Dave Sokola’s Commercial For Corporate Education Reform & Money For The Poverty Pimps Will Not Sway Voters

Delaware Senator David Sokola is frantic over his upcoming election.  Meredith Chapman, a Republican in his district, filed earlier this year to run against the long-time Senator.  So how does Sokola respond to the many allegations that his actions have thwarted Delaware education for 25 years?  He writes a letter to the News Journal pimping the very same bad policies he helped create.  He does this by praising a report on how America has No Time To Lose, brought to us by the National Conference of State Legislatures.  Oh, and Dave helped write the report…

I felt the need to point out some of Dave’s fallacies in this letter.

We’re lucky in Delaware to have collaboration among our public and charter schools, businesses, unions, and higher ed institutions, plus community, foundation, and state leaders.  If we are going to succeed, and sustain that success, we need to be open, transparent and inclusive.

In Delaware, we call this the Rodel Foundation and their ten-year roadmap Vision programs and coalitions.  They send out surveys that lean heavily towards what they want and call that stakeholder input.  And since so many Delawareans believe in “The Delaware Way”, these education leaders and members of the business community feed the fire by sitting at the table.  Meanwhile, Dr. Paul Herdman pushes this because, well, that $344,000 salary sure is groovy.  Sokola’s firm belief in successful schools led to the creation of one of the most discriminatory schools in America, Newark Charter School.  Everything he does props up this school which he relies on for votes every time the election cycle spins around again.  And we saw this district and charter collaboration really working this past weekend in one of the shadiest back-room deals Delaware education has ever seen.  And I have no doubt in my mind that Sokola was somehow involved in that charter school scam.  Which charter school in Delaware would have received the most benefit from this change in funding?  Newark Charter School.  And it was their idea!  Thank God enough legislators acted fast enough to put this very bad idea on pause.  He is a bill destroyer when legislation comes around that would actually prevent his own ideas from coming to fruition.  His sole pupose in the General Assembly is to pervert the masses with Governor Markell’s very bad education beliefs.  In terms of “transparency”, this is a guy who doesn’t feel posting minutes for the Senate Education Committee is important.  The same guy who changes agendas for these meetings at the last-minute and yells at parents during meetings when they disagree with him.  Yeah, that guy…

We’re piloting innovative clinical residency programs and lab schools, on top of new models for peer observation, feedback, and reflection.

In corporate education reform lingo, we call this Teach For America, Relay Graduate Schools, and other bad teacher practices that put college graduates in low-income schools with six weeks of training.  Many of these “teachers” don’t end up staying in the profession and end up working for state Departments of Education or the thousands of education poverty pimp companies out there that take money from the classroom.  Sokola gutted a bill that would remove the Smarter Balanced Assessment as a sole factor in one of the components of our teacher evaluation system in Delaware.  He also thought having parent and student surveys would be a good idea in determining a teacher’s evaluation score.  The bill passed, but our Governor Markell hasn’t signed it yet.

The fact is that most American state education systems are falling dangerously behind the world in a number of international comparisons and on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress, leaving the United States overwhelmingly underprepared to success in the 21st century economy.

Yeah, we were fooled on this when Common Core and Race To The Top came into our lives.  Race To The Top ended, and many states are attempting to remove Common Core from their state standards.  The experiment failed.  What Sokola can’t get through his thick head is that Americans aren’t believing the lies anymore.  We don’t care what these reports say because we know they are built on statistics that are created to benefit these reports.  Many of the same people involved in this latest report created the very same tests that show we are failing.  And now they are telling us to trust them and find a new path for our country at risk (again)?  Sorry Dave, you can only tell the same story so many times until it starts sounding like crap.  This is a commercial.  Paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

And which countries did Sokola visit to make these grand-standing statements?

We visited high-performing systems here in the United States, as well as Beijing and Shanghai, China, to learn more about their success.

Okay, let’s go back to the old chestnut in comparing the U.S. to China.  This has been debunked more times than I can count.  China uses only the most successful students to take their standardized tests.  So of course their results will skew higher.  Enough Dave.  That is so 2012.

What kills me though is reading some of the names involved in this report.  But one stands out above the rest: Marc Tucker.  He is listed as the CEO and President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who wrote their own “Tough Choices, Tough Times” report ten years ago which served as an impetus for Common Core. Yes, that Marc Tucker.  The one who wrote Hillary Clinton a letter in 1992 which set the blueprint for all that went down in public education since.  The one who believed every single word of the 1983 horror show called “A Nation At Risk”.  But now we need to heed these prophetic whispers of doom in this new report, according to Tucker:

This hard-hitting, refreshingly honest report is a bipartisan clarion call for a very different definition of ‘education reform’ than the one that has dominated the American political landscape for years.  The country will ignore it at its peril.

