kitchen table math, the sequel

This past week I presented research to the Board of Regents that clearly suggests the need to adjust the "cut scores" on the state's grade 3-8 English and math exams to more accurately indicate student proficiency on those exams. The Board endorsed the rationale I presented and I will adjust those scores accordingly.

[snip]

If our tests are to be a useful tool, they have to give us meaningful information — not only about a student's current level of proficiency, but also about that student's future prospects. So we looked at linkages and connections, to better understand the signals that indicate whether a student is on track to pass Regents exams and to go on to higher education prepared to do college-level work.

The research told us many things. Most significantly, it revealed that some students who have scored "proficient" on state exams were unprepared, without remediation, to do the work required of them when they reached college. That must change.

"Proficiency" on our exams has to mean something real; no good purpose is served when we say that a child is proficient when that child simply is not.


a sequenced curriculum

But more rigorous exams are only one piece of the Regents' broader reform vision — a vision that includes a more challenging, sequenced curriculum, stronger preparation for teachers and principals, and a world-class data system.

[snip]

We are embarking on a new era of reform, and the goal is clear: to provide all students with a world-class education that prepares them for college, work, citizenship and lifelong learning.

Changes will make New York's standardized tests more meaningful
by David Steiner
July 25, 2010

at the Irvington Parents Forum:

It seems to me that there is an obvious and probably unresolvable tension at work here.  Tie a high school diploma to a high and meaningful standard and you will have boxcar numbers of children who will not measure up now or in the foreseeable future.  Keep it low and you're essentially misleading a similar number to believe they have achieved a level of preparedness they have not.  Advocate for a two-tier system, and you risk (as others have noted) a return to the bad old days.

At present, "college ready" is little more than a bumper sticker.  The fact that only one in four kids (as based on the most recent ACT results) are prepared to do c-level college work in all tested subjects is ample proof that it's not an operative goal for high schools anywhere.  Given the range of colleges, it's a slippery concept.  Harvard ready is not the same as Hostos ready.  The only possible solution of which I can conceive is for state assessments to give families meaningful feedback not on the equally ephemeral concept of "on grade level" but whether or not a child is on track for acceptance within that state's university system--and guarantee a seat if so.  New York can't say I'm Harvard material.  But they certainly should be able to say if I'm SUNY material.

New York Will Make Standardized Exams Tougher
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: July 19, 2010

Regents Approve Scoring Changes to Grade 3-8 Math and English Tests
July 19, 2010

To help inform the Regents deliberations, the Department – together with testing experts Daniel Koretz and Howard Everson (both are members of the State’s Technical Advisory Group) and CTB/McGraw-Hill, the state’s assessment contractor – conducted a series of studies and surveys concerning student cut scores and student proficiency. Among their findings were the following:

• Nearly a quarter of students in all New York State two and four-year institutions of higher education take remedial coursework;

• Students taking more remedial courses in their first year of college are less likely to persist in higher education;

• Students who score below an 80 on their math Regents exam have a much greater likelihood of being placed in a remedial college course;

• Students who score above an 80 on their math Regents exam have a good chance of earning at least a C in college-level math;

• Students who score at least a 75 on their English Regents exam have a good chance of earning at least a C in Freshman Composition;

• Institutions of higher education around the state consider a score of 75-85 on Regents exams to be the bare minimum for college readiness;

• Students at the current Level 3 proficiency standard on their 8th grade math exam have less than a 1 in 3 chance of earning an 80 on their math Regents;

• Students in high need districts at the current Level 3 proficiency standard on their 8th grade ELA exam have about a 50-50 chance of earning a 75 on the English Regents;

• Students scoring below 80 on their math regents and below 75 on their English Regents exams have a high likelihood of scoring below 500 on the SAT.

I was already a devoted fan of David Steiner before he was appointed New York state's Commissioner of Education. I'm rapidly becoming a devoted fan of Meryl Tisch, too.

In today's Wall Street Journal:

Acknowledging that a New York state high-school diploma doesn't mean a student is necessarily ready for college, the chancellor of the Board of Regents said she envisions the state providing two types of diplomas in the near future: one that is marked "college-ready," and one that is not.

There is no formal proposal yet to do so, but Merryl Tisch, the chancellor, said the move would be a natural extension of a broad effort by the Regents to toughen up academic standards. Those efforts are fueled by increasing evidence that even while New York students have been showing marked progress on state tests, their performance on national tests has stagnated.

"It's awful to be 18 and not have choices," Ms. Tisch said.

Nearly a quarter of students in all New York state two- and four-year colleges need to take remedial course work, according to John King, the state education department's deputy commissioner. Students taking remedial courses in their first year of college are less likely to graduate, he said.

