Repost For Tax Day: The Teacher Supply Tax Credit & Why We Aren't Saints

I'm reposting this from December of last year in "celebration" of Tax Day tomorrow.

Via Fred Klonsky, here's yet another way to screw teachers out of money:

STATELINE (WIFR) -- Local teachers may be forced to spend more of their own money on school supplies next year, now that a federal tax break is about to expire.

Teachers are able to deduct up to $250 on what they spend on classrooms supplies including workbooks, pencils, and posters. Congress hasn't passed a measure that would extend that tax break into 2014. Teachers shopping at The Three R's in Rockford say if the benefits went away, they'd still buy supplies for their classrooms, but this could affect their personal spending.

"I teach with a passion and I want to provide different perks for my kids," said Joe Kowalski, an ESL teacher at Marsh Elementary. "I'm in this profession because I love it, I love working with the kids and making the world a better place. And if I lose the $250 deduction, it'll hurt me more on a personal level then on a professional level."

The National Education Association estimates that teachers spend an average of $400 annually on supplies.

So that kinda sucks; nobody wants to pay more taxes. But let's step back a bit from this and look for the unsaid messages within the tax deduction itself.

I've been doing my own taxes for years. One thing I've noticed in reading how-to articles about tax preparation is that deductions and credits for middle-class folk are often sold to us as "gifts" or "breaks." The teacher tax credit is no different; here, for example, is Fox Business's take:

A Tax-Deduction Apple for Teachers

Teaching takes a toll on many educators' pocketbooks as they routinely buy supplies for their financially strapped schools. Over the past few years, they've enjoyed a tax break for such academic dedication. 

Teachers and other educators can deduct up to $250 they spent last year to buy classroom supplies. 

Even better, the deduction is claimed directly on Form 1040, meaning there's no need to itemize to get the break. Rather, it's an adjustment to your income, helping cut your tax bill by reducing your overall income. The less income to tax, the lower the tax bill. 

While every little bit helps, the educator expenses deduction is indeed relatively small. But because it's an adjustment to income and doesn't require itemizing expenses, more school employees should now be able to claim at least a portion of their class-related expenditures.

In this telling, it's an "apple" - a perk - for teachers to "enjoy" a tax break when they go out and spend their own money on supplies for their students. "Even better," the break isn't itemized: golly, aren't we lucky!

In Pennsylvania, the legislature is considering their own version of the law; look at the hidden assumptions, however, on which it is based:

Walk into any Pennsylvania classroom and you're bound to find students using items that were purchased by their teacher who paid for them out of pocket, said veteran Harrisburg School District teacher Rich Askey.

In these days of district belt-tightening, this practice has become an “essential fact of life” for students to have what they need to learn, said Rep. Jim Roebuck of Philadelphia, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee.

See, it is, according to this Democratic politician, an “essential fact of life” that teachers must give up their own money to give their students the basics they need for school. Rep. Roebuck is from Philly; perhaps he's not yet heard, but another “essential fact of life” is that his home city has led the nation in  screwing teachers out of their wages and other compensation, all while undermining their right to collectively bargain.

Philadelphia is a school system that has been chronically underfunded for years. But this, apparently, is the best Harrisburg can do: give a little tax break to teachers in the hopes that they pick up the slack:

This sacrifice by teachers has not gone unnoticed by Democratic and Republican state lawmakers who want to give educators something back for this demonstration of their dedication to their profession.

Let's be clear: PA's lawmakers aren't "giving something back" to teachers: they are expecting them to dip into their already modest wages so they can make up for the failure of politicians to adequately fund public schools. So when a politician like Rep. Jake Wheatley, D-Allegheny, says something stupid like this:

“There’s no more worthy cause for a tax credit than to help our educators provide for the bare necessities for our students,” Wheatley said.  

Understand that he is admitting that he has failed in his job to provide schools what they need. Of course, the truly awful Tom Corbett can't even commit to helping out teachers even this a little bit:

Gov. Tom Corbett's press secretary Jay Pagni said it would be premature to comment on this proposal until the Legislature has an opportunity to do a fiscal analysis.

I'm sure Corbett will do a "fiscal analysis" of this just as soon as he's finished with the "fiscal analysis" of how his good buddy and biggest political contributor, Vahan Gureghian, is making a fortune off of a charter school scheme that wound up further screwing the teachers of the Chester-Upland school district.

When those teachers offered to work without pay, many of our leaders - including the president himself - sang their praises. But think about what these elites were really saying: when governments fail to adequately tax corporations and the wealthy so they can provide basic public services, teachers and other public workers are expected to give back their pay to make up the difference.