Okay Dr. Doom.  Thanks for your words of wisdom.  I think America is pretty much done with you.  How much money have you made on the “fix American education” racket you’ve been involved in for 25 years?  Which is about as long as Dave Sokola has been pimping this same bad education policy in Delaware.

Sokola is trying to give himself some credibility where he has none.  The barometer of everything that comes out of this washed-up Senator is the standardized test.  He lives and breathes on these tests.  He ignores the realities behind them and how they aren’t a true measurement of student success.  He is a broken record, stuck in the same groove since 1990.  He knows he is in extreme danger of losing his Senate seat.  But he isn’t listening to anything the majority of Delawareans are telling him: “Shut up Dave!”  Instead we get these cash in the trash reports designed solely to make corporations richer that take desperately needed funds out of our schools.

On Election Day this year, do the best thing in the world for the children in the 8th Senate District.  Vote for Meredith Chapman and help our children in the 21st Century to be one notch away from bad education policy in Delaware.  Look beyond party politics.  People like Sokola, who pretend to be Progressives, ride that train so they can get in the system for their own twisted agendas.  Dump Dave!

State Rep. Sean Matthews Reflects On The Waste To The Top

Many legislators are resistant to the Markell-given power of the Delaware Department of Education, but State Rep. Sean Matthews truly gets it.  I have watched Rep. Matthews, in less than a year, become one of the leading voices against corporate education reform.  He speaks truth!  He recognized the reform movement is an illusionary power and the true power exists in the hearts and voices of our educators, students and parents.  It is past time we yield that power as a force for change!

One of my co-teachers was recycling some old papers today. We found a school calendar from several years before Race to the Top, DCAS, testing-mania, etc came into effect. It was interesting to see how few days were spent on state testing as compared to our current State-mandated testing requirements. Are we better off for all these new days, hours and efforts spent on more standardized testing? Are kids learning more? Is our “reform” test/punish/test/punish cycle working? Recent NAEP data would say no. We have think-tanks and “reformers” with scant teaching experience driving the education agenda. Teachers/parents/students, take back your power!

Vision Coalition & Student Success 2025 Is A Joke, All The Kiss-Asses Need To Stop The Charade #vcconf15

I’ve been following the live tweets from the Vision Coalition and their idiotic Student Success 2025 most of the morning.  I see lots of district admins, Delaware PTA reps, teachers and legislators buying into this absolute nonsense.  All you are doing is lining up the pockets of Rodel’s Dr. Paul Herdman and his corporate education reform buddies.  Enough.  You attend this event expecting some kind of miracle every year, and it is more of the same.  Endless talk with no true progress.  The NAEP scores came out today, and students did worse.  Smarter Balanced is a complete failure.  You talk and talk and do nothing about the true problems: crap like this making its way into the classroom.  All this talk about personalized learning…you have no idea what you are turning children into.  Drones for the millionaires and hedge fund managers.  And who is going to pay for all this?  Our state is facing a probable $200 million dollar deficit in the coming months, and you want to spend more money.  While funds are siphoned out of the classroom for these events?  Come on people, wake up!

If you want to do something meaningful for Delaware students, stop attending events like this.  Get in the classrooms, see what teachers really need.  See what students need.  Personalized learning is not it.  Standards-Based IEPs are not it.  You can talk about community and parent engagement all you want, but I guarantee you the bulk of the parents in this state could not give a rat’s ass about this kind of thing.  Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.  All you are doing is making clowns like Paul Herdman rich.  And trust me, he is laughing all the way to the bank.  He likes to talk about unintended consequences a lot.  You have no idea what just attending an event does to the students you like to think you represent.  If you are there for the awesome eclairs, I get it.  But if you are there to go back to your district, school, or association and fill heads up with all these great ideas, you are barking up the wrong tree.

I’m sure Jack Markell will give some rousing speech to go along with all the other bs you heard today.  Don’t forget about the students and stop going to these “all-star country club” events.  You are all culprits in the traps being set for students and teachers by merely attending.  You should be supporting a nationwide push to get outside companies the hell out of education.  You should be digging your heels in against standardized testing and all it’s punishment tactics.  Support opt-out.  Support special education.  Stop bullying.  Turn the discussion on how we can lift children out of poverty and reduce crime.  Stop with the apparent racism that exists in our state.  Stop the segregation and the tactics used to make it continue.  This isn’t education, it is a corporation.

