"Common" Sense Questions About EOI's and ACT

One day while visiting with a legislator, I heard words so true I'll ultimately carry them with me for the rest of my life. As I sat talking to this man about a particular bill, he uttered the sentence,

"Jenni, we make laws up here (the Capitol), that's what we do." 

It was then I understood with crystal clarity why I felt as though I was constantly fighting one bill or another every year. It was then I discovered why I sit uneasily on the edge of my chair from February through May. Legislators see it as their job to make laws. 

Okay, we do call them law makers, but really, is that their job? Is their job to MAKE LAWS or to PROTECT MY LIBERTY? According to the Constitution, my liberty is of the utmost importance, yet therein lies the conundrum. If we elect people to represent us in our government, call them law makers and then send them to the Capitol with a certain number of bills they may write every year, how will individual liberty NOT be subverted in at least some way? It's a shoe-in it will. (So far this year we've had a bill to fine me for wearing a hoodie and a bill to fine me for texting while driving though we already have a law on the books for distracted driving - I rest my case.)

Let's look at the latest infringement of liberty in the education category - SB707 - a bill in which key segments of last year's Common Core repeal bill will be, well, repealed.

I've written about this bill a number of different times and so have many many others. Good grief, at this point, just Google the bill number and Oklahoma together in a sentence and you'll get plenty to read.

This morning, I saw the OKEducationTruths blog on why Oklahoma should use ACT instead of our current End of Instruction (EOI) exams. In the blog was this picture the author had taken at a High Stakes Testing Summit in which people from all over the state had come to discuss the issue.

It's a bit hard to read all of the concerns written on this page, but here are a few:

1. Technology
2. If you don't test it it doesn't count
3. Misuse of Results
4. Inaccurately Defines Success
5. Results Don't Return Soon Enough
6. Psychological Impact to Students and IEP students

Let me address just these few - comments are number-matched:

1. Technology - though Oklahoma schools have had to use E-Rate grants to upgrade their internet broadband in order to be ready to provide online exams, broadband isn't the only issue involved with online testing. Pearson will be supplying the technology platform for ACT. Pearson, unfortunately, has a terrible record of testing problems - including here in Oklahoma.
2. The ACT is aligned to the Common Core. Implementing ACT BEFORE Oklahoma creates its own standards (as dictated by the Common Core repeal bill HB3399), will usher in a real possibility where Common Core comes back into the state as teachers begin to teach to the mandated, Common Core aligned ACT.
3. Results of the ACT is college readiness. Will mandating this test be taken by every Oklahoma high school junior tell us anything other than that they are 'college ready'? 
4. The ACT is a test that doesn't tell what a student has learned directly in the classroom, it uses its own standards to generate a general test for college 'readiness'. If we are to use ACT as a high school exit exam when not ALL students are prepared to attend college, though the test has never been validated for that use, what results are we expecting? High school transcripts have long been shown to be a better predictor of college success than the ACT.
5. Online testing in Oklahoma has proved technologically challenging and has produced late or no test results. Paper and pencil tests have not experienced these issues.
6. ACT does have a provision for testing IEP students. Just recently, we were notified of a parent in another state who also mandates the use of ACT as a junior, whose child had their ENTIRE IEP file uploaded to ACT in order to receive modifications. If that isn't a breach of privacy, I'm not sure there's a definition. That's quite an impact for not only that student, but the family as well. Then, of course, there's the stress that comes with taking a test that was once voluntary, but now has become a high stakes test....

In closing, the OkEducationTruths blog spawned a whole list of questions I would love to see answered. In fact, it's my hope Common Sense overrides the necessity to 'make law' up at the state Capitol on a regular basis, but certainly on this issue. Maybe it would help - instead of acting - to answer these questions first...GO!

1. Why should we circumvent the bidding process and put a specific test in law?
2. Why should we name any specific test in law, tying ourselves down to a situation that might possibly have to be rectified with MORE legislation (laws)? Did Common Core teach no one a lesson here about putting specific programs in law before we knew what they would do?
3. Simply moving from 7 EOISs(only 4 are tested, but 7 have to be prepared) to 1 EOI will save great heaps of money, so to say using ACT is THE financial panacea for testing costs is simply a red herring, isn't it?
4. Why is using the ACT the best way to go? Isn't grade point average the better predictor of college success?  If so, can't ANY comprehensive test be used as an EOI?
5. Why commit to using an online test administered by Pearson when Oklahoma has a terrible track record with that business?
6. How can administrators who ordinarily rage against state mandates be so willing to get behind the creation of yet another mandate?

Let's Educate Americans Into Jobs For Our Country, Chinese-Style!

As usual, Marc Tucker blogged on Education Week today about how we need to educate Americans to create a high wage workforce (Manufacturing Jobs: What Will It Really Take To Bring Them Back).  As usual, his comments made me violently ill.  Normally, I remember that no amount of reasoning will make a Socialist/Communist a Capitalist, read his tripe (just to know what the enemy is thinking/saying) and move on.  Today, I simply couldn't.  The words flowed and I vomitted them up all over the comments section. 

Please read this and share with those who believe that Marc Tucker and his hero Barrack Obama are on the right track.  Maybe we can change one red to red, white, and blue!

