By Steve Poftak
March 1st, 2010
I’ve written about New York’s insane political world in the past, and it took another turn this week, when the NY Times finally (after two whiffs) printed its stunning piece on NY Governor David Paterson.
To start at the beginning, Eliot Spitzer got elected Governor with a little known LG, David Paterson. Spitzer had to resign after the “Client 9″ scandal and Paterson took over. During the fighting over control of the state senate, Paterson appointed Richard Ravitch as LG. To give you a sense of the drama involved, Ravitch was sworn in tableside at Peter Luger’s steakhouse to beat a court injunction. His appointment was invalidated, then allowed up the rungs of the court system in NY, before finally getting approval by the state’s highest court.
Now, with Paterson in deep trouble, Ravitch may end up as Governor. He’s a well-respected figure but the state will end up with a Governor that literally not one person cast a ballot in favor of. Is that liberating or de-legitimizing? We’ll see.
By Jim Stergios
February 26th, 2010
Way back in February 2009, we criticized a report issued by the 21st century skills task force report produced by an ad hoc committee established by the chair of the board of education. The report pushed for a move away from the state’s focus on rigorous content-based academic standards and objective tests toward soft skills and portfolio assessments.
We criticized the report on many fronts, including its focus on skills rather than content, lack of familiarity with existing state standards, lack of facility with empirical evidence, and on and on. One of the key criticisms we had was that the report wanted to focus this effort on underperforming districts. Hold that thought.
The Board of Education has never voted to approve implementation of 21st-century skills, and notwithstanding that the Commissioner has put out an RFP to revise the MCAS to incorporate 21-c principles, and sadly even the legislature in its Act Relative to the Achievement Gap has included
student acquisition and mastery of twenty-first century skills
as one of 13 requirements for assessing turnaround proposals. Well, folks, take a read of today’s Washington Post where staff writer Michael Alison Chandler reports:
Virginia officials are moving to sharply limit an alternative testing program that many schools in the Washington suburbs use to measure the abilities of special education students who traditionally have fared poorly on the state’s Standards of Learning exams.
The effort by state lawmakers and education officials targets “portfolio” tests, which have helped increase passing rates at many schools by allowing students to avoid the multiple choice tests in favor of more flexible, individually tailored assessments. Critics have said that the alternative tests undermine Virginia’s widely praised accountability system and overstate the progress districts are making in closing achievement gaps between racial groups.
State leaders say they are worried that portfolios, intended to help a select group of special education students who are learning grade-level material but cannot demonstrate what they know on a multiple choice test, are being overused.
Lawmakers unanimously decided to phase out the portfolio approach “as soon as is feasible.”
The portfolio tests, called the Virginia Grade Level Alternative, like the multiple-choice test, assesses students’ understanding of the state’s academic standards. Teachers document learning throughout the year in a binder of class work, including worksheets, quizzes and writing samples. Eligible students could have a wide range of disabilities, including information processing disorders or emotional disabilities.
Why? Districts doubled the number of students taking portfolios assessments. Overall, 20% of grade 3-8 students with disabilities were given portfolio assessments, the percentage reaching >50% in some districts. With Chandler reporting that districts are concentrating minority students in special ed classes, higher numbers of minorities take these assessments. End result? VA has been inflating progress in closing the achievement gap.
If we are to implement this sort of soft skill/portfolio approach, we urge that it is done in districts where kids have achieved proficiency. Don’t use it to mask the achievement gap.
Read the piece – and let’s hope that we are not headed in this direction.
By Jim Stergios
February 26th, 2010
Massachusetts has submitted its Race to the Top application and the feds have their scales out, weighing all of the documents, included MA’s 900+ pager.
So you’d think that a visit from the US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the Hub of the Universe would be newsworthy, right? Hmm.
The USED website noted that
Secretary Duncan to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Askwith Forum. 2:30-4:00 p.m. at the Askwith Lecture Hall, Longfellow Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education. 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138. Limited space for press.
Calls into USED provided no information and rather asked things like – who are you? why do you want to know? Not an auspicious start. Everybody tightlipped. You think he is not interested in talking about money?
Word is he is to speak about access to higher education. Good. Word is also that RttT decisions are to be made next week. Meanwhile everyone is waiting… chewing their fingernails.
By Steve Poftak
February 26th, 2010
See, I told you so, someone needed to join Steve Grossman in the Treasurer’s race.
Right there in today’s Suffolk poll at Question 19, Murphy leads Grossman in the race. OK, its only 15% to 13% but still… early momentum?
By Steve Poftak
February 25th, 2010
Its not easy being the Attorney General. You step on too many local officials and you end up like Scott Harshbarger — you might get nominated but everyone sits on their hands when you need them to work for you.
Martha Coakley seemed to have solved that problem through her office’s seeming disinterest in public corruption of high-ranking public officials. During a period that has seen an unprecedented level of indictments and investigations, the US Attorney’s office has done almost all of the heavy lifting.