Unraveling The Gordian Knot Around The Delaware DOE, AIR, DRC, CCSSO & SBAC

For many years, the Delaware Department of Education enacted policies and procedures with most of Delaware not aware of what was really going on.  This is changing at an exponential rate.  A Gordian knot is described as an unsolvable problem.  For years, folks in Delaware took whatever the DOE said as the gospel truth and there was nothing they could do about it.  The times, they are indeed changing…

For example, Senate Joint Resolution #2.  Sponsored by Delaware State Senator David Sokola and State Rep. Earl Jaques.  This resolution creates a task force to do away with unnecessary assessments because “students are being tested too much.”  Now I am hearing the DOE wants to increase the amount of interim assessments for the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  So we will get rid of the tests that actually give immediate feedback for instructional growth, but have more tests aligned with the Smarter Balanced?  You have got to be kidding me.  I always knew this was a ploy to fight opt-out, but now we are seeing the scorpion sting coming from the backend.  They want ALL the assessments kids get to be tied to Smarter Balanced, all for scores on THIS test.  And let’s not even get into how much more money this will give the vendor for Smarter Balanced, none other than American Institutes for Research (AIR).  As if $38 million between DCAS and Smarter Balanced weren’t enough…

In a couple newsletters from the Delaware System of Student Assessments (DeSSA), they talk about Data Recognition Corporation (DRC) being the scoring vendor, but never reveal the actual contractual relationship between AIR and DRC, even though other states were openly talking about it.  In fact, it appears the DOE did everything they could to avoid anything seen as issues with the Smarter Balanced Assessment during all of the House Bill 50 debate.

The key words in this newsletter from May of 2015, which talks about the “assessment inventory” are as follows:

Ultimately, the overall goal of this project is to provide a balanced system of assessments incorporating a minimum amount of high quality testing while meeting accountability needs and the needs of the educators supporting student growth and maximizing time for instruction.

Source: DeSSA May 2015 Newsletter

We are also finding out how much AIR and DRC are closely tied.  DRC is not just a test scoring vendor.  In fact, DRC was recently announced as the testing vendor for the Badger Exam in Wisconsin.  And there are already accusations surrounding campaign contributions to Governor Scott Walker from DRC President Susan Engeleiter.  DRC is the scoring vendor for Delaware’s Smarter Balanced essay portions of the test.  But the Delaware DOE never announced this.  In fact, they danced around the question for quite a long time.  They said nothing about it.

In the same newsletter from above, the DOE is very careful about how they word things:

Delaware non-machined scored online items are being hand-scored by the Data Recognition Corporation (DRC). Delaware student items are being scored using the rubrics and student samples validated by educators from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium states, including educators from Delaware.

Hand-scored results will then be combined with machine-scored results for reporting purposes. Our score reports will then be sent from our Delaware online platform vendor, American Institutes for Research (AIR).

Parent reports are scheduled to be sent out early August, providing student scores for testing in ELA/literacy and mathematics. An interpretative guide will also be distributed to support full understanding of the document.

The whole newsletter is actually chock full of information.  Too bad parents don’t get this newsletter.  But in the March 2015 newsletter, it indicates more about DRC, and the qualifications for their scorers.

High Expectations for Summative Scorers:

Step 1 – Screening

 Four-year college degree in relevant scoring content area

 Educational/work experience related to scoring subject

 Prior scoring experience is considered

Step 2 – Interview

 Personal interview

 DRC content-area proficiency assessment

Step 3 – Training

 Item training

 Reliability calibration/validation

Step 4 – Ongoing Validation

 Read-behind validation

 Ten percent double-scoring, supervisor review

 Ongoing accuracy review

Step 5 – Retraining (if warranted)

 Re-assignment of scoring and all previously scored work

 Follow-up tracking for accuracy

 Dismissal from process and rescoring of scored work

Source: DeSSA March 2015 Newsletter

The DOE confirmed at the May 2014 Governor’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Citizens that none of these portions of Smarter Balanced would be graded in Delaware.  This article from Oregon Save Our Schools shows a great deal of concern with DRC as the “human scoring vendor”…

…confirmed that the test vendor (AIR) is subcontracting with a company called Data Recognition Corporation, DRC, to manage scoring of constructed responses.  They operate in much the same way the Measurement Incorporated and Pearsons scores the tests using random temp workers paid low wages. DRC is paying $13/hour, like Pearsons while MI pays $10.70. They all make the only qualification, a BA or 4 year degree in any subject. These low wage temp workers are not educators and not qualified to evaluate our students. They work under conditions that are not conducive to good assessment, sitting for hours reading huge volumes writing of students they don’t know.

