Public Hearing - June 11, 2012
1 BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE
STANDING COMMITTEE ON LOCAL EDUCATION
2 ------------------------------------------------------
3 PUBLIC HEARING
4 THE EVOLUTION OF STUDENT ASSESSMENTS:
WHERE WE STARTED; WHERE WE ARE; AND
5 WHERE WE SHOULD BE GOING
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7 Legislative Office Building
181 State Street
8 Van Buren Hearing Room A - 2nd Floor
Albany, New York 12247
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June 11, 2012
10 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
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PRESIDING:
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Senator Charles J. Fuschillo, Jr.
14 Chair
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16 SENATE MEMBERS PRESENT:
17 Senator Suzie Oppenheimer (RM)
18 Senator Hugh T. Farley
19 Senator Kenneth P. LaValle
20 Senator Carl Marcellino
21 Senator George D. Maziarz
22 Senator Michael H. Ranzenhofer
23 Senator Joseph D. Robach
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SPEAKERS: PAGE QUESTIONS
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Dr. John B. King 8 30
3 Commissioner
Valerie Gray
4 Executive Deputy Commissioner
New York State Education Department
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Andrew Palotta 74 85
6 Executive Vice President
Marie Neira 74 85
7 Vice President
NYS United Teachers/United Federation
8 of Teachers
9 Jane Fox 74 85
Teacher
10 Heidi Sabatino (ph.) 74 85
Teacher
11 Albany City School District
12 Hillary Luallen Southern (ph.) 74 85
Teacher
13 Schenectady City School District
14 Timothy G. Kremer 116 128
Executive Director
15 NYS School Boards Association
16 Robert Lowry 142 158
Deputy Director
17 NYS Council of School Superintendents
18 Dr. Lorna Lewis 142 158
Superintendent
19 East Williston Central School District
20 Jennifer Pyle 162 167
Deputy Director
21 Conference of Big 5 School Districts
22 Jim Viola 168 178
Director of Government Relations
23 School Administrators Association of NYS
24 Paul Gasparini 168 178
Principal
25 Jamesville-Dewitt High School
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SPEAKERS: PAGE QUESTIONS
2
Dr. Kenneth Mitchell 180 186
3 Superintendent
South Orangetown Central School District
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Dan Drmacich 194 198
5 Retired School Principal
Rochester City School District;
6 and Chair of the Rochester Coalition
for Justice and Education
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Donald Barlow 194 198
8 Educator
(Organization not announced)
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Jaye Bea Smalley 210 212
10 Co-Chair
Citywide Council on Special Ed
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Lisa Edstrom 224 228
12 A Parent
Parent Voices New York
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14 ---oOo---
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1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Can everyone hear okay?
2 All right.
3 Good morning. Welcome to the
4 Senate Education Committee hearing on tests.
5 And, I want to start by thanking and
6 introducing my colleagues who have joined us this
7 morning. I know everyone has very busy schedules,
8 so I appreciate everyone taking the time:
9 Senator Maziarz, Senator Farley,
10 Senator Robach, Senator Marcellino, and, my friend
11 and colleague, the ranker on the
12 Education Committee, Senator Suzi Oppenheimer.
13 Couple of brief things.
14 First of all, thank you to everyone for being
15 here.
16 I sincerely apologize, there are things that
17 we can control and things we can't control.
18 The fact that it's about 97 degrees in here
19 was not done on purpose. Water is available at $5 a
20 bottle. We will give that to the State Education
21 Department.
22 [Laughter.]
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And we have -- here's what
24 we are trying to do: I just want to make some
25 remarks before we go to the Commissioner, and be
5
1 very brief at the same time.
2 We asked for people to provide written
3 testimony before the hearing. And I know the
4 Commissioner is very good at this, but anyone who
5 comes up to testify, if you are going to read your
6 testimony, I will politely interrupt you, because
7 everyone in the room is smart, everyone can read,
8 and they can read independently on their own.
9 It would be far better to make comments,
10 summarize, and then we can actually have more of a
11 dialogue. I think that's far more productive.
12 So, just in advance, if I cut somebody off,
13 it's only because I'm trying to be fair to everyone
14 here, and allow our colleagues to ask as many
15 questions as possible.
16 And, usually, like Senator Hannon is really
17 good with technology stuff. So, I'm taking a stab
18 at this.
19 This is a very quick set of slides on some of
20 what we were trying to talk about. And what we did
21 was, ask State Ed, school boards, school
22 superintendents, and NYSUT: What do you believe are
23 all the tests necessary to get a diploma in the
24 state of New York?
25 And it's sort of like many other things in
6
1 life, everybody has a slightly different
2 interpretation.
3 There is real consistency in what's there,
4 but we just thought it might be useful to take a
5 quick look at that.
6 And let me also added that there are copies
7 of the testimony that will be available for
8 everybody. There was very lengthy testimony
9 submitted from the School Boards Association, with a
10 multitude of comments.
11 Those comments are not available in volume
12 right now, but everything that comes out of today
13 will be put into a record that will be available to
14 everyone as quickly as possible.
15 So, briefly, I hope, and everyone can see
16 that, but -- okay, here we go.
17 Now, if we could turn the lights down there
18 quickly, maybe we can do the air conditioning at the
19 same time.
20 [Laughter.]
21 [Slide show begins.]
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, just quick:
23 Areas of focus: How many exams?
24 And since I told everyone else not to read, I
25 know everyone can quickly read that. Sort of broad
7
1 questions.
2 And then, okay, first one is:
3 State Education Department.
4 I believe their position is, is that there
5 are 19 different exams that are required for a
6 Regents diploma.
7 And, again, all of this will be available.
8 The School Boards lays it out slightly
9 differently. And they do add, even though they
10 aren't, technically, there for the Regents, that
11 there are AP exams, PSATs, SAT, or ACT, and elective
12 classes.
13 And, oh, God, I remember the TerraNova test
14 from my own kids, so that's certainly another test
15 that people have to be involved in.
16 Council on School Superintendents, they gave
17 a broader description.
18 And I know it's a little hard to see, I
19 apologize for that, but they included field tests
20 and a variety of different tests that are available.
21 But, there is a consistency with the -- all
22 four groups in terms of the general number, of,
23 like, between nineteen and twenty, or twenty-one, in
24 terms of getting a Regents diploma.
25 And then NYSUT was interesting in its own way
8
1 because, not only did they lay out the number of
2 tests, but they gave the amount of time that was
3 required for each of them. And clearly put in their
4 description here, that it doesn't include time spent
5 taking field tests.
6 And they line out, in terms of the number of
7 minutes for kids who are taking tests. I think it's
8 4,400 minutes, or, 74 hours, of testing.
9 So, if we could raise those lights again,
10 that's it on that.
11 And maybe it will cool off the room if it's
12 darker.
13 But, Commissioner, welcome, and we appreciate
14 you taking the time.
15 Before I go to you, I just want to ask
16 Senator Oppenheimer if she wanted to make any
17 comments.
18 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: No.
19 My only question is: Is this in our
20 materials, the -- what we just saw here?
21 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yes.
22 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: No, I'm anxious to hear
23 what everyone has to say.
24 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Commissioner.
25 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: I'm going to keep my
9
1 mind open.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And, Val, thank you for
3 being here as well.
4 COMMISSIONER KING: Good morning.
5 Thanks, Senator Flanagan.
6 Thanks, members of the Committee.
7 Let me start by introducing our
8 executive deputy commissioner, Val Gray, who's
9 joining me for today's testimony.
10 What I thought I would do, is try and walk
11 quickly through the materials that we provided, at a
12 high level, and give you a sense of how the
13 Department sees the landscape.
14 As you will recall from my budget testimony
15 earlier this year --
16 [Microphone repositioned.]
17 COMMISSIONER KING: As you'll recall from my
18 budget testimony earlier this year, it's never been
19 more critical for our high school students to
20 graduate ready for college and careers. That's
21 essential for the future of our state's economy, and
22 essential for the future of our state's democracy.
23 Our assessment program obviously plays a
24 critic a role in that work, and a critical role in
25 the Regents reform agenda.
10
1 The first page of the presentation that we
2 provided to you highlights the four core elements of
3 the Regents strategy for trying to increase the
4 percentage of students who graduate from
5 high school, college- and career-ready.
6 We've adopted a new set of standards: the
7 common-core standards;
8 We are building instructional data systems to
9 help schools and teachers make good use of data on
10 student performance;
11 We're doing a lot of work on teacher and
12 principal preparation, and, teacher and principal
13 effectiveness;
14 And, a focused effort to turn around our
15 lowest-performing schools.
16 You'll note on the second page of the
17 presentation, just an overview of where we are in
18 terms of graduation rates. This is the week where
19 we announce the prior year's graduation rates, final
20 graduation-rate numbers.
21 You'll see that our graduation rates have
22 risen steadily over the last five year, now reaching
23 74 percent statewide. And, yet, despite that
24 improvement, we continue to see a very large
25 achievement gaps; great disparities between and
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1 across need-resource categories.
2 On the next page, we illustrate the
3 graduation rates for the Big Five, and you can see
4 the scope of our challenge.
5 The Big Five city school districts certainly
6 have significantly lower graduation rates than our
7 overall state graduation rate.
8 On the next page, we focus on -- this is
9 page 4, we focus on college- and career-readiness.
10 What's the percentage of students who
11 actually graduate high school, prepared to succeed
12 in college, prepared to enroll in credit-bearing
13 college courses?
14 And what you'll see there, is that,
15 unfortunately, of the students who began as freshmen
16 in 2007, in June of 2011, under 35 percent actually
17 graduated college- and career-ready.
18 So, the scope of the challenge is quite
19 great.
20 And the next page, page 5, emphasizes the
21 implications of the college- and career-readiness
22 gap for our economy.
23 Even, very recently, there have been a series
24 of studies that have shown how poor the employment
25 rate is for students who only have a high school
12
1 diploma, and aren't prepared with the skills they
2 need.
3 On the next page, we try to put the
4 assessment system in context. All right?
5 The assessment system is a part of a
6 multi-pronged strategy to improve performance.
7 The assessment system is a key measure for
8 how we see students doing against the New York State
9 learning standards, it's a key measure for school
10 accountability, and it is a component, one of
11 multiple measures to be used evaluating teacher and
12 principal performance.
13 On page 7, we describe the history of the
14 New York State assessment system.
15 The assessment system dates back, actually,
16 all the way to the beginning of the Regents exams in
17 1865. So, there's a long history to our assessment
18 system. And over time, the Regents exams at the
19 high school level were supplemented by exams at the
20 grade 4 and 8 level, in English language arts and
21 math.
22 And then, as we describe on page 8, with the
23 advent of "No Child Left Behind," the assessment
24 system was expanded to grades 3 through 8, English
25 language arts and math;
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1 A federal requirement for there to be a
2 science exam, in grades 3 through 5, and then again
3 in grades 6 through 9, and then again in grades 10
4 through 12;
5 And the requirement that there be at least
6 one high school English language arts exam, and
7 mathematics exam.
8 And, obviously, with NCLB, all of these
9 assessments became even more critical tools for
10 school accountability.
11 Page 9, explains the history of how that
12 assessment system translates into operational tasks.
13 The 3-through-8 assessments, that system was
14 competitively bid, initially, in the contract that
15 was awarded to CTB/McGraw-Hill.
16 And then, in 2010, a second RFP process was
17 completed, and the contract was awarded to Pearson
18 for the 2012-to-2015 period.
19 The Regents exams, different from
20 grades 3 through 8, are actually developed by the
21 Department.
22 And the development process for both the
23 3-through-8 assessments and the Regents exams relies
24 on the participation of teachers throughout the
25 development process.
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1 On page 10, we turn to the subject of testing
2 time, and the testing schedule.
3 One of the issues that's gotten a lot of
4 attention, even in slides that Senator Flanagan
5 opened with, is the amount of time for the
6 third-through-eighth-grade assessments.
7 Page 10 tries to lay out that the assessments
8 are designed, the tests are designed to take,
9 anywhere from 45, to a maximum of 70, minutes for
10 students.
11 We did ask this year, for the first time, for
12 this districts to schedule a 90-minute block for the
13 assessments, even though the tests are not designed
14 to take 90 minutes, so that students would not have
15 the experience, which we have heard complaints about
16 in previous years, of having the test pulled from
17 their hands as they struggle to finish the last
18 question.
19 We're not trying to assess speed. We're
20 trying to assess student knowledge against
21 New York State standards.
22 And so, for that reason, we changed to the
23 same approach that Massachusetts, the New England
24 Consortium, takes to test scheduling, allowing
25 students the time that they need to finish the exam,
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1 if it takes more than the target time.
2 So, again, the actual time for each session
3 ranges from 45 to 70 minutes, although we ask
4 schools to schedule 90 minutes in case students
5 needed more time.
6 Page 11, speaks to some recent changes in the
7 assessment system.
8 In the summer of 2010, after several years of
9 very large test-score gains, the Regents reevaluated
10 how the State was defining proficiency.
11 And one of the things we looked at was: How
12 good a predicter are the third-through-eighth-grade
13 assessments of student performance at the college
14 level?
15 What can we learn about student performance
16 in college courses?
17 Who's assigned to remediation?
18 And, then, how might we use that information
19 to inform where we set the proficiency bar in the
20 third-through-eighth-grade assessments?
21 And so what we found, unfortunately, was that
22 we were labeling as "proficient," an eighth-grader
23 with a less than one-third chance of ultimately
24 performing the level necessary to enroll in
25 credit-bearing college courses.
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1 So, we raised the bar for proficiency, and
2 that had the result of changing the performance
3 levels across districts across the state. But, we
4 thought it was important to make sure that we were
5 defining proficiency at the level necessary for
6 college and career success.
7 We also introduced, at that time, a number of
8 changes to the assessment system:
9 We added audit questions, to compare New York
10 performance against performance nationally;
11 And, we began the process of embedding
12 field-test questions; that is, putting into the
13 test, as most large-scale assessments do, tasks that
14 were testing out for potential use in future years.
15 And I'll come back to that topic in a moment.
16 It's also worth noting, that over the last
17 few years, the Department and State have been
18 engaged in an effort to phase out the local diploma,
19 and to raise the bar for high school graduation.
20 You'll notice in the chart on page 11, then
21 beginning in 2005, the Regents required, that in
22 order to get a local diploma, a student needed to
23 take five Regents exams. They could have three
24 scores above 55, and two above 65.
25 Over the last four years, that has inched
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1 upwards.
2 So it moved:
3 In 2006, to three exams at 65;
4 For the 2007 cohort, four exams at 65;
5 And, for the cohort that will graduate this
6 June, five exams at 65.
7 There's been a lot of discussion about the
8 phaseout of the local diplomas.
9 Some key points to clarify: The local
10 diploma remains available, even after this year, for
11 students with disabilities, and, for a subset of
12 general-education students.
13 The change between the cohort that graduated
14 last June and this June, is that, in order to earn a
15 diploma, those students will need to earn a 65 on
16 one more exam than last year.
17 So, it's a 10-point change. They were able
18 to take that exam at a 55 the previous year. This
19 year, it is 65.
20 The next page, page 12, talks about field
21 tests, and we're in the midst of the field-test
22 period.
23 "Field tests" are, essentially, the testing
24 out of test questions for use in future years.
25 Most large-scale assessment systems,
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1 virtually all, embed their field-test questions;
2 that is, you want to see that students are trying
3 their hardest. So, you put a small number of test
4 items that are being tested out for future years,
5 inside of the operational test.
6 Unfortunately, in New York, as far as we
7 know, the only state that prints and ships their own
8 tests.
9 As a result, we only print four forms of each
10 exam; four versions of the exam.
11 So we can only sprinkle a very small number
12 of field-test items into the operational tests.
13 For that reason, unlike other similar large
14 states, we have to do standalone multiple-choice
15 field tests; that is, tests that are entirely
16 composed of trial questions.
17 That's what's happening now.
18 It's a 40-minute period, where students are
19 asked to do trial questions for future years. To
20 read passages, do math problems, that could then be
21 used for future years' assessments.
22 But it's important to note that we certainly
23 would prefer to embed the field-test questions, but
24 given that we print our own tests, which was a
25 decision made many years ago, given that we print
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1 our own tests, we only have those four forms. And
2 that requires us to do the standalone field testing
3 of multiple-choice items.
4 Now, open-response items, extended response,
5 where students are writing essays or responding to
6 open-ended questions, all states use standalone
7 field tests as a general matter -- virtually all
8 states, for those open-ended questions.
9 But, multiple choice, New York is quite
10 unique in having to do those standalone field tests
11 at the scale that we do, and as a result of our
12 printing our own exams.
13 In order to take a different approach, we
14 would either need to spend a lot more on printing
15 and shipping, or, move -- what we think is the
16 better option, is to move as quickly as possible, as
17 a state, to computer-based testing, so we eliminate
18 the printing and shipping component of the work and
19 administer the assessments by computer.
20 On page 13, we speak to the issue of costs.
21 New York State spends, as you know, well over
22 $50 billion on education.
23 And we spend just below $35 million --
24 $34.5 million -- on assessments.
25 So, the assessment costs, the State
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1 investment in assessment is certainly very small
2 relative to the overall spending on education.
3 You see on the -- on page 13, how the
4 assessment costs break out, grades 3 through 8, the
5 Regents exam.
6 And then there are other assessments that are
7 required by federal law, related to students with
8 severe disabilities, English-language learners,
9 et cetera. And that rounds out the cost
10 calculations there.
11 On page 14, we speak to an issue familiar to
12 all of you, that we have faced at the Department, a
13 structural deficit with respect to our assessment
14 system over the last few years, as a result of a
15 decrease in State General Fund appropriations to the
16 Department, as well as a decrease in some federal
17 funds, as well as the exhaustion of our federal
18 carryover funds.
19 Last year, we sought $15 million in -- to
20 cover the structural deficit. We received
21 $7 million.
22 As a result, we had to take a number of
23 cost-cutting measures, including, at one point, the
24 potential elimination of the January exams,
25 although, that was prevented by a philanthropic
21
1 [unintelligible], that allowed us to continue the
2 January Regents exams.
3 This year, in the budget, we were fortunate,
4 and we appreciate getting $8.5 million, which allows
5 us to maintain the Regents program in its current
6 form, including the January Regents exams.
7 Page 15, there's certainly been a fair amount
8 of media attention to some issues on the exam, as
9 developed by Pearson, the 3-8 exams.
10 I just want to take a moment to walk through
11 what those issues were, and the actions that we are
12 taking.
13 First, there was a passage on the
14 eighth-grade English language arts exam that we
15 concluded was inconsistent with the rigor level
16 required for the New York State learning standards.
