FOCUS DC News Wire 7/24/13

 

 

Citing costs, Georgia and Oklahoma have decided against adopting standardized tests being created by a consortium of states as part of the new Common Core national academic standards.

 

And politicians in other states — including Indiana and Florida, which has been a leader in the development of the Common Core — are voicing similar concerns, suggesting that more defections could be on the way.

 

“I’m disappointed to see those states drop off, but I’m not surprised,” said Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts’s education commissioner, who chairs one of the two groups of states that are designing math and reading tests linked to the Common Core standards. Georgia and Oklahoma are members of the 21-state consortium, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.

 

“I didn’t expect when we started this journey that all the states that joined at the front end would stick with it,” Chester said.

 

The Obama administration has invested heavily in the idea of states agreeing to common standards and collaborating on tests. It awarded $330 million to two groups — PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium — to develop valid, reliable tests that could be administered and compared across state lines.

 

But on Monday, when PARCC said it would cost states $29.50 a student for both math and reading tests, Georgia had sticker shock. The state, which spends $12 a student for tests in math and reading, said it would instead write its own tests, perhaps joining with other states in a regional effort.

 

The PARCC tests are more expensive than the multiple-choice “bubble tests” widely used today because they are designed to measure critical thinking skills, requiring students to write analytical essays and demonstrate their understanding of mathematical concepts. The test must be graded by hand and not by computers, adding to the cost, Chester said.

 

And test questions will be made public after the tests are administered, allowing students to learn from their wrong answers but requiring new questions for the next year.

 

“We’re designing a very ambitious assessment that sets a high bar, and you can’t do it on the cheap,” Chester said.

 

Still, for some states, the PARCC tests will be cheaper. Maryland spends $32 a student and the District spends $112 a student, according to a recent study by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Virginia has not adopted the Common Core.

 

Written by governors and state education officials in both parties and largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Common Core standards are designed to create consistent math and reading standards from kindergarten through 12th grade. Currently, academic standards vary widely among states, and that patchwork nature has been partly blamed for mediocre rankings of U.S. students in international comparisons.

 

The Common Core standards do not dictate curriculum, allowing states to decide what to teach.

 

Defections based on cost are the latest headache for the Common Core, which has been fully adopted by 45 states and the District and will be in place by the 2014-15 school year. The standards have been attacked by conservatives and tea party activists, who say they amount to a federal intrusion into local school systems. They are also under fire from some progressives, who don’t like standardized tests and are uncomfortable with the role of the Gates Foundation.

 

If many more states decide to write their own tests, it can dilute some of the benefits of the Common Core, supporters said.

 

“We won’t be able to compare their test scores — it’s almost as simple as that,” said Chester E. “Checker” Finn Jr., president of the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank that supports the Common Core. “It’s very difficult, sometimes impossible, to meaningfully compare a score on one test to a score on a different test. You can do some fancy things to get an approximation. But that simple comparison of Springfield, Ohio, with Springfield, Illinois, and Springfield, Mass., would be out of reach.”

 

 

PARCC summative tests in mathematics and English/language arts will cost member states $29.50 per student, more than what half its member states currently pay for their tests, according to figures released today.

 

The new tests being designed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, are priced just below the $29.95 median level of spending on summative tests in those two subjects in the consortium's 20 member states. The cost estimates for the PARCC tests were posted today on its website.

 

The cost of tests being designed by PARCC and the other state testing group, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, are a topic of intense interest now as states try to decide their testing plans for 2014-15. That's when the new tests designed by each group are scheduled to be operational.

 

States are grappling with how to build support for different tests, something that can be difficult even without a price increase. But for almost half the states in PARCC, and one-third in Smarter Balanced, that job is even tougher since the tests will cost more than what they're currently spending.

 

Smarter Balanced issued its pricing estimates in March, and its officials said they are less expensive than what two-thirds of its 24 member states currently spend per student on summative tests.