This is an extremely useful construction for politicians and pundits who want to have it both ways. Chris Christie, as I've written before, is a master at telling this particular story:

I think for those people who are feeling discouraged right now, because they're going to have to pay a percentage of their health insurance premium, or they're going to have to pay one or two points more towards a lifetime pension, then I would suggest to you respectfully that those people have completely lost touch with reality, and probably didn't have the passion to begin with.

See how it works? If a teacher dares to say that maybe he shouldn't be the one to shoulder all of the financial problems of his state while billions of dollars are given away in tax expenditures and other giveaways that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, then that teacher isn't "passionate" enough. Christie makes out "good" teachers to be saints; but his test for canonization is whether those teachers are willing enough to take money out of their own bank accounts.

Meanwhile...

Chez Christie.

Yeah, times are tough for everyone.

Here's the truth: school spending is still down years after the Great Recession. There's evidence teachers are spending more of their own money on supplies. I'll miss the teacher supply tax credit, but let's also acknowledge that it has normalized the notion that public school teachers ought to be making greater and greater personal sacrifices in response to the failure of politicians to adequately fund our schools.

I'd gladly give up my small tax "break" if it gets people thinking that teachers buying their own chalk is not an acceptable state of affairs.

Sunday Music: Hugh Masekela

I caught Hugh Masekela last Sunday at NJPAC. The younger Jazzboy plays the trumpet (his first instrument is the computer, actually, and the music he makes on it is really quite good), so Mrs. Jazzman and I thought this would be good family outing. It was.



Masekela is 75 and is really amazing; he's a ball of energy on stage, playing, singing, dancing, telling stories, and just generally being great. His band is tight, tight, tight. I don't know what it is about African musicians, but the best have this ability to play with the time while keeping the groove in the pocket that's just remarkable. Masekela had this kid playing guitar with him who was phenomenal - the whole band was great.

As I told the Jazzboy on the way out: there are few things better in this life than watching and listening to a group of musicians who can really play. On this point, we agreed, there is no generation gap.

Data Wars, Episode I

Bruce Baker wrote a post yesterday about the appropriate use of data that really should be read by all engaged in education policy debates:

My next few blog posts will return to a common theme on this blog – appropriate use of publicly available data sources. I figure it’s time to put some positive, instructive stuff out there. Some guidance for more casual users (and more reckless ones) of public data sources and for those must making their way into the game. In this post, I provide a few tips on using publicly available New Jersey schools data. The guidance provided herein is largely in response to repeated errors I’ve seen over time in using and reporting New Jersey school data, where some of those errors are simple oversight and lack of deep understanding of the data, and others of those errors seem a bit more suspect. Most of these recommendations apply to using other states’ data as well. Notably, most of these are tips that a thoughtful data analyst would arrive at on his/her own, by engaging in the appropriate preliminary evaluations of the data. But sadly these days, it doesn’t seem to work that way.

I'll be the first to confess that I am still relatively new to "the game," and I'm as prone to mistakes as anyone. The data and analysis I've been putting out on this blog and elsewhere is, undoubtedly, open to scrutiny and critique. There may well be things I haven't thought of when making a criticism, and I'm more than willing to listen to a contrary point of view and debate it.

But here's the thing...

I'm not in charge of anything. I'm not the guy making policies: I'm the guy who, along with my fellow teachers across this state and the nation, has to live with them. So when I see a snake oil salesman like Joel Klein put out a blatantly deceptive graph, that just bugs the hell out of me. Klein ran the largest schools system in the US; arguably, it is also the most-studied, as many education researchers are headquartered in NYC. Yet here he is, using data in an utterly fraudulent way.

Or take his latest hire, Former Acting NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, whose magic graph "proved" poverty just doesn't matter. Click through to see how totally disingenuous this "data-based" thinking really is. Yet, in spite of his persistent abuse of data, Cerf has had more influence on New Jersey's schools than any other commissioner in a generation. 

And then there's Michelle Rhee, who can't read even the most basic research on education. Rhee gets the amount of time spent preparing for standardized tests wrong in this piece, which was originally published in the Washington Post. I wrote about it last Monday; and yet, incredibly, the Star-Ledger reprinted her inaccuracies just today. 

(A message for Tom Moran, editor of the op-ed page at the S-L: you've admitted you read me, buddy. Do you do these things just to give me more fodder for my blog?)

I could go on: Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Gates... all have enormous power over school policy. All claim to drive their decisions with research. But all turn out to be either woefully misinformed or outright mendacious when using data to justify their policy preferences.

Again: it would be one thing if these people were just voicing their opinions. But what they say and what they do matters. There are consequences to their actions. Their misuse of data has serious ramifications for students, teachers, and families.

Which brings me to our latest episode of data abuse:

The Newark Public Schools have been under state control for 19 years, ostensibly because this district was so poorly run when under local control. Ironically, however, NPS was years late in producing a Long-Range Facilitates Plan (LRFP), as was required by state law. But that changed last month, when the district finally "amended" its 2005 LRFP.

