Category Archives: Smarter Balance

Is the New Hampshire Commissioner of Ed Misleading Parents Again?

If you click on the link below, you will find more praise for the Common Core Standards and assessments. However, are they telling us the truth? Are they misleading us again? Are they refusing to give us the facts? Are they incapable of providing critical information on the Common Core standards and assessments?
You be the judge….

Q: What kind of change in results can states expect with higher standards and these new assessments?
A: As students have more years of instruction aligned to new standards, results typically improve. For example, in Kentucky, the first state to begin using the Common Core standards, student test scores went down at first. But, over the next four years as teachers and students worked to meet higher standards, the percentage of high school graduates meeting the state’s benchmark for college and career readiness increased from 34 percent to 62 percent. There also have been impressive gains in ACT sores in Tennessee since adoption of more rigorous standards. And in California, where students have taken an early assessment of college readiness and participated in 12th grade courses to improve their preparation since 2007, the proportion of students needing remediation at the California State University has dropped from 56 percent to 43 percent.

http://nh.portal.airast.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Smarter-Balanced-Achievement-Levels-QA.pdf

Here is what Commissioner Barry left OUT of the propaganda ………
FROM THE Bluegrass Institute:
http://www.bipps.org/kentucky-educations-shaky-statistics/#more-14497

Do Kentucky’s schools deserve to be, “…congratulated for their continued progress on graduating more students with the skills and knowledge they will need to succeed in the 21st century,” as Interim Kentucky Commissioner of Education Kevin Brown claims?
Sadly, Holliday and others are actually hitting on sour notes, using “apples to oranges” comparisons in what they consistently mislabel as the state’s “College and Career Readiness” rates. Aside from presenting numbers that are not comparable over the time period cited, a growing number of people think Kentucky Education’s latest numbers themselves are a shaky.
Furthermore, when the college/career ready numbers are tied to those graduation rate figures, it turns out that a gruesomely large proportion of our students are leaving high school with only a hollow piece of paper. Thousands being declared ready are not really getting the educations they need.
How many kids are we talking about? Even if we accept both Kentucky Education’s college/career rates and graduation rate data as accurate, the Bluegrass Institute estimates that more than 40 percent of the students who started the ninth grade with the high school class of 2015 failed to leave school with an adequate preparation for life. Some of those who failed dropped out of high school, but many were socially promoted all the way to an empty diploma.

BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS
http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/groups-question-school-standards/article_2524e644-e523-5fd8-a9e6-04131fe36dd9.html
Findings from two groups suggest the Kentucky Department of Education’s standards for preparing students for college and adult life are lacking and that the department’s statistics are misleading.

Both the Bluegrass Institute and the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission’s Office of Education Accountability recently released reports critical of KDE’s performance.

KDE’s willingness to put “spin above substance” makes its data misleading, said Jim Waters, president of the Bluegrass Institute. The institute “works with Kentuckians, grassroots organizations and business owners to advance freedom and prosperity by promoting free-market capitalism, smaller government and the defense of personal liberties,” according to its website.

“We have questions about whether we’re really getting the needed information to really determine how Kentucky has performed in its college and career readiness arena,” Waters said. “Have these improvements actually occurred, or has the bar been lowered to give the appearance of improvements?”

Goodbye “Local Control” of Education in New Hampshire

We continue to question the over-reach by the New Hampshire Dept. of Education as the Commissioner seems to believe the Superintendents work for her and not the local communities that pay their salaries.

The preliminary Smarter Balanced scores were recently released to all of the Superintendents throughout New Hampshire. However the Commissioner directed the Superintendents NOT to release this information to the local school boards or taxpayers. Once again, Commissioner Barry is treating our paid employee as if they work for her.

Some board members have reported asking their Superintendent for this information, only to be told NO, they would follow the guideline set forth by the Commissioner.

Sucking up to the Commissioner is not a bad idea because we know Dr. Livingston, Superintendent in Manchester, received a recommendation from Commissioner Barry when applying for her job. However it’s important that school boards remind their Superintendent that they still work for them.

Superintendents attend a “closed door” monthly meeting with the Commissioner where school board members have no access to public records.

We ask school board members again, who does your Superintendent work for?