 

Unlike PARCC, Smarter Balanced broke its cost into two options for states: One option, priced at $22.50 per student, would include only its summative tests. The other, which includes summative tests as well as interim and formative tests, costs $27.30 per student.

 

Different Pricing Models

 

Smarter Balanced also has a different model of services than PARCC. In Smarter Balanced's model, the consortium is responsible for providing some services, such as developing test items and the test-administration platform, and producing standardized reports of results. States are responsible for others, including delivering the assessment, providing help-desk services, and, in particular, scoring the tests. (In PARCC, the consortium, rather than individual states, will score the tests, according to PARCC spokesman Chad Colby.)

 

Smarter Balanced states could opt to score their tests in various ways, such as hiring a vendor or training and paying teachers as scorers, or combining those methods. Smarter Balanced will design scoring guidelines intended to make scoring consistent, said Tony Alpert, the consortium's chief operating officer.

 

Smarter Balanced's cost projections include both the cost of the services that the consortium will provide and the costs of the services the states will provide themselves or through vendors.

 

Here's how Smarter Balanced test costs break down:

 

• For the "basic system" (only summative tests):

Total per-student cost of $22.50 = $6.20 (consortium services) + $16.30 (state-managed services)

 

• For the "complete system" (summative, interim and formative tests):

Total per-student cost of $27.30 = $9.55 (consortium services) + $17.75 (state-managed services)

 

PARCC's pricing includes only the two pieces of its summative tests: its performance-based assessment, which is given about three-quarters of the way through the school year, and its end-of-year test, given about 90 percent of the way through the school year.

 

Its price does not include three tests that PARCC is also designing: a test of speaking and listening skills, which states are required to give but don't have to use for federal accountability; an optional midyear exam; and an optional diagnostic test given at the beginning of the school year. Pricing for those tests will be issued later, according to Colby.

 

If states want to give paper-and-pencil versions of the PARCC tests, which will be available for at least the first year of its administration, that will cost $3 to $4 per student more, according to a frequently-asked-questions document prepared by the consortium.

 

Smarter Balanced's computer-adaptive assessment and its performance tasks are given during the last 12 weeks of the school year. Its interim test and formative tools, if states choose to purchase the package that includes them, can be used anytime schools and teachers wish.

 

A Value Proposition?

 

States vary widely in what they spend for assessment, so they find themselves in varied positions politically as they contemplate moving to new tests.

 

Figures compiled for the two consortia's federal grant applications in 2010 show that in the Smarter Balanced consortium, some states paid as little as $9 per student (North Carolina) for math and English/language arts tests, while others paid as much as $63.50 (Delaware) and $69 (Maine). One state, Hawaii, reported spending $116 per student.

 

In the PARCC consortium, per-student, combined costs for math and English/language arts tests ranged from $10.70 (Georgia) to $61.24 (Maryland), with a median of $27.78.

 

Comparing what one state spends on tests to what another spends—and comparing current spending to what PARCC or Smarter Balanced tests could cost—is difficult for many reasons. One is that states bundle their test costs differently. Some states' cost figures include scoring the tests; others do not. Some states' figures include tests in other subjects, such as science. Some states' figures lack a subject that the two consortia's tests will cover: writing.

 

Most states' tests are primarily or exclusively multiple choice, which are cheaper to administer and score. Some give more constructed-response or essay questions, making the tests costlier to score but of greater value in gauging student understanding, many educators believe.

 

The two consortia are keenly aware that states might find it difficult to win support for the new tests if they represent increases in cost or test-taking time. They are taking pains to point out what they see as the value their tests will add compared with current state tests.

 

A Power Point presentation assembled by PARCC, for instance, notes that its tests will offer separate reading and writing scores at every grade level, something few state tests currently do. It says educators will get test results from its end-of-year and performance-based tests by the end of the school year, while in many states, it's common for test results to come back in summer, and even, in some cases, the following fall. Echoing an argument its officials have made for many months, the PARCC presentation says that its tests will be "worth taking," since the questions will be complex and engaging enough to be viewed as "extensions of quality coursework."