I'm not qualified to say whether this amended plan meets the requirements of the law. I can tell you, after having seen it, that it comes across as a mish-mosh of disparate reports and policy briefs and graphs and powerpoints, slapped together without any overarching organization. I'd tell you to go look and judge for yourself, but -- so far as I can tell -- the plan hasn't been released to the public.

In any case, as I was skimming through, this page stood out (click to enlarge):

So what's going on here? Well, NPS is trying to use test outcomes to identify its "struggling" schools in this amended LRFP (which is weird in and of itself, as the old LRFP concentrated on facilities and didn't have anything to do with test scores). There are two measures in use:

1. "LAL % Prof +": Language arts proficiency, as defined by whether a student is deemed "proficient" or "advanced proficient" on the NJASK. I can't be sure, but it looks like the proficiency rates were averaged from Grade 3 to 8, which, according to Bruce's post, is a no-no. But we'll set that aside for right now.
2. "LAL SGP": The infamous Student Growth Percentiles, which have a host of problems of their own -- again, we'll put those aside. Here we have the median SGP in language arts for the entire school population, the state's measure for how a school's students "grow."

To identify which schools are "struggling," NPS has averaged the LAL proficiency rate with the SGP score. Supposedly, they thought they could do this because SGPs and proficiency rates both use a 0-to-100 (or close enough: 1-99) scale. So they've got to be equivalent measures, right?

Wrong:

This is a little tricky, but it makes sense if you break it down a bit. What we have here are the distributions of SGPs and LAL proficiency rates by schools for the Newark area, both public schools and charters. The green bars show the number of schools that got SGP scores within a certain "bin": in other words, there are 16 schools that got SGPs between 35 and 40, the largest bin (and, therefore, the largest bar) in the graph. Notice how the distribution is such that the most schools are in a bin that is roughly at the mean (or average) score, which is about 41. The number of schools in neighboring bins roughly falls off in each direction: this is, very crudely, a normal distribution, aka a "bell curve."

The clear bars show the distribution for proficiency rates in Grade 8 LAL; the mean rate is about 61 percent. Notice that the bars don't follow that bell curve shape: the distribution isn't normal.

Why does this matter? Well, NPS's simple formula -- averaging the two measures -- makes an assumption: that a difference in these two measures is equivalent. In other words, if your schools is ten points higher in SGPs than another school, but that school is ten points higher than you in proficiency, then your two schools are equal on the "struggling" index. Compared to other schools, your school and the other you are comparing yourself to are "struggling" (or not "struggling") the same amount.

Except this graph shows the comparisons are not equivalent. Being ten points above the mean on SGP is a much bigger deal than being ten points above the mean on proficiency. You beat out many more schools when you shift those ten points on SGPs than you do when you shift the same amount on proficiency.

In addition: the means for both measures aren't equivalent. So if you have a proficiency rate of 70, you're barely above the middle of the pack. But if you have an SGP of 70, you're at the top in growth. Of course, there's no way to know that being at the bottom in SGPs is just as good of an indicator that your school is "struggling" as being at the bottom in proficiency. NPS is averaging two measures that have different means, different distributions, and different educational meanings.

And yet high-stakes decisions are being made -- whether schools should be closed, whether the buildings should be turned over to charter management organizations, whether staffs should be fired across the board -- on this misuse of data. Again, it wouldn't matter so much if this was just someone's opinion, but it's not: the people who did this are in charge of making policy for Newark's schools.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with identifying which schools are "struggling" within a system and require intervention. But misusing data to come up with a simplified quantitative measure is a cop-out. This stuff may be complex, but Anderson and her staff signed up for the job on the premise that they were qualified to handle it. Stuff like this suggests they aren't up to the task.

More data wars to come...

Averaging non-equivalent measures: to the Dark Side it leads, young one...

Why Is Michelle Rhee Wrong About Everything?

Michelle Rhee is consistently wrong about everything.

She was wrong about teaching to the test. She was wrong about her grading of state education policies. She was wrong about truancy. She was wrong about student surveys and VAM. She was wrong about the effectiveness of her "reforms" while leading the Washington, D.C. schools.

Michelle Rhee was even wrong about her own record as a teacher.

And now America's #1 corporate reformer is wrong about the amount of classroom time taken up by standardized testing:

Those test-crazed districts need to be reeled in. But a new study by Teach Plus, an organization that advocates for students in urban schools, found that on average, in grades three and seven, just 1.7 percent of classroom time is devoted to preparing for and taking standardized tests. That’s not outrageous at all. Most people spend a larger percentage of their waking day choosing an outfit to wear or watching TV. [emphasis mine] 

Diane Ravitch and Peter Greene deal with the rest of Rhee's useless article very well; I, however, want to concentrate on this one paragraph, because it shows, once again, how Rhee is incapable of reading and understanding even the most basic pieces of education research.