We expect the Smarter Balanced scores to be released soon even though the DoE promised fast results. We’re not sure when “fast results” translated into, 6 months later.

Once the results of the Smarter Balanced scores are released, one would expect the leader of their school, the Superintendent, to offer their honest opinion on those results. In other words, what do they honestly think about the assessment? Are the scores, which are expected to be worse than the previous years under the NECAP, accurate? Is the Smarter Balanced Assessment fundamentally flawed as many have described? (See the examples below)

What we’ve uncovered is a list of “talking points” that were given to Superintendents by the NH DoE. Are our Superintendents so ill equipped that they cannot provide honest commentary on the results? Do they need the DoE to do their “thinking” for them?

Parents want honest answers for the poor scores that are about to be released. They want to know if they are accurate. They want to know if the assessment is flawed or if the school has indeed been failing our children.

We tend to believe the assessment itself is NOT a good indicator of how well your school is performing. We’ve looked at the critical views on this assessment and have NO confidence in the results. This is why we encourage parents to REFUSE this assessment for their children.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is a data gatherer on your children. IT does not offer you information on whether your child is proficient in the core subjects. If you want that kind of information, have your child tested outside the school system using an achievement test.

Assessments are for assessing your child’s behavior, attitudes and values. An achievement TEST will measure their academic knowledge.

Ask home-schoolers what they use to test their children. Some reliable achievement tests include; The Iowa Basic Skills Test, Stanford Achievement Test, or the California Achievement Test. Look for the non-Common Core aligned achievement test.

Next ask your Superintendent for honest feedback on the Smarter Balanced Assessment and question why they would need the DoE to issue “talking points” on the results.

NH Talking Points (FINAL 8.31.15)

Why the Smarter Balanced Common Core Math Test Is Fatally Flawed

Doctor Gary Thompson (Licensed Child Psychologist) Smarter Balanced Assessment NOT Valid

NH Families for Education: Considerations for School Districts Before Administering the Smarter Balanced Assessment

CALL TO ACTION: New Hampshire Dept. of Ed., RELEASE THE TEST SCORES!!

A CALL TO ACTION: URGENT
Send the following message to ALL of our State Reps. and Senators ASAP:

The NH Department of ED is REFUSING to release the Smarter Balanced Assessment scores!!! While other states have released the preliminary scores, NH is REFUSING to release these scores until November 12th. JUST AFTER ELECTION DAY.

Are they playing POLITICS with test scores? Are the proficiency levels SO bad, that they have to wait until AFTER local school board elections?

SEND AN EMAIL TO:
HReps@leg.state.nh.us
Senators@leg.state.nh.us

Ask the legislators to call upon Commissioner Barry to RELEASE the Smarter Balanced Assessment SCORES IMMEDIATELY.
Stop playing politics with our children and our schools.

Louisiana’s Superintendent released their test scores after legislators applied political pressure. Why does it take political pressure to do what’s right?

CALL TO ACTION: E-mail State Representative Judith Spang

CALL TO ACTION:
Please E-MAIL Rep. Judith Spang the following article
Her e-mail address is: judith@kestrelnet.net

Rep. Spang (D-Durham) continues to deny that standardized test scores will be used to evaluate teachers. As you can see from this article, there is plenty of information from the NH Dept. of Ed to suggest, that’s exactly how they will be used.

http://schoolchoicenh.org/2015/09/24/responding-to-critics/

We also suggest looking at the Manchester Innovation Zone Implementation Plan: http://www.mansd.org/reports
Click on the link and scroll down to #17 where it says
17.2 Twenty Percent of teacher evaluations will be based on student growth results

LOOK OUT NH TEACHERS: you have a target on your back!

When did you give up local control to the NH Commissioner of Ed? Virginia Barry

NH residents need to start asking themselves, when did they give up local control to the Commissioner of Education, Virginia Barry?
Has our State Commissioner of Education overstepped her boundaries AGAIN?
Who pays the Superintendents?
Who hires and fires the Superintendents?
It’s not the Commissioner, and she has NO right to put our administrators in a position where they cannot share information with the people who pay their salary.
The NH Dept. of Education is again, overstepping their authority and grabbing control away from local communities.