Mr. Tucker,

Mr. Romney has indicated his interest in limiting federal involvement of public education - allowing greater local control and the subsequent fertilization of individualism that will inevitably follow.

Having studied your positions on education, Mr. Tucker, I rather believe this thought to be absolute anathema to you. I feel certain that, like our President, you believe in a federal government which oversees every facet of American life – since, as individuals we can do nothing for ourselves without the assistance of a benevolent dictator to show us the way.

It may come as a surprise, but Communist China uses the same workforce education model you tend to espouse. This, comes as anathema to me, as I believe the principal of individualism - clearly the historical model for this nation - produces a product wrought of blood, sweat and tears that rises closer to perfection than any product subsidized by any government ever could.

Public education is a truly American trait. We do not (at least we SHOULD not according to our Constitution) socialize the institution. Instead, we allow boards of citizens at the local level, whose taxes support the system and who know what's best for the students/families in their towns and bergs, to promulgate necessary rules and guidelines, creating an education model that meets a bar of success in their specific localities.

During the long, horrifying years before 1964 and the first real federal intrusion into education, the American people suffered greatly. Without the government to tell them how to prepare for the kind of jobs the country would need down the road, nearsighted entrepreneurs like Ford created the automobile, crazy professors like Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity, moronic researchers like Edison invented the light bulb and downtrodden slaves like George Washington Carver overcame racial prejudice to become one of the best botanists ever known.

Though I feel sadly grim at the prospect, I hope most Americans still have enough 'common' sense to see that the 'common' public education identified and promulgated by your ilk since the early 1900's are exactly what has KILLED American education.

I live on a clinging, yet paltry, hope that those of us who do understand the ramifications and repercussions of your model, are able to sabotage your efforts to create a socialized system of education designed to churn out workers and 'thinkers' based on COMMON (socialized) standards and COMMON (socialized) tests, relieving America of the individuality that – until the last couple decades - had made it, in every way, superior to every other country in the world since 1776.

Until then, I guess I'll attempt to teach children to spell "a-u-t-o-m-a-t-o-n" and watch the system – and the American way of life - circle the drain.

Too Many Cooks, Too Many Kitchens? So, let's at least get rid of the UNCONSTITUTIONAL one!

Read this really good post from Fordham today ("Too many cooks, too many kitchens") in which Finn and Petrilli expound on the idea that, though many of us pine for "local control" in public education we're not only not getting it, we're often not getting ANY control because of the convoluted administration of schools.

Despite America’s romantic attachment to “local control of public education,” the reality is that the way it works today offers a worst-of-both-worlds scenario. On the one hand, district-level power constrains individual schools; its standardizing, bureaucratic, and political force ties the hands of principals, stopping them from doing what’s best for their pupils with regard to budget, staffing, and curriculum. On the other, local control isn’t strong enough to clear the obstacles that state and federal governments place before reform-minded board members and superintendents in the relatively few locales where these can even be observed.

It frustrates me to NO END that people today have apparently lost all touch with the concept of COMMON SENSE! (yes, I am yelling - it's just frustration - sorry - I'm going to put on the Christmas music again...that seems to calm me down...)

I mean, truly, people EVERYWHERE have lost touch with this little beheld phenomenon of the 21st century - common sense. Over and over again we see this concept missing, not only in everyday life (example: those people who literally sleep in tents outside a giant box store just to get $50 bucks off a gaming system they don't really have the money for, that they spend so much time on that they can't really exist in the real world, or hold down a job and as such still have to live in their parents' basement - or a community park) but everywhere in government.

Finn and Petrilli's argument that there is so much movement in the system that the system can't move is simply dead on. You would think it common sense that you don't go to a government that can't pay its bills with your hand out to pay for programming that isn't really needed and that will require so many new employees just to administer, that only a fraction of the actual money received will make it into the classroom to run the program you thought you needed to have in the first place.

ON WHAT PLANET ARE WE LIVING?

Oh, I know. The planet of, "the more money I bring in, and the more programs I am thought to develop/run, the more power over others I gain". In fact, this whole public education thing is nothing more than a game based on money and power anymore. The idea of how to help children learn is really only secondary to an administration that lumps that responsibility primarily on the backs of the poor teachers who are (for the most part) just treading water trying to do what they can to please not only their building administration, but the school board and THAT layer of administration as well in order to keep their jobs.

This fabulous game has always been played out in spades within higher ed and, sadly, it has trickled down (with all the America-hating, work-abhorring, PC-abounding, liberal nonsensical garbage) like slimy, fetid oil from a rusted out grease trap in a Kipps Big Boy, into every nook and cranny of the public school system that is supposed to be educating America's children to love and appreciate their country (according to Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson)!

Finn and Petrilli are right! We must remove the layers of administrative blankets placed on schools - and not just CHARTERS - ALL schools. I say the first place to start is with the Feds!

Until someone can show me the Constitutional justification for that department - get rid of it! Keep Oklahoma's money home in Oklahoma and let us (through our school boards) help our schools use it to help Oklahoma's kids! But then again, this could never work, mainly because, as they say, "common sense isn't "common".