Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Standard Issue: Patrick Picks Reville to Head Mass. BOE

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One wonders if Reville is aware of the research that has been done on high-stakes testing and the questions it raises on high-stakes testing. An article in Educational Researcher, for example, found that schools align curriculum to state tests, not curriculum frameworks. In other words, teachers teach to the test, which means they teach less than they might if there were no tests. Instruction also tends to be more teacher-centered, which tends to be less effective than other strategies.

Students in danger of failing MCAS (disproportionately minorities) often receive more instruction in test-taking than they do the richer, deeper curriculum enjoyed by students who fare better on the test. This situation is hardly a solution to “the pervasive soft discrimination of low expecations” that Reville bemoans.

Educational think tanks, like the Rennie Center that Reville directs, usually lack depth when it comes to research. Instead of considering the questions and doubts that emerge from serious study, these education policy experts tend to focus on research that seems to confirm what they already believe. Given his Kappan article, Reville certainly looks like he falls into this category.

Managers aren’t necessarily the deepest thinkers. They don’t have to be if they can deal with the thinking of others. A lot of questions have been raised by Reville’s policy-making in the 1990’s. Will he have what it takes to address them? The future of education policy in the Commonwealth depends on it.

–Mb

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Comments

  1. Not all districts teach to the test.  The good ones teach to the frameworks.  However, the Department of Education has made that a difficult task.

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    When schools had low test scores, the Department of Education came in with something called “Performance Improvement Mapping.”  This was an exercise in teaching to LAST YEAR’S test.  The exercise?  Go through the most recent questions and look for weaknesses in teaching and curriculum that resulted in wrong answers.  Write an improvement plan that addresses those deficiencies.  Next year’s test scores go down because the test is different.  duh  Rinse and repeat.

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    It takes courage for a school leader to focus on good teaching and the frameworks.  However, that effort will lead toward improved teaching and learning.

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    As I said elsewhere, the one thing Reville is good at is being a facilitator and managing discourse with different points of view.  That bodes well for his potential success as BoE chair.

  2. Patrick’s appointment of Paul Reville, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education…

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    A lecturer?  Couldn’t Patrick find someone who had actually done research to become the head of the MA BOE?

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    A few nits.

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    One, when I was in high school in the mid 1960s we took standardizes tests–the Iowa Standard.  They were not required for graduation.  What their purpose was, was to inform the teachers where the deficiencies were, to help them adapt their teaching methodologies.  It worked quite well.

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    Regarding

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    But Reville is more interested in making rhetorically hedged bets on high standards with sentences like “It is true that we cannot attribute all of our healthy indicators directly to the education reform, but, as reform has been the dominant feature of the last decade, the correlation appears to be strong.” Correlations are either strong or they aren’t.

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    Aside from the fact that correlation does not suggest causation I suspect that Reville doesn’t know how to do regression analysis.  The latter is a mathematical method of isolating the effects of one variable from a multi-variate data set.  I’ll give an example of the problem with Reville’s assertion.  It has been well-documented that Houston TX’s school system (headed by GWBush’s first SecEducation) improved their test scores by encouraging students who were likely to score low to drop out, thereby increasing the likelihood that the remaining students to improve school test scores.  Is the same thing happening in MA?  You’ll never know, unless you do a regression analysis on the data set: scores vs. drop-out rates.

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    Educational think tanks, like the Rennie Center that Reville directs…

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    Does anyone know who is funding the Rennie Center?  Follow the money.  I would almost be willing to bet that they are being funded by companies that prepare tests.

    • [Raj speculates Reville’s center is funded by testing firms]

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      The morning Globe story on the appointment quotes someone who thinks the former head, Romney appointee Anderson, is too close to unnamed companies:

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      But Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, drew a sharp distinction between the two.

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      “There’s more to public education than giving certain businesses what they want for the next few years,” he said. “Reville takes a longer view.”

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      Of course this doesn’t necessarily conflict with the idea that Reville will overly favor testing companies in general.  Anyone know which companies Koocher means?  Ones that actually manage whole schools?

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