17 It was a passage that Pearson developed years
18 ago. It's been used in six states and three large
19 districts, multiple times, over a 10-year period.
20 Nonetheless, we concluded, upon review of
21 that passage, that it did not meet the standards for
22 rigor for the New York State exam system, and we
23 removed that passage.
24 We are in the final stage of completing an
25 amendment to our Pearson contract, to put in place
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1 additional layers of review around passage quality.
2 I'll also speak in a few moments to the work
3 we're doing to convert the exams to the new
4 common-core standards, which I'll describe in more
5 detail. And that will require more rigorous
6 passages, even more than we've seen in past years.
7 And, so, we are making those changes in
8 response to that issue.
9 A second issue: There were a small number,
10 4 out of 1,116 items, in which there were
11 typographical errors.
12 Any error is a problem, and we should do
13 everything possible to minimize them.
14 So, we are requiring, as part of our -- an
15 amendment to the contract with Pearson, additional
16 layers of review, and the introduction of an
17 electronic system for tracking edits and revisions,
18 to minimize, going forward, the potential for any
19 typos, although, obviously, human beings are always
20 going to be fallible; and, so, there's always the
21 possibility of an error. But, we are putting in
22 place additional procedures to minimize those.
23 Third: There were a number of errors in the
24 translations.
25 We translate our 3-through-8 exams into
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1 five languages, as well as braille.
2 It requires, this year, for example, well
3 over 4,000 items, in terms of the translated items.
4 There were twenty of them in which there were
5 translation errors.
6 Pearson has a subcontractor that does the
7 work on translations.
8 We are requiring, as part of their contract,
9 that they put in place additional procedures,
10 additional levels of review, again, to try to
11 minimize any errors as a result of translation.
12 I should say that, in any time -- not only
13 this year, but, historically, any time an error is
14 identified, it is not held against students or the
15 teacher or schools.
16 Pearson is also putting in place, we've
17 required as part of this contract amendment, an
18 independent review of the exam-development process,
19 not only for 2012, but for 2013. We want to make
20 sure that the work is of the utmost quality.
21 And, finally, I should say that the contract
22 amendments will also provide for financial penalties
23 if there are unacceptable items or translation
24 errors.
25 So, those are steps that we are taking to
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1 address the Pearson issues.
2 Pearson has expressed their commitment to
3 providing the highest-quality product to New York,
4 and we will hold them to that.
5 On page 16, we begin to talk about the future
6 of the assessment system.
7 Obviously, the assessment system, as I've
8 said, plays a crucial role in our work to improve
9 college- and career-readiness.
10 We are doing work to continue to build the
11 assessment system.
12 First: We are aligning the assessments to
13 the common core, which I'll describe in more detail.
14 We are one of 45 states to adopt new
15 common-core standard, mapped backwards from college
16 and career success.
17 We are participating in a consortium of
18 states funded by a federal Race to the Top
19 assessment grant, to build next generation
20 assessments that would be delivered by computer.
21 And, so, we're working with 24 states on that
22 project.
23 We also put in place this year a new test
24 security unit, based on concerns in previous years
25 about test improprieties.
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1 A test security unit, headed by a former
2 federal prosecutor who's assembled a talented -- is
3 assembling a talented team of folks, to ensure the
4 integrity and security of our test system.
5 And then, certainly, we are moving forward,
6 as we describe on page 17, on the work, using the
7 assessments as one of multiple measures within the
8 evaluation system.
9 And that's an important point, obviously
10 understood by members of the Committee, but worth
11 emphasizing for the public.
12 The evaluation system that was first passed
13 into law in 2010, the law was -- improvements were
14 made to the law, as you know, this session.
15 That law makes assessments a part of a
16 multiple-measures evaluation system. That includes,
17 observations of the teacher by the principal, or
18 observations of the principal by a superintendent or
19 other administrators. Includes locally selected
20 measures.
21 But one of the measures, 20 percent of the
22 score for those teachers and tested subjects, will
23 come from the state -- from growth on the State
24 assessments.
25 And that's also an important point to
26
1 emphasize.
2 It's not absolute performance, but the growth
3 that students have made under that teacher's care
4 and guidance.
5 On page 18, we talk about these new
6 common-core standards, which I've referenced.
7 Again, a State-led effort, involving
8 45 states, three territories, creating common
9 standards, developed by talking to higher-ed
10 faculty, talking to higher-ed administrators,
11 talking to business leaders, about what skills are
12 needed for students at the entry level, and then
13 mapping backwards from there, to tenth grade, to
14 seventh grade, all the way back to kindergarten.
15 We believe those standards are more rigorous
16 than the standards we have had in place, and will
17 help us meet the aspiration of college- and
18 career-readiness for all students. And, will also
19 allow better collaboration across states, on the
20 work of ensuring that we've the highest-quality
21 instruction for our students.
22 Page 19, describes some of the changes in
23 instruction required by those new common-core
24 standards.
25 Just to illustrate one example: One of the
27
1 things that the common-core standards' authors heard
2 from higher-ed faculty and business leaders, was
3 that students, upon entry, after graduating from
4 high school, are often asked to read non-fiction
5 texts, whether it's a research article in a science
6 course, a history textbook, a technical manual, in a
7 new career.
8 And we need to make sure that students are
9 prepared to do that.
10 Too often, in K-12, we are not pointing
11 students toward those non-fiction texts.
12 And, so, those are the kinds of changes in
13 instruction that the common core brings. And we are
14 using "Race to the Top" resources to support the
15 creation of tools to help teachers with implementing
16 the common core, from professional-development
17 videos, to curriculum modules, to examples --
18 videotape examples, of great teaching aligned to the
19 common core.
20 On page 20, we speak to the NCLB waiver that
21 New York just secured.
22 For both Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver,
23 states were required to implement the common core,
24 which we're doing, and to implement the teacher and
25 principal evaluation system that incorporates
28
1 student growth, which we are doing.
2 In exchange, the waiver allows us some key
3 areas of flexibility.
4 We, like most states, were on a path to
5 having a tsunami of identified schools by 2014,
6 under the targets set in the original NCLB.
7 And, at times, schools were identified, in
8 the accountability status, as underperforming, that,
9 actually, were making very significant gains, but
10 were just missing the absolute target.
11 And one of the changes that the waiver allows
12 is for us to look at growth as part of our
13 accountability system. That will allow schools that
14 are making very significant progress for their
15 students, to avoid accountability status simply
16 because they've missed an arbitrary target.
17 The other thing that the waiver provides, is
18 greater flexibility in the use of federal funds at
19 the district level. And, certainly, that will be of
20 value, particularly to our highest-need districts.
21 We also describe in the waiver application, a
22 series of supports that we will continue to put in
23 place for those districts that have our most
24 struggling schools.
25 On page 21, we summarize some key issues
29
1 around the future of the assessment system.
2 We will see greater rigor with alignment to
3 the common core. The tests will be more
4 challenging, and will better reflect college- and
5 career-readiness.
6 That will begin with changes to the
7 third-through-eighth-grade assessments for next
8 school year, and then continue with changes to the
9 Regents exams in the years that follow.
10 We want to get to a place of greater
11 coherence between K-12 and higher education. We
12 don't want the students to graduate from high school
13 thinking that they are ready for college courses,
14 only to discover that they're required to attend
15 remediation.
16 And we all know the stark remediation
17 statistics: Over 40 percent in SUNY's two-year
18 institutions. Over 75 percent in CUNY's two-year
19 institutions.
20 The assessment systems have to inform
21 instruction, and they have to drive instruction in
22 the right direction. And that's part of the reason
23 to align them to the common core.
24 And, we've got to take advantage of new
25 technologies, like computer-based testing. We've
30
1 got to get there as quickly as we can.
2 And, we've to have an evaluation system that
3 uses student growth as a part of the picture around
4 educator performance, and then informs high-quality
5 professional development.
6 So, thank you for your attention.
7 I look forward to your questions.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thank you, Commissioner.
9 I'm going to start off with a couple of
10 questions. And I know my colleagues have some, and
11 I will probably come back.
12 But, when I think about these things, there's
13 two things that come into mind right away.
14 Number one: Even though my youngest is now
15 graduating high school, I think of this in the
16 context of being a parent;
17 And, number two: I try to think, as elected
18 officials, how do we go back to our constituents and
19 explain this so the people can actually understand
20 it?
21 When you talk about embedding and rubrics,
22 and all these different types of things, I get it,
23 because I'm immersed it in.
24 But, I'm trying to figure out: How does this
25 go out to the parent who's in the district working
31
1 closely with the teacher?
2 And, it seems to me that we title this, you
3 know: Where we were, where we are, where we're
4 going.
5 I would like you to comment on several
6 different things.
7 It seems to me that, when Senator Robach and
8 I were in high school, a few years ago, we were
9 going through the Regents, and everybody seemed to
10 refer to that as "the gold standard." That we took
11 a lot of tests, but we didn't take a crazy amount of
12 tests.
13 This predates the NCLB, and the ELA in fourth
14 and eighth grade, and then all the additional tests.
15 So, it seems like, in past, we were,
16 essentially, geared towards a Regents standard.
17 Now, we seem to be evolving from NCLB, and
18 have added a great deal of tests along the way.
19 And, then, where we're going seems to be more
20 aligned with common core and moving away from NCLB.
21 Is that too simplistic a description?
22 COMMISSIONER KING: No, I think that's fair.
23 I think that's a fair characterization.
24 I wouldn't say -- I think over the last
25 decade, there's been an increased interest in having
32
1 a good sense of where students are on the path to
2 that -- to the Regents exams, to the -- to the
3 destination. And that that's been a driver
4 alongside the NCLB requirements.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
6 But, then, from an educator standpoint,
7 listening to teachers and administrators,
8 superintendents, and I've heard this term now many
9 times, "the cohort," now you have to have five exams
10 with 65 or more.
11 It also seems to me, that if a kid starts in
12 kindergarten, because now we're talking about
13 back-mapping, your term, all the way back to
14 kindergarten, why can't we basically make a
15 blueprint that says: For a kid who's enrolling in
16 kindergarten in September, for that child's
17 education, through the end of high school, it's
18 going to stay the same, it's not going to change, so
19 everybody knows what the rules?
20 Is that too far a reach?
21 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, I think the common
22 core aspires to that.
23 One of the challenges is, that there is so
24 much change in our state's economy, and what's
25 demanded.
33
1 I think if you looked at even what the
2 fastest-growing jobs are today, versus a decade ago,
3 when the students who are in high school today began
4 their education, they look very different.
5 And, so, I think there's a balance to be
6 struck between clarity, when students enroll in
7 kindergarten, and having a system that is responsive
8 to changes in the state's economy, and the country's
9 economy.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, three other
11 quick things.
12 You talked about, and I'm going right through
13 your testimony -- well, let me start with this: In
14 terms of test preparation, there's been a lot of
15 discussions about Pearson, and a lot of the factors
16 like that. And it was McGraw-Hill before them.
17 And I think the old contract was even more expensive
18 than the one we're presently operating under.
19 But, ultimately, just as we, as the
20 legislative entity, are responsible, Pearson,
21 everything gets cleared through SED.
22 So when those tests come out, ultimately,
23 it's the responsibility, the credit or the blame,
24 for SED and the Regents, because there's been a
25 whole host of eyes looking at that.
34
1 Is that accurate?
2 COMMISSIONER KING: Depends on the portion of
3 the assessment.
4 So, for example: Around translations, we
5 don't have, at SED, a staff that speaks -- staff
6 members who are experts in each of the translated
7 languages. So we rely on Pearson, through the
8 contract, to ensure that the translations are right.
9 When the final typesetting is done for an
10 exam, for example, the questions, issues of format,
11 potential typographical errors, could be introduced
12 at that final stage when they go to final printing.
13 So there are places where there's not that
14 final review, but there is a process by which we
15 have panels of educators look at questions and
16 passages.
17 The questions obviously go through the
18 field-testing process.
19 So there is, certainly, a lot of oversight,
20 but there are pieces that are ultimately the
21 responsibility of the contractor.
22 But, look, it's our contract, and in the
23 end -- at the end of the day, it's our task to make
24 sure that our vendor does the things that are
25 required of them.
35
1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, let me put
2 translation to the side for a second.
3 Just, you're assuming the test is given in
4 English.
5 Ultimately, the test that goes out the door,
6 I'm assuming that, the Department, then I understand
7 the Regents fellows play a role in this as well --
8 There is -- who's the last person to approve
9 what actually goes out the door?
10 COMMISSIONER KING: There's not a simple
11 answer to that, unfortunately.
12 The last version that goes to the printer is
13 coming from the person that's responsible for
14 typesetting.
15 So that's why I say there's the possibility
16 for the introduction of errors at the typographical
17 level.
18 In terms of passages and questions, those go
19 through multiple layers of review, both with Pearson
20 and with the Department.
21 The Department signs off on the passages.
22 Although, it's worth noting, that the passage
23 that attracted all of the criticism this year, was a
24 norm-referenced Pearson passage that was used in
25 multiple states.
36
1 As part of the terms of the contract, we
2 included the use of those norm-referenced items to
3 make comparisons nationally.
4 So that passage itself was reviewed by a
5 panel of New York State educators, was field-tested
6 in New York, was ultimately included through all the
7 usual protocols, but it was a passage that was
8 constructed by, and the questions were constructed
9 by, Pearson.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, before I go to
11 Senator Marcellino, I just want to read part of --
12 this is one of the values of getting the testimony
13 beforehand.
14 In NYSUT's testimony, it says: Contrary to
15 some reports, teachers have no approval role in the
16 State's selection of standardized tests.
17 How would you respond to that?
18 COMMISSIONER KING: So teachers participate
19 in a panel of educators that reviews the items, and
20 provides feedback to the Department and Pearson on
21 the items.
22 I think the question of approval, as I
23 described, there's multiple stages of review and
24 recommendations, and approval, that the panel of
25 educators is giving feedback.
37
1 So, if the distinction is between feedback
2 and approval, it's a fair one.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay. I have a number of
4 other questions, but Senator Robach wanted to jump
5 in here on that follow-up point, so...
6 SENATOR ROBACH: I guess, Commissioner, thank
7 you.
8 And I wanted to thank Senator Flanagan for
9 having this hearing.
10 I remember, even when he moved to the
11 testing, I found those hearings were very impactful
12 on me, especially hearing from a lot of
13 African-American women who were educators, who said,
14 without the testing, they were always encouraged, as
15 soon as they didn't do well in a grade, to go into
16 cosmetology, or something else, which I found
17 fascinating. I heard that all over the state.
18 But, following up on John Flanagan, I heard
19 you -- you know, we talked about the vendor, we
20 heard SED even mentioned business leaders. And this
21 is obviously a work in progress. And, I mean,
22 "high stakes," is the right word for everybody
23 involved, most importantly, the students.
24 And we always hear from parents, from
25 teachers, from other people: What is their ability
38
1 to impact the whole process, from the core goals to
2 the testing?
3 Is there really a blueprint for that to get
4 the final product out the door?
5 What is their mechanism, Commissioner, if
6 somebody calls us, how do they get in, besides a
7 hearing like this?
8 How would they get to SED?
9 COMMISSIONER KING: It's a great question.
10 So, in the development of a common-core
11 standards, there was a very extensive process of
12 gathering feedback from educators, not only in
13 New York, but in each of the states that were
14 participating.
15 Over -- you know, over many, many months,
16 there were several drafts issued, feedback was
17 gathered from educators, from educator associations,
18 from all across the country, and so forth. And, we
19 took extensive comments from educators and from the
20 public on the standards prior to adoption, and we
21 made some adjustments.
22 States were allowed to make some adjustments
23 to standards, to add up to 15 percent to the
24 standards.
25 And, we made some additions based on that
39
1 feedback.
2 In terms of the assessments, one thing that
3 we're doing later this week, we will publish our
4 sample items, that reflect how the assessments will
5 change as we align to the common core. And we're
6 publishing them intentionally as drafts, so that we
7 can get feedback from educators and parents, and
8 others, on those items.
9 And then, obviously, the field testing itself
10 is a way for us to sort of learn from
11 student-performance information that informs the
12 development of the assessments.
13 But whenever we make changes to the -- to,
14 for example, graduation requirements, we always go
15 through a process of public comment, and so forth.
16 SENATOR ROBACH: Do you think, and, you know,
17 this is more, maybe, and I want to apologize, my
18 political hat, I hear from parents, and I represent
19 pretty diverse school districts -- the city of
20 Rochester; Brighton, which gets cited as one of the
21 best; some more rural districts -- but all across
22 that, a lot of parents were very involved with their
23 kids, they're doing what they're supposed to,
24 comment on the length.
25 Not the stress to their kid, but the length.
40
1 Do you feel the current set of testing is too
2 lengthy right now and should be adjusted, or do you
3 think it's good where it is?
4 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, we're reviewing a
5 set of survey results that we took after this last
6 test administration.
7 You know, the challenge is, the complaint
8 that we heard prior to this year, was around:
9 Students not being able to finish the exam;
10 Or, students were furiously rushing through
11 the last few questions, you know, as the time ticks
12 away, and the teacher's coming over to take the
13 paper from the student's hands.
14 And so the choice was, between that model,
15 and the model that's in use in Massachusetts and the
16 New England Consortium, and other places, of
17 allowing much a longer period of time for those
18 students who need it, so that students have plenty
19 of time to finish. And if they needed some extra
20 time to continue working, to allow them that time.
21 We opted for that latter model, but we took
22 survey results, to try to get a sense of how
23 educators felt it went. And, we also did some
24 observations in schools, talking with folks, to hear
25 how it went.
41
1 So, we're looking at that, particularly
2 around the third and fourth grade.
3 But, I actually think a lot of them, reaction
4 to the amount of time on testing, is driven by a
5 reaction to the amount of time that's spent,
6 instructionally, on test prep.
7 And I think one of our challenges, as a, sort
8 of education community, is to help teachers and
9 principals understand that test prep, as a strategy,
10 is likely to be significantly less effective at
11 driving improved student performance, than really
12 rich instruction.
13 It's one of the reasons we're going to use
14 Race to Top money on curriculum materials, to help
15 provide curriculum materials that illustrate what
16 rich instruction would look like, that would ensure
17 students are prepared for the test without having,
18 you know, day after day of instruction.
19 Look, you know, just like the -- sort of a
20 photocopied version of test-prep materials.
21 SENATOR ROBACH: Okay. Thank you.
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Marcellino.
23 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Thank you very much.
24 Thank you very much, Commissioner. It's a
25 pleasure to see you.
42
1 I was just reminded, when John Flanagan
2 talked about his days in high school as being only a
3 few years ago, I remember my own. And it wasn't
4 easy in those days, carrying those stone tablets --
5 [Laugher.]
