[regional_school] Re: Gov. Brown Blasts Testing Law
- From: "Padron, Henry I" <Henry.Padron@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "ccse_core@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ccse_core@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:43:48 +0000
now-if he repeals prop227 he will begin to convince me...
________________________________
From: regional_school-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[regional_school-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of William Cala
[wcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 8:26 AM
To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; ccse_core@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [regional_school] Gov. Brown Blasts Testing Law
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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