 

It also seeks to make the point that $29.50 isn't a lot to spend on a test, noting that it's about the same as "a movie date" or "dinner for four at a fast-food restaurant," and less than what it costs to fill the gas tank of a large car half full.

 

Alpert, Smarter Balanced's chief operating officer, noted many of the same points, as well as the "flexibility" of SBAC's decentralized approach to scoring and administration, which offers states many options for how much to do themselves and how much to have vendors do. If states choose to draw heavily on teachers for scoring, he said, they derive an important professional-development value from that.

 

"Comparing costs isn't really accurate," he said. "States will be buying new things. It's like comparing the cost of a bicycle to the cost of a car. A car costs more, but what are you buying? [Smarter Balanced tests] are definitely a better value and a better service. They're going to give teachers and policymakers the information they've been asking for."

 

The role of artificial intelligence in scoring tests remains an open question in both consortia. If they determine that it is reliable enough to play a large role in scoring, test costs could decline.

 

 

In the early 90s, charter schools were a novelty in a handful of states--a pressure release valve for a few brave edupreneurs. By 1999 there were about 1,500 charters and a few charter management organizations (CMO) were getting off the ground with help from NewSchools Venture Fund. Early arguments about charter access to public facilities resulted in California's Prop 39 in 2000. 

 

By 2005, it was clear that regional CMOs were achieving quality at scale and were the most important development in U.S. public education of the decade. It was also becoming clear that a portfolio strategy was the urban path forward--a high-demand, high-support combination of school improvement and new school development, a multi-provider partnership of district and charter schools. However, as competition for students expanded in most urban areas, district-charter relationships often became contentious.

 

By 2011, there were 5,277 charters and new governance structures including the Louisiana Recovery School District, the Tennessee Achievement School District, and Michigan's Education Achievement Authority. Both district and charter schools were adopting blended instructional strategies and a layer of digital opportunity-- full and part time online learning--was available to most U.S. students.

 

Ranging from competitive to cool, to collaborative, the relationship between school districts and charters is of growing importance now that more than 25 cities have more than 20% charter enrollment. Three quarters of New Orleans students attend charters; soon half of all students in Detroit and D.C. will attend charters. Almost 100,000 students attend charters in LA.

 

In most urban areas districts and charters compete for students, argue about facilities, and worry about budgets. But with more than 6,000 charters and growing pressure for achievement, there are more signs of collaboration.

 

The most basic areas of collaboration is a universal enrollment system for all public schools in a city. If the state accountability system doesn't, it helps to have a common metrics to help families evaluate all schools on consistent criteria. 

Compact Cities. To promote district-charter collaboration, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is sponsoring partnerships in 15 cities: Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Central Falls (RI), Chicago, Hartford, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Spring Branch (TX). Some cities have lots of charters--New Orleans has 70% charter enrollment--others like Nashville are just getting started with only 2% enrollment.

 

These communities have signed District-Charter Collaboration Compacts - plans for bold collaboration between public charter and district public schools. In 2012, seven of the cities received grants between $2 and $4 million to support deeper work.

 

 

Collaborative plans tackling the most intractable roadblocks

Last month, The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) issued an initiative review: District-Charter Collaboration Compact: Interim Report . In addition to progress by city, the report outlines "challenges like leadership transitions, local anti-charter politics, and key leaders' unwillingness to prioritize time and resources for implementation have thwarted efforts in some cities."

 

"In a somewhat remarkable turn of events," said the CRPE review, the "vicious dynamic is beginning to shift in some places." Charters have matured and gained public and foundation support. "It is no longer possible to ignore the results of select charter schools that go leagues beyond what most districts have been able to achieve in high-poverty neighborhoods."