Notice that she claims here that "... just 1.7 percent of classroom time is devoted to preparing for and taking standardized tests." Is that what the Teach Plus report measures? Here's page 4:

For this research, we compare publicly available district and state test calendars to teacher reports of test administration time. District and state calendars are an important baseline in the test-time dialogue in that they are a primary way officials communicate the amount of time spent on testing to parents and the public. While most state and district officials would acknowledge that testing takes longer than the amount of time reflected in the district calendar, ours is the first piece of research to measure the gap between the minimum time allocated for tests by administrators and the real time costs experienced by teachers. 

In addition to the time it takes for students to complete an assessment and for teachers and staff to administer it, teachers also experience an impact on instructional time when they have to prepare students for the assessment or when they put other instructional plans on hold for the administration of required assessments. Our research examines this impact on instructional time through survey data from over 300 classroom teachers. [emphasis mine]

So the report has two parts: an examination of the time it takes to administer tests, and a look at the preparation time involved. The 1.7 percent figure is specifically referenced on page 7:

According to a 2013 Education Commission of the States (ECS) report on the minimum amount of instructional time per year, the average time for a kindergarten student in the 12 states featured in this report is approximately 885.9 hours, assuming a full-day kindergarten program. With an average of 3.1 hours of testing per year, the typical kindergarten student is tested for less than one percent of the year. In third grade, the amount of required state instructional time across the 12 urban districts in this study is 953.7 hours, meaning 1.7 percent of the typical third grader’s year is spent on state- and district-mandated testing. Likewise, in seventh grade, the average number of instructional hours is 1,016.8, and the average time spent on testing is also 1.7 percent. These 1.7 percent figures do not reflect the many time demands that may be associated with testing such as preparing students or analyzing data. However, it is an important baseline figure. It reflects the cumulative time impact that districts currently use to communicate with parents and the general public about the time students are being tested. [emphasis mine]

Let's be very clear: in direct contradiction to Rhee, the Teach Plus report specifically says the 1.7 percent figure does not include test preparation time. 

So what does the study say about the amount of time spent in schools on test prep? The methodology doesn't allow for precise answers, but there are some qualitative findings (p. 15-16):

In addition to the time it takes to administer them, a refrain heard among teachers was that they often set aside time to provide students with test-taking skills. This test preparation seemed to vary between setting a few days aside before the state test to being a regular part of the school day or week in other cases. 

•“It takes a lot of time to prepare for the tests. We usually spend time making sure students review what they learned during the year to ensure they are ready.” – Third grade teacher 

•“Yes, with daily test prep and standards review sessions. More than 35 percent of instructional time is spent on these assessments per year. That includes initial instruction, review, scoring, planning, preparation of additional assessment materials, and reassessments.” – Third grade teacher 

• “The prepping for the test takes a lot of time. Instead of possibly doing projects or more hands-on learning, we really focused on the testing format and preparing our students to be comfortable taking the test. The prepping starts at the beginning of the year and ends in April. We also have to do the practice tests for the [state test] and [district test]. These practice tests can take up to an hour to do.” – Third grade teacher 

• “We spend time practicing getting into our testing groups, taking practice tests, etc. We also typically take time from our usual instruction to focus on test prep in the week or two leading to the test. For example, I stop teaching the novel we are reading for a week to do multiple choice test prep. Also, during the week of the test, we have literally no instruction. I would say overall we lose about 15-20 days of instruction to testing to statewide testing. Another 20 days we are instructing, but it is focused on test prep.” – Seventh grade teacher [emphasis mine]

A critique I would make about this report is that it is difficult to tell at times whether the teachers' comments about test prep are always related to state- or district-level tests. But there's enough here for us to say that there is evidence that preparing for state-level tests consumes a significant amount of instructional time.

So the report Rhee herself cites contradicts her main point: standardized testing does, in fact, gobble up lots of classroom time. Her statement above, according to the source she herself cites, is just dead wrong.

I must tell you, I continue to be astonished that the people who fund Rhee's jihad against teachers, their unions, and public schools in general seem to care so little about her incompetence. Aren't they concerned that they are giving their money to someone who can't even read a simple report correctly? I mean, even if they want to destroy public schools and teachers unions, don't they want to have someone leading the charge who isn't a constant embarrassment?

David Tepper, Eli Broad, John Arnold, Rupert Murdoch, I'm asking all of you: why do you continue to give money to someone who is consistently wrong about everything?

Sorry, fellas -- I'll do better next time, I promise...

Uncommon Comes To Camden: Let The Segregation Begin!