From the Girard at Large web site:

MSD: Withholding Smarter Balanced Assessment scores

The Manchester School District, in response to a right to know request we filed last Thursday, has acknowledged it has received the city’s Smarter Balanced Assessment scores from the state Department of Education and has had them for several weeks. However, in an email sent to us yesterday, Superintendent Debra Livingston denied our request for the scores to be released, saying they would be released in conjunction with the state D o E. (Interestingly, she copied the entire school board on her response, despite our not copying them on our inquiry.)

Results withheld
Just four hours later, the district issued a statement saying the scores will be available to parents and the public on November twelfth. The statement also announced that S A U staff will quote

“soon be reviewing the data and preparing instructional materials for principals and teachers to use in order to interpret and make the best use of the data.”

It also said the data will be sent to the schools later this week and given to teachers on Monday, September twenty eighth. Livingston said the data would be used to quote “establish a baseline of achievement.”

Glassner: Got the info
We made the inquiry after State Board of Education Chair Tom Raffio told Sid Glassner, during his show Inside Education on this radio station, that the state had the assessment scoring and had sent it to school districts weeks ago. Glassner discussed it at length last Thursday during the Girard at Large “Is Our Children Learning?” segment. According to the state department of education, the scores were supposed to be released in July so districts could use the data to inform instruction in the coming school year.

REFUSE to COOPERATE: Where’s the Smarter Balanced Assessment Results?

We URGE you to refuse to cooperate in further testing days or testing time for SBAC tests UNTIL the SBAC sends back useful information to all parents, teachers and schools based on the 2015 assessment.

Then schools, teachers and parents will jointly decide if the information the SBAC sends back on individual students is pedagogically useful.

Bureaucrats at the NH Dept. of Ed said the results would be timely. The SBAC was needed so they could get the results back to schools quickly. They said the results would be released in July, then August and NOW NOVEMBER.

While schools continue more and more testing to prepare for the Smarter Balanced Assessment, this becomes and even bigger debacle by the day.

REFUSE the SAT/ACT/PSAT: Here’s WHY! Oh and the Smarter Balanced too!

Governor Hassan’s Dept. of Ed is proving to be a disaster. Let’s take the Smarter Balanced Assessment debacle as an example. Before the assessment was administered, the NH DoE was looking for an alternative. That’s right, they signed on to a flawed assessment from the beginning and they are now trying to get out of that train wreck.

Last year they tried to force the PACE assessments through the legislature with the help of Rep. Rick Ladd (R). PACE was another unvalidated assessment based on the dumbed down workforce skills called “competencies.” They appeared to be, go from BAD to WORSE. At least with the Smarter Balanced Assessment, parents could refuse to have their children take it. With PACE, that may have been more difficult or even impossible for parents to do.

In the end, HB323 allowed high schools to use the SAT or ACT instead of the Smarter Balanced Assessment for 11th grade. The goal was to get parents to “COMPLY” and have their kids take the standardized assessment. Greedy Superintendents were fearful that funding would be cut off if more students refused to participate. This is a perfect example of funding being more important that your child’s education.

It’s still important to REFUSE to take the new SAT, PSAT or the ACT and here’s why. There are over 800 colleges that take students who have not taken the SAT. STARVE THE BEAST. The College Board is now run by David Coleman, one of the chief architects of Common Core. The SAT will be Common Core aligned in 2016 forcing your kids to submit to another Common Core assessment. The REFUSAL movement seeks to put the College Board out of business. The College Board redesigned the SAT in order to hide the devastating effects of Common Core, however you can already see that by the current SAT.

As of 2016 the new Common Core aligned SAT will make it impossible to determine if Common Core is better or worse.

Now why would that have to do that? Why would they have to hide the truth? Because the truth is not their agenda. If we refuse to support the College Board for just one year they will struggle to stay afloat.

Hiding Common Core’s Damage: New SAT wont allow comparison to prior years’ scores

by DR. SUSAN BERRY7 Sep 2015177
SAT scores this year hit the lowest level in 40 years, even though governments across the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars on education.

However, according to a former Bush administration education advisor, when the new SAT is rolled out next year, the College Board’s changes to the college admissions test will not allow scores from the new version to be compared to those from the past.