 

The idea of multi-provider urban collaboration is catching on and so is the notion of thinking about educational provisioning as portfolio of options. CRPE is sponsoring a national network of more than 30 portfolio districts. Similarly CEE-Trust supports a national network of intermediaries and funders (with a big CRPE overlap) that support portfolio approaches.

 

Next. Beyond the basics, there are two big issues to tackle through these collaborations. First, It's Time to Separate Facilities From Operations. Districts have taxing authority to develop school facilities. In most cities, charters pay rent out of smaller budget. It's time to fix the problem.

 

The second big issue is the strategic opportunity for cities to begin act like a rational portfolio of educational options--to develop a system of managed choice where every family has transported access to a couple interesting options. That requires closing chronically failing schools, improving struggling schools with blended strategies and interesting themes, and being intentional about the location and type of new school development.

 

A layer of digital opportunity is easy and affordable to add. For example, most Miami Dade high schools have an iPrep Academy, a flex option, as well as a learning lab for part-time access (self blend) to online courses--both created in partnership with Florida Virtual. 

As illustrated by the Smart Cities series, there are a growing number of exciting examples of public-private partnerships building portfolios of high quality educational options for students, families, and educators.

 

 

Nathan Saunders, the Washington Teachers’ Union president who lost his reelection bid early this month, is seeking to invalidate that result and force a new round of voting. Saunders was defeated July 1 in an upset by Elizabeth Davis, a longtime union activist who promised to be more forceful about challenging D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.

 

Saunders has filed an appeal, arguing that the contest was skewed because of rules violations, including, he alleges, Davis’s unfair campaign tactics and improper voting by teachers who retired or were fired before ballots were counted. Saunders said his 459 to 380 runoff defeat should be thrown out.

 

Davis is slated to take office Aug. 1, but Saunders argues that he should remain president until the union’s elections committee resolves his complaints.

 

“I’m optimistic, actually,” Saunders said of his chances of prevailing. Davis dismissed Saunders’s claims as an illegitimate power grab and said she would take office as planned. At stake is the right to negotiate a new contract on behalf of 4,000 District teachers.

 

Saunders has said he is close to reaching an agreement that would include salary in­creases and provisions for longer school days. Henderson has said longer school days are critical for improving student achievement.

 

Davis said she cannot comment on how she plans to proceed until she sees the pending contract language. But she said she is skeptical that more hours in school will translate into better outcomes for students.

 

“I think it’s worth examining that and seeing how we make it a better school day, not a longer school day,” Davis said. She and Saunders were among four initial candidates for WTU president. None won a majority of votes in the first round of balloting, forcing a runoff, which Davis won by 79 votes. Saunders said that tally was flawed because the elections committee sent ballots to 350 teachers who retired on or before June 30, making them ineligible to vote.

 

In addition, 54 teachers wrongly received ballots after they were fired in June for poor performance, Saunders wrote in his appeal, as did 89 teachers who lost their jobs as a result of budget cuts. It was unclear how many of those teachers actually submitted their ballots for counting. School system officials declined to comment on those figures. Saunders also alleged that Davis violated union rules when she asked principals to announce to teachers the date and time of a campaign event.

 

Davis acknowledged that she had asked for that help. But “not one teacher showed up” to that event, she said. “Anybody would see that did not have an impact on the outcome of the election.”

 

Finally, Saunders argued that he is entitled to remain president until December 2013 because the union constitution says terms should begin on July 1 and are three years in duration. Saunders took office several months late, in December 2010, because of a delay amid union infighting: Then-President George Parker had refused to hold elections, forcing the national parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, to step in.

 

Saunders acknowledged that he could have challenged the timing of this year’s election earlier, before votes were cast. But he had expected to win.

 

“A lot of folks were quite surprised with the results, including myself,” Saunders said. There is no deadline for a decision from the union’s elections committee. Candidates may appeal that local ruling to the AFT.