Camden's State Superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, shares much in common with his friend from the good old days in NYC, Newark State Superintendent Cami Anderson. Anderson, for example, believes she can simply ignore the law whenever she wants, as she does not answer to the citizens of Newark, with whom she has lost all credibility.

So, apparently, does Rouhanifard:

Two more Renaissance schools enrolling up to 700 students will open in the fall in addition to the one previously approved, the Camden School District said Friday.

Mastery and Uncommon Schools will use temporary facilities beginning in the 2014-15 school year while constructing buildings, the district's state-appointed superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, said Friday.

Neither operator has received state Department of Education approval, as required by law, to operate the district-charter hybrid schools, and plans for permanent facilities are vague, but the district made the announcement anyway to allow the operators to get a jump on enrollment, spokesman Brendan Lowe said. The two applications will be submitted to the state Monday, when they will become public.

"It's a way to support these schools . . . to begin getting the word out, making sure they have students for the fall," Lowe said. [emphasis mine]

Listen, when you're bringing awesome transformational change with urgency and excellence, you can't be bothered by pesky little things like actually following the law, amiright? I mean, what's the point of disenfranchising poor black people and installing an inexperienced and unqualified school leader if you're going to get bogged down in details like whether your actions are illegal?

At some point I'll get to Mastery and the trail of destruction left by Philadelphia's charter school industry. But let's take a moment to review the track record of Uncommon Schools in New Jersey as exemplified by their Newark branch, North Star Academy. Bruce Baker has written a particularly readable post about just how awesomely refromy North Star is:

***

A true miracle it was… is… and shall be. One that must be proliferated and shared widely.

But alas, the more they shared, the more they touted their awesomeness, the more it started to become apparent that all might not be quite so rosy in North Star land.

As it turned out, those kids in North Star really didn’t look so much like those others they were apparently so handily blowing out on state tests….

And there was complete freakin’ silence!

Somehow, this rapidly growing miracle school was managing to serve far fewer poor children than others (except a few other charter schools also claiming miracle status) around them.

And, they were serving hardly any children with disabilities and few or none with more severe disabilities.

And again there was complete freakin’ silence!

And if that was the case, was it really reasonable to attribute their awesomeness to the awesomeness of their own teachers – their innovative strategies… and the nuanced, deep understanding of being driven by data?

Actually, it is perhaps most befuddling if not outright damning that such non-trivial data could be so persistently ignored in a school that is so driven by data?

And there was complete freakin’ silence!

But alas, these were mere minor signals that all might not be as awesome as originally assumed.

It also turned out that of all the 5th graders who entered the halls of awesomeness, only about half ever made it to senior year – year after year after year after year… after year.

And for black boys in the school, far fewer than that:

And there was complete freakin’ silence!

And in any given year, children were being suspended from the school at an alarming rate.

Again… raising the question of how a school driven by data could rely so heavily on a single metric – test scores and pass rates derived from them – to proclaim their awesomeness, when in fact, things were looking somewhat less than awesome.

***

Thanks, Bruce* -- read the entire thing, everyone, then hope that Camden's current charter schools don't discriminate on the basis of special education needs. Because, if they did, we'd see the charter schools in these graphs in the upper left corner: smaller SpecEd populations with relatively high test outcomes.

Oh dear...

This really is outrageous. North Star Academy has a proven record of segregation and student attrition in Newark, yet it is being pushed illegally into Camden with no acknowledgment from the state administration of its past or current practices.

When the Camden school district is finally left in shambles, and these segregating charter schools have been shown to be failures at educating all types of students, and the children who need well-resoucred schools the most -- the poorest children, the children with special needs, the children who are Limited English Proficient -- are consigned to crumbling, inadequately funded public schools...

What will we do then? How will we salve our guilty consciences? To what lengths will we go to convince ourselves that this course of destruction was really putting the interests of our most needy and deserving children first?

New Jersey reflects on Camden school "reform"

* Bruce Baker is my advisor in the PhD program at Rutgers.

Charter School "Success": There's ALWAYS a Catch

Camden's public school district is being systematically dismantled to become a "portfolio" district of "choice." This is, of course, all part of the formerly secret plan that was implemented by Former Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf -- a plan paid for by his mentor and patron, California billionaire Eli Broad.

What barely gets mentioned in the discussion of Camden's charter schools, however, is what barely gets mentioned in discussions of any city's charters: "successful" charter schools owe most of their "success" to the fact that they don't educate the same kids as their neighboring public schools.

Camden is a particularly interesting case of this phenomenon. Because often you can count on charters to segregate students by poverty status; Hoboken's charters are a particularly good (bad?) example of this. But Camden's poverty is so prevalent that its schools don't show much variation in free lunch-eligible status. We're better off looking at other differences in student characteristics...

Like special education rates.

