"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in the education category - SB707 - a bill in which key segments of last year's Common Core repeal bill will be, well, repealed.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?

Mo Money

Last week, one of the bloggers I follow, okeducationtruths, released a blog about vouchers and, more specifically, Jason Nelson's bill on vouchers.  I added my two cents because, even though we don't always agree, the writer is a great listener and quite accommodating of opinions, and I LOVE that!  

I'm not going to get into the voucher thing here (if you're interested, you can find my comments at the link above) but I am going to paste my answer here to okeducationtruths last post.  It's a post I've wanted to do here on our blog for quite a long time, so it just seemed the right time to make this happen. 

I've had very definite opinions on money in public education for quite a long time and I would like people to hear them.  If you don't agree, that's fine, tell me why not.  I truly do LOVE hearing peoples thoughts.  In fact, the first line of response to okeducationtruths is:

First, I actually love that we don't always agree.  As I've told Nicole a number of times, if we always agreed the world would be a very dull place AND we'd have learned nothing to expand our horizons!

I think your points are excellent and well taken here - especially the point about not being able to add up tax dollars like chits.  True, however, there is an actual proportionality of tax dollars required by each tax payer that goes toward public education (your property tax bill has that fully delineated).  This is the amount of money I was referencing in this case.

Your comment, "I do have a problem with the mentality that everything can be done better when left to private markets", is also interesting to me.

I can come into agreement on that as well for the most part.  In fact, I think the most nefarious thing about this whole latest 'reform' package is the fact that it IS private companies/philanthropists (without any educational expertise on any level in a whole lot of instances - the Chamber of Commerce?  Come the heck on!) making these pronouncements instead of ideas unfolding in a more 'democratic' style.  "He with the gold makes the rules" as it were.  That is NOT American if you ask me.

Here's where I think I get the most frustrated.  I was not for state question 744.  I am not for pouring more money into schools.  The idea that we should somehow be equating money with educational 'rigor' (ack, I can't believe I said that word in a sentence!) or outcomes of any kind is a red herring.  (PS I totally appreciated hearing the definitions provided for both Red Herring and Straw Man!)

I am constantly attacked for what I'm about to say, but I think it speaks to my conviction (or stupidity!) that I keep on message: we put men on the moon when computers took up rooms and rooms, most advanced mathematical computations were done on slide rules and the federal government had yet to really sink their hooks into the educational system.  There are home schooling families out there that use little more than books and flashcards to give their kids a well-rounded, classical education, that has been shown to produce better overall results than public education. 

I studied lots of ins and outs of spending as I researched my arguments against 744 and here is what I found (in general terms).  It takes a HUGE amount of money at the state level to administer federal grants for which we get - after administration costs - pennies on the dollar, yet our state goes running to FedEd constantly for all kinds of programming.  Much of this programming has never been tested or tried - or has been proven NOT to provide much, if any benefit (Head Start, for example) yet we do it because we get 'free' money.

Oklahoma legislators are very fond of riding public education with a heavy hand.  A very large number of education laws are passed because someone in a district needs/wants that very thing they ask of the entire state.  Most laws won't/don't translate well to another district, but suddenly, all districts must fall under the edict.  We have mandated public schools into near complete commonality and the poor house, as most state education laws end up in the unfunded category.

That said, there can be no way that the largest (well second now behind health care I understand) budgeted item in the state needs MORE money to succeed.  (Yes, as a teacher, I DID buy a number of my own things and as a science teacher I was often begging for supplies, just for the record.)  What we do need, however, is an enormous AUDIT of programming, unfunded mandates and job descriptions at the state education level.  We MUST return money to classrooms from the administrative level so science teachers can buy microscopes (instead of watching online videos about Paramecium, the novel idea would be that kids actually get to see them for themselves!) and any other amount and/or kind of tool necessary to teach kids.  There is money in the system, it just needs to be reapportioned and why shouldn't we demand that this happen?  Why must we use federal money when it comes with strings and gives us only pittance for our beseeching?  Why must districts go to the state for money when their 'customers' are right in their own backyards?  Our cities are run in this fashion.  If schools were administered at the district level instead of the state level, it would certainly be a lot easier to reapportion unnecessary funds and redirect money into classrooms...but then do the powers that be really want that? 

Educational Equity doesn't always come wrapped up in a perfect little box labeled "money".  We need to get out of this rut, expand our horizons and realize that few things in life are ever really 'equal' and that equal education is really a subjective term - for parents and even communities.  The only reason we love the word 'equality' in education is because it happens to be the only thing we can use to make that label mean the same thing to everyone - the objective quantity of dollars and cents.  Sadly, true equality in education is only going to come when schools/districts can do for their 'customers' what is actually best for them and NOT best for the state.