According to research by the Department of Education, students who scored below an 80 on their math Regents exam have a much higher likelihood of being placed in remedial college courses. Students only need a 65 to pass the math Regents test in New York.

Regent Eyes New Diploma
By BARBARA MARTINEZ
JULY 17, 2010

A new report is spurring New York state to overhaul the way it defines academic proficiency for public-school students -- a massive change that could suddenly label tens of thousands of kids as being below grade level.

[snip]

Among older kids, the study found that those who did just well enough on their high-school math Regents to graduate -- scoring at or slightly above the passing grade of 65 -- had a less than 5 percent chance of getting placed in the easiest for-credit math course offered to CUNY freshmen.

Hiking class standards
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
New York Post
Posted: 4:39 AM, July 14, 2010

Over the last few years, student performance has soared on math and English tests across New York State, with the most dramatic improvements evident in urban districts such as Buffalo, leading many to celebrate the progress.

But now, state education officials say the progress may not have been quite what it seemed.

Weaknesses in the state’s testing and scoring systems over the last several years created what Education Commissioner David M. Steiner equates to systemic “grade inflation.”

• Students who score at the “proficient” level in middle school math, for instance, stand only a 1-in-3 chance of doing well enough in high school to succeed in college math, he said.
• Students begin getting “inflated” test scores before they hit high school, state officials said. A student who scores a 3 on a state math test — which is considered “proficient” on the scale of 1 to 4 — stands only a 30 percent chance of getting an 80 on the high school Regents math exam, they said.
• ...a student who scored at the proficient level on a state test in 2006 was in the 45th percentile on the national test, meaning that 55 percent of students in the country scored better. In 2009, the same score on the state test would land a student in the 20th percentile on the national test, meaning that 80 percent of students nationwide scored better.

The state Education Department recently asked a group of experts, led by Harvard University’s Daniel M. Koretz, to determine how closely eighth-grade scores correlate to high school Regents exam scores — and how well those Regents exam scores correlate to success in college.

Flawed tests distort sharp rise in scores by students
By Mary B. Pasciak
Updated: July 06, 2010, 11:42 pm / 19 comments
Published: July 07, 2010, 6:35 am

here

here

and

here

Amazing.

I've just finished topic number 210 in ALEKS geometry. One topic left to go.

ALEKS lets you compare what you're learning from ALEKS to your state standards. According to ALEKS, New York state geometry standards includes 101 of ALEKS' 211 standards.

I don't know whether New York's geometry standards include topics ALEKS doesn't cover.

I haven't followed the ins and outs, so this is all I've got.

Lynne Munson at the Common Core blog:

New York City’s Board of Regents has chosen David Steiner as New York’s new education commissioner, EdWeek reported earlier this week. Steiner’s move to Albany comes after four years as dean of Hunter College’s School of Education.

Why are we happy with the regents’ pick? Because Steiner is widely known for his commitment to a rigorous, comprehensive curriculum, and he has published quite a bit on the subject.

Don’t take our word for it, though – read how Steiner describes his schoolboy days:

“I read the classics as they were then understood—Austen, Brontë, Chaucer, Conrad, Dickens (not a favorite), Eliot, Hardy, Lawrence, Milton (sampled, and put aside for years to come), Mann, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Flaubert, Zola—and many authors of the second rank. I recall Trollope, Webster, Spencer, “modern” novelists of every hue—Fitzgerald, Roth, Updike, Nicholas Monsarrat, Storm Jameson (a close family friend), John le Carré—and so many others lost to memory.”

We’ll be watching with interest.

Boy. Me, too.

Steiner was on the board of the Core Knowledge Foundation, he did the ed-school syllabus study a few years ago, and he worked with Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First to create Teacher U at Hunter College.

Steiner's appointment has happened at the precise moment I was gearing up to lobby for adoption of the Core Knowledge curriculum here in Irvington. The precise moment. Ed says we should see if he'll come to town to give a talk.

The press release describes Steiner as "a bold and provocative education reformer."

That's something you don't see every day.

Lenore Skenazy let her son Izzy make his own way home from Bloomingdale's in New York City a couple of weeks ago, and wrote about the experience in the New York Sun. It was a man-bites-dog story, as Izzy is only nine--. Lenore wrote another column for the Huffington Post:

Last week I wrote a column for my newspaper, The New York Sun, titled, "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway." It basically said that I let him do this because he wanted to take a trip solo, he knew how to read the map, and I had every confidence that he could find his way home.