Let me first say that there are other measures of student outcomes that show far less correlation to special education rates. But it's telling that 60 percent of the variation in 8th Grade language arts proficiency (as measured here by what proportion of students "clear the bar" on the NJASK test) can be explained by the special education rate for a school.

And notice Camden's charter schools in red: all have relatively low SpecEd rates, which clearly helps their proficiency rates (except in the case of DUE, which has a SpecEd rate just as low or lower than many CPS schools, yet lags relative to them in proficiency). 

Is State Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard's plan to move as many children as possible into charters with low SpecEd rates? Who, then, will be left behind in the public schools?

I think the answer to that question's rather obvious, don't you?

Chris Christie: "Paymon has a proven track record..."

ADDING: I'm a little reluctant to post this graph, as it has so many caveats attached to it. SAT scores are not good measures of school effectiveness, as the tests are voluntary (among other reasons). We don't have many data points for Camden high schools, so any linear regression is somewhat suspect. The range of scores isn't all that big, either.

All that said...

Over three-quarters of the variation in Camden's high school's SAT scores can be explained by the schools' special education percentages.

Perhaps someone ought to ask Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, the founder of LEAP Academy, what she thinks would happen if she took on the same special education population as Camden High.

NJ Field Tests PARCC: Who Are You Gonna Believe?

According to the mandarins at the NJDOE, the new, computerized, Common Core-aligned PARCC tests have had a field test this week that was just oh-so-super!

State Department of Education officials said 60 percent of the schools that will administer the PARCC test next spring are participating in the practice run. Other districts, like South Orange-Maplewood, are working with neighboring schools to monitor the exam’s implementation.

“As problems get identified they are being resolved,” acting Education Commissioner David Hespe told the Senate Budget Committee during a hearing Thursday in Trenton. “Every field test is going to reveal problems. That’s why we do it.”

The dry-run allows districts to determine their technological capacities for the computer-based exam. Roxbury has spent $500,000 in upgrades to meet the technical requirements of the PARCC, including improvements to its software, network infrastructure and computers.

Rehman is using three different devices — Chromebooks, iPads and desk-top computers — to see which work best.

“That’s music to my ears,” assistant Education Commissioner Bari Erlichson said. “One of the principals of the design of PARCC is that students should be able to take the exam on (various devices). It is agnostic to the device and the student should see the same item in the say way.”

Two points before we go on:

1) Are we sure the conditions of the field test are truly analogous to the conditions of the full implementation of PARCC? Are the tests being hosted on similar servers? Can the state's individual school districts handle the bandwidth requirements and hardware needs of a full-scale administration of PARCC?

It may be music to Erlichson's ears that PARCC works as well on a desktop as a Chromebook... but how confident is she that the field test has appropriately mimicked the conditions of an actual administration, with the dozens (at least) of different hardware and network configurations that will be used across the state, and the millions of students who will be taking the test simultaneously?

Former Acting Commissioner Cerf had a funny habit of picking and choosing what he considered to be "urgent": properly studying the effects of charter schools, for example, was not high on his list of "urgent" matters. But he was always darned sure that we had to roll out the PARCC and attach high stakes to the results -- like teacher evaluations -- as quickly as possible, even if the tests had never been properly vetted.

It seems to me, however, that the only way we can be sure these tests will work the way they are supposed to is to have an actual full-scale administration. Why are we attaching high stakes to PARCC before we have even seen how it works when it is fully implemented? Isn't the far more logical course of action to try out the PARCC, see how it goes, then make policies about which actions to take based on its results?

Or is that not "urgent" enough?

2) Roxbury is a "GH" district as listed in the state District Factor Groups: it's not the lowest in terms of student economic disadvantage, but its still a relatively affluent district. Like many suburban schools in the Garden State, it's had to struggle with the insipid 2% tax cap and declining state aid; however, it is still a relatively well-resourced district, especially compared to the Abbots and non-Abbotts that serve large proportions of students in poverty.

So it's nice that Roxbury got through the PARCC -- but that's not really the test, is it? You see, under Chris Christie, New Jersey's school funding equity -- at one time, the envy of the nation -- has been steadily declining. How can districts without the necessary technology resources can hope to compete with districts, like Roxbury, that are able to pull off the PARCC? How can Hoboken -- a district being financially devastated by the segregated charters the state forces it to fund -- possibly find the resources needed to administer the PARCC as easily as Chatham, a community with a strong tax base, far fewer students in economic disadvantage, and no charter schools leeching off of its budgets?

PARCC -- like AchieveNJ, aka Operation Hindenburg, the new teacher evaluation system -- is yet another way to exacerbate the growing inequality in New Jersey's schools. AchieveNJ is putting an undue burden on schools without adequate resources; so, undoubtedly, is PARCC.