This year’s high school students’ SAT scores fell once again, to the lowest level in 40 years. As Breitbart News reported:

A record 1.7 million graduating seniors took the SAT test last year. With a highest possible score this year of 800 on each SAT section, according to the College Board, students scored a worst since 1999 math score of 511, worst since 1972 reading score of 495, and worst writing score since the section was added in 2005.

But Ze’ev Wurman, former senior policy adviser with the U.S. Department of Education under President George W. Bush, tells Breitbart News these disappointing results are still on the old SAT college admissions test.

“Consequently, they represent a trend that does not speak well of the frantic implementation of Common Core that has been taking place around the nation in recent years,” he says.

“Next year the College Board will roll out a major change in the SAT that will make comparisons with past results impossible, and allow Common Core proponents to argue ‘these are different and better tests, so don’t pay attention to past results,’” Wurman states. “We are lucky that this year’s SAT has not changed yet, so the decline is clearly visible and cannot be hidden or denied.”

The College Board president is David Coleman, the so-called “architect” of the Common Core standards.

Wurman reflects on a warning given in 1993 by Zalman Usiskin, one of the founders of reform math:

Let us drop this overstated rhetoric about all the old tests being bad. Those tests were used because they were quite effective in fitting a particular mathematical model of performance – a single number that has some value to predict future performance. Until it can be shown that the alternate assessment techniques do a better job of prediction, let us not knock what is there. The mathematics education community has forgotten that it is poor performance on the old tests that rallied the public behind our desire to change. We cannot pick up the banner but then say the test are no measure of performance. We cannot have it both ways.

“Unfortunately, the first thing reformers do these days is to change the test to obscure the track record,” Wurman asserts.

“Hence the new Common Core tests, hence the ‘re-adjusted’ PSAT and SAT,” he adds. “And more to come, all under the guise of ‘we need to better measure what students know.’ In reality, it is like shooting an arrow and then painting a target around it.”

Wurman has been studying a similar situation regarding the Common Core-aligned statewide tests in California for grades K-12. He and colleague Bill Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education, wrote in an op-ed last week at The Sacramento Bee that the California Department of Education “has been acting in a way that would have made the Soviet government proud.”

The two former members of the California State Academic Standards Commission continued:

The department has maintained a database of the results on the statewide K-12 standardized tests since their inception in 1998. This database allowed parents and reporters to easily see detailed test results from any school and grade level in the state and compare them with any other school or school district. That helped parents to evaluate the quality of their child’s school, helped set district priorities and helped evaluate trends at schools and districts over time. The easy availability of this data was an important part of public school accountability.

Yet state bureaucrats have a problem. Students across the state took the new Common Core test earlier this year, and insiders are saying that the results are dismal. So first, the bureaucrats delayed the publication of the results from mid-August (as called for in state law) to Sept. 9.

Then until an about-face last week, they blocked the public from being able to compare the last 15 years of test results with the current Common Core results, obscuring the new low level of performance.

Wurman and Evers describe the situation of California students’ test scores in history and science from several years available for comparison on the state’s website, but not so for math or English – the two areas now covered by the Common Core standards.

Fortunately, as the colleagues note, media inquiries about transparency led to the math and English test data being restored to the state’s website.

The California Department of Education’s behavior, they add, “is all too similar to that of authoritarian governments that excel in hiding information from their people.”

How The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Set Students Up To Fail

The Smarter Balanced Assessment set students up for failure. This explains why….

EXCERPT:
In September 2014, the group that developed the SBAC test announced for the first time that the SBAC test would fail 67% of the students who took the test. Here is a quote from their press release: “Smarter Balanced estimates that the percentage of students who would have scored “Level 3 or higher” in math ranged from 32 percent in Grade 8 to 39 percent in Grade 3. See the chart below for further details.”

http://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/the-real-reason-the-sbac-math-test-fails-67-percent-of-all-students

More Towns Getting Out Of Common Core

Abington, MA passed their town article last night to get rid of Common Core and PARCC, and return to proven education standards. They join Brookfield, Halifax, Hampden, Hanson, Holland, Lakeville, Norfolk, Tewksbury, Uxbridge, Whitman, Wilbraham.

So where is Governor Hassan and your local Superintendent? Still pushing the inferior Common Core Standards and Smarter Balanced Assessment on your kids?