6 SENATOR MARCELLINO: -- back and forth to
7 school. It was heavy work.
8 The Governor has, on many occasions, pointed
9 out that New York State spends huge amounts of
10 money, the most in the nation, on education, yet we
11 rank, as a state, 37th, I believe was the number
12 that he uses, nationwide, for education.
13 Why is that?
14 COMMISSIONER KING: So, I think that the
15 challenge of those two numbers, is that there's a
16 lot of nuance on the ground when you look across the
17 700 districts.
18 So, on the one hand, you have districts that
19 are very high spending and get outstanding results;
20 You have districts that are fairly high
21 spending and have mediocre results;
22 And, you have districts that are low
23 spending, and really struggling;
24 And, districts that are low spending and
25 getting very impressive results despite that.
43
1 So, there's a lot of nuance.
2 Certainly, when the Governor talks about
3 graduation rates, he's right to worry about our
4 overall performance.
5 You know, when you think about the life
6 chances of those students who don't graduate from
7 high school -- we've got a quarter of our students
8 who are not graduating at all from high school --
9 and what jobs are available for those students,
10 there's a lot of reason to worry about a 74 percent
11 graduation rate.
12 On the other hand, there are particular
13 communities where you've got a 99 percent graduation
14 rate, and 100 percent of kids going on to
15 competitive colleges.
16 So, the challenge is getting at the nuance.
17 There's a lot of work we need to do to make
18 sure that every school is providing students with a
19 real path to college- and career-readiness. Part of
20 that is about the core instruction. Right?
21 That's why we adopted the common core.
22 Part of it is about making sure that every
23 adult in the building feels accountable for a
24 student performance, teachers and principals, and
25 has the support they need. And that's what we're
44
1 driving at with the evaluation system.
2 Part of it is about making sure that students
3 can see a connection between their experience in
4 high school and what's afterwards.
5 It's one of the reasons that the Department
6 has asked the Board of Regents to consider
7 increasing the role of career and technical
8 education in graduation requirements, to create
9 another pathway for students, so that students can
10 see why the day-to-day work in class and high school
11 matters, and what possibilities there are for them
12 afterwards.
13 So the answer to your question is complex.
14 And, again, one of the challenges of how much
15 we spend, and what results we get, is getting to the
16 level of nuance on what the variety look likes
17 across the state.
18 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Well, I can understand,
19 when you say that there are, different districts
20 perform differently; different reasons, different
21 circumstances, and so forth.
22 Given the fact that money is dear, and
23 probably, in the long term, will continue to be
24 dear: the common core.
25 I get a lot of complaints from districts that
45
1 I represent, which, in many cases, are
2 high-performing.
3 From Long Island, my districts are
4 high-performing districts, for the most part. They
5 do well. They're graduating high percentages. The
6 Regents-exam passage is a high percentages.
7 You heard Senator Robach talking about
8 Rochester, one of the school districts he
9 recommended with high percent.
10 Why are we mandating a common core on
11 everybody?
12 Why don't we cherry-pick?
13 Why aren't we letting those districts that
14 are doing well, leave them alone?
15 Let them continue to do what they have to do,
16 what they're doing.
17 If they're doing well, leave them. Don't
18 throw that kind of money at them, don't force them
19 to change.
20 Why are we making everybody do the same?
21 Why not concentrate on those districts that
22 are not performing, where they need your help, where
23 they may need, I don't know, maybe extra money,
24 maybe extra expertise, specialty, people going into
25 the districts that State Ed can provide -- whatever
46
1 help you can give?
2 But, if we have districts that are
3 performing, and doing well, by all standards that we
4 ask of them, why don't we leave them alone?
5 Why do we mandate the common core?
6 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, certainly, the
7 responsibility of the Department is to set a clear
8 set of academic standards for all schools. And we
9 want those academic standards to align with college
10 and career success.
11 But, if you look at page 19, and the shifts
12 in instruction that are described for English and
13 math, I would argue that those districts that are
14 high-performing, these are the very things that they
15 do.
16 Senator Flanagan will recall, he and I had
17 the experience of being at Commack High School. And
18 we were sitting with students in the international
19 baccalaureate program, and they were very
20 impressive.
21 And their -- the work that they're doing, the
22 research that they're doing, the papers they're
23 writing, very impressive.
24 So I said to them, you know: If your school
25 district wanted more students, at the high-school
47
1 level, to be ready to get an international
2 baccalaureate diploma; wanted more students, at the
3 high-school level, to be able to do the kinds of
4 coursework that you're doing, do the kinds of
5 research that you're doing, what should the
6 schools -- what should schools do differently at the
7 elementary- and middle-school level?
8 And they literally described all of the
9 things on page 19.
10 They talked about the need for students to be
11 writing more, to be writing more with evidence, to
12 be writing to make arguments, because that's the
13 kind of writing that they're asked to do in the IB
14 program, that they'll be asked to do in college.
15 They talked about, students having the
16 opportunity to read non-fiction, to gain
17 information, and to use that to support their
18 writings.
19 So, in many ways, the common-core standards
20 are an effort by the entire country -- and we're
21 talking about 45 states -- by the entire country, to
22 look at the places that are excelling, both within
23 the United States and internationally, asked: What
24 is it that they're doing that is working so well,
25 and how can we make sure that all schools are doing
48
1 it?
2 So, you know, when people talk about the
3 transition to the common core, many of the districts
4 that are highest-performing will be able to see, as
5 they dive into the standards, and prepare for next
6 year, that many of the things that the common core
7 is asking. Are the things that they're already
8 doing well, it's reason their students are
9 succeeding, are in the IB programs, AP courses, are
10 prepared for college.
11 Other districts will discover that they've
12 allowed, for example, history and science to lose
13 their place in the elementary-school curriculum, and
14 as a result, don't have the background knowledge to
15 grapple with difficult tasks. And they will need to
16 make a shift in which books they use at the
17 elementary level.
18 So I -- it's very variable for districts, how
19 much of a transition the common core will require,
20 but it is absolutely built on the best practices,
21 nationally, and internationally.
22 SENATOR MARCELLINO: I hear what you're
23 saying, but what, in fact, is being required, if
24 these districts are now going back, and having to
25 readjust, realign, and change curriculums that
49
1 they're doing now, to meet the core standards?
2 And, again, if the district is performing, if
3 the district is doing well, by graduation standards,
4 by Regents-test standard, by the standards the State
5 is requiring, why are we requiring changes in
6 methodology, changes in technique, which is what
7 you're talking about?
8 Requiring them to go through hours of
9 training, and retraining, and readjustment, when
10 they're already meeting the goals, leave them alone,
11 and go to those districts that need the help, and
12 supply the assistance and care and organization.
13 You have limited resources.
14 You said this when you opened your remarks:
15 You have limited resources.
16 So why spread them too thin?
17 Go to those districts that need the
18 assistance, and give them whatever you can, by
19 expertise, by help -- by whatever -- so that they
20 can perform, and let the other districts -- I'm not
21 saying forever. You got to go back and test to make
22 sure they maintain a standard.
23 That's understandable.
24 But, why require them to redo everything?
25 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, again, they only
50
1 have to redo everything if they see a large gap
2 between what they're doing and the common core.
3 So if the district believes that their
4 students are prepared for what's required in the
5 common core; that is, that they have the exposure to
6 non-fiction, that they're prepared to write with
7 evidence from sources, that they have the ability to
8 apply math, not just at a set of procedures, but as
9 a toolkit, almost to solve challenging problems, if
10 they're developing those skills, then they should
11 have to make very modest adjustments.
12 Now, one challenge, though, I will
13 acknowledge, is that, there are school districts
14 that, I think, when you look inside the results,
15 even though they are doing well against our current
16 metrics, if you look at how their students do
17 afterwards, when they get to college, we see gaps.
18 We know, as a country, this is a challenge we
19 face; that, when our students get to higher
20 education, they are less competitive than some of
21 our international competitors, when it comes to math
22 and science, for example.
23 And the common core was developed, in part,
24 to address that concern.
25 So even for districts that are doing well,
51
1 some of them know, and I think, as they look at the
2 common core, they'll see this, that there are gaps
3 in what they're doing to ensure that their students,
4 not only go on to college, but, are able to succeed
5 in that biochemistry major that they want because
6 they have the right set of skills.
7 SENATOR MARCELLINO: See, I can understand
8 you saying that, you want to follow the kid into the
9 college and see what they're doing, and how well
10 they perform in the college.
11 That, we can do.
12 That, you can do statistically right now.
13 You know where they came from. You know the school
14 districts from which these kids come from.
15 So, if Student A, B, C, and D is coming from
16 a School District Y, and, another group of students
17 and they're performing poorly on a -- in the college
18 curriculum, you can go back to the college after a
19 while, after a couple of years, and say: Hey, look,
20 in checking the records, we find out that these kids
21 aren't doing so well. You get them out there, you
22 get them into the college, but they're not
23 performing when they get there. Let's take a look
24 at what you're doing. What's the reason for that?
25 There could be a whole host of reasons for
52
1 that, both socially and educationally.
2 But, let's take a look at it after the fact.
3 But what you're saying now, is, the districts
4 have to go back and come into line.
5 Where my suggestion is, and a lot of the
6 districts are saying the same thing: We're already
7 there.
8 You know?
9 If we're wrong, if we're failing, fine.
10 But, we're not, and you're making us change.
11 Even that minor adjustment, according to the
12 superintendents I deal with -- and you know why
13 we've invited you to come down. I'd like to see you
14 come down and speak to my superintendents, and
15 explain the situation to them, in small groups, not
16 thousands. But, you know, I represent 14 districts.
17 I'd like to get you with -- in with a group of
18 14 superintendents, and some, you know, board
19 members, and the like, and let them talk to you, and
20 you can go through the explanation, and hear from
21 them directly, it would make some sense.
22 We're looking forward to that meeting.
23 But, I still believe you could focus your
24 money where it can be best applied, and where you
25 can use it the most, and get the most bang for the
53
1 buck, because the buck is limited.
2 I appreciate your time.
3 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
4 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Oppenheimer.
5 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Oh, Lordy be, I have
6 too many questions.
7 Of course, the point that was made by my
8 colleague, is one that I've made to you so many
9 times, because we do have, within my Senate
10 district, some of the top districts of the
11 United States.
12 And I have appealed on different occasions,
13 on different -- in different arenas. And you have
14 been most gracious to come down and talk to my
15 superintendents, who were sort of up in arms. And
16 you've been very calming, and, even though they
17 don't think you necessarily subscribe to what they
18 think.
19 But, we certainly have tried to overcome
20 that.
21 But, in teaching to the common core, I've had
22 a lot of parents come in, and say: Why -- why, in
23 the middle of my kindergarten-child's year, did they
24 suddenly get a big box from, I guess it was Pearson,
25 and now you have to teach to that box?
54
1 And they say, before that, the children were
2 having a grand time, with very creative
3 opportunities, in kindergarten, which is a good time
4 to explore.
5 But this, apparently, big box came, and they
6 were told they had to only teach to that box; what
7 was in that box.
8 Now, I'm not sure what this is about.
9 Nor do you.
10 We'll have to explore this further --
11 COMMISSIONER KING: Right.
12 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: -- because it was a
13 highly specific thing, and they were very, very
14 unhappy.
15 But it does leave me to question: What has
16 happened to history? What has happened to
17 geography? What has happened to civics
18 responsibility? -- the important things, I think,
19 for our society.
20 COMMISSIONER KING: I couldn't agree more.
21 And I think that's exactly what the common core is
22 trying to get at.
23 You know, if you look at page 18, you know,
24 one of the things that's important about the
25 common core, is it's not just the common core in
55
1 English language arts and mathematics. It's
2 actually the common core in English language arts,
3 and literacy in history, social studies, science,
4 and the technical subjects.
5 And, so, the common core is actually calling
6 on schools to do precisely what you're describing:
7 engage students with history texts, with science
8 texts.
9 One of my favorite common-core exemplars that
10 we have on our website is on the
11 "Gettysburg Address," and it's significance as a
12 historical document, and also as a piece of writing,
13 and an argument that Lincoln was making.
14 The common core, also, I would say, attends
15 to the issue of creativity.
16 We -- so, you know, there are choices that
17 districts are making about curricular materials.
18 Those are theirs to make.
19 All right?
20 We don't mandate a curriculum in
21 New York State. We don't have text-book approval in
22 New York State, unlike other states.
23 You know, we set the standards. The
24 assessments will reflect those standards.
25 If districts feel like their kids are well
56
1 prepared for the complexity of readings that are on
2 the common-core assessments, if they feel like their
3 kids can do the multi-step math problems that the
4 common core will require, then they probably don't
5 have to change very much.
6 On the other hand, if districts need to make
7 adjustments, either to sequencing or to content, to
8 get kids to the common core, that's exactly right,
9 and what the Regents envisioned in adopting the
10 common core.
11 The final point I'd make, just on the
12 curricular materials, is -- and it goes back to the
13 point I made to Senator Robach, on time and testing:
14 One of our biggest challenges is a set of
15 pedagogical judgments, teaching judgments, that are
16 made, that would suggest, well, if we know that the
17 test is going require students to read a short
18 passage and answer some multiple-choice questions,
19 what we'll do is, we'll make every day look like
20 that.
21 When, in fact, if every day looks like that,
22 you will get lower performance, not better
23 performance.
24 Right?
25 We want students to do the play, to do -- to
57
1 read the exciting novel, to have all of those
2 experiences, precisely because, those experiences
3 will prepare them for success in college and
4 careers, and that will be reflected in their
5 assessment results.
6 So there is a gap, I think, between what
7 people take away that they should do, and what the
8 assessments actually intend.
9 And what the assessments intend is, a
10 measure, you know, a useful measure among multiple
11 measures of readiness for college and careers.
12 But, the test isn't supposed to be the
13 curriculum. The curriculum is supposed to be a rich
14 set of learning experiences.
15 And that's one of the reasons, again, why
16 we're putting Race to Top resources into building
17 curriculum materials, and making those available for
18 free. They won't be mandated. They won't be part
19 of any regulation, but, just as a resource for
20 districts.
21 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: God bless, I wish you
22 well, because, I see in my own district, places like
23 Scarsdale, say: We're never going to teach to the
24 test. What we're doing is fine, and our children
25 are going to do fine on the tests.
58
1 And then I see another community, where my
2 daughter is a reading specialist, and they've done
3 nothing but teach to the test.
4 And, they've had her proctoring some of these
5 things, and she's not even permitted to talk.
6 So that, I said: Well, there's an
7 opportunity. Maybe you can help some students.
8 "Oh, no, no, no. I'm not permitted to do
9 that."
10 There's just such a discrepancy in what I
11 see.
12 And I -- I mean, I hope what you're saying
13 will occur, but I'm somewhat concerned, in our areas
14 that are more challenged, that, you know, this might
15 not happen.
16 Okay, couple of more fast questions.
17 We have seen in the past week, in my Senate
18 district -- seems to be a district that is riled up
19 on things -- that they have said they -- the field
20 tests that are being taken by Pearson are not --
21 many of their students did not show up at school.
22 They were told by the superintendent of
23 schools that if you stay out of school the day that
24 the Pearson test -- field tests are happening, that
25 it will not be held against you.
59
1 So, in at least two of my districts, they
2 stayed out of school.
3 Now, how does Pearson going to evaluate this?
4 I mean, maybe one-third of the class took the
5 test.
6 And maybe those that were most competent
7 said: Oh, we don't need to help, Pearson. Why
8 should we help Pearson? We're being tested to
9 death. Why should we do field tests?
10 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, it's important to
11 note, first, the field tests are not for Pearson.
12 All right?
13 The field tests are for the items that will
14 be used in future New York State tests.
15 That said, you know, the field tests are
16 designed to be a sample. Based on everything that
17 we've heard so far, we'll have more than adequate
18 sample to be able to assess the validity of the
19 items.
20 So, I understand some parents made the choice
21 to hold students back.
22 Our sense is, it's a relatively small number
23 compared to the absolute whole of the sample.
24 And, actually, it's not unusual.
25 You know, that there's a certain climate
60
1 around testing that can be acrimonious at times.
2 And as you look across the country, whether it's
3 this year, or five years ago, or ten years ago,
4 there's always been some degree of acrimony around
5 tests, and some who've chosen to opt out.
6 And, you know, that's to be expected.
7 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: How quickly can we get,
8 which I just heard today, from the four printed
9 forms on your testing, to something on the Internet?
10 I mean, that sounds foolish.
11 COMMISSIONER KING: So, it's a great
12 question.
13 We have got to get to computer-based testing.
14 All right?
15 It's clear that that's the right future.
16 The challenge is, you know, we have some
17 districts that are very well positioned to do that.
18 They have lots of devices, whether it's
19 desktop, laptop computers, or iPads.
20 We have other districts that have challenges
21 in terms of the hardware that they need.
22 We have some districts that have very robust
23 technical support. So, if a computer goes down,
24 someone's there from the district right away to fix.
25 Other districts, some of our smaller
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1 districts that are reliant on a BOCES that may be
2 some distance away for technical support, if their
3 computers go down, they have a much more difficult
4 time getting them back up.
5 We also have bandwidth challenges. Sometimes
6 by community, sometimes by buildings. Some of the
7 older buildings that don't have reliable high-speed
8 Internet access.
9 So, one of the things that we're doing, along
10 with all of the other states participating in the
11 Park Consortium that we're a part of, is a survey
12 tool that's being done this spring and summer, to
13 gather feedback from districts on what their
14 capacity is for computer-based testing, so that we
15 can move there as quickly as possible.
16 We also asked in our budget request for a
17 small amount of funds to pilot one of the Regents
18 exams as a computer-based test.
19 That's something we would still like to do.
20 I think we'll come back with that budget request
21 again next year, because we think, unless you sort
22 of start, it's the kind of thing that it's slow for
23 folks to build capacity around, because it seems
24 like something off in a distant future.
25 But, if we were to take one of the Regents
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1 exams and start to make it available, by computer, I
2 think you'd see a shift.
3 And this is what you see across assessment
4 systems. I mean, most of the large-scale assessment
5 systems are shifting to computer-based tests.
6 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: And --
7 Which is just a statement at the end, and
8 then I'm finished.
9 -- which, makes me underscore what
10 Senator Marcellino said.
11 If we had districts where they are sending
12 95 to 98 percent of their students to college, why
13 are we not putting our efforts, all of our efforts,
14 into those districts where they need computers and
15 hardware?
16 Thank you very much.
17 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thank you,
18 Senator Oppenheimer.
19 Senator Farley.
20 SENATOR FARLEY: Yes, thank you.
21 Incidentally, this is a very nice
22 presentation that you made here.