Now, the Amy Bishop case has captured the headlines and raised serious questions about who among the major players — then-DA no-Congressman Delahunt, Braintree Police, and State Police — was delinquent in their duties.
The Governor asked the State Police to review the matter, which is hardly satisfactory. The Attorney General’s office would be the logical nexus for leadership on the state level on this issue, but nothing has been announced.
In steps…you guessed it…the US Attorney’s office to lead the investigation.
By Jim Stergios
February 23rd, 2010
Checker Finn has a great blog at the Flypaper, which notes the “heavier and heavier burdens” of the common standards project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
I disagree with Checker when he notes that we haven’t seen drafts (we have seen several early drafts) and that we can’t see where this is going. The process is really opaque, and given the criticism CCSSI has received on this point without any action to fix it, any reasonable person would conclude that (1) the team is not up to the job or (2) it’s on purpose. Neither answer is satisfactory.
In addition, we don’t have a real sense as to how the common core team is making determinations on public comments. And, well, the standards are really poorly written and jumbled. By the 6th inning of a game, you need to know the rules and how to throw a good number of strikes.
Then there is that “small” matter of voluntary adoption by the states, the president and ed secretary Duncan yesterday turned on its head in a heavy-handed move that threatens to pull Title I money (existing funds) for states not adopting this mess.
Uh, no thank you.
Had enough? OK, today Catherine Gewertz notes that Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, now a member of the national standards “validation” and “assessment” committees is building
support for a new vision of educational assessment that is less a snapshot of students’ one-time performance and more like good instruction itself.
Yeah. Gulp. So we are supposed to give up our nation-best academic standards for fluff and then run the risk of adopting LDH’s idea of assessments?
Again, we are Massachusetts not West Virginia. And we are not looking forward to being led down the primrose path to the Mountain State’s status by Dane Linn and Co.
By Jim Stergios
February 23rd, 2010
State House News Service (subscription required) reports that the Commonwealth Connector, the state authority that oversees the health care exchange envisioned in the 2006 reform, is “launch[ing] a new health insurance product designed for businesses with 50 or fewer employees.”
That’s fast. Pioneer’s report, Drawing Lessons, which compared the Utah and Massachusetts “exchanges” found that, in author Amy Lischko’s words,
“Some decisions made while implementing the exchange model in Massachusetts, for example, have meant that the Connector has not met the needs of small employers in Massachusetts well.”
Small businesses wanting to know more, can go to www.MAhealthconnector.org, or call Connector customer service at 877-623-6765.
And, good on you, Dr. Kingsdale. We’re pleased to see it and will look over the new products!
By Jim Stergios
February 23rd, 2010
There was/is the big push to centralize health care. Now centralize academic standards? Yesterday, speaking to the National Governors Association President Obama made it clear that he now is ready to open up a second front in centralizing authority within the federal government.
When he originally proposed improving academic standards, the President promised a “state-generated” set of common standards that states would adopt voluntarily. Yesterday, the façade of voluntary adoption fell, and instead President Obama and US Education Secretary Duncan made clear that they would now tie Title I funds for K-12 schools to coerce states to adopt the standards proposed by the Common Core State Standard Initiative.
So, essentially, the federal government has decided that it needs a takeover of two of the policy areas that have generated most antipathy to market solutions and reform. We now have generationally important Tenth Amendment issues opened on two fronts—the prospect of centralizing health care and education policy.
Why would Massachusetts and its localities, after $90 billion in spending and implementing the highest academic standards in the nation, after running to the top of the heap nationally, after proving itself competitive with the best nations in the world on math and science, adopt proposed national standards that look like West Virginia’s?
The answer is, we won’t. Not if we have any say. This is just the federal government thinking it knows best but doesn’t.
Attached is a press release and our new report, Why Race to the Middle?, a report, issued jointly by Pioneer Institute (MA) and the Pacific Research Institute (CA).
By Steve Poftak
February 23rd, 2010
I heard it for the first time last night — “Benedict Brown”.
And read the comments for yourself on Senator Brown’s facebook page.
Its going to be a tough few weeks for our junior Senator as the dissonance between his national profile and political reality (particularly the local kind) get reconciled.
By Steve Poftak
February 23rd, 2010
The Legislature is rolling out a “Municipal Relief Act” today, shepherded by Committee Chairs Representative Paul Donato and Senator Jamie Eldridge.
Unless I’ve missed some grand strategic plan to insert plan design on the floor, this Act is an embarrassment.
Everyone agrees that healthcare costs are killing local governments. By my estimation, its gone from roughly 6% of local budgets to over 12% over the last ten years – no other municipal department is growing like that.
One potential avenue to controlling healthcare costs is joining the state employee’s insurance pool, the GIC, but many municipalities either object to that or don’t think it will save money. The next option then is to give municipal managers greater control over health insurance plan design.
This is sensitive because changes to plan design outside the collective bargaining process anger public sector unions.
But its the only realistic option left on the table for the most material source of cost escalation at the local level.
And the Legislature’s Municipal Relief Act is not interested in addressing it. Ridiculous and Unserious.
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