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From: [email protected] To: Antonacci, Peter Subject: [Spam:***** SpamScore] Fwd: Testing On Trial - Lee County, as it turns out, is at the epicenter of t... Date: Wednesday, October 01, 2014 10:08:24 AM Attachments: image017.png image021.png FYI article below Pete Jeb is on the $$$ gravy train with Gates, Pearson, AIR and some others. When the "FL Standards" test scores come out for our students in March or April this is not going to be pretty. Why hasn't anyone in this administration really dug into this issue and given the governor the facts? Apparently, the governor's former Jeb staff have a seriously colored perspective and their marching orders as well. The main players are Pam Stewart and Kim McDougal. I honestly don't think Gary has the true understanding of any of this. Kim McDougal, when on a recent tour in Jacksonville w/ the governor seemed to care not one bit that the U.S. AP History curriculum had been eviscerated by that data mining liberal, who is an unqualified "educational advocate" (weasel) named David Coleman, who is now the College Board president. Fun fact, David Coleman was Arne Duncan's roommate and now an education "reform" colleague of Jeb's. Common Core and "FL Standards" are not about "standards" or education, it is a multi-billion $$$ corporate heist. I hope that many of the legislator's children soon learn what they are teaching in their children's math classes, it is not math. That is what Bobby Jindal saw in his son's books, you can see how he reacted. Why the gross indifference in FL? Again, wait and see what happens when the tests come out for Florida students, surely Jeb and co will be on hand to tell everyone how rigorous they are...... NOT! And we can also thank Charlie Crist for binding FL's DOE to this, that in and of itself is the worst indictment of how bad this is, and should have been closely scrutinized. There is still time. Article below. Nancy From:Sent: 10/1/2014 8:42:14 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time Subj: Testing On Trial - Lee County, as it turns out, is at the epicenter of the statewide debate, Testing On Trial 2014-09-25 / Top News BY ROGER WILLIAMS [email protected] IT DIDN’T MATTER THAT MARTHA SIMMONS’ granddaughter had an IQ of 135-plus, or that she’d scored 5s, the top score, right through elementary school on her FCATs. Or that her grades in gifted classes were at the top of the scale. It didn’t matter that her grandmother and mother were educators and knew how bright and creative she was. What mattered, instead, was that she had a bad day when she took her seventh-grade test, and — her confidence shaken — another bad day when she took her eighth grade test. Her Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test or FCAT scores dropped to a 2. No matter what else the compelling evidence of her portfolio suggested, her teachers removed her from a classroom trajectory that challenged and pleased her, and forced her into remedial classes that did not. The state’s “accountability” requirements necessitated that action. In effect, says Mrs. Simmons, her granddaughter was punished for two or three years because she had two or three bad days. The FCAT was just one of many tests she and every other public or charter school student in Florida (about 1.2 million kids) have to take each year, including so-called End of Course tests in five subjects. There are good reasons for those tests, say those who have promoted them aggressively over time, including former Gov. Jeb Bush. Mr. Bush has taken his Foundation for Excellence in Education, a schoolreform vehicle, on the road to other states, convincing a number of them to adopt his data-driven education policies established in the Sunshine State. Those include holding back third graders who do not pass state-mandated reading tests and withholding diplomas from students who can’t pass the 10th-grade test. The business of testing — the writing and selling of tests by private companies — is worth billions of dollars in the United States, and hundreds of millions in Florida alone, if not more. Some of the beneficiaries of the movement have been Mr. Bush’s colleagues, and even his brother Neil, who created a testing software company in Texas. “The idea of testing is not to be harsh or hurt people, it’s to assure that kids that are on one track that dooms them for failure for the rest of their life get a chance to be able to dream big dreams and have the capacity to fulfill them,” he told National Public Radio two years ago. The Bush-era reforms have defined and redirected a history of tests that dates back decades, at least to President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 policies, in which he took on “A Nation at Risk,” says Dr. Jeff McCullers, director of grants and program development for Lee County Public Schools. BUSH That year in Florida, a landmark court case called “Debra P. versus Turlington” gave state officials the right to withhold diplomas from students who couldn’t pass a standard test, even if evidence suggested that an “achievement gap” existed between black students, who were mostly poor, and white students who weren’t. With that case, Florida ultimately marched into the 21st century. “The apotheosis of the education accountability movement may have been the enactment of the federal ‘No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,’ which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002,” explains Dr. McCullers. “The law mandated that 100 percent of students in the U.S. would perform at grade level on state tests in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of the 2013-2014 school year.” SCOTT What happened, instead, is something entirely different and much less promising. Here, Florida Weekly takes a look at where we’ve been, and where we are. In the 21st century Tests and standards seem to keep reforming themselves with new tests and different standards almost as regularly as Florida weather reforms itself, educators and critics acknowledge. “No Child Left Behind” policies continued with President Barack Obama’s fine-tuning of that focus, in a relatively minor part of the stimulus plan aimed at education — a strategy the president called, “Race to the Top.” The testing companies, meanwhile, including Pearson Education, said to be the largest in the world, and American Institutes of Research, which has sold a new test to Florida for use beginning next year, have benefitted hugely from the “accountability” requirements of former Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, and current Gov. Rick Scott. CRIST They’ve devised an increasing number of tests that they sell to state education officials, whose direction — especially under Gov. Scott — has been to privatize the business of education, according to critics, who come from both conservative and liberal viewpoints. These tests are no longer used just to measure student progress — and as far as that goes, significant research indicates that they may measure a student’s ability to take a test as much as they measure student knowledge and skill. Now, in addition, the tests are also used to judge teachers and schools, and to hold them “accountable.” Unfortunately, according to the American Statistical Association, research shows that teachers have an effect on no more than 14 percent of the variability in test scores, and as little as 1 percent. GUNDLACH But the stakes for both students and teachers, not to mention the cost of tests, are high. “In 2011 when Gov. Scott signed the Student Success Act, it increased the stakes,” says Dr. Kathi Gundlach, president of the Palm Beach County Teachers’ Association. “It tied teachers’ salaries and job security to the value-added model (of judging their ability), which is not statistically sound. The formula is very scary. We are looking for the link that will explain the formula, but as one statistician said, ‘There is a lot of noise in the formula. This means there is a great deal of room for error.’” Among other things, the value-added model looks at a teacher’s record based in large part on how well his or her students do on the state-mandated FCAT tests — tests being traded out in the coming year for another set called FSA, the Florida Standard Assessments tests. JASPER As things now stand, teachers will continue to be graded on the basis of these student tests, just as they were when Mrs. Simmons’ granddaughter failed in the seventh grade. Although the young lady did well in End of Course tests and others, she soon found herself in remedial high school reading — even though she earned straight As in Advanced Reading all the way through elementary and middle school. That experience is common throughout the state, and frustration among educators and parents has reached a boiling point in recent weeks. Local school officials in many counties are looking for alternatives to the current system of heavy-dosage test taking and “accountability,” backed by an unofficial corps of knowledgeable gadflies who want those experiences for children to end. Making it personal Nowadays, about 1 in 5 third graders fail to reach the fourth grade with their classmates, because they haven’t passed the “high-stakes” exam that state officials require them to take, says Kathleen Jasper, a former teacher and education activist, and the founder of the increasingly influential blog, ConversationED. Ms. Jasper, by no means a conservative, has found herself on the Glenn Beck show more than once, agreeing with that conservative icon and entertainer of the right that contemporary education is in trouble.

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