charters and new schools combined underperform the average school, in fact (see especially slide 6), and they gained only one to two points more than the "traditional" schools in percentages of students meeting standards in math and less than a percentage point in students meeting standards in English. That, according to the mayor, was conclusive evidence for the success of his reforms. 

"Dear parents: As you may have probably heard, the new state test scores were released to the press and they are disastrous. Only 31% of students in New York State passed the new Common Core exams in reading and math. More than one third -- or 36% -- of 3rd graders throughout the state got a level I in English; which means they essentially flunked.  In NYC, only 26 percent of students passed the exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math - meaning they had a level 3 or 4.  Only 5% of students in Rochester passed.  Though children's individual scores won't be available to parents until late August, I urge you not to panic when you see them.  My advice is not to believe a word of any of this.  The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence.  They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.  Here are five reasons not to trust the new scores"

"The first problem is that Gideon seems to be convinced that there is only one right way to solve a problem and if he does not solve it that way he will be marked wrong. This problem he will get over either as he learns more about how the world works or becomes less interested in pleasing his teachers. The second problem is a bit more serious to me as a teacher and grandparent. Instead of trying to understand a math problem and being willing to play with the numbers, Gideon is committed to remembering a long, complicated sequence of steps to finding a solution. If he makes a mistake somewhere in the sequence he gets the answer incorrect, but he does not recognize it as incorrect, because his goal was following the prescribed steps, not coming up with a result that makes sense."