23 But, on page 2, the very first part, about
24 graduation rates, I see that you lump urban and
25 suburban together, which is a strange marriage,
63
1 because they end up putting (unintelligible).
2 I would imagine, unless -- because, in my
3 district, it's certainly different between the urban
4 and the suburbans school.
5 What would be the breakdown between the two
6 of those?
7 I would imagine, the suburban are rather high
8 and the urban's rather low.
9 Is that right?
10 COMMISSIONER KING: Yeah, well, this is
11 broken down by need-resource categories, so this is
12 particularly those suburban communities that are
13 closest to the urban communities in terms of their
14 level of need.
15 So, many of the traditional -- the districts
16 we think of as traditionally suburban, which fall
17 into the other two categories: low need and average
18 need.
19 But we can get you a specific breakdown of
20 which districts are in each category.
21 SENATOR FARLEY: Because, first, as to my
22 district, we have suburban districts that are --
23 abut the urban area, and the differentiation is
24 startling --
25 COMMISSIONER KING: Exactly.
64
1 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: -- to say the least.
2 COMMISSIONER KING: Exactly. Exactly.
3 So, we'll get you the breakdown.
4 And our actual -- on the web today, as we
5 released these, which we always do, we'll have, I
6 think it's some 200 sites that breaks down the
7 information from different perspectives.
8 But, we'll be sure to get you a breakdown of
9 these need-resource categories.
10 SENATOR FARLEY: That's it.
11 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Commissioner, I have
12 several other questions, and you're at a slight
13 disadvantage because I'm going to ask everyone who
14 comes up here the same thing: On a scale of
15 1 to 10, if you were to grade New York's testing
16 system, what would you give that grade, and why?
17 COMMISSIONER KING: Well, I think until we
18 implement the common core, we -- it would be
19 somewhat in the middle. Probably "6," or "7," given
20 the gap between what we ask and what is required for
21 college- and career-readiness.
22 When you look at the remediation rates at
23 SUNY and CUNY, and you know that many of those are
24 students who we said, as a system, were performing
25 fine all along the way, until they arrived at higher
65
1 education, that points to a real challenge.
2 So, there's work to do.
3 The other piece, is that we should get to
4 computer-based testing as quickly as possible,
5 because it's more efficient, because we can have
6 better items, because scoring can be managed better,
7 because we can embed field-test items.
8 So, in the absence of computer-based testing
9 in the common core, which is exactly what we're
10 focused on trying to create, I think we have a
11 distance to travel.
12 SENATOR FLANAGAN: How long before we get to
13 a "9," if we follow what you've outlined?
14 COMMISSIONER KING: The goal for the
15 Park Consortium is to have those assessments online
16 in 2014-15, but a lot will depend on how quickly we
17 can build the capacity to do computer-based testing.
18 I do think we'll move probably to an "8" with
19 alignment to the common core.
20 And that we will see phased in, beginning
21 next year, with the 3-through-8 assessments, and
22 then in the following year with the Regents exams.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, you have in your
24 testimony, you talked about, on page 12, the title
25 is "Importance of Field Tests."
66
1 And it says: It allows SED to build valid
2 operational exams and accurate measure of college-
3 and career-readiness.
4 And then you have below that: Embedding
5 field-test questions in an operational exam is the
6 best practice that generates higher-quality test
7 data and standalone field tests.
8 No disrespect, it just seems inconsistent.
9 And I know, going back to part of what
10 Senator Oppenheimer was asking about, Why are we
11 doing field tests anymore, to begin with?
12 And I'll have this as a sub-question: If
13 you're going to embed tests, and we have certain
14 limitations because of printing, if we're going out
15 and doing field tests now, aren't we spending a lot
16 of money on field tests independent of the,
17 quote/unquote, real exams?
18 COMMISSIONER KING: So, yes, I mean, it would
19 be better, again, if we didn't have to do standalone
20 field tests.
21 Let me take a moment to describe the
22 mechanics.
23 So, if you have for a given test, four forms;
24 so, you have Version A, Version B, Version C, and
25 Version D, and you sprinkle a small number of
67
1 field-test items into each of those operational
2 tests, let's say you had ten, in each of the four
3 forms, as an example, that will only give you
4 40 field-tested questions at the end of the
5 operational tests.
6 But in order to build the test, you need a
7 lot more questions than that. And, you know that
8 when you're field testing, some of the questions
9 will not perform well and you'll need to not use
10 them.
11 So, you not only need enough questions to
12 populate the actual test, but you need more, so that
13 you can take out questions that don't perform well.
14 So, that's why, in many large states, you're
15 talking about 15, 20, 25, 30 forms, so that they can
16 have a small number of field-test questions in each
17 of those forms.
18 We would much rather be able to embed all of
19 the field-test items. It would be more efficient,
20 it would save us the time on field testing, it would
21 save us the cost of printing and shipping field
22 tests, so forth.
23 But, we are constrained by the process we use
24 to print and ship exams; which is, we have a
25 printing machine, we have a printing staff. And
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1 that was a decision made many year ago at the
2 Department.
3 To take a different approach would require
4 contracting that work out, which would be an
5 expensive potential undertaking. And, I would
6 argue, a potential distraction from getting to
7 computer-based testing which would solve the
8 problem, and, have the benefit of eliminating
9 printing and shipping as a part of the process,
10 because, with computer-based testing, then you can
11 have as many forms as you want without all of the
12 constraints that come with printing and shipping.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: How much do we spend on
14 field tests?
15 COMMISSIONER KING: It's embedded in our
16 overall contract.
17 I don't know that we have a breakdown of
18 field-testing costs alone.
19 VALERIE GRAY: I think --
20 Is this on?
21 -- as we've looked at it over the last
22 several years, on average from --
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Try that again, Val. I'm
24 sorry.
25 VALERIE GRAY: I think, that as we've looked
69
1 at prior contracts and prior experience, it ranges,
2 on average, between four and five million.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, so if we were -- I
4 want to make sure that I'm understanding the
5 distinction.
6 If we were to get rid of those separate field
7 tests, and we were just going to fully embedded,
8 quote/unquote, regular tests, we're constrained by
9 the process that we use, because of the printing and
10 everything else.
11 Right?
12 So if you -- if we were to go to an outside
13 vendor, so that the State were not doing it, but it
14 was not yet computer-based, are we talking about
15 4.5 million, or are we talking about 40 million,
16 or --
17 VALERIE GRAY: Yeah, I think it's difficult
18 to say.
19 And I also want to clarify the average
20 figures for sample field tests, that was not just
21 printing, shipping, and administration. That also
22 included the item development and the scoring and
23 some of the other technical aspects.
24 I think it's difficult to estimate how much
25 it would cost if you outsourced that. You would
70
1 probably need do some sort of RFI, or, a request
2 from a number of bidders.
3 In general, you know, we spend about
4 6 million for printing and shipping for all of the
5 exams throughout the year, so that gives you a
6 little bit of a flavor of the overall
7 printing-and-shipping costs.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: So if we go to a
9 computer-based model, are we saving money?
10 COMMISSIONER KING: Yes, on the annual
11 operating costs, but, that requires that you have
12 the capacity in districts to execute on that.
13 But, yes, you'd be eliminating the whole
14 printing and shipping, so, that six million, for
15 starters.
16 But, also, scoring would be that much easier
17 to do, right, because each teacher who's
18 participating in scoring could be sitting at
19 their -- at a computer at their school, rather than
20 having to go to a central location, and all of the
21 costs of transporting exams through a central
22 location for regional scoring. All of that would be
23 saved as well.
24 Computer-based testing would be less
25 expensive, year over year, operationally, but, we've
71
1 got to build the capacity to get there. And that
2 will require an up-front investment in hardware,
3 tech support, and bandwidth.
4 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I get that.
5 But, why are we waiting to find that out?
6 I mean, if you are -- if you're going to put
7 in budgetary requests, that the number's
8 4.5 million, or 6 million, and you're talking about
9 districts in Senator Oppenheimer and
10 Senator Marcellino's area that are, technically, at
11 capacity, I think we should be figuring out what it
12 would cost to do it in those areas where there are
13 more challenges.
14 Is there anything going on like that?
15 COMMISSIONER KING: Exactly right. So that's
16 the survey tool that we're doing, along with the
17 other states that are participating in Park, the
18 technology-survey tool that we are asking districts
19 about.
20 You know: How many computers should they
21 have? Where are they situated? What is their
22 bandwidth speed?
23 All those kinds of questions, so that we can
24 do exactly the assessment you are describing, and
25 come back then, with a budget request, potentially,
72
1 both, at the state level, around district capacity,
2 and, potentially, even at the federal level, around
3 some of the bandwidth issues, and the investment in
4 high-speed Internet access that's required.
5 And in some buildings, it's even an
6 electricity issue, and whether they have the
7 electricity capacity.
8 One of the questions that we are also working
9 through with the consortia is: What kind of device
10 can be used?
11 So many school districts, I think, are
12 rightly, for instructional reasons, going towards
13 tablets. So, iPads, or other tablets.
14 We want to make sure that the assessments can
15 be delivered through those tablets. And, so, our
16 assessment consortium, just federally funded, and a
17 second consortium of other states that is also
18 federally funded, have been meeting with major
19 tablet-makers, to make sure that those tablets are
20 able to be used for delivery of the assessments.
21 So, we're trying to answer exactly these
22 questions.
23 I do think a pilot would be the most
24 effective way to expedite the process.
25 One of the reasons we've included that in our
73
1 budget request, because, until you actually start
2 doing it operationally, you don't always know all
3 the questions that may come up, all the challenges
4 that you may discover.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: What are the five
6 languages?
7 COMMISSIONER KING: I believe it is Chinese,
8 Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.
9 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
10 And last question, I appreciate your
11 indulgence: Within reasonable constraints, if you
12 could change one thing right away, in testing, what
13 would it be?
14 COMMISSIONER KING: The alignment of our
15 [unintelligible] assessments and Regents exams with
16 the common core and with college- and
17 career-readiness.
18 It troubles me deeply that there are students
19 who have their five 65s, think that they're ready
20 for college-level work, show up on a college campus,
21 and are told that they have to take a remedial
22 course that they themselves and their families have
23 to pay for.
24 And, so, we have an incoherence between
25 our -- what higher ed and employers demand, and what
74
1 we are using as our targets within the K-through-12
2 system.
3 So that alignment, so that we know, that when
4 students leave us, they are ready for college and
5 career success, I think that, around assessments,
6 that is the thing that I would be most eager to
7 change.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Now, I'm fairly certain if
9 I had to asked Val the same question, she would just
10 ask for a pile of money.
11 COMMISSIONER KING: That's her job.
12 SENATOR FLANAGAN: That's right.
13 Thank you very much, Commissioner.
14 COMMISSIONER KING: Thank you.
15 SENATOR FARLEY: Thank you. Good job.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Next is, New York State
17 United Teachers: Mr. Palotta, Ms. Person, and
18 Ms. Neira.
19 Good morning.
20 ANDREW PALOTTA: Good morning,
21 Senator Flanagan and members of the Education
22 Committee.
23 You have copies of our testimonies, and I
24 know that you've read it, because you quoted it
25 already. So, that's a good thing.
75
1 I am Andy Palotta, executive vice president
2 of NYSUT.
3 Joining me today are:
4 NYSUT vice president, Marie Neira;
5 And, three current practitioners from the
6 Albany City School District, sixth-grade teachers
7 Jane Fox [ph.] and Heidi Sabatino [ph.];
8 And, from the Schenectady City School
9 District, Hillary Luallen Southern [ph.].
10 Maria and I also have many decades of
11 teaching experience, so we have a lot of good
12 knowledge here.
13 On behalf of NYSUT, I want to thank you for
14 holding these hearings, and providing us with this
15 opportunity to speak to you about our thoughts, and
16 on how we can improve teaching in New York State.
17 A few points:
18 New York has a long history of teaching, and
19 testing, which we should be proud of.
20 Our Regents exams are known as the gold
21 standard around the country. Teachers have been
22 involved in designing these tests since 1906.
23 In addition to the Regents exams, we have
24 traditionally tested students, once during
25 elementary school, and once during middle school, in
76
1 ELA and math.
2 With the passage of No Child Left Behind by
3 Congress, the federal test mandate expanded for
4 grades 3 to 8, for math and ELA, and also required
5 science tests in elementary and middle school.
6 The requirements for high school exams in
7 ELA, math, and science had no effect on New York
8 because of the Regents exam requirements.
9 And these federal requirements have had a
10 major impact on what we do each and every day in the
11 classrooms.
12 Our vice president, Marie Neira, will now
13 speak about the impact of testing.
14 MARIE NEIRA: Thank you, Andy.
15 I will briefly highlight four major points:
16 The time on testing, the narrowing of the
17 curriculum, issues with the current tests, and
18 NYSUT's recommendations.
19 As we've heard, no country tests its children
20 more than the United States does.
21 And, as you saw, we do estimate, and that's a
22 real rough estimation, that we test about 74 hours
23 if a student is in school from kindergarten to
24 twelfth. And that doesn't include the additional
25 assessments that are sometimes administered and laid
77
1 on at the district level.
2 What I do want to emphasize in this
3 particular piece, is not just the time spent on
4 testing, but as the Commissioner mentioned, it is
5 the time that is spent on test prep.
6 And that time, we can estimate, and this is a
7 very rough estimation, between four to six weeks,
8 depending where you are in the state, which is
9 really at the core of the fixation on testing.
10 Research has told us, over and over, that the
11 excess on test prep distorts the purpose of testing.
12 And that is a piece that I want to highlight.
13 As much as we spend time on testing, we know
14 that it's not just about getting higher test scores.
15 And usually that's what the test prep will
16 emphasize.
17 We have -- the overemphasis on testing, and
18 the use of results, to determine graduation, and
19 promotion, has increased the stress, not only of
20 students, but of parents.
21 And we've heard that. We've seen how parents
22 have exercised to show their anger about these
23 issues.
24 In NYSUT, we commissioned a whole of parents,
25 where we have 63 percent of parents who said too
78
1 much emphasis is being placed on standardized tests,
2 as we will have demonstrated through the numbers
3 that you have seen.
4 Also, you will know that most test developers
5 will tell you that assessments are not designed for
6 high-stakes purposes.
7 In most cases, a test and assessment is a
8 point in time, and it is really about the -- a small
9 point in time.
10 In short: We really believe that the
11 overreliance on testing comes with the cost to our
12 students, and the time that they are put through the
13 paces.
14 On the curriculum, the focus on testing and
15 test prep has led to a serious narrowing of the
16 curriculum.
17 And we have heard it today already, where we
18 have the emphasis -- in some districts, not all
19 districts, where the emphasis is on ELA and math.
20 And, you have entire discipline areas that
21 are not part of the entire educational process --
22 the arts, music, social studies, science -- our
23 educators will tell you.
24 It -- also, research tell us that high-stakes
25 standardized tests are poor measures of high-quality
79
1 curriculum, because, remember, an assessment is only
2 measuring a certain amount of questions, and will
3 not capture the entire curriculum for that year in
4 any one area.
5 Narrowing the curriculum fails to engage our
6 students, and we see that constantly. And, it does
7 not, currently, as the Commissioner said, prepare
8 our students for college- and career-ready, and I
9 would say, because we are not giving our students
10 that entire round of education.
11 While we can say that adopting the
12 core-curriculum standards is the right -- in the
13 right move, it also provides the opportunity for
14 New York State to pause, and to take a better look
15 at how it is aligning.
16 It's not only the standards and the
17 assessments, but notice the big gap in the
18 communications, which is the curriculum.
19 There is no curriculum right now guiding our
20 process.
21 So, we have standards that are being rolled
22 in, we have a set of assessments that are already
23 being adjusted, but there's this big hole in the
24 middle, which is curriculum, which is something that
25 we really must pay attention to.
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1 On the problems with this year's tests, in
2 addition to the concerns, with time that we have
3 been extremely concerned about, and the quality, we
4 are, definitely, very concerned about the purpose,
5 and the amount of errors in this year's tests. And,
6 cannot overestimate what -- the complexities of
7 educational testing cannot be ignored.
8 We're glossing over some of the very big
9 complexities.
10 And we believe, and our members believe, that
11 students should not bear the consequences of a
12 flawed assessment process.
13 So during our convention, we heard very
14 disturbing stories from our members. And you have
15 those stories in our testimony.
16 The negative impact of the tests on our
17 students?
18 When students do not understand test items,
19 because they are unnecessarily confusing, they
20 cannot effectively demonstrate what they know.
21 And one of the big questions and -- that --
22 one of the comments that were repeated throughout
23 our surveys from our members, was the fact that the
24 test questions were, in many instances, very
25 complex. In some instances were not clear, and very
81
1 confusing, especially on the math assessment.
2 Which, remember, math is supposed to be the
3 international language. It doesn't matter what
4 language you speak. But, if it becomes more of a
5 reading-comprehension test, then you are going to be
6 distracted from the mathematical skills that you
7 have to provide.
8 We have three practitioners today who
9 administered the tests, so, if during the questions,
10 you have specific questions about administration, we
11 have our three members who will be more than happy
12 to follow up with those questions.
13 Very quickly: In our recommendations, as
14 NYSUT, we have voiced concern over our current
15 testing system, especially with test prep, and the
16 misuse of data.
17 And I want to emphasize, when we talk about
18 the misuse of data, data -- there's one test. And,
19 that single test, right now, is serving all masters,
20 and, it's trying to create data that is not
21 necessarily designed to give us.
22 So, in that instance, sometimes we have to
23 make sure that we are understanding what that
24 assessment is really telling us.
25 Educators are not opposed to student
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1 performance or being held accountable. We just want
2 to make sure that these assessments are fair. We
3 want to make sure that they are -- we get it right
4 this time, because we have the opportunity to do
5 that.
6 Our members recently considered a resolution
7 to our leadership.
8 The resolution demands that SED take a look
9 at, and end, the demands of the current system of
10 testing in the way that it is currently being
11 implemented, because it harms our students, and
12 hinders real learning, and affirms our support for
13 multiple measures.
14 We have to make sure that we don't have one
15 assessment that is making all the decisions for our
16 students' future. And through the assessments we
17 can assure that we have an accurate, fair, and
18 appropriate process.
19 We are calling for a balanced system; a
20 system that prioritizes instruction, and not
21 testing.
22 And that is what the members of NYSUT
23 continue to ensure, that we are talking about,
24 balance, and instruction.
25 It is also clear that, simply, getting
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1 Pearson and SED to fix the flaws within the existing
2 system is not the solution to the testing dilemma.
3 In my -- as an educator for 18 years in the
4 classroom, I can tell you that a computer -- taking
5 the test on the computer is not going to deal with
6 the issue of it being high stakes.
