Fix poverty , not add more tests

Mercedes Olivera
Tests, tests and more tests won’t fix the problems with our nation’s schools.
More funding would certainly help in an era of widespread state budget deficits.
But the real problem, says Stephen Krashen, is poverty.
Stephen Krashen.

That’s the message the linguistics and education scholar gave to bilingual educators at the annual conference of the National Association for Bilingual Education. About 3,000 educators attended the event in Dallas this week.
Krashen has a point.
It’s become almost axiomatic these days to talk about America’s educational system as “broken.” U.S. students do poorly on tests when compared with those in other countries, especially in math and science.
But recent studies also reveal that U.S. students from middle-class families and
well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries.
“Our average scores are less than spectacular because the U.S. has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries,” said Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California.
“People think that our schools were once very good and that they have declined, and the best way to make them better, as good as they were in the good old days, is ‘rigorous’ standards and tests to enforce the standards. But the assumptions aren’t true.”

Schools short on money, but long on tests

Stephen Krashen,

Schools are "facing tough budget choices" (August 24) and cutting back on teaching positions, tutors, support staff, summer programs, and extracurricular activities. According to an ASCD survey (SmartBrief poll, 2011-12), 78% of respondents said that they are "experiencing a lack of funding and it has affected student learning.

 

Unmentioned in the Ed Week article is the fact that at the same time money is so short, we are keeping a number of useless tests and actually increasing testing to astonishing levels, in the face of empirical evidence showing that these tests do not increase student achievement

A clear example of a current useless test is the High School Exit Exam used in many states. Studies consistently show that high school exit exams do not lead to more college attendance, increased student learning or higher employment. In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a high school exit exam.

The US Department of Education is planning an astonishing increase in testing. In addition to end-of-year tests, there will be tests in reading and math near the end of school year and testing several times during the year (interim testing), In addition, the Department is encouraging pre-testing in the fall and testing other subjects as well.  Recently, the Department announced plans to test children before they enter kindergarten.  In addition, all tests will be administered on-line, a huge expense.  There is no evidence that the new tests will help children.

We all agree that assessment is part of teaching and learning, but our philosophy should be "no unnecessary testing":  Determine which tests are useful and eliminate the others. Over-testing is choking our schools both intellectually and financially.

Stephen Krashen

Our Schools are not broken; the problem is poverty

Commencement Speech: Stephen Krashen
Delivered at Lewis and Clark College, June 5, 2011
Our schools are not broken: the problem is poverty


"Broken" schools?

We have been told repeatedly that our schools are "broken," that our teachers are inadequate, that our schools of education are not doing their job, and that teachers unions are spending all their time protecting bad teachers. The evidence is the fact that American students do not score at the top of the world on international test scores.  One observer claimed that American students are "taking a shellacking" on these tests.

The impact of poverty

Not so. Studies show that middle-class American students attending well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries on these tests. Overall scores are unspectacular because over 20% of our students live in poverty, the highest percentage among all industrialized countries. High-scoring Finland, for example, first on the PISA science test in 2006, has less than 4% child poverty.

Reduce poverty to improve education, not vice-versa

The fact that American students who are not living in poverty do very well shows that there is no crisis in teacher quality. The problem is poverty.  The US Department of Education insists that improving teaching comes first: With better teaching, we will have more learning (higher test scores, according to the feds), and this will improve the economy. We are always interested in improving teaching, but the best teaching in the world will have little effect when students are hungry, are in poor health because of inadequate diet and inadequate health care, and have low literacy development because of a lack of access to books. Also, studies have failed to find a correlation between improved test scores and subsequent economic progress. 

The relationship is the other way around: "We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”   (Martin Luther King, 1967, Final Words of Advice).

At least: Protect children from the effects of poverty

If poverty is the problem, the solution is full employment and a living wage for honest work. Until this happens, we need to do what we can to protect children from the effects of poverty. This means (1) continue to support and expand free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs ("No child left unfed," as Susan Ohanian puts it). It means (2) make sure all schools have an adequate number of school nurses; there are fewer school nurses per student in high poverty schools than in low poverty schools. It means (3) make sure all children have access to books. 