But this reality doesn't help sell the image of a testing regime that is bright and sunny and happy:

The computer-based PARCC exam has generated plenty of anxiety around the state. The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has called for delaying its debut next spring, saying teachers and districts need more time to adapt to both the subject matter and format.

Hespe told lawmakers Thursday that about 71 percent of the state’s school districts are ready, but that leaves 29 percent unprepared. Officials are working on contingency plans that might include using paper and pencil, Hespe said.

Teachers have testified at state Board of Education meetings that the PARCC, and the more rigorous curriculum it assesses, are creating chaos. The fact that they are being judged by their students’ performance ratchets up the stress.

But Erlichson said the state has planned for years for the rollout of the Common Core curriculum and the PARCC. A handful of schools first tested the exam last year, she said, and that experience led to changes and improvements.

Schools were asked to volunteer for the practice test and were given a 20-day time frame that allows them to decide when and how to administer it. A second round will be given in late May, she said.

“From a test administration standpoint, we need to give folks the information they need to feel confident,” she said. “I’m delighted to see the sharing of these tech folks.”

I mean, why don't they just hire Pharrell to be the new spokesman for the NJDOE? Bari Erlichson could borrow his hat...

NJDOE Spokesman Pharrell Williams: "Happy, happy, happy, happy..."

The truth is that, under Cerf, NJDOE has lost just about all its credibility with teachers in this state. And if you go to one of the few places where teachers can actually give feedback about the PARCC field test -- testingtalk.org -- you'll find the reviews are not very good. A few samples:

The tests were an embarrassment. The passages on most days weren't so bad and yes I know day three one passage that was high but it was the length of the tests and some of the questions. But we shouldn't have expected better. Only thing that made it better was the way kids came in a little more knowing and in my school a little less stressed about the exam. I'm in a middle school and the kids came in knowing it will be difficult. The work we did bookmarks, centers , reading marathon, leveled questions based on where a student is made them more relaxed. Discussion around the social I justice of these tests made them more knowledgeable, the realization that these tests shouldn't define anybody made them stronger. Thank you tc for helping with that.

 Or:

I just can’t stop thinking about the question of who is this test for. I work with eighth graders in an inclusion program. At best, these tests make then miserable, at worst, a feeling of utter helplessness. What do they gain from this? Does a Pearson rep contact the family with insight into their child as a learner? Teachers in NYC DOE have to give up teaching time to score the test for another grade, for someone else’s students. At best, this test which was created by someone else will be used to evaluate the teacher as part of “holistic” process that just happens not to get student or parent feedback. So, who exactly is a “stakeholder” ? There is a much better way to use resources and I think that a real conversation need to begin. Let’s start valuing the input of those who we should value and stop allowing outside forces to evaluate there way into our coffers.

Or:

As most of you are aware, the PARCC in NJ will consist of two, 20-day windows for testing in the first year. That is a total of 40 days of testing occurring in a school or almost 25% of the entire school year. Furthermore, a speaking and listening testing component will be added in the 2015-2016 school year which will require an additional number of testing days.
Also, we (school districts) have been told by NJDOE officials that an online test is part of the world of digital learning and I agree with this, however, this test will be conducted on the very devices our students use to learn digitally!
That means that the devices we use to learn digitally will not be accessible for 25% of the school year because they will be used to administer a standardized test.
Schools do not have extra devices sitting idle that can be used twice a year for 20 days at a time. Computers are used by students daily to learn. They are the pencils, notebooks and textbooks of the 21st century. Due to the extensive testing schedule that will take place next year, our students will be without those learning tools for 25% of the school year.
Finally, schools have always tried their best to ensure that curriculum drives technology purchasing. That is, we purchase technology in schools to meet the needs of what occurs in the classroom. Districts are now beginning to purchase technology equipment to administer a test and not because of a learning need. Thus the cost of testing will grow exponentially.
I have three questions for NJDOE officials, state legislators, etc.:
1. How can we support the PARCC testing when that very test will stifle digital learning for 25% of the school year?
2. How much additional money should taxpayers be expected to pay for the PARCC test?

3. As our students continue to perform in a connected world, shouldn’t we be wary of putting digital testing ahead of digital learning? 

Yes, this is unscientific -- as unscientific as NJDOE's contention that the PARCC field test was just fine.

The fact is that we just don't know how it went, or whether it will go well in a year. We just don't know. We need to properly assess this field test, then run a no-stakes administration across the state with data and results open to the public so the PARCC can be properly vetted.

Until that happens: NJ teachers, go to testingtalk.org and leave your thoughts about the PARCC field test. You are the ones who were there; you are the ones the public needs to hear from.

Anything other than the observations of real teachers is nothing more than happy talk.