7 If it is a high-stakes assessment, it will
8 continue to be test prep. The test prep will be
9 done on the computer, and, we will have test prep
10 computer programs to do the test prep.
11 So, in wrapping up, I would want to leave you
12 with, that the real question we believe needs to be
13 at the center of this debate, is: What do our
14 students need? And, do we have the will to get it
15 right this time?
16 I believe that we have the opportunity, with
17 the changes in the current system, with the roll in
18 of common core, with a new generation of
19 assessments.
20 I will turn it over to Andy for a wrap-up.
21 ANDREW PALOTTA: Thank you.
22 As you consider what we've talked about so
23 far today, and the concerns you've heard, we would
24 like you to act now, to protect teachers from the
25 media abuses, that the data from these tests are
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1 linked to teacher performance, and made public.
2 Divulging that information through the media
3 will corrupt the intent of the new-teacher
4 evaluation system, especially when that data is
5 coming through, that is defective and imprecise.
6 We ask you to approve legislation that would
7 clearly prohibit the media and general public from
8 having access to teacher-principal evaluations, and
9 other personnel information.
10 You know that this information has caused a
11 disaster in New York City, with the 12,000 names
12 published. And, it was inaccurate and unfair.
13 We thank you again for holding these
14 hearings.
15 We believe that -- in short, the answer to
16 Senator Marcellino's question on the standing of
17 New York State schools, the number that is usually
18 given by the governor, is incorrect.
19 And, the number we go by is the number from
20 "Education Week," which has us as Number 3 in the
21 nation.
22 And the short answer to the question that was
23 posed on, Do the teachers have the final say in
24 drafting these tests? -- the answer is no.
25 So, thank you for your time.
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1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And if I could, and please
2 forgive me for not having listened properly, could
3 you just give the teacher names again?
4 JANE FOX (ph.): Oh, I'm Jane Fox.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Jane. Okay.
6 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): I'm
7 Hillary Luallen Southern.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Hillary.
9 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): Heidi Sabatino.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
11 I have -- I'm sure my colleagues have
12 questions, and I'll just start off with a couple.
13 In reading the various pieces of testimony,
14 some you haven't heard yet, it seems to me like one
15 of problems, is that you don't really know what the
16 test is, and that you're not allowed to see, and
17 you're sort of, I guess, shooting blind, almost, in
18 terms of figuring out, how do you properly
19 prepare? -- whether it's through the curriculum and
20 getting to the test, or just actually doing test
21 prep.
22 So, as a backdrop on that, and I don't know
23 if this would be helpful to hear from the classroom
24 teachers: Is it ridiculous to suggest, that, in the
25 beginning of the school year, whatever the grade may
86
1 be, if we're going to do an assessment, just do a
2 test right in the beginning of the year?
3 No test prep. Just, find out, as a gauge of
4 where kids are. And then the, quote/unquote, real
5 test at the end of the year; the one that can gauge
6 what has happened over the course of that academic
7 year.
8 Is that helpful? hurtful?
9 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): In our
10 district, we are working towards that.
11 The difficulty is, that the test really has
12 to be the same one, in the fall and the spring, or
13 whenever you choose to do it, or the same family of
14 tests. Otherwise, you're measuring apples and
15 oranges.
16 So, the State assessment obviously won't
17 work, unless the initial assessment is designed by
18 the same company.
19 And I'm not sure how you feel, but I have
20 huge issues with the test, beyond the publicized
21 errors that have been discussed, and made much of in
22 the media.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
24 JANE FOX (ph.): We currently do a test at
25 the beginning of the year, and we do a test in
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1 the -- January, and we do another test at the end of
2 the year. That is a district policy that we do.
3 For the State test, I think the skills that
4 we know that are on the test are embedded in our
5 teaching throughout the year, which is what the test
6 is grading us on.
7 However, some of the issues that I find with
8 the test, students that have special needs,
9 throughout the year, you're able to assist them.
10 It's part of their plan.
11 However, when it comes to the day of the
12 test, you're telling them: Here it is. You're on
13 your own.
14 And they've had this assistance because, it
15 is part of what we decided is best for the student,
16 to get them from Point A to Point B.
17 And, I don't think the test gauges that, when
18 they don't have, whether it be reading the test to
19 them, because, in the past, they've had somebody
20 who's read the test to them, or read the answers to
21 them, because they might have difficulty at that
22 grade level.
23 That's my concern with the tests.
24 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): As far as just testing
25 them, and getting their abilities, the State test
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1 does not give us any feedback on their abilities.
2 We get a score, and that's it.
3 We don't see where their strength and where
4 their weaknesses are. We just get the score.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: But if you could come up
6 with something that would accurately measure that,
7 do you see that as a problem doing the thing in the
8 beginning of the year, and then at the end, as long
9 as there was consistency in the test?
10 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): Right, that would be
11 great. That's more of a diagnostic test, where we
12 see where they need work on, and where they're fine
13 at.
14 That -- you take it at the beginning of the
15 year, you work on those skills, and then you test
16 again at the end of the year, that would be
17 wonderful.
18 MARIE NEIRA: So, I'm old enough to say,
19 that, it has been done in New York State.
20 [Laugher.]
21 MARIE NEIRA: After 35 years, when I started
22 teaching, you had a pre-test and a post-test.
23 And that's exactly what you did.
24 You knew what the skills would be at the
25 beginning of the school year. You embedded that
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1 throughout your curriculum.
2 And, I dare say I'm old enough also to know
3 that New York State used to give you the curriculum
4 that would allow you to meet those skills, and then
5 you would be tested at the end.
6 Now, things have changed over the 35 years,
7 and especially this year's testing.
8 This year's testing is a transitional year,
9 where we're testing on standards from 2004. But,
10 there were -- also, embedded common-cause standards
11 were embedded, plus, you had the field-test
12 questions.
13 So just imagine the kind of assessment that
14 was put in front of our students this time around.
15 And, every year, that I can remember,
16 especially with the coming in of No Child Left
17 Behind, every year, the assessment has changed.
18 So, we, as classroom teachers, have a moving
19 target every single year.
20 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: That's crazy.
21 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I'll go back to the
22 question that I asked the Commissioner, which I said
23 I was going to ask everybody.
24 This might be very interesting to hear from
25 our classroom teachers.
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1 If you were grading, on a scale of 1 to 10,
2 how would you grade the State of New York, and why?
3 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): I hate going
4 first.
5 All right. I would have to say that I think
6 that the score the Commissioner gave is high, and
7 optimistic.
8 And I would aim it right in the middle. I'll
9 say "5."
10 There's not enough time, you know, for all of
11 us to talk about our experiences doing this, but,
12 one of the issues that I was listening to this
13 morning was the movement towards computerized
14 testing.
15 And I thought, "Wow."
16 Because one of the problems that I see as an
17 ELA teacher, is the discrepancy between asking our
18 kids to find details, and defend their thinking.
19 With a standardized-test question, it only
20 has one right answer, which is what you get with
21 multiple choice.
22 So, I looked at -- I can't discuss the test
23 with you.
24 That's another issue, because it's embargoed,
25 it's secret; we can't discuss any of the questions
91
1 or the answers.
2 But, there were many multiple-choice
3 questions in the reading passages, which I could not
4 answer definitively. And I have a master's degree
5 in reading, and I graduated summa cum laude from
6 college.
7 So, if I cannot decide, definitively, that
8 one answer is correct, how can my eighth-graders do
9 that?
10 And, how can we talk, in good conscience,
11 about going to a completely computer model?
12 That's crazy.
13 And I'm also thinking about the computers in
14 my classroom that are missing keys, that they won't
15 fix.
16 So, you know, there's a huge -- I can't --
17 I -- I -- there's too much to talk about.
18 But, I don't think that we're doing a "6."
19 And I think the notion that we'll get to a
20 "9" by 2014 is not possible.
21 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Jane, how about you?
22 JANE FOX (ph.): I would agree. Probably
23 more like a "4."
24 The problems with the tests, and I'll talk
25 about technology first, in a building with 625-plus
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1 students, if you have -- if the State sets the time
2 that they do this, here's the week that you give
3 testing, and here are the two days that you get to
4 make up tests, you have to have 625 computers that
5 are working, for the kids to sit down for that time
6 period of 90 minute, or 60 minutes, or, if they
7 adjust it because it's computerized, I don't foresee
8 a district being able to take on that expense, or
9 the State is going to want to say, I'm going to
10 supply this many.
11 And that's one school in the entire district
12 of twelve other schools for 3 through 8.
13 And as far as the test itself, my co-teacher
14 Ms. Sabatino, she also teaches ELA. And, we took
15 the test separately, and then we compared our
16 answers.
17 On this test, there were probably six, that
18 even when we went back -- the distracters in the
19 past were kind of close, but you could definitively
20 go back and find: You know what? Yeah, this one
21 was correct, not that one.
22 There were six questions that we, literally,
23 said, "Oh, my God."
24 And having just chatted with students,
25 "What did you think of the test?" they picked out
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1 two of the same questions that we had, and said,
2 "I went back and forth between these two answers."
3 And I don't find that to be fair.
4 What are you testing them?
5 Do you narrow it down to two, and then just
6 say: Okay, I'm going to guess this one?
7 So, I don't -- I don't see it getting to
8 where it needs to be, based on the Commissioner, in
9 2014. And, I don't know if the test is really
10 gauging what the students know, because sometimes
11 the students say: I don't care. It doesn't matter.
12 But then they're put into a class because
13 they don't perform well.
14 And the growth that they may have, if they
15 scored, we'll say, a 640, or a 611, and then they
16 went to 640, they're still failing according to the
17 State, because they score one. But, there has been
18 growth, so they've made some progress, but it's not
19 shown in the test.
20 And I don't get to see the results of: Well,
21 what did they get, and what didn't they get?
22 What was the skill that they understood or
23 they had progress in, and what are they deficient
24 in?
25 I just get that number.
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1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: So, the Commissioner
2 started at "6."
3 And you went to "5," and you went to "4."
4 And, Heidi, if you're going to "3," we have a
5 problem.
6 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): Can I just say low?
7 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
8 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): Very low.
9 [Laughter.]
10 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): Everything that they
11 said, and it's such a small snapshot of a child. I
12 mean, we have students that are from impoverished
13 areas. We have kids, the night before, that have
14 gone into shelters, that are very emotionally
15 distraught. We just spend the 90 minutes just
16 getting -- encouraging them to get through the test.
17 So, it's just such a high-stake test for
18 these kids. And even the kids that are able to
19 perform proficience, they have such testing anxiety,
20 a lot of time is spent just coaxing them to go
21 through: It's okay. You'll be fine.
22 So, in many ways, quite low, my score would
23 be.
24 MARIE NEIRA: I would say --
25 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Oppenheimer --
95
1 MARIE NEIRA: -- I would just add -- just to
2 add just to what our practitioners have said: It is
3 extremely important that we do not gloss over the
4 complexities of test design, because what you're
5 hearing here is how complex a test is to design.
6 Two points that I need to bring to your
7 attention also:
8 With test design, and moving into using
9 technology, we need to move into the world of the
10 technology. We must take into account the issue of
11 equity. Equity will be a big concern, should be a
12 big concern, for you, and especially with
13 constituencies that you represent.
14 And, most importantly, our rural school
15 districts that do not, to date, have the capacity
16 of even getting Internet or broadband into their
17 districts.
18 So, just to put that as background
19 information.
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, thank you.
21 Senator Oppenheimer.
22 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Well, thank you all for
23 being here. And, you've been such a wonderful
24 resource through the years, and I want to thank you
25 before I leave the Senate, to each of you,
96
1 particularly Andy, who has always been there to
2 answer my questions.
3 Well, you heard what we were saying earlier
4 about broadband, and about the fact that --
5 Oh, I'm not on.
6 I'm on? I'm not.
7 I'm on.
8 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Speak into it.
9 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Okay, speak into it.
10 You know, we were saying earlier, is that, we
11 find, Senator Marcellino and myself, that in many,
12 many different districts within our schools, they
13 don't need, though they'll probably contest that,
14 but there's not a great need for the resources.
15 The resources have to be placed where the
16 need is. And, if we don't have computers in some of
17 our schools, and there's no broadband, there's no
18 way to get any access, we have to focus in on that.
19 And, I think, as far as, you know, technology
20 in the classrooms, which one of you two mentioned,
21 Hillary or Jane, that can be -- the technology
22 concerning the students taking tests, there's no
23 need to have 650 computers in one school.
24 All you need is to say, grade X will take it
25 on one day. Three days later, grade -- another
97
1 grade will take. -- so that there will never be a
2 need to have the entire school taking tests at the
3 same time.
4 I had a couple of questions for --
5 Hillary?
6 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): Hillary,
7 yes.
8 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: -- because, earlier,
9 you had said, that their were many things that
10 were -- you found distressing in the testing, quite
11 beyond, you know, typo mistakes. I mean, that seems
12 pretty superficial, even though they shouldn't be
13 there.
14 But, I'd like to hear some of your major
15 issues that you have with the testing. And I think
16 that you did mention a couple of them, but I would
17 like to hear what --
18 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): Well, I
19 heard someone allude to it earlier, but there's a
20 great deal of language in the test itself, which is
21 confusing to many -- most of my students.
22 So, for example, and this is going to sound
23 silly to you, but, we have a high ESL population.
24 And words like, "beneficial,"
25 "advantageous" -- and I'm not -- I'm calling these
98
1 out of long-term memory, not recent ones from the
2 test -- those are testing-type words.
3 And, we are not allowed to answer the child
4 when he or she raises his hand and says: What does
5 "beneficial" mean?
6 If I were to say it out loud, often the kids
7 would know what it meant. But, I'm not allowed to
8 read it to them either.
9 I don't believe that the -- test, when the
10 child's result hinges on something as small as
11 understanding a directional word, I don't believe
12 that the test can accurately measure what my
13 children can do. I think it very effectively
14 measures what they can't do.
15 And that's a terrible focus.
16 The -- we talked a bit about the timing, too,
17 earlier, the 90 minutes.
18 It's a horrible amount of time to sit down
19 and be quiet, and be focused, and work on something
20 that may, to many of my students, feel as though
21 they have failed already.
22 You want to add to that?
23 JANE FOX (ph.): No, I completely agree with
24 you, 90 minutes is a long time.
25 Just imagine sitting here for 90 minutes, and
99
1 saying nothing, moving, don't touch anything, don't
2 write anything, other than that test sitting in
3 front of you -- for 90 minutes.
4 And you are talking about sixth-graders.
5 They need to move.
6 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: So you're saying it's
7 impossible for those that are finished earlier to be
8 excused from the room?
9 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): There's
10 nowhere to send them because everyone in the
11 building is testing.
12 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Well, that's a problem.
13 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): And that's
14 just the design of the test.
15 You know, we have five days in which to
16 administer the test, administer makeups, and send
17 the tests back on its way.
18 And that's -- it's impossible to do it any
19 other way, than to have all of the kids testing at
20 once.
21 So that is a problem.
22 But, one test follows on the heels of
23 another.
24 No sooner have we finished ELA testing, then
25 we dive into math.
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1 No sooner have we finished math testing, then
2 the science testing begins, which has four parts.
3 We are still testing in my school. We just
4 finished the math field testing, I believe, on
5 Thursday last week.
6 And there's more science testing to come.
7 We've been testing since --
8 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: The beginning of April.
9 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): Thank you.
10 -- the beginning of April.
11 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Right after April break.
12 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): Every week.
13 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: We believe, or at least
14 we're putting money behind it, the longitudinal data
15 system, which is going to cost multiples of
16 millions, and will take some time. Part of -- half
17 of that money is coming from the feds.
18 But, will that not zero in on the individual
19 child, and show where the specifics of that child's
20 distress, the areas that they are not succeeding in?
21 What's your opinion?
22 Or your opinion, Andy?
23 Or your opinion, Marie?
24 MARIE NEIRA: Well, we know that the data
25 system that's being created is, basically, to gather
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1 statewide data.
2 Reports that will be generated, we're told,
3 will have some specific individual information about
4 each student.
5 The question is going to be, is: When do we
6 get it?
7 If we get the returns in August, or
8 September, the current classroom teachers do not
9 have that data to help them try to correct or make
10 any interventions for the students at that time.
11 So, many of us, we say: Okay, we know now
12 what students don't know. And, hopefully, when they
13 go in next grade, that teacher will have an
14 opportunity to see what they don't know, and try to
15 fill in the blanks.
16 But, the current data that will be returned
17 to teachers will have very little benefit for the
18 students who are currently in front of them.
19 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Okay, not good.
20 Now, the last question I have, is, I've been
21 getting some -- many complaints, actually, from
22 teachers' colleges, colleges that teach the
23 teachers, and, universities.
24 And they say that the State Ed has not
25 developed a teacher-certificate process.
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1 They have said that they are going to do it.
2 And they have said, on many occasions, it's going to
3 be done soon.
4 And, apparently, this has not happened.
5 Is that your experience?
6 MARIE NEIRA: New York State has changed the
7 certification process that -- the assessments for
8 the certification process.
9 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Right.
10 MARIE NEIRA: And they have just reintroduced
11 the teacher-performance assessment, and that is just
12 in the process of being rolled out.
13 It is true that faculty and schools of
14 education have had very little communications about
15 how this will be impacting their programs, their
16 curriculum, their syllabus.
17 So, yes, there is a lot of -- a lack of
18 communications. And, again, this is more about the
19 artificial timeline of Race to the Top, which says,
20 we were going to have a different certification
21 process.
22 So, it's being just timelined, and not
23 looking at the efficiency and the ability to
24 implement these at college level.
25 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: You know, the concerns
103
1 were, from the colleges, that they couldn't plan
2 curriculum. They've have to put it out in the
3 summertime, so that --
4 MARIE NEIRA: Absolutely.
5 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Well, once again, thank
6 you so much for all that you've done through the
7 years.
8 ANDREW PALOTTA: Thank you, Senator.
9 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Robach.
10 SENATOR ROBACH: Yes. I will try to -- I got
11 a lot of questions.
12 But, you know, I think there really is, and I
13 hope not naively so, a collective will between
14 everybody involved, even SED, educators, the
15 Legislature, and I think the public, I won't just
16 say parents, you know, wants that.
17 You know, Carl Marcellino talked about, that
18 we do prioritize education. We use a lot of
19 resources.
20 And, so, I think there's a way, but I'm
21 unsure, you know, it sounds to me like you like the
22 direction, or at least, Marie, in your statement,
23 of, you know, moving towards these core items.
24 Is that accurate?
25 MARIE NEIRA: Yes, we -- NYSUT supports the
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1 common-core standards. We believe it does focus.
2 It takes the standards and narrows it down to what
3 it is students should know.