So what is the relationship between AIR and DRC in terms of standardized assessments?  They both have strong ties to overall education policy due to their business relationship with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).  These corporations pay a “membership” fee to get in, and then reap the benefits through numerous contracts with testing consortiums and state education agencies like the Delaware DOE.

Led by Executive Director Christopher Minnich, CCSSO describes itself as:

The Council of Chief State School Officers is a nonpartisan, nationwide, nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions. CCSSO provides leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues. The Council seeks member consensus on major educational issues and expresses their views to civic and professional organizations, federal agencies, Congress, and the public.

But good luck getting into any of their closed-to-the-public meetings.  In fact, they stress this is by invitation only.  As I reported last night, Mark Murphy and former Delaware Secretary of Education Lillian Lowery were both on the Board of Directors, but due to their recent resignations, they can’t be on the Board.  But that doesn’t mean other members of the DOE aren’t participating in the many different work groups within this organization.

Delaware DOE has a hand in the following groups at CCSSO: Accountability Systems and Reporting, Assessing Special Education Students, Science, Social Studies Curriculum and Instruction, and Supports and Interventions.  While CCSSO is very strict about quoting from their website, it is worth poking around at the CCSSO website to see exactly how many of the grand announcements coming out of the Delaware DOE actually come from this organization.  Everything from their recent announcements about educator effectiveness, to school leader programs, and even the Delaware School Success Framework seem to come from work done in this group.  Keep in mind this is a company, and it is not the United States Department of Education.  But they certainly assist in setting policy while they get paid handsomely by states and businesses.

Their business members, which they call “corporate partners”, include the following: American Institutes for Research, Data Recognition Corporation, Educational Testing Service (ETS), McGraw-Hill, Microsoft, Pearson, Scholastic, Amplify, Apple, College Board, ACT, IBM, Questar, Texas Instruments, and numerous other assessment and technology companies.  These members join at a Tier level, between 1-3, based on the amount of their entrance fee.

If you look at the contracts web page for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, you can see how many of these “corporate partners” are directly aligned with development of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.

States also have to pay for CCSSO’s services.  Delaware alone has paid $770,572.00 since Fiscal Year 2011 in annual membership fees and payments.  All of the companies CCSSO works with have made billions of dollars on testing American public school students.  American Institutes for Research is at the top of the pack.  Some have theorized that the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium IS American Institutes for Research, but this has not been proven definitively.  But it is more than obvious AIR benefits from the need for high-stakes testing as blogger Mercedes Schneider wrote last year:

AIR does not question the self-defeating role that test-driven reform plays in compelling states to set “safe” state goals for an unrealistic NCLB  (including the lowering of state standards and watering down of state tests) in order to not have principals and teachers fired and schools declared failures and taken over in order to be “turned around” or handed over to privately managed, under-regulated charters. AIR assumes that test-driven reform is good and will result in some undefined international superiority evidenced by America’s achieving The Best Test Scores In the Universe.

But there is another home-hitting, *economic* reason for this AIR “CCSS and assessments” push:

AIR NEEDS CCSS because AIR is counting on profiting from CCSS assessments. 

AIR is the company that designed the pre-National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests which soon became the NAEP test as we know it.  They published report after report about how our schools were failing.  They were heavily involved with CCSSO who developed the Common Core State Standards (CCSS, not to be confused with CCSSO).  Then they developed the Smarter Balanced Assessment, many of the psychometrics for the test, and the algorithms for the test which creates the adaptive portion of the test.  And because so much of this is proprietary, they won’t even let state DOEs contract out the scoring vendor of THEIR test.  Only they can sub-contract.  Which they do to DRC, all the time.  But DRC is also known to be a recruiter for AIR, an assessment vendor, and other similar functions.  In this crazy world of corporate education reform, it is very hard to tell AIR and DRC apart.  But at the top of the assessment game, it’s AIR.  They not only created the need for the Smarter Balanced Assessment, they created the test, the benchmarks, the algorithms, and they are well-connected with the company that scores the essays from the test.  It’s all a big win for AIR as Schneider wrote in the above link:

So, for AIR to analyze state standards and assessments, compare those to national and international assessments, and find in favor of a set of standards that it cannot test because doing so would require AIR use assessments that do not yet exist but are nonetheless declared imperative for America to compete internationally– that is decidedly suspect given AIR’s past, current, and future aim to profit off of CCSS assessments.