Two days later, said son and I found ourselves on the Today Show, MSNBC and FoxNews, trying to convince anchor after anchor after anchor that:

1) This was not a crazy idea - as they could see from the fact the kid was sitting there, grinning. And

2) I am not a crazy mom, as they could see from...

Well, that's the point. Not all of them could see. The mere fact that I'd let my son out of my sight made me seem nuts to more than a few people, who wondered why didn't I follow him, or keep checking in with a cell phone, or wait until he was 34 and balding before I let him go out on his own.

Skenazy is looking to give her son "a longer leash."

But here's what I've learned from all the folks who don't want to do that, and send bile-filled notes instead: For some reason we live in a society that sees little difference between letting a child frolic in the front yard and letting a child frolic in front of a firing squad. It's impossible for people to calculate the difference between real and remote risks.

So she's started a blog, Free Range Kids, to counter the coddling and hypervigilance -- even countering the helicopter parenting phenomenon.

At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail.

Go and tell your story of raising Free Range Kids.

(will be cross-posted at I Speak of Dreams)

You've got to see the trailer for this documentary to believe it.

The Rubber Room

I dare you to keep from shaking your head in disbelief.

Governor To Bet Billions on SUNY reports The New York Sun.

Envisioning a dramatically greater role for universities and colleges in the remedial education of secondary students, the Spitzer administration is planning to pump billions of additional dollars into the State University of New York and the rest of New York's higher education system, sources said.

[snip]

The aim is to shift remediation to an earlier point — starting with children as young as 12 — so that more students are prepared for college by the time they graduate high school.

[snip]

In doing so, the commission is hoping to combat a persistent problem: More than half of students entering community colleges require math and reading remediation.

Apparently, the already planned $7 billion increase in K-12 funding over the next four years will not be enough to remedy the remediation problem. While the increased funding to colleges for this new proposal has not been specified, the newspaper reports that spending on higher education in New York is expected to increase by $1.6 billion over the next five years.

Mo money, mo money, mo money.

Here’s the silver lining, if there is one.

Commission members say they foresee assigning colleges and universities a greater role in helping to develop the curricula of public high schools and middle schools.

That in itself might be worth a few billion dollars. Oh wait, do they mean the education departments or the subject areas? I have a sinking suspicion it’s the former.

I'd like to express my gratitude at the opportunity to post here on KTM - as a long-time reader of this site, I'm honored.

So, let's get down to business and address a question that pops up so often that I've decided to cross-post the answer on my own site.

Can an interested party record a school board or school committee meeting in New York State? [NJ and PA are touched upon as well.]

The short answer: Absolutely, provided that the recording process and its devices don't disrupt the proceedings.

Remember, a public meeting constitutes quorum gathering to discuss issues. This means that you're free to record regular school board meetings, budget hearings, committee meetings, etc. - any time there's quorum/over half the official body in attendance with the intent to conduct public business, go ahead.

But school boards aren't always into public records and accountability. When your New York State school district denies that you're allowed to tape a meeting, cite the following precedents:

• Mitchell v. Board of Education of Garden City UFSD, 113 A.D.2d 924 (2nd Dept. 1985). This established that unobtrusive, handheld tape recording devices were acceptable.


• People v. Ystueta, 99 Misc.2d 1105 (District Court, Suffolk County, 1979). Established that prohibiting recording devices violated public policy.


• NYS Dept. of State Committee on Open Government OML-AO-3037, June 18, 1999. Backs up People v. Ystueta.


• Feldman v. Town of Bethel, 106 A.D.2d 695 (3rd Dep't 1984). Use of recording device may not cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or disturb the meeting.

Then there's Csorny, et al. v. Shoreham-Wading River Central School District, et al. (Index No. 31583/00) which not only upholds the above rulings, but cites supporting precedent in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey:

The overwhelming weight of authority from other states likewise supports our holding herein. In Hain v Board of Directors of Reading School Dist. (163 Pa Commw 479, 641 A2d 661), the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania struck a school board rule prohibiting the videotape recording of public meetings as violative of Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act. In Maurice River Tp. Bd. of Educ. v Maurice River Tp. Teachers Assn. (193 NJ Super 488, 475 A2d 59, affg 455 A2d 563), the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, similarly held that a school board could not enact a blanket prohibition against videotaping of public meetings, as such a rule violated New Jersey's Open Public Meetings Act (NJSA 10:4-6 et seq; see also Sudol v Borough of North Arlington, 137 NJ Super 149, 348 A2d 216 [NJ Super]).

There ya go, kids. Record at will.

And when the Board members freak out, hand them a sheet of paper citing these precedents and make it very clear that their ignorance of the law in no way supersedes either statute or precedent.