4 Our concern is about implementation.
5 And in New York State, being the state that
6 we are, that is where the issues become
7 implementation.
8 So, we have common-core standards. Teachers
9 were involved. I have to say, yes, the teachers
10 were involved in giving input into the additional
11 standards for New York State.
12 But, the point that we're at now, is that,
13 next year, 2012-2013, the assessment will be based
14 on common-core standards.
15 If you take a survey of New York State,
16 they're -- we're just in the process of starting to
17 do the professional development that will support
18 teaching to the shifts, and changing your
19 instruction.
20 It took Finland 30 years to get to the best,
21 and we're trying to do this in less than two years.
22 SENATOR ROBACH: You had also used the term,
23 you said, you'd like to see multiple measures.
24 And I know -- I see my friend Dan Drmacich up
25 there, who's a principal in school in Rochester, a
105
1 School Without Walls, that did other things, but had
2 very good outcomes.
3 Do those have to be loose, or could they be
4 more defined in terms of what those alternatives or
5 multiple standards would be?
6 Because, you know, that's what I hear all the
7 time. People, they see a failing graduation rate,
8 and they see how much money they spend. And it's a
9 normal thing to get excited about that, both, on the
10 emotional level, and even from a resource level,
11 because we want kids to do good. And then you --
12 you know, if you kind of -- you know, if you pay for
13 a Cadillac, you want a nicer car.
14 And I almost think that people who don't have
15 kids in school get very caught up in that.
16 So, I don't know what those alternatives are,
17 I can tell them, because I sort of thought, going
18 back to what my colleagues said, some of the
19 common-core things were just going to be an
20 expansion of teaching what's already working in
21 those school districts, you know, like Brighton, or
22 some of the ones across the state, where they are
23 having, you know, 99 percent graduation rates.
24 But, I'm not exactly sure.
25 And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but,
106
1 if you could maybe fill in some of those things for
2 me, I would like to be more versed on what those
3 are.
4 MARIE NEIRA: So -- great question.
5 Authentic assessments allows for the common
6 cores to be carried out through students actually
7 demonstrating what they can do, unlike the
8 traditional standardized tests.
9 The standardized test is, bubble in, multiple
10 questions.
11 What you -- in the Schools Without Walls,
12 what you have is, students actually demonstrating
13 their skills and their knowledge, and they're able
14 to do this through video presentation, a debate.
15 And they -- and there is a way of, quote/unquote --
16 and I'm using "standardize" -- to standardize that,
17 because there is a protocol that is criteria-driven,
18 so that it can be comparable throughout schools.
19 So, yes, that is the kind of balance that
20 we're talking about.
21 We're always going to need to have some kind
22 of standardized testing, just so that you have a
23 sampling.
24 It's like polling.
25 When you take a poll, that's what
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1 standardized testing means to me.
2 But the authentic assessments, the
3 assessments that allow us, as classroom teachers, to
4 demonstrate what students can actually do, is what
5 we are striving for as we try to ensure that
6 students are, not only career- and college-ready,
7 but they are ready for a democratic society.
8 And, I'll let me colleagues talk to that.
9 HEIDI SABATINO (ph.): As she was saying, one
10 of the shifts in the core curriculum is -- in the
11 common core, is student-centered learning. So, the
12 students takes over and is able to drive their own
13 learning.
14 It's also based on cooperative groups. And,
15 then, working in groups, to solve problems, which is
16 a very important skill today.
17 And, these -- the little snapshot of these
18 testing does not test that. We need other measures,
19 as she said, to test those types of skills.
20 SENATOR ROBACH: Can I just ask -- and I'm
21 sorry, [unintelligible] time -- you know, kind of
22 going in a different direction, there's a lot of
23 expertise up here.
24 While we want to push everybody to their
25 fullest potential, what do you feel about the
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1 Regents -- or, a different, a local diploma, or
2 other tracks, for people, do you think that would
3 deter from people reaching their full potential?
4 Or, do you think that could be implemented,
5 and their should be other tracks, you know, to push
6 some kids to, maybe more career, rather than
7 necessarily, first, higher ed?
8 JANE FOX (ph.): Well, you know, as a parent
9 myself --
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Jane, pull that closer.
11 JANE FOX (ph.): -- as a parent myself of
12 three, I can see the difference, and -- with my own
13 three children, and, in my classroom, the same
14 thing; that, not every child is going to go to
15 college, but, there is something that they can do.
16 And, getting your Regents diploma, and
17 getting into a college, to say, I have to graduate
18 to do something, there are kids that are graduating
19 that aren't getting a job in the field that they
20 really excel at, because the jobs are just not
21 there.
22 But, to say that every kid needs to be
23 college-ready, there are certain positions that you
24 are on-the-job trained. It is an internship. Or,
25 it is, you are working with somebody, and getting
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1 your education through a field that's not,
2 necessarily, requires the Regents.
3 Yes, you need to be able to read, and do
4 math, but, it doesn't require you having a Regents
5 diploma.
6 SENATOR ROBACH: Right.
7 I guess, more specifically to what the SED
8 has dictated, are those -- you know, I don't know
9 what you want to call them -- core competencies.
10 They say, if you pass five of the Regents
11 era, now, that you can get a local diploma. And I
12 think it capped out at that.
13 Do you hear from teachers, is that working?
14 not working? Or should that be fine-tuned?
15 I say that, because there's a lot of
16 legislation being proposed, to try and address that.
17 And in your comments, I think you're right,
18 let's seize this opportunity to try and do it right.
19 MARIE NEIRA: I think that there is a real
20 need for there to be pathways, as we all know, as we
21 deal with students. And the Regents are starting to
22 talk about the different pathways.
23 CTE as a pathway. The STEMs as a pathway.
24 We support that process because, as we know,
25 boxing all students into having five Regents, most
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1 of us in this room probably took Regents.
2 I can tell you, I got a -- barely a 65 in
3 algebra.
4 And, it does limit.
5 And the question that we have posed to the
6 Regents, over and over, for the last -- since
7 2000 -- in 2000, when they changed the graduation
8 standards, is: Can we put all students in one
9 track?
10 And, now, they're relooking and revisiting.
11 We do believe that when you look at these
12 pathways, you are going to need to look at the
13 graduation requirements. Not all the pathways will
14 require five Regents exams, is our position, as
15 we're taking a look at the information that they're
16 sharing with us at this time.
17 SENATOR ROBACH: Thank you.
18 MARIE NEIRA: I would also just want to
19 emphasize that, as educators, the one thing we are
20 sure of, is that we do not want the pathways to
21 track students.
22 In many instances in the past, tracking has
23 become a way of making sure certain students go down
24 a -- tracks that have -- that lead to nowhere.
25 So, we have to make sure that these
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1 alternatives are really viable.
2 That's why we're saying, that when the
3 Regents are discussing pathways, they need to look
4 at it in a comprehensive manner. And it's just not
5 about just taking one Regents out and putting in
6 another.
7 SENATOR ROBACH: Thank you.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Marcellino.
9 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Thank you very much.
10 Andy, you mentioned, when I raised the issue
11 with the Commissioner about the Governor's comment
12 about, we spend the most, yet we're 37th statewide,
13 overall, you mentioned the different test where we
14 came out -- we in New York State came out as
15 Number 3 nationwide.
16 What's the difference between those two
17 standards?
18 ANDREW PALOTTA: Well, the number that I'm
19 quoting was in "Education Week." It was a few
20 months ago that they came out with this. It was
21 based on a broad spectrum of different standards.
22 So, I believe that that is the number where
23 we can say "Education Week" is non-biased.
24 So, that's something that we have followed.
25 MARIE NEIRA: And we also know that the
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1 number that the Governor used is also cohort.
2 This was a cohort coming out of census, about
3 10 to 12 years ago.
4 So, it is a number that might be valid for
5 that group of individuals, when you're looking at
6 that cohort.
7 The information that we are looking at has
8 been for the last five years. And we have seen,
9 it's not only -- we have the most intel students who
10 qualify in New York State. Our high schools are
11 tenth. We have nineteen out of the best
12 high schools in the country, in New York State.
13 And those are the good news that we don't
14 hear about.
15 SENATOR MARCELLINO: I also raised the issue
16 of the "one size fits all," which, frankly, as a
17 teacher myself, bothers me.
18 And I think I made that clear in my questions
19 to the Commissioner.
20 If you have districts that are performing,
21 and performing well, high graduation rates, high
22 test scores, on whatever standard you want to
23 measure, why not leave them alone?
24 Why make them change their methodology to,
25 some call it a "common core," some call it, whatever
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1 you want, some new system, when they're doing well?
2 Why not spend the limited resources that we
3 have, which are limited, and are not necessarily, in
4 the near future, going to get that much more?
5 Why not spend those resources on those
6 districts that need the extra help, that need the
7 extra expertise, that may need some specialists to
8 come in, that may need some equipment?
9 You're right, many rural districts may not be
10 able to get broadband or Wi-Fi at all. Just by
11 virtue of the physical, it's not there.
12 So, why not help them?
13 Why spend money where you don't have to spend
14 it, and in my mind, waste it, when you could spend
15 it where you might get a better bang for your buck?
16 What's your thought?
17 MARIE NEIRA: We have always talked about the
18 issue of equity. And that is a policy question that
19 the Regents have to answer.
20 It does come down -- and I'm not the finance
21 expert, it does come down to financing.
22 I do believe that all districts need a
23 certain amount of support in dollars.
24 So -- but I do agree with you, that those
25 districts that are doing well, should be given the
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1 flexibility to continue doing what they're doing.
2 And the key word for us has always been
3 "flexibility," so that we're not all put into
4 "one size fits all."
5 So, yes, flexibility is key for when you are
6 looking at the major shift changes that are being
7 discussed in New York State.
8 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Thank you. I appreciate
9 you coming.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Very quickly, just in the
11 interest of time, Hillary, I'm going to pick you
12 out.
13 I asked the Commissioner this question
14 before: If you could, within reasonable
15 constraints, change something, quickly, you got the
16 magic legislative want in your hand right now, what
17 would you do?
18 HILLARY LUALLEN SOUTHERN (ph.): I wish I had
19 a single choice.
20 I think we need to stop focusing on building
21 more tests. I think there ought to be a limit on
22 how many. I think we ought to consider reducing.
23 I'm thinking about my students when I say
24 this: It feels like punishment to them.
25 And, it would feel that way to me too, or any
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1 one of us.
2 So, I think I'm -- I feel weak in this
3 answer, but I think that I'd reduce the amount of
4 time and the number of tests that we give to
5 students.
6 SENATOR FLANAGAN: You shouldn't feel weak in
7 your answer. It's a real answer, and you're
8 practicing in the field every day. So, it's
9 helpful.
10 Maria, one last quick thing, please?
11 In the testimony, there's a comment, in terms
12 of where we should be going.
13 It says: First, we need a realistic time
14 line that provides teachers with a new curriculum
15 before we can assess appropriately.
16 I get it.
17 Put it in real life.
18 Like, you know, we're talking about common
19 core.
20 What do you think that time line should be?
21 MARIE NEIRA: Right now, we are going to have
22 an assessment on common cores starting next year.
23 We have not rolled out even the exemplary curriculum
24 that would could support it.
25 I would say, first, you have to have the
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1 curriculum. You need to put the cart first, before
2 you put the horse. And, right now, the time is not
3 aligned.
4 I would say we need, first, time to practice
5 the core standards, to practice a curriculum that
6 supports it, before it can be tested. And that
7 2014-2015 is not real, when you go to classrooms,
8 especially the first classrooms that we have in
9 New York State.
10 I believe that we need two to three years of
11 practice, with the curriculum, with the standards,
12 before students are held accountable, because this
13 is high-stakes testing.
14 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thank you very much.
15 ANDREW PALOTTA: Thank you.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Next is, the New York
17 State School Boards.
18 TIMOTHY KRAMER: Good afternoon,
19 Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee -- member
20 of the Committee.
21 I'm not David Little.
22 David, unfortunately, got called away. His
23 father is ill in Maine, and I'm filling in.
24 I'm Tim Kremer. I'm the executive director
25 of the New York State School Boards Association.
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1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Pull the mic in. Pull the
2 mic closer.
3 TIMOTHY KREMER: I'm Tim Kremer, the
4 executive director of the New York State School
5 Boards Association, and filling in for Dave.
6 We hope that his father is doing all well --
7 alright.
8 I represent about 650 boards of education
9 throughout New York.
10 These are people who are representative of
11 millions of New Yorkers, who believe in public
12 education, and believe in their communities, and
13 want their children to succeed.
14 We do appreciate this opportunity to testify,
15 and we have taken this opportunity very seriously.
16 I'm not a professional educator, although I
17 have worked for State School Board Association for
18 33 years, so I -- I've hung around a lot of
19 professional educators for a long time.
20 And, in so doing, because of this
21 opportunity, and because I don't have this
22 professional education background, I did want to
23 make sure that we were gleaning from those who could
24 help us, and help you, in providing you testimony
25 from the field, if you will.
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1 So, we presented with you -- to you a packet,
2 and I'm hopeful that you have that packet.
3 And, it contains testimony, you must think of
4 it this way, from virtually hundreds of people who
5 are out there: school board members, administrators,
6 many school board members, who are themselves
7 professional educators.
8 So, I try to bring that to you as
9 representative. I'm the communicator representing
10 them.
11 If you look through that packet, you'll see,
12 in Tab 1, there is a letter there from me, where we
13 try to summarize our positions, and where we are, as
14 far as this issue, and the controversy that
15 surrounds testing, which is happening in school
16 districts everywhere every day.
17 Behind Tab 2, you will find our official
18 positions, our board -- excuse me -- the delegates
19 to our annual business meeting, vote on resolutions
20 that are submitted by member boards, and going back
21 all the way to 2007 -- because once they're
22 five years old, they come off the books -- but,
23 going back to 2007, we picked up those resolutions
24 that are germane to this issue of testing.
25 And you will see a variety of things in
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1 there.
2 So, this has been a debate among school board
3 members going on for a long time:
4 The issues that the teachers were talking
5 about regarding flexibility are a common theme
6 throughout all of these resolutions, that are the
7 official positions of the New York State School
8 Board Association;
9 Things that have to do with cancellation of
10 Regents exams due to bad weather, what happens;
11 Advanced notice of test results, getting them
12 in a timely facility;
13 Component retesting;
14 Testing of students who are English-language
15 learners;
16 Modified testing for students who have
17 disabilities;
18 When those exam results are made available,
19 and how they're made available;
20 The frequency and scheduling of standardized
21 assessments.
22 Those have been issues that have been debated
23 by school board members for years, and continue to
24 be.
25 So, we're very much engaged in this sort of
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1 issue.
2 Behind Tab 3 is what the real essence is of
3 what I bring to you today.
4 We assembled 42 people as a focus group.
5 They were school board members, many of whom
6 were selected because they are professional
7 educators.
8 They are either teachers, administrators, or
9 school psychologists, and we had some school
10 administrators, district administrators, as well.
11 The first half of what's behind Tab Number 3
12 is an 11-page summary that summarizes the rest of
13 the document.
14 It -- what we tried to do is, is pick out the
15 things we thought were the most salient comments,
16 the things that were unique, so that if there were
17 repetitive comments, we weren't going to have you
18 read all of the repetitive stuff.
19 So, the first 11 pages are things -- across
20 8 questions, are things that we think are excellent
21 feedback to a group like yours, a Committee like
22 yours, when you're trying to some decisions about:
23 Where do we go from here?
24 The first question, for example, that we
25 asked was: Please describe how testing has been
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1 either beneficial or detrimental to improving
2 student achievement.
3 And you'll see through their comments, most
4 of the -- frankly, most of the remarks we got would
5 suggest detrimental. Although, there were some, I
6 thought very thoughtful things about beneficial
7 aspects of student testing as well.
8 The second question we asked was: Is testing
9 information relevant and available soon enough to
10 inform instruction?
11 And we got some very good feedback on there.
12 I'm not going to read all of this to you.
13 I want you to know that, this first 11 pages
14 covers 8 questions.
15 And you'll find, if you continue on, a
16 38-page document, which is the full transcript of
17 the feedback we got from this focus group, including
18 the questions.
19 The 11 pages is summarized, for your benefit.
20 Tab 4, is additional information.
21 We did, what I call a "pulse poll." And we
22 had 490 school board members respond to this.
23 Now, this is not a scientific sampling.
24 These are self-selected people.
25 But, we asked them three very quick
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1 questions:
2 "In general, does student testing enhance
3 instruction?"
4 56 percent of them said no.
5 We asked them a second question.
6 "Is the cost of and/or administration of
7 State assessments a burden in your district?"
8 90 percent of them said yes.
9 Now, "burden," you know, a relative term.
10 Number three: Does the current level of
11 State assessment infringe on instructional time in
12 your district?
13 93 percent said yes.
14 The sense we got from this, was certainly
15 that this is not what we would be doing if we were
16 not forced to do it.
17 The last tab there, Tab Number 5, is another
18 pulse poll that we did, actually, at the request of
19 the State Education Department, the Commissioner
20 specifically, where they have put forward this idea
21 of separate pathways: one for STEM (science,
22 technology, engineering, and math), and a second for
23 CTE.
24 And, we asked questions:
25 To what extent do you think there should be a
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1 separate pathway for STEM, a separate pathway for
2 CTE?
3 Should there be a separate assessment for
4 those kids who had signed up for the STEM
5 curriculum, for those kids who had signed up for the
6 CTE curriculum?
7 And the answers to all of those were,
8 generally, yes. We think that that's a good idea to
9 have a separate pathway. There should be a way to
10 assess them differently than you would others.
11 But here's one thing interesting.
12 The last two questions said: Should those --
13 that STEM assessment or that CTE assessment replace
14 global history, that fifth, and sometimes
15 questionable, Regents exam?
16 And the answer, generally, was more
17 equivocal: Nah, maybe not.
18 So, they're not saying that the testing is
19 bad, that the global-history test is necessarily
20 bad.
21 They would say: Probably, if you're going to
22 put a kid into a CTE program or a STEM program, they
23 might be assessed separately, but they should also
24 be accountable for their Regents exam as we know
25 them today.
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1 So, those are -- that's information I wanted
2 to share with you. It's kind of virtual testimony,
3 if you will, to let you know that the -- what people
4 out in the field, that I represent, are saying.
5 For school board members, really, our job
6 boils down to, kind of, two major questions:
7 What is it that students need to know today,
8 that's going to prepare them for what they're going
9 to have to do after school, when they graduate from
10 here, when they leave here?
11 What kind of information are they going to
12 need that's going to be useful, essential, in fact,
13 for them to go forward?
14 And then, specific to your charge here today:
15 Is testing helping students learn?
16 It's a very costly proposition, as you've
17 heard, and you've seen the data.