But AIR doesn’t just get rich from state DOEs.  They have over 20 contracts with the United States Department of Education as well, as I reported in April in a very extensive article about AIR.  If you look at the contracts web page for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium you can see how many of these “corporate partners” are directly aligned with development of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.

AIR also “helped” the Delaware DOE with their state educator equity plan, which drew the wrath of numerous inner-city school districts once the News Journal published a story blasting Delaware educators, especially those in Wilmington schools.

Source: Page 8, Delaware Excellent Educators For All Plan

AIR and DRC have their hands all over the education landscape.  And Delaware seems to be an easy target for their extensive work.  But our children do not benefit from their empire.  Delaware citizens are lied to all the time from state officials, or they aren’t given pertinent information.  Our educators are ridiculed and humiliated constantly, and the DOE doesn’t care.  They want this.  Make no mistake, this is a vast network of companies and US Government agencies, with tentacles everywhere, not just in education.  To untangle it all would take a great deal of time, and every time you think you have it figured out, like a hydra, two more take its place.

Since all of this culminates in the Smarter Balanced Assessment, the easy solution is the most obvious: REFUSE THE TEST!  Take away the fruit of all their labors, and what are they left with?  These companies have tried to mold public policy in their own self-serving interest to make more money!  At the end of the day, this conspiracy is all about money.  They are corporate invaders trying to take over public education because they want to make more money by privatizing it all.  This isn’t one political party that’s doing all of this.  It’s bi-partisan.  Because there is one thing that makes the world tick: money.  Either you have it or you don’t.  And in corporate education reform, these companies are getting it by the truckload every day!  You don’t have to be a prophet to see the profit.  But you do have to care to see this is not good for children at all.

Thomas Fordham Institute Data Guy Went On Rick Jensen, Listen To What Happened!

One of my favorite talk-show radio hosts in Delaware is Rick Jensen on WDEL.  While I may not always agree with him on every issue, we stand united in our hatred of Common Core and both actively advocate for parent opt-out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  Or as Rick calls it, the “Not So Smarter Balanced Assessment”.  He had this guy from the Thomas Fordham Institute on the show today.

I love how this guy refuses to call Common Core a curriculum.  Really?  Then why is it I put an article up with a copy of my son’s math homework a year ago, and it generated 15,000 hits in less than 24 hours?  Because parents across America were Googling this homework that night, when kids all across the country had the SAME homework, with teachers teaching to that math that day.  If that is just a standard, then I strongly suggest this man buys a dictionary and learns the difference between standards and curriculum.

And let’s not forget one thing that most folks don’t know.  The NAEP test, that has been a “steady” barometer of our children’s success in America, is based on tests designed by American Institutes for Research.  Who is also a vendor for numerous states and their standardized assessment, including all the Smarter Balanced Assessment states.  Of course kids would do worse on a test they helped create against a test they helped create.  A company like that doesn’t get $38,000,000.00 from a small state like Delaware, and who knows how much at a national level, if all children are succeeding.  They need kids to fail this test, in great numbers, so they can continue their profit margins.  That’s what it’s all about.  So when these “think tank” guys talk about how much we need this data, they need that data so they can line their pockets with taxpayer money.  It’s not about the kids.  It’s never been about the kids.  It’s about greed, pure and simple.

Why are these Fordham guys showing up in the News Journal and WDEL all of a sudden?  Because folks like Dr. Paul Herdman of Rodel are asking them to.  Because they know opt-out numbers are going to go through the roof next spring, and they want to get the spin control out now.  Because these corporate intruders, and that’s what they are, are scared to death of the 148th General Assembly overriding Governor Markell’s veto of House Bill 50.  But like the Smarter Balanced Assessment itself, they will fail.  Because they are missing the crucial ingredient in all of this.  A parent’s love for their child.  There is nothing greater aside from the Almighty Himself!  So Jack, Paul, Mark, all of you, listen up.  We will not give up.  We will not surrender.  We will not stop.  We aren’t idiots who believe whatever lines you throw our way.  We are parents.  We are our children’s voice.  You all need to stop before you embarrass yourselves even further.