Dear Bill Maher: Here's Why You're Wrong About Tenure

Dear Bill Maher,

Let's dispense with the fanboy stuff first: I think you're great, I really liked Religulous, I think ABC screwed you over, and you come closer than anyone around today to keeping the spirit of America's greatest political philosopher, George Carlin*, alive.

But on teacher tenure you are just dead wrong:

What exactly is the argument for teacher tenure? According to the teacher's union's lawyer, "Tenure is an amenity, just like salary and vacation, that allows districts to recruit and retain teachers despite harder working conditions, pay that hasn't kept pace and larger class sizes." 

...Okay, but so is offering them a car. That's not an argument for why the teaching profession should be virtually immune from the normal threat of termination that just about every other employee in the nation lives under. Additionally, Hollywood writers, producers, and directors all have unions, but none provide any sort of protection like tenure; they mainly exist to argue for compensation and benefits. If you don't do your job, you still get fired. As it should be. Because this is America, and some amount of job insecurity is a good thing. It's why when you go to Greece or Italy you find yourself in a line 15 people deep because the person behind the desk doesn't really care about helping you. Because they're never getting fired. 

Shouldn't teachers' unions drop tenure and focus on compensation and benefits too? 

Let's start with this: I don't see anyone offering me a guaranteed new car every year in exchange for my workplace protections. In your construction, Bill, we teachers will give up our tenure in exchange for some extra compensation that will continue in perpetuity. Forgive us, but we've heard this one before, and it's always turned out to be a crock.

The truth is that if we give up tenure -- something our predecessors fought for and earned after a long struggle -- there might be some small bump in wages or benefits on the front end... but it will quickly be erased as life without tenure becomes the new norm. We might be teachers, but we are neither stupid nor naive: we're not about to give up our hard-earned protections on the easily breakable promise of more money.

But I don't know why you, Bill, as an advocate of smart government spending, would want to trade tenure for more dough -- which has to come out of your wallet -- anyway. Teacher tenure costs the taxpayer next to nothing, yet teachers themselves value it. Unless you can prove that tenure hurts students, why would you or anyone advocate for taxpayers to give up such a good deal for their own pocketbooks?

And that really is the most important point to be made about this: teacher tenure has never been shown to affect student achievement. There is simply no correlation between teacher tenure and student performance. High performing states and high performing countries like Finland all have teacher tenure - it's clearly not an impediment to student learning there. When it comes to academic outcomes, tenure is a non-issue.

But still, the idea of tenure pulls on the heartstrings of the gullible private sector employee something fierce: "Why can I be fired at any time and you can't?" Except if you ask just about any HR manager in the private sector, they'll all tell you the same thing: you can't just fire any employee whenever you want. Anyone firing a worker, even for cause, better have their ducks in a row, or there will be hell to pay. The notion that teachers have protections far and away above those of any employee is a notion that is way overblown.

That said, I will grant you that teachers enjoy a somewhat higher level of workplace protection than private sector employees. But you know what, Bill? You should be damn grateful they do. Our new, reformy world is already running the risk of turning our public school districts into hundreds of thousands of Tammany Halls all over the country; how much worse would this be in a system where tenure was eliminated?

Tenure doesn't just protect teachers; it protects taxpayers. Are you really so confident in the good will of local politicians that you are willing to turn over millions of teaching jobs to them, confident that they will put the interests of children above their own? Are you really certain that these city- and town-level pols will gladly reward great teachers -- no matter their political allegiances? Even those teachers who might challenge school administrators and boards of education on policies that are not in the best interests of students?

I didn't think so.

Furthermore: for a guy who loves to mock evangelicals, I find your insouciance about fundamentalists taking over school districts to be more than a little incongruous. Do you know what kind of crap is being foisted on children who go to private schools (funded by public voucher dollars) with teachers who aren't covered by tenure? Are you comfortable with a system that denies teachers the ability to stand up and demand that their students learn actual science and history in the face of overt political pressure?

Bill, no one wants bad teachers in schools -- especially good teachers. But tenure is not a guarantee of a job for life: it is simply a guarantee of due process. Let's make it easy, quick, and inexpensive to remove a bad teacher: everyone is for that. But let's make it fair. Tenure is nothing more than a guarantee that firing a teacher is just that.

By the way: when I and my colleagues start making more than a tiny fraction of what Hollywood writers, directors, and producers make, I'll be glad to draw some equivalencies. Until then: try getting someone to take your call about a gig directing your latest project that pays $55,418 a year. Some comparisons are so silly they aren't even worth considering...

3rd Grade teachers and movie producers: sure, that's a great equivalency... [/killme] 

* Bill, you might be wondering why I put up a link to a "bleeped" version of my favorite George Carlin rant on this blog.

Simple: I don't want to get fired.

Can you start to see why maybe tenure means something to people like me?