[regional_school] Re: Gov. Brown Blasts Testing Law
- From: Elizabeth Osta <elizabethosta@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:03:13 -0400
Hooray for the West.
elizabeth
On Oct 10, 2011 8:26 AM, "William Cala" <wcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> GOV. JERRY BROWN BLASTS DATA-BASED SCHOOL REFORM
> Washington Post "The Answer Sheet" Blog -- October 9, 2011
> By Valerie Strauss
>
> California Gov. Jerry Brown wrote a tough indictment of data-based school
> reform in a message he wrote vetoing a bill that would have changed the
> state’s accountability system for public schools.
>
> The legislation, SB547, would have reduced reliance on standardized test
> scores to evaluate students and schools, but Brown called the legislation
> “yet another siren song of school reform” and would do nothing to improve
> the quality of schools.
>
> “SB547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning,” said the veto
> message by Brown, who has gone further than any other governor in blasting
> modern test-based school reform. “It does allude to student excitement and
> creativity, but does not take these qualities seriously because they can’t
> be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s turgid mandates is any
> recognition that quality is fundamentally different from quantity.”
>
> The current California accountability system is based mostly on
> standardized math and English language arts test scores. The general
> consensus in the state is that singular focus on test scores had forced
> schools to narrow their curriculum and that broader measures of quality were
> needed.
>
> The legislation, similar to laws already passed in other states, would have
> let standardized test scores account for no more than 40 percent of an
> evaluation in high school and no less than 40 percent in K-8. Other measures
> of quality would have been added, including dropout rates and graduation
> rates.
>
> While the legislation would have made standardized test scores less
> important than they had been under California’s current Academic Performance
> Index, the replacement system, called the Education Quality Index, still
> relied too heavily on data that Brown said in his veto message was not
> acceptable.
>
> Brown’s veto leaves in place the more restrictive test-based accountability
> system, but the governor apparently believes that that is better that
> pretending a new system based on data is much of an improvement and that now
> is the time to look at real alternatives.
>
> Here’s his letter:
>
> To the members of the California State Senate:
>
> I am returning Senate Bill 547 without my signature.
>
> This bill is yet another siren song for school reform. It renames the
> Academic Performance Index (API) and reduces its significance by adding
> three other quantitative measures.
>
> While I applaud the author’s desire to improve the API, I don’t believe
> that this bill would make the state’s accountability regime either more
> probing or more fair.
>
> This bill requires a new collection of indices called the “Education
> Quality Index” (EQI), consisting of “multiple indicators,”many of which are
> ill-defined and some impossible to design. These “multiple indicators” are
> to change over time, causing measurement instability and muddling the
> picture of how schools perform.
>
> SB547 would also add significant costs and confusion to the implementation
> of the newly-adopted Common Core standards which must be in place by 2014.
> This bill would require us to introduce a whole new system of accountability
> at the same time we are required to carry out extensive revisions to school
> curriculum, teaching materials and tests. That doesn’t make sense.
>
> Finally, while SB547 attempts to improve the API, it relies on the same
> quantitative and standardized paradigm at the heart of the current system.
> The criticism of the API is that it has led schools to focus too narrowly on
> tested subjects and ignore other subjects and matters that are vital to a
> well-rounded education. SB547 certainly would add more things to measure,
> but it is doubtful that it would actually improve our schools. Adding more
> speedometers to a broken car won’t turn it into a high-performance machine.
>
> Over the last 50 years, academic “experts” have subjected California to
> unceasing pedagogical change and experimentation. The current fashion is to
> collect endless quantitative data to populate ever-changing indicators of
> performance to distinguish the educational “good” from the education “bad.”
> Instead of recognizing that perhaps we have reached testing nirvana,
> editorialists and academics alike call for ever more measurement “visions
> and revisions.”
>
> A sign hung in Albert Einstein’s office read “Not everything that counts
> can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.”
>
> SB547 nowhere mentions good character or love of learning. It does allude
> to student excitement and creativity, but does not take these qualities
> seriously because they can’t be placed in a data stream. Lost in the bill’s
> turgid mandates is any recognition that quality is fundamentally different
> from quantity.
>
> There are other ways to improve our schools — to indeed focus on quality.
> What about a system that relies on locally convened panels to visit schools,
> observe teachers, interview students, and examine student work? Such a
> system wouldn’t produce an API number, but it could improve the quality of
> our schools.
>
> I look forward to working with the author to craft more inspiring ways to
> encourage our students to do their best.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Edmund G. Brown Jr.
>
> ****
>
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