18 It has enormous implications today on
19 people's lives. Students, staff, communities;
20 everybody is really focusing in on this testing.
21 It has huge implications for the school
22 boards having to make decisions about curriculum,
23 about teacher qualifications, about resource --
24 scarce resource allocation.
25 So, we are really paying much more attention
125
1 to test results. And I think the people whom we
2 represent are as well, much more so than ever in the
3 past.
4 For that reason, the data that we get from
5 these tests has to be accurate. It has to be
6 relevant, instructive, informative, helping us make
7 smart decisions in a timely fashion.
8 If you read through this packet, I think
9 you're going to conclude that most of the people we
10 reached out to believed that the current system is
11 detrimental to student achievement.
12 You will see some balance in here. But if I
13 had to, you know, to answer your question, if I was
14 to answer it, I might come in higher.
15 But if I answered on behalf of the people who
16 filled this, this is probably a "4," or something to
17 that effect.
18 Here's some of the comments that --
19 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Why -- why is it
20 detrimental?
21 TIMOTHY KREMER: Here's some of the comments
22 that people told me when I asked them about: Why is
23 it detrimental?
24 Testing does more harm than good;
25 It's too disruptive and too expensive;
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1 It causes too much stress;
2 It narrows the curriculum;
3 And, the bureaucracy that the State has put
4 forward, regarding test administration, is too
5 rigid;
6 Takes up too much instructional time;
7 The questions that are on these tests
8 sometimes lack validity, and the data that comes
9 from the results of this test, lack validity;
10 And, the results are not available in a
11 timely fashion for us to use them on the students
12 who took this test.
13 So that's what I think people would tell you,
14 if asked the question: Why is this detrimental?
15 I once talked with a guy, who you may have
16 heard of. He's a pretty harsh critic of public
17 education. His name is Mark Tucker, and he's out of
18 Rochester -- or, he was out of Rochester.
19 He once told me something that I thought was
20 very interesting.
21 He -- we got to talking about testing, and
22 teaching to the test. A big complaint that a lot of
23 people have.
24 He suggested to me, that the United States is
25 the only country that complains about teaching to
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1 the test, which I was surprised to learn.
2 And he said the reason for that is because,
3 in other countries, they invest significant amounts
4 of resources into research and development of tests,
5 to the point where these tests are viewed, and
6 perhaps as a cultural thing, but they're viewed as
7 unassailable: This is indeed what we want our kids
8 to know and be able to learn. These tests are
9 widely respected as being representative of that.
10 And, people seem to admire the fact that these tests
11 are here, and they respect the fact that these
12 measures are accurate.
13 We don't want to be like Finland and
14 Singapore, maybe not even Canada, all of which are,
15 allegedly, achieving at higher rates of student
16 achievement than the United States is, in general.
17 However, we do need to get this testing
18 question right.
19 The school boards that I represent, the
20 communities that those school boards represent, they
21 want us to have in place a system of testing that is
22 widely respected. One that is viewed as being, not
23 just beneficial -- not just deficient -- beneficial,
24 but essential part of the education program.
25 And right now, I think people look it as an
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1 add-on, a burden, perhaps detrimental.
2 And we'd like it to be embedded as one where
3 people admire the fact that we have a great testing
4 program.
5 So that's what we hope that you will be able
6 to develop, in cooperation with the community
7 throughout New York, as a result of these hearings
8 here.
9 I'd be happy to answer any questions, sir.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I do have a couple of
11 questions.
12 Tim, I have to really start off: Got this
13 Friday, and very much appreciate it. I just
14 finished reading it about six minutes ago.
15 TIMOTHY KREMER: Thank you.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And all kidding aside,
17 there is an exhaustive amount of information in here
18 from --
19 [Laughter.]
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: -- no, from the people in
21 the field. And the -- it's very, very helpful.
22 TIMOTHY KREMER: Thank you.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I'm looking at -- I'm not
24 sure of the page number, but, I wanted to just ask
25 you a couple of very quick, specific things.
129
1 TIMOTHY KREMER: Okay.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And I don't know if these
3 are, paraphrasing, direct comments, but, on the
4 page, it says: Testing's Effect on Instruction.
5 TIMOTHY KRAMER: Is this in the, one of
6 38 pages, or one of 11 pages?
7 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I think it's one of the
8 eleven.
9 TIMOTHY KREMER: Okay.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: But, nonetheless, the
11 point remains the same.
12 TIMOTHY KREMER: Yeah.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: It says: "For example,
14 administrator has said that teachers become too
15 focused on preparing for tests rather than teaching
16 the curriculum.
17 "Though the district has work at teaching" --
18 "worked at teaching teachers, that if you teach the
19 curriculum, you are teaching for the test, they
20 really don't believe it."
21 TIMOTHY KRAMER: Yep.
22 This was a sentiment that came out, that said
23 that this -- the people -- that the teachers do not
24 have faith that these tests are valid measures of
25 the curriculum. And that they, maybe they feel,
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1 ill-prepared to administer these tests because,
2 they're not as familiar with the curriculum, and
3 they're getting these tests for the first -- they're
4 seeing these tests for the first time themselves.
5 So, that's what I think was coming through
6 there.
7 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
8 Then I'm looking at another one that speaks
9 to the detrimental effects?
10 TIMOTHY KREMER: Uh-huh.
11 SENATOR FLANAGAN: "The school literally
12 shuts down during the test administration. No
13 teaching occurs when students are testing. After
14 taking the test, the children are mentally and
15 emotionally drained. So, even though they are
16 actually in school, they have absolutely no desire
17 to do anything."
18 TIMOTHY KRAMER: Right.
19 Well, of course, these are anecdotal. I
20 can't say that that is something that is generally
21 true everywhere you would go.
22 But, I heard from these teachers up here just
23 a few minutes ago, about the 90-minute blocks.
24 And, some kids might be done in 17 minutes,
25 now they have to sit for the rest of the time.
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1 Or, there's other kids who need 90 minutes
2 just to get settled down.
3 It's a very difficult time to do these tests.
4 Now, we have to do them at some point in
5 time.
6 I'm not a test expert. I'm not even a
7 school-administrator expert.
8 I think you'll hear from some of those
9 people, as to how to administer these test blocks.
10 But, I would tell you that it's a very
11 frustrating period of time, that we hear from school
12 board members and administrators regularly.
13 I think a big part of it is indeed that: We
14 shut down the school. Everyone's getting tested at
15 the same time in grades 3 through 8.
16 And, when you asked the one question, Well
17 couldn't somebody, when they're done, go somewhere
18 else? -- I think it was Senator Oppenheimer who
19 asked the question -- the answer is, there's nowhere
20 else to go.
21 So I do think that it almost feels like a
22 lockdown.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
24 And, then, one last thing: The -- there's
25 reference here to the Park tests?
132
1 TIMOTHY KREMER: Yes.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And there seem to be
3 comments about the using the Smarter Balanced
4 assessments as opposed to Park?
5 TIMOTHY KRAMER: News to me. I don't know
6 what that is.
7 I'm hoping somebody here might be able to
8 add -- that appears to be some sort of a -- it
9 almost sounds like it is a proprietary system, that
10 is in cooperation -- or, excuse me -- is an option
11 to the Park partnership that has been developed.
12 It is not something that I had ever heard of,
13 and it is contained here.
14 I will try to find out more about it. And if
15 I do, I will send that information on to you.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Good.
17 And, again, I appreciate the depth of the
18 information.
19 I realize this is a very labor-intensive
20 endeavor, so, thank you.
21 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Well, as a former --
22 well, you're never a former teacher. You're always
23 a teacher. Like being a marine, you're never out.
24 It bothers me that it says: Does the testing
25 enhance instruction? -- and the term, the
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1 overwhelming response was, no.
2 Which tells me that testing isn't being used
3 appropriately.
4 What it does tell you?
5 TIMOTHY KREMER: Well, I don't know if I'd
6 come to that same conclusion.
7 I could see where some people are not -- or,
8 feel as if it's not informing instruction.
9 I think what people are saying is: That we
10 don't see the connection between the testing that's
11 taking place, and the results that we would hope to
12 achieve with our students. We don't think it's
13 going to be -- and maybe I'm answering your question
14 just as you would -- but, we don't think it's
15 being -- it's supplementing their educational
16 experience.
17 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Right. The young lady
18 who was here before, who said: They never see the
19 results. They're not allowed to discuss the
20 results. They're not allowed to talk to the kids
21 about the results, or even handle the results. --
22 that bothers me.
23 TIMOTHY KREMER: Right.
24 SENATOR MARCELLINO: If you're going test to
25 find out where kids are, and make it a useful tool,
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1 then the person involving the teaching has to get
2 the test, and get an analysis of the test, so that
3 that person doing the teaching knows what they did
4 or did not do, what the kids did or did not learn,
5 and why. Come to some conclusions from it.
6 That, I think goes along to the fact, whether
7 there's a disconnect between staff -- teaching staff
8 and testing. They don't see it worth anything
9 because, they never get the results, and they never
10 get to use the results, to improve their skills or
11 to improve their performance.
12 That's, to me, a knock on the whole system.
13 I asked the Governor -- or, the Commissioner
14 of Education, I asked the NYSUT people before, the
15 same question, and maybe you heard it if you were
16 sitting here: The Governor says we spend the most
17 money as a state, yet, we are 37th in performance.
18 How do you assess the fact that we are
19 37th in performance?
20 TIMOTHY KREMER: You know, I was -- have
21 questioned, several times, where that number came
22 from.
23 And what I've been told that number is, is
24 the percentage of -- or, how we rank, throughout the
25 country, for the percentage of high school graduates
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1 who live in New York, who are over 25 years old.
2 Now, that includes a lot of people who came
3 to this country, who were never in our schools, who
4 live here now.
5 I don't know if that's an accurate -- if I'm
6 describing what he is describing accurately, but
7 that's what I've been told, is, that figure is the
8 percentage of high school graduates, 25 years or
9 older, living in New York, and how we compare to
10 other states, is we're 38th.
11 But, here is the interesting part: I don't
12 remember what the exact percentage is, but the
13 differences between 38th and 37th, 36th and 35th,
14 are, like, tenths of a percent.
15 So, it's not that significant of a number,
16 and it's -- in my mind, it's been taken out of
17 context.
18 SENATOR MARCELLINO: I agree with you. And I
19 agree your assessment on the population.
20 The question is: Who are you testing?
21 And who is being tested?
22 And who are the participants in the tests?
23 So if the -- you have a person who's just
24 moved into the country, may not be totally English
25 speaking, or up to the cognizance of a lifelong
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1 resident, then you'll have different results and
2 different standards.
3 And that's the -- in my mind, that becomes a
4 reason to get different results, and perhaps a
5 variance in the results, that comes across.
6 The common core, I hear it from school board
7 members, and I hear it from teachers as well, it's
8 "one size fits all."
9 What are your members thinking about, as far
10 as imposing a "one size fits all" on a district,
11 whether the district is performing or not?
12 I represent many districts, as do many of us,
13 represent many districts that are high-performing
14 districts, graduating a high percentage of kids,
15 going to college, moving on high scores in Regents
16 exams, all right, all the test scores.
17 They're doing very well; yet, they're going
18 have to change their techniques, their skills, their
19 curriculum, their text books -- the whole nine
20 yards -- to fit this common core.
21 Why?
22 TIMOTHY KREMER: I am not sure that the
23 people I represent are -- I think the jury is still
24 out with a lot of them.
25 They have not yet assessed how they feel
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1 about the common core, because they don't really
2 know exactly what the implications are.
3 I do believe that there are many districts
4 out there that said: We're doing great, as is. Why
5 do we have to change?
6 But, those who are proponents of the common
7 core have suggested to us, that it will lead to a
8 place where kids are better prepared for college and
9 career. That they will be more proficient upon
10 graduation.
11 And, one can't deny, that throughout this
12 state, there are school districts where, the
13 graduation rate, and if you go and measure the
14 proficiency rate, it's inadequate.
15 And there are school districts in this state
16 that have inadequate educational programs.
17 Those people, those school districts, need to
18 change. Something has to happen there.
19 The people who I represent have not been very
20 vocal in opposition to the common core. They may
21 not know all the implications. I think the jury is
22 still out.
23 As time goes on, they may have a more
24 reasoned assessment about that.
25 SENATOR MARCELLINO: I think your school
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1 board members better get proficient in what the
2 common core means, because their districts are going
3 to be evaluated --
4 TIMOTHY KREMER: Right.
5 SENATOR MARCELLINO: -- in a very short
6 period of time.
7 The lady from NYSUT, Maria, made a very good
8 point --
9 TIMOTHY KREMER: Right.
10 SENATOR MARCELLINO: -- there's no chance to
11 even practice the curriculum that's going to be
12 imposed, and tested, and then the districts are
13 going to be evaluated by 2014.
14 That's a couple of years from now.
15 TIMOTHY KREMER: I can tell you that, we have
16 a very healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to
17 all of the top-down reforms that have come out,
18 mostly from Washington.
19 Race to the Top -- you're gonna to hear more
20 about that, I think, later on -- that the costs
21 associated with that, that are not being funded by
22 any federal money, are significant.
23 And this idea of Race to the Top, probably
24 common core, certainly APPR, all of these top-down
25 reforms --
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1 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Response to
2 intervention.
3 TIMOTHY KREMER: -- response to intervention;
4 these the top-down reforms, where somebody,
5 somewhere else, has decided what's good for our
6 community, is something that has caused a lot of
7 skepticism among my members.
8 And common core may fall into that at some
9 point in time. I just haven't heard that voiced in
10 any specific way yet.
11 We are spending a lot of time of putting
12 together workshops and seminars, and participating
13 in a lot of the network training work with the
14 State Education Department, so that we're up to
15 speed on common core, and we can advise our members
16 properly.
17 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Thank you. Appreciate
18 your time.
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Senator Robach.
20 SENATOR ROBACH: I would just -- I have no
21 questions.
22 I just want to say thank you.
23 There is a tremendous amount of information.
24 And, I especially appreciate the part on the
25 STEM and the CTE, because I think you're going to
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1 be -- if we're going to do this right, it really has
2 to be integrated, and all encompassing, given,
3 everybody, no matter what their position is, keeps
4 talking about lead-in times.
5 So, I appreciate that.
6 And I'd say, maybe on an equal field note, if
7 you can build consensus amongst school board
8 members, that's a feat in itself.
9 [Laughter.]
10 SENATOR ROBACH: I know, just in the groups
11 that I represent, they rarely agree on everything.
12 So, thank you.
13 TIMOTHY KREMER: Variety is the spice of
14 life.
15 SENATOR MARCELLINO: Exactly.
16 TIMOTHY KREMER: Thank you very much.
17 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thank you, Tim.
18 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: And I want to thank
19 you --
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Oh, I'm sorry.
21 TIMOTHY KREMER: Thank you, Senator.
22 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: -- for all that you
23 have done over the years.
24 TIMOTHY KREMER: Thank you. Appreciate it.
25 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: For me, and for
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1 everyone.
2 And I -- I have just one question -- no, I
3 guess it's two.
4 The evaluation of people -- of teachers who
5 are in specialties, what do you foresee for that?
6 I have a daughter who's a reading specialist.
7 And, for the most part -- well, it's two parts to
8 the same question -- for the most part, she deals
9 with children who are rather lagging in performance,
10 to -- that's being kind to them.
11 It's impossible. How are they going to
12 possibly evaluate these children?
13 She's trying to keep them out of special ed.
14 That is her purpose.
15 TIMOTHY KREMER: Well, there are -- I don't
16 know if these -- I don't know if the children that
17 your daughter has in her classroom are subject to
18 standardized tests.
19 If they're not --
20 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: They are.
21 TIMOTHY KREMER: -- then they --
22 Okay, well, then, they will participate in
23 the testing system, and will be judged accordingly.
24 And you'll find in here, positions that our
25 organization has had for a long time, that suggests
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1 that children who have special needs should be
2 looked at differently than "one size fits all."
3 There is also this system of student-learning
4 outcomes (SLOs) that are being developed. And
5 that has caused a lot of interest. And, you know,
6 we asked for flexibility, but this is almost beyond
7 the pale perhaps, because every teacher is going to
8 be asked to come up with some system, whereby,
9 they're going to evaluate students who are not
10 tested by some standardized measure. And then have
11 that SLO approved by somebody else.
12 And that's going to be, I think, a very
13 complicated system of approval -- development and
14 approval process.
15 But that's the kind of thing that will come
16 into play for students, perhaps, who are not -- that
17 are in your daughter's classroom, or, people who she
18 might eventually see.
19 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Thank you.
20 TIMOTHY KREMER: And congratulations to you
21 as well.
22 Thank you.
23 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: Thank you, Tim.
24 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Next is, the New York
25 State School Superintendents.
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1 Good afternoon.
2 ROBERT LOWRY: Good afternoon.
3 Senator Flanagan, and other Senators, thank
4 you for having us, for conducting this hearing, and
5 inviting our testimony.
6 I'm Robert Lowry, the deputy director of the
7 State Council of Schools of Superintendents.
8 And with me is Dr. Lorna Lewis, the
9 superintendent of the East Williston School District
10 in Nassau County. She's a member of our executive
11 committee, and the co-chair of our curriculum and
12 instruction committee.
13 I'll say just a few words to lead off.
14 Lorna certainly knows a lot more about
15 testing and what actually is going on in schools
16 today, than I do.
17 But, it's possible to imagine a much better
18 future for testing; how it's conducted, and the
19 value that it provides.
20 And some of is it related to things we've
21 talked about this morning: The common core, and,
22 turn to computerized testing.
23 The common core holds the promise of
24 economies of scale, because it is being used across
25 the country. Hopefully, we'll be able to get better
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1 state tests, better vendor tests, like the
2 TerraNovas, and, better instructional materials,
3 textbooks and instructional technology, than we've
4 had in the past.
5 And computerized testing also holds the
6 promise of providing teachers and schools and
7 parents, with better information, more sensitive
8 information, on a more timely basis.
9 But, how we get from here, where we are
10 today, and there, is something that's very much in
11 doubt. And the route we've been traveling has
12 certainly been filled with bumps. Some of them
13 you've heard about already; the concerns about
14 charging ahead with changing the tests to reflect
15 the common core before schools have received
16 curricula or sample tests, and so forth, to gear up
17 for that.
18 Also, you know, some of the problems we have
19 today with tests are because the -- all 3-through-8
20 tests were design for a relatively narrow purpose:
21 to try and sort kids at distinctive points. You
22 know, proficient, not proficient; mastery, not
23 mastery.