Krashen on Diane Ravitch and School Miracles

A comment on Ravitch's NY Times article: School Miracles, Slow Learners and Access to Books- by Steven Krashen
First-class investigative reporting by Diane Ravitch revealed that when schools seem to have overcome poverty and have achieved "stunning results," it is usually "the result of statistical legerdemain," and that "the only miracle at these schools was a triumph of public relations." (Waiting for a School Miracle,http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html).
The media and politicians are slow learners (see eg Jonathan Alter's remarks on Ravitch's column. Alter focuses on two small details but ignores the other cases, past and present;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-03/don-t-believe-critics-education-reform-works-jonathan-alter.html).  Gerald Bracey regularly reported cases like this years ago, and I contributed an analysis as well.  We both concluded that there were very very few cases in which schools in high-poverty areas achieved high scores on tests. 

New New York School Chancellor. No Teaching Experience

Another high-level administrator without classroom experience
Sent to the NY Daily News, April 9, 2011

Andrew Wolf points out that "Dennis Walcott is more of the same: Bloomberg's new chancellor once again lacks classroom experience," (April 8). 
Here is another obvious case: US Education Secretary Arne Duncan has never taught and has no actual credentials in education. He has no background in education other than administration. 
His uniformed view that increased testing is the answer to improving schools demonstrates that, like Dennis Walcott, he "lacks the instructional experience to actually fix what is going wrong in our classrooms."
Stephen Krashen 

Andrew Wolf article: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/04/08/2011-04-08_dennis_walcott_is_more_of_the_same_bloombergs_new_chancellor_once_again_lacks_cl.html#ixzz1IxAUQ0f1

NCLB: Lacks evidence

Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond Simon feels that
“Testing critics ignore [NCLB’s] ‘positive record”
(April 4). Not so. It is Secretary Simon who appears
to have ignored the record.

Simon claims that since NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
was passed, “reading and math scores have risen
sharply and achievement gaps have narrowed to record
lows.”

Several recent reports have concluded that the
increase in reading on national tests occurred before
NCLB went into effect, not after. There has been no
improvement in reading on national tests for fourth or
eighth graders since NCLB went into effect. In math,
the rate of improvement after NCLB is the same as it
was before NCLB. The research also shows that the gaps
among racial groups and between high and low poverty
groups are mostly unchanged.

Just in case Simon and his colleagues at the
department of Education have missed this research,
here is a reading list:
1. Bracey, Gerald. 2006. The 16th Bracey report on
the condition of public education, Phi Delta Kappan,
October.
2. Crawford, James. 2007. Selling NCLB: Would you buy
a used law from this woman?
http://www.elladvocates.org/index.htm#selling.
3. Fuller, Bruce, Gesicki, Kathryn, Kang, Erin, and
Wright, Joseph. (2006). Is the No Child Left Behind
Act Working? The Reliability of How States Track
Achievement. University of California, Berkeley:
Policy Analysis for California Education
4. Krashen, Stephen. 2006, Did reading first work?
http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17349
5. Lee, Jaekyung. 2006. Tracking achievement gaps and
assessing the impact of NCLB on the gaps: An in-depth
look into national and state reading and math outcome
trends.
Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University.

Stephen Krashen

Newt Gingrich is wrong on bilingual education

Re: Gingrich critical of bilingual education (April 1)

Newt Gingrich is wrong and Peter Zamora is right:
Bilingual education does a better job of helping
children acquire English than English “immersion.”
Bilingual programs use the child’s first language in
ways that accelerate English language development.

In the last two years, four major reviews (including
one from the US government) have been published
confirming that children in bilingual programs do
better on tests of English reading than those in
all-English programs, including one report from the US
government.

Stephen Krashen

The four major reviews:
1. Slavin, R. and Cheung, A. 2005. A synthesis of
research of reading instruction for English language
learners, Review of Educational Research 75(2):
247-284.
2. Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K., & Glass, G. 2005. The big
picture: A meta-analysis of program effectiveness
research on English language learners. Educational
Policy 19(4): 572-594.
3. Genesse, F., Lindolm-Leary, K., Saunders, W., and
Christian, D. 2005. English Language Learners in U.S.
Schools: An Overview of Research. Journal of
Education for Students Placed at Risk, 10(4), 363–385.
4. Francis, D., Lesaux, N., & August, D. 2006.
Language of instruction, In D. August & T. Shanahan,
(Eds.) Developing literacy in second-language
learners, pp. 365-413. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.