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By Anthony Cody.

Education blogger Alexander Russo has offered an analysis of recent education journalism in a piece entitled “Common problems with Common Core reporting.” Russo hosts a blog called This Week in Education, sponsored by Scholastic corporation.

Russo reached out to me for input as he was researching the piece, but my perspective does not appear there. Here is Russo’s thesis:

…so far, at least, much of the media’s coverage of this spring’s Common Core testing rollout has been guilty of over-emphasizing the extent of the conflict, speculating dire consequences based on little information, and over-relying on anecdotes and activists’ claims rather than digging for a broader sampling of verified numbers. The real story—that the rollout of these new, more challenging tests is proceeding surprisingly well—could be getting lost.

To make his case, Russo focused first on a recent report by veteran journalist John Merrow, focused on the opt out movement. Russo writes:

There are a few problems with the news segment. The opening footage showing Newark students protesting the local school board suggests that the new tests are a main concern of the protesters, when all previous reports have them rallying primarily against Christie-appointed Newark school superintendent Cami Anderson. Eleven of the 12 states that “dropped” the official Common Core tests have developed their own similar assessments, according to right-leaning think tanker Mike Petrilli. And—perhaps most problematic—the piece speculates about the future of the entire endeavor based on vague assertions about parents opting out without any hard numbers.

As I mentioned, Russo reached out to me for my thoughts, and here is what I shared with him.

I disagree in two regards. In the first place, it is the job of a journalist to look for the kinks in the system, the signs of disruption. In that regard, the reporters who are reporting on these things are doing their jobs. In the second place, this is a shift in public attitudes and behaviors that could spell real trouble for high stakes tests, which are the enforcement mechanism for the Common Core.

Those teachers who are risking their jobs, and parents who risk their children’s futures, and students who risk disciplinary action by walking out of school, or opting out of the tests, are committing civil disobedience. A year ago you could say this was a very isolated thing. There were a handful of “teachers of conscience,” but nothing like the wave this spring. There was a significant opt out movement in New York state, but it did not spread to other states much. This year you have students walking out in Colorado, New Mexico, Seattle and many other places in the country.

As you know, there does not need to be a huge proportion of students opting out to render the test results of little value. If even five or ten percent of the students do not take the tests, that can cause major problems. We have yet to see any sort of count on this year’s opt outs, but it will, without doubt, be an order of magnitude larger than last year’s, and that is news.

In response to your criticism of the Merrow piece on New Jersey. I think that given the fact that the Newark Student Union has an entire web page devoted to a detailed critique of the PARCC test, it is hard to sustain a serious objection to Merrow’s report. I actually reached out to Tanaisa Brown, the Secretary of the Newark Students Union, and explained your criticism to her. Here is what she replied. I asked and got her permission to share this with you, but not for publication [she has agreed for it to be shared here].

Newark Students Union Secretary Tanaisa Brown:

Well, our protest was against Cami Anderson and her blatant disrespect to the community, because her contract was up for renewal during that time and we wanted her to either come back to public meetings or to resign as a Superintendent. Cami Anderson and what is going on in Newark is hugely a part of the privatization movement.

Standardized tests tie directly into privatization, and so yes they are all correlated. NO, the protest was not merely because of the PARCC but it didn’t have to be because all of these issues are interconnected as far as students rights and the push back against privatization and the defunding of public education, standardized tests (as well as the PARCC) aide in the lack of resources in our schools.

While at the sit-in, we had a whole livestream chat dedicated to explaining the PARCC and how to opt out. While at the occupation, we were simultaneously working on people opting out across the district. Protesting a disrespectful superintendent and protesting a standardized test are not at all mutually exclusive; the problems exist together and NSU deals with many issues at once because they are all related. And yes we also do have a website merely dedicated to opting out of the PARCC, because opting out of testing is its own form of civil disobedience and we think the tests in themselves are very oppressive. The website against the PARCC informs students and parents of their rights, introduces the test to them, as well as it has updated news/controversy about the test, and also Frequently Asked Questions, etc. ” http://newarkrefuses.weebly.com

I also pointed out that a recent Education Writers Association event for reporters covering the Common Core featured a panel that included no real critics – and most of the panelists were from organizations funded by the Gates Foundation. From my point of view, coverage of the movement against corporate reform has often ignored or marginalized the voices of teachers and students who challenge the reform narrative. The “Education Nation” mounted by NBC News for several years is a prime example. In fact, research that looked closely at who were quoted or interviewed as the “experts” on education found that

The people most often cited as “education experts” in blogs and news stories may have the backing of influential organizations — but have little background in education and education policy,

And when the “experts” are those who have received corporate funding, rather than real educators, we know the inevitable bias that will carry.