The Honesty Gap Between Governor Markell And Students, Parents, & Teachers Is Wider Than The Pacific Ocean

“And we’re not being honest with kids about what they need to be proficient.”

In an article in the News Journal, Governor Markell said there is an “honesty gap” between state standardized tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.  First off, with all the news going on with education in Delaware, how is it that reporter Matthew Albright’s biggest education news of the day yesterday was a conference call with Markell, Achieve, and the Collaboration for Student Success?  I can think of at least three dozen other matters that are more newsworthy.

Governor Markell is scrambling.  So are the big education reform companies.  They will say and do anything to attempt to gain the trust back in their corporate education reform agenda.  Now they are tackling the biggest problem they will have in the next three months: when the scores come back on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  What Markell and Achieve don’t mention in this article is how Achieve is in a contract with the Delaware Department of  Education right now with the Assessment Inventory initiative.  This was Markell’s rocket science idea to get rid of other assessments to justify the Smarter Balanced.

When the issue of parent opt-out came up during this conference call, Achieve President Michael Cohen said:

“While we’re here talking about making sure parents get honest, accurate measures of performance, parents are actually opting to get no information about their performance,”

You are absolutely right Mr. Cohen.  The parents who are opting their children out do not trust the test or Governor Markell.  Teachers don’t trust it either.  Sure, maybe the chosen few who become Teachers of the Year or become part of the Rodel Round Table over at Camelot, aka 100 W. 10th St. in Wilmington.  These are the dying embers of a failed policy, but Markell is too stubborn or too invested to just throw water over them and just let it cool down.  This is his Achilles Heel.  Whenever his baby is threatened, he pulls these stunts.  And this widens the gap between himself and the rest of us.

Where is the honesty with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Governor Markell?  Teachers can’t see the test beforehand, and they don’t see the answers the students give or the actual graded tests.  Parents don’t see it either, but they are supposed to trust a score?  But this is okay to measure schools and teachers?  I don’t see a lot of honesty  in that Governor.  So keep peddling your proficiency measure like some guy selling Rolex watches in New York City, and us parents will continue to opt our kids out.  The debate is over, but you are too foolish to realize it.

Matt Albright, you are better than this.  Stop taking phone calls from the Governor and start covering real education stories.

DOE & Arne Duncan Accused of Breaking The Law With IDEA & Special Education by GOP Senate

In a letter addressed to United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, GOP Senators from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Lamar Alexander, Mike Enzi, Richard Burr, Johnny Isakson, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts, Lisa Murkowski and Mark Kirk have accused the US DOE of breaking the law when it comes to special education determinations being based on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) testing and making changes to IDEA without legislative approval.  The letter was dated August 4th, 2014.

“The changes spelled out in your “Results-Driven Accountability” framework clearly amount to Federal influence on the standards and assessments states and school districts use to direct the educational program of students with disabilities and would give the Federal Government authority to use student proficiency as measured by the NAEP to evaluate and either reward or sanction school districts.  This is clear influence and coercion, if not direct control.  It is troubling that the Department made unilateral changes to the IDEA compliance framework without seeking legislative approval, disregarded Congressional intent, and appears to have violated the clear letter of the law.”

The Senators also said the authorizing statute for NAEP states “Any assessment authorized under this section shall not be used by an agent or agents of the Federal Government to establish, require or influence the standards, assessments, curriculum, including lesson plans, textbooks, or classroom materials, or instructional practices of States or local education agencies.”

Does this invalidate OSEP’s ruling against Delaware, Texas, California and Washington D.C.?  Special Education has now become a Federal intrusion into public school districts.  I hope this issue becomes much bigger, and can also be used as another reason why standardized testing and common core just don’t work for students with special needs.  Someone needs to hold Arne Duncan and his wild bunch over at the US DOE accountable.

Thanks to Education Week for supplying the link to the letter: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/Secretary%20Duncan%20Letter%208.4.14.pdf

Delaware DOE: The Eye of the Hurricane in Special Education

In a hurricane, everything is wild and chaotic.  Winds are fierce, rain is massive, and destruction looms.  Many people flee, but some stay hoping for the best.  Homes are destroyed, roads are flooded, and lives are frequently lost.  In the middle of a hurricane, everything is calm.  It can sometimes be sunny, and rain may not be present and it can be viewed as a moment of peace.  The eye is the center of the hurricane, and everything that happens is a result of the eye.  This is the Delaware Department of Education in regards to special education.