Russo, like the Gates-funded Education Writers Association, has positioned himself above the fray, and is offering supposedly impartial guidance. But I would suggest that in both cases, this is more akin to a coach on the sidelines “working the refs.” In sports, there is a time-worn practice by coaches of jaw-boning the impartial referees that monitor game play, the idea being that these referees are susceptible to pressure, and may adjust their calls in response to this sort of response.

Russo tends to cheer for the corporate reform side in the ongoing battle over public education. A few years ago he described me, TeacherKen, Nancy Flanagan and John Thompson as “Goliaths” dominating online media, and while he claimed to be impartial, the thrust of his post was to exhort the corporate reform side to put up a stronger fight in that arena. The Education Writers Association is funded by the Gates Foundation, and recently determined that, despite the fact that I won a first prize for my writing last year, I am now ineligible to compete in their annual contest.

Russo complains that the reports of problems with tests are insufficiently corroborated by hard numbers. He suggests:

Claims about opt-out numbers need to be verified through official sources (even if it means calling districts individually, as some reporters and bloggers have done). Wherever possible, reporters should find some way to give numerical context (i.e., in percentage form) rather than raw numbers, whose significance is hard to grasp. Speculation—especially one-sided speculation—should be treated like it is, one-sided.

This is good advice, and should be taken to heart when we share stories about opting out.

But I think reporters who follow Russo’s suggestion that the big story ought to be the successful rollout of the new tests will be in danger of missing a very real shift. As Tanaisa Brown’s comments show, the students in Newark are highly aware of the interconnections between Common Core tests and the whole corporate reform/privatization project. And I think his stance, positioning himself as a neutral arbiter, is undercut by the slant of his advice.

Update, Mar. 23, 2015: John Merrow has posted a rebuttal to Alexander Russo’s critique here.

What do you think? Is Russo working the refs? Or is he correct that coverage of the protests against Common Core tests are exaggerating the problems?

Featured image shows New Mexico students who walked out this spring to protest the PARCC tests. Used with permission.

Author

Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody worked in the high poverty schools of Oakland, California, for 24 years, 18 of them as a middle school science teacher. He was one of the organizers of the Save Our Schools March in Washington, DC in 2011 and he is a founding member of The Network for Public Education. A graduate of UC Berkeley and San Jose State University, he now lives in Mendocino County, California.

Comments

  1. jeanhaverhill    

    this is from an op ed in the Worcester MA newspaper (2nd largest city after Boston) written by a school committee woman…. it is relevant because schools are in the testing window now…………….is the Commissioner of Ed ready to listen?:
    He’s going to need to listen to parents, like those who wonder how it is that a test that assesses reading suddenly means the school library is off limits. He’ll need to hear how frustrated they are by the enormous time sink of assessments: of days spent on MAP, of substitutes in for teachers doing Dibels, of weeks and weeks of time for MCAS.
    He’ll need to hear from parents whose children are inappropriately assessed by MCAS, whose schools have undergone upheavals around test scores, whose children come out the night before testing begins, in tears and with upset stomachs.” we have a unique problem in Massachusetts because of the pressure from M. Chester (Commissioner) he spends most of his time as a marketing agent representing Pearson to the consortia of states that want to drop out of PARRC (as they are doing one by one). There might be only 9 left at this count. As part of Title I regs they have to give some test — so it is back to the reinventing I guess… but better “home brew” than this monster created by Pearson.

  2. Caroline Grannan    

    Professional journalists know that it’s the out of the ordinary that’s news. “Tests are being given” is not news. “Parents, teachers and students are protesting the tests” is news.

  3. TFTeacher    

    He is not a journalist. He’s a paid hack.

  4. Don Corley    

    He is definitely “working the refs”! All one needs to know is who is signing his paycheck.

  5. teacherken    

    allow me to respond as a fellow “goliath” who happens to still be in the classroom in a state (Maryland) that unfortunately still is committed to RttP, Common Core, and PARCC. Russo is as silly now as he was when he bashed you, Nancy and me. That’s my first point. My second is I was one of a group of bloggers (in my case as a replacement for Renee Moore) who were invited to NYC to “participate” in an EWA conference. When we saw how it was organized, a number of us complained that we seemed to be there mainly as window dressing. As a result, Steve Lazar organized a get-together for the evening before the official event began. Among those participating were Ariel Sacks, Jose Vilson, and David Ginsburg. We all had problems with the organization of the conference. During the conference itself we rarely even got to ask questions of the “experts” brought in, none of whom were current or recent classroom teachers.

    The final event was the EWA members still there and bloggers, organized in 3 long tables, with about 4 bloggers and maybe a dozen EWA people at each. I was at the table where the discussion was led by Linda Perlstein who had organized the event. Jose was also at my table. After hearing a lot of misunderstanding and even distortion by some of the EWA members – including one whom I will kindly not identify who made clear her purpose was to “find out all the dirt on bad teachers” – I finally had had enough. I told the assembled that I was going to mention four things and I wanted to know how many could identify them. The four were Zone of Proximal Development, Reggio Emilia, Simpson’s Paradox, Campbell’s Law. The only non-blogger who claimed to be able to identify all 4 was Perlstein. Some of the others could at most identify one or two. Some had not heard of any. I explained what each was, then asked how they could be expected to do a proper job of reporting on education for the general public when they lacked understanding of key ideas necessary to understanding education.

    Russo was not present. His claim to fame is the book he wrote on a high school in Los Angeles as his long-form journalism as a result of receiving a Spencer Foundation Fellowship in Education Reporting at Columbia. The fact that the portrayal he gave of Alain Locke High School turns out to have missed what was really going on at the school. His attacks on the three of us, what John Merrow has shown as his less than complete candor in their dealings with one another, should properly forewarn people about the quality and the intent of his work.

    Someone who is truly being fair in writing about education would lose the snark, and dig below the surface. If one wants to truly understand what is happening in education, one cannot avoid starting with a detailed exploration of the impact of what Diane Ravitch has rightly called the Billionaire Boys Club. It is not just the foundations like Gates, Bradley, Broad, and Walton Family. It is also the anti-union attacks funded at least indirectly by David and Charles Koch, it is the ripping off of public funds for private profits by hedge fund types, who oh by the way play an inordinate role in the so-called “Democrats for Education Reform.” It is the likes of David Brennan of Ohio who uses political contributions to shape the legal framework so he can then profit from what he has wrought through his White Hat Charter Schools. It is someone one like Dennis Bakke who having made a fortune in the energy business thinks that qualifies him to run a chain of charters (Imagine) which on the surface are non-profit but all of whose operations are done by for profit entities in which people like Bakke get richer from the public purse while providing ever less real academic benefit to the students in those schools – full disclosure, I know Bakke, since we frequent the same Starbucks on Saturday mornings.

    Pearson now owns the GED, Pearson partners with the interests of Gates for computerized testing. Let’s talk about that – because of PARCC testing our school lost use of its computer labs for about 2/3 of the class time this month. Oh, and by the way, the first of our scheduled days of PARCC testing we could not test because the tests were cloud based and apparently Pearson lacked the bandwith to support all those who tried to be on. If Russo is merely accepting the pablum put out by Pearson and those in the educational establishment, and demands of Merrow and of critics “proof” of problems or of percentage of people opting out, then he is not reporting. He can and should get the information from multiple sources. He might find that in one county in Maryland a person involved with testing sent out a letter that falsely claimed that students were required by the federal government to sit for the PARCC tests. Not true, and even after that was shown to be false the system in question did NOT communicate that either to some of the families who had raised the question or to the public as a whole.

    Perhaps because they fear parents will opt their students out, some school systems have put in place punitive and demeaning alternatives – students must sign on and then sit there for the entire test, with a zero being reported for their grade, or they go to the equivalent of a rubber room, where they cannot talk or read or do anything except stare at a wall for the duration of the test.

    We have had one change. At least now we are being told that if students have finished the test they can leave. That leaves an alternative to opting out, which is to sign on to the test then sign off claiming completion and leave. The null score has no effect upon the students – YET. But watch for those rules to be changed.

    The scores being generated are not going to be valid. For one thing, if there is no detailed record keeping of how many opted out and what their academic performance outside these tests are, there is a lawsuit waiting if a system tries to dismiss a teacher based on such scores. For another, there is NO independent validation of the tests that I have seen anywhere in the literature. Further, there are teachers being evaluated by the scores of students they have never taught.

    PARCC and Smarter Balanced are both, to use the term of Dickie Attenborough’s magnificent film, A Bridge Too Far. The opt out movement will continue to grow. The “reform” movement is in real trouble. Unfortunately the students we are damaging in the interim will suffer from those harms long after we finally kill the “reform” movement. Because if we don’t kill it, it will kill American democracy.

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