24 They're less valuable for making distinctions
25 across the whole range of performances, but, now,
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1 with incorporating growth measures into teacher and
2 principal evaluation, we need tests to be able to
3 make those kinds of distinctions.
4 And so, yet, we're moving ahead with using
5 the tests in that fashion.
6 So, I think, you know, we can envision a
7 better future.
8 We support, we recognize, that the need, the
9 importance, of having standardized measures of
10 student performance.
11 And Lorna will share some thoughts on where
12 we are today, and where we need to go.
13 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Thank you.
14 And thank you for the opportunity to address
15 you.
16 As I begin, I always begin with the thought
17 of our students that are served by what we are
18 doing.
19 And, so, to answer that question, let's look
20 back at what we -- where we were.
21 I think your three questions were right on
22 point.
23 Where were we?
24 As we began this assessments back in 1998, I
25 was in Three Village at the time. And when that was
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1 being unveiled, we were replacing some rather
2 low-bar assessments. Those were called the
3 "PEP tests."
4 So, kids -- they were feel-good tests.
5 Everybody did well, and, we celebrated, and we loved
6 the idea that all our schools were doing well. But,
7 really, it didn't really separate out high
8 performance or challenge. It wasn't a challenging
9 assessment.
10 So when we had the standards -- the content
11 standards introduced, we were introduced to the
12 fourth- and eighth-grade assessments. And that was
13 a -- we felt that that challenged our students. And
14 those teachers who were in fourth and eighth were
15 very challenged.
16 And when those results came out, we started a
17 new day in our area, and it was high stakes for us.
18 But, really, the other grade levels were not
19 as attentive as they could be.
20 So when the 3-through-8 assessments came out,
21 then more people stepped up to the plate, and I
22 think more challenge was there for all of our
23 students.
24 But, the important thing was, also, what we
25 had our teachers engaged in when we had those
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1 assessments, because we had a tremendous amount of
2 staff development that was associated with it.
3 And, actually, the scoring of the assessment
4 was, in and of itself, a tremendous opportunity for
5 staff development for our teachers.
6 We had the results back, we had the actual
7 student performance back, so we could actually look
8 at those assessments and gain a great deal of
9 knowledge about where the gaps in performance were,
10 what the -- where the challenge levels were.
11 And, so, we gain -- the actual task of doing
12 the assessment was, in and of itself, its own
13 curriculum.
14 We usually talk about the taught test --
15 taught, tested, and written curriculum. So, the
16 test, in and of itself, became another version of
17 the curriculum.
18 We learned so much from it.
19 So comes the 2011 assessments, and we heard
20 such things as: No vested interests. Teachers
21 could not have a vested interest in the assessments.
22 And, the security measures that had to be in place
23 so that teachers could not see what their children
24 had done.
25 Now, just imagine a surgeon going in and
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1 doing surgery, and not being able to examine the
2 patient afterwards.
3 I think that that's what the era that we're
4 in.
5 So, we have this assessment. And what has
6 been driving all of our assessment procedures now,
7 is the notion of having to have accountability for
8 the teachers.
9 So that's, rather than a student-focused
10 assessment, we are now into an era where having a
11 score for the teacher is much more important than
12 actual finding out how kids are performing. And,
13 more important, learning from that performance so
14 that we can then adjust and help our students to do
15 better.
16 So that's an issue of testing.
17 While we're not saying that we do not want
18 testing, what we're saying, is that the actual
19 format that we're engaged in is not a healthy
20 format, in the sense of wanting to have our teachers
21 grow from the assessment, and have our students
22 benefit from the assessments.
23 So when we get those results back -- now,
24 this year, our students took the exam in April --
25 early April. We will not -- we have not seen any
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1 results, and we're not expecting any results back
2 until September.
3 So, any child who was in that teacher's
4 class, certainly, is not going to benefit because
5 they've not seen any -- any of their work.
6 And, so, that's fairly major piece.
7 The other issue is that, as I -- in fact, I
8 hope that you have a copy of the assessments
9 K through 12. That's just one example of a
10 district.
11 And my colleague can -- who will follow me,
12 will have a much more detailed spreadsheet on cost
13 analysis for other districts.
14 But, I wanted to focus on my small neck of
15 the wood, as a representative.
16 I have a small school district, about
17 1,800 students, and my data is very similar. You
18 could scale it up or scale it down to the various
19 districts.
20 But, K through 12, and it's not just this
21 year, because we're already in 2012-13, next year
22 every single grade level and every single teacher is
23 going to have to have an assessment that is a
24 benchmark assessment in the fall and a benchmark
25 assessment in the end.
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1 So, a kindergarten teacher has to have at
2 least two assessments in the fall, math and English
3 language arts, and the same thing in the spring.
4 But what's even more important now, just
5 think -- I want you to think back: A kindergarten
6 teacher needs to know as much about their child's
7 reading ability -- Where are they coming in? What
8 is the reading level? How are they doing in the
9 fall? -- so that they can then monitor instruction.
10 What reading groups are they going to belong to?
11 What kind of materials will I use to help that
12 child?
13 With the new rules about vested interests,
14 that kindergarten teacher is no longer giving that
15 assessment.
16 So, typically, in kindergarten, you would do
17 a reading level, or those kinds of things.
18 So, in addition to the assessments that we
19 will now have to do for the student-learning
20 objectives, we still have to do those other
21 important tests, which we feel informs instruction
22 far more than some of the imposed SLO testing that
23 we will have to do.
24 In addition, we will have the State
25 assessment. We will also have -- we have to do a
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1 local assessment in all the other grade levels.
2 So, for example, in my district, we have
3 adopted the NWA, which is -- which comes at a cost,
4 $25 per student.
5 So, whether you choose the Pearson
6 assessments, which are $35 per student, or you could
7 choose -- I mean, there is variability.
8 Which, in and of itself, by the way, when you
9 have that much variability, you're, really, how are
10 you comparing districts to -- one district to the
11 other?
12 Some districts will choose a low-bar
13 assessment, some will choose a high-bar assessment.
14 So, that is also going to be a part of the
15 testing regime that we'll have for next year, at a
16 very, very high cost.
17 So in my district, just to implement the
18 required assessments for next year, the scoring of
19 the assessment, every child who gets scored, it's
20 $12.85 per test.
21 So, we cannot score our tests in-house
22 because of the vested interests. Those tests are
23 going out, $12.85 per test.
24 So, you can scale it out.
25 So, the cost is one thing that is prohibitive
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1 for many of us in an era when we have a 2 percent
2 tax cap that we're trying to honor.
3 That is huge.
4 Let's talk about the actual time of the test.
5 We had third-grade students sitting for
6 90 minutes.
7 And I think you've heard many of the other
8 folks who have gone before speak about the
9 inappropriateness of the time of the tests.
10 And, whereas the Commissioner might say,
11 well, the test was really geared to 45 minutes, and
12 75, you know, you could do it, I mean, yes, there
13 were many students that were finished before the
14 90 minutes.
15 But, structurally, when you have kids in a
16 classroom, you cannot take the papers of some
17 students, while other students may choose to have
18 more time.
19 If the State says, "There's 90 minutes for
20 the test," that's what we're going to have.
21 Then the other students who are students with
22 disabilities, they -- who may have double time, they
23 get 180 minutes. By the end of the day, they were
24 totally wiped out.
25 Now, I heard you speak about your daughter
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1 who's a reading specialist.
2 Every single adult in a building that is --
3 for example, my middle school is 5 through 7. Every
4 single adult in that building was being used to
5 deliver testing accommodations.
6 So, there is no other place to send a child
7 because you're using every single adult to do time,
8 location, all of those assessments.
9 At the end of the day, when a child has taken
10 180 minutes of testing, there is no other learning
11 that is going on.
12 And, so those tests were built longer,
13 thicker, because they needed to embed the field
14 tests.
15 I heard the Commissioner speak about that.
16 Well, only a few weeks later, we got a slew
17 of field tests that came. Again, using our time.
18 And, really, since April, we have been
19 engaged in testing. So, there's a tremendous amount
20 of time.
21 Now, I happen to know that there are some
22 districts that were hit harder than others.
23 So, for example, when I spoke to Brentwood
24 and to CI and some of the districts of high SDS
25 population, Hicksville, they -- because they needed
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1 to have those populations in the field tests, they
2 had more -- they had a disproportionate number of
3 field tests, as I collected the data.
4 Now, when we ask kids -- it's always good to
5 ask kids what they think about the tests.
6 So, in Hicksville, one young man came to his
7 superintendent, and said: They gave us the test
8 right after vacation. I was home for two weeks.
9 Nobody speaks English in my house. So, if they had
10 given me the test before, just after I had had the
11 preparation and intense instruction, I might have
12 done better.
13 So even the timing of the tests, when you ask
14 about giving you a scale of 1 to 10, those are all
15 the things that become frustration on our part,
16 because of the timing of the test.
17 You ask about -- we pleaded -- in fact, the
18 superintendents met with the State Ed and pleaded
19 with them not to have concurrent testing.
20 First, because all of our adults needed to be
21 engaged in giving modifications.
22 When you have every single test being given
23 at the same time, all of your resources are used at
24 the same time.
25 There is -- you know, if they had been
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1 staggered -- so, you have a third-grade test on one
2 day, fourth-grade test on another -- so that's a
3 tremendous siphoning of resources.
4 And, so, when the Park testing comes on
5 board, hopefully, we hope that somewhere in that new
6 testing regime is some kind of adaptive testing, or,
7 some way that all grade levels are not required to
8 take that test at the same time, because, frankly,
9 you cannot test all of Brentwood at the same time.
10 And, you know, in my district, we have
11 1,800 kids. Just in terms of the capacity of
12 computers and bandwidth and resources. And,
13 frankly, what a waste of resources.
14 Why would you want to have that many
15 computers available, only because you want to test?
16 So, you really have to rethink what is
17 driving the train.
18 Is it the students, and the outcome for the
19 students, that is driving the train, or is it that
20 we need to test?
21 You know, we often compare ourselves to
22 Finland and Denmark, and all of these
23 high-performing countries. But the truth is, when
24 you say to Finland that you test every year, and you
25 test twice a year, and, all of the batteries that
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1 are coming, they look at us, and they say: Why
2 would you do that? Is that just -- that's just
3 insanity that you test that much.
4 My favorite author Doug Reeves, a renowned
5 educator, always says, "You don't pull up the
6 radishes to find out if they're growing."
7 Let's have some benchmarks that indicate what
8 it is that we want children to know and be able to
9 do.
10 We already have those benchmarks. There are
11 wonderful assessments. There are NWA that we use
12 for 3 through 8.
13 But, most important, let's forget about the
14 commercial problem -- the commercial assessments,
15 there is NAEP, which everyone likes to compare us
16 to.
17 Well, forget about comparing us. Give us
18 NAEP. Bring it on.
19 Let the -- that's a great test. It is a
20 global assessment. It is an international
21 benchmark.
22 Why aren't we using the benchmark?
23 Why are we creating an assessment so that we
24 can then compare ourselves to that assessment?
25 We have AP and IV, internationally known,
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1 internationally accepted.
2 Why aren't we setting some parameters, that
3 says -- and we also know, by the way, that exposure
4 to study at the college level is a great indicator
5 of whether or not a student is college- and
6 career-ready.
7 Let's not create another assessment. Let's
8 not create another measure. We have the measures.
9 Hold us accountable for performance on those
10 measures.
11 So, come up with a battery of assessments, of
12 the -- I'm sorry -- a metric that will use
13 already-proven assessments, such as "News Week"
14 does. That includes, for example: Graduation
15 rates, percent distinction on your Regents exams,
16 the AP and IB percentage of students taking IB,
17 percentage of students who are AP scholars.
18 One of things I have in my district is --
19 that's my focus. My focus is on percentage of
20 students who are advanced Regents diplomas, and
21 percentage of students who are AP scholars.
22 If I set that as my benchmark, and I build
23 downward, I know I'm going to get it.
24 I have 150 students graduating this year. I
25 have 120 AP scholars.
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1 When I first got there, there were 50.
2 But, you set that as a benchmark, and that's
3 what you move towards; so, the percentage of
4 advanced Regents diplomas.
5 We don't have to create another assessment.
6 That's -- that's the point: If you want
7 college- and career-ready, we know what college- and
8 career-ready is.
9 Those --
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Can I -- I have a couple
11 of questions for you.
12 And before I do that, I wanted to thank
13 Senator LaValle and Senator Ranzenhofer for joining
14 us.
15 On the NAEP, in your opinion, can you use the
16 NAEP as a valid assessment with the adoption of the
17 common core?
18 DR. LORNA LEWIS: I believe so.
19 I do.
20 I do.
21 By the way, I know a lot of people are -- we
22 embrace the common core.
23 We feel that the work that has been done will
24 lead us to a path that will have better learners,
25 more proficient learners, more creative thinkers.
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1 So, we embrace it.
2 And, we believe that NAEP may not be
3 currently aligned to the common core that we have
4 now, but it is an assessment that is internationally
5 accepted. And, frankly, what gets measured gets
6 done.
7 And, so, if NAEP is our benchmark, you will
8 see a transformation in classrooms, because, there's
9 a trust that is associated with that test, as
10 opposed to the trust that we don't have for the
11 assessments that we currently have.
12 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay. In all the
13 testimony, you're the only one that referenced that,
14 which I appreciate.
15 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Yeah.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: The testimony is very
17 detailed. It hits on all the points that you
18 raised.
19 And, I don't know if my colleagues have
20 questions, but I have two quick questions for you.
21 And you heard me ask this to everyone else.
22 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Yes.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: So, on the scale of
24 1 to 10, how you would grade New York's testing, and
25 why?
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1 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Okay, on a scale of
2 1 to 10, the current system, I would rate probably a
3 "4," because I don't think that is it serves our
4 children well. I don't think that we're informed by
5 the results of the tests.
6 I happen to be -- I happen to be a person who
7 is very hands-on. I've involved in the scoring of
8 the assessment, even the new assessments that just
9 came out. It's -- there are flaws in it. Some of
10 the questions are not -- they're -- they go beyond
11 the scope of the curriculum.
12 A very simple example that I would give on
13 the field test that we had: They had the law of
14 sines and closed sines in a geometry test.
15 And, I'm a math person, so, I can tell you
16 that that's not in the curriculum for geometry.
17 I mean, you don't do the laws of sine.
18 And we saw many, many examples where there
19 were actual content that was not -- that, clearly,
20 were field-test items, because they went beyond the
21 scope.
22 So, I'd say that there's a lot to be --
23 there's a lot of room for growth.
24 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And last is: If you could
25 change one thing, you know, again, within reasonable
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1 constraints, what would you change?
2 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Well, first of all, I
3 would -- the number of assessments that we have, I
4 certainly would change.
5 And, I would have benchmarks. I would have
6 testing at fourth grade, eighth grade, and the end
7 point. So that, using the whole notion of radishes,
8 so we allow flexibility in some local assessments,
9 in between.
10 But, at the same time, I'd hold every teacher
11 who has taught that kid, from K through 4,
12 accountable for the fourth-grade assessment.
13 So that's how you get your teacher of record
14 in, so that every single grade level, every single
15 teacher, who taught K through 4, for that child, is
16 responsible for their fourth-grade assessment.
17 And the same thing, eighth-grade level.
18 So, you get the accountability in, but you're
19 not killing us on the number of assessments.
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
21 Any questions?
22 Thank you.
23 It's obvious you're hands-on.
24 Take that as a compliment.
25 DR. LORNA LEWIS: Oh, thank you.
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1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Next is, the Conference of
2 Big Five.
3 SENATOR OPPENHEIMER: I'm sorry, I will have
4 to leave. I have grandkids here. And, one is in
5 eighth grade. She's the oldest.
6 And, she found it very distressing that she
7 had to sit. She finished the test very quickly, and
8 she had to sit for 90 minutes.
9 And I said: Well, did you -- could you bring
10 a book along so at least you could read?
11 She's a big reader.
12 And she said: Absolutely not.
13 They were not permitted to bring anything in
14 the room.
15 To make a kid sit for 45 minutes, with their
16 hands folded, and no book, nothing to do? That's
17 insanity. She's 8 years old.
18 So, it was very good that she heard that.
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thanks, Sue.
20 Jennifer, welcome.
21 JENNIFER PYLE: Good afternoon, and thank you
22 so much for providing us was the opportunity to
23 comment today.
24 Georgia Asciutto wanted me to extend her
25 apologies, as she's unable to be with us here in
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1 Albany today.
2 My comments today are going to focus
3 primarily on the fiscal issues, relative to
4 administering the examinations, scoring, and the
5 integrity of the examinations.
6 As you know, the Big Five recognize and value
7 the importance of having a reliable and effective
8 State assessment system. And we are in support of
9 the current system; however, we believe that much
10 work needs to be done to address deficiencies that
11 we've noted in our testimony.
12 New York State's testing system has grown to
13 levels that State Ed and school districts cannot
14 afford to maintain.
15 As you know, each year, there is the
16 discussion with regard to what gets eliminated,
17 what's necessary. We're not always on the same page
18 with regard to those issues, but, we think it's
19 something that everyone needs to come to the table
20 and address.
21 All of our districts are struggling with
22 limited resources to implement the current State
23 assessment system within the confines of a very
24 limited instructional calendar.
25 A couple of the recommendations we've put
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1 forth are, as follows:
2 First: We're again calling for extended
3 school-day, school-week, and school-year initiatives
4 in order to allow us to implement the system in a
5 more effective and efficient manner.
6 We need additional resources.
7 As a number of folks have mentioned today,
8 it's quite expensive to hire substitutes and to
9 serve students with a multitude of testing
10 accommodations currently.
11 In addition, there are a number of issues
12 that could be addressed that would simplify the
13 process.
14 For example: Eighth-grade students are
15 currently required to, not only take their
16 eighth-grade math and science exams, but if they're
17 enrolled in accelerated Regents program, they take
18 those exams as well; something we think is
19 duplicative and unnecessary, and could be addressed
20 in the current system.
21 We've put forth a number of recommendations
22 to the Department in recent months, with regard to
23 streamlining, and making the Regents-examination
24 system more effective, and these are some of them:
25 First: Districts should be permitted to
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1 score exams within the same building where they're
2 administered, so long as individual student exams
3 are not scored by the teachers who administered
4 them.
5 In addition, districts are struggling with
6 scheduling requirements, and out-year dates for
7 scoring requirements and testing calendars need to
8 be provided in a more timely fashion.
9 We would again like to emphasize that
10 administration of January and August Regents
11 examinations is critical to our districts, not only
12 for those students struggling that may need an extra
13 chance, but also for students enrolled in
14 accelerated programs.
15 We've also requested that the June
16 Regents-examination schedule be expanded by two or
17 three days, to allow us to have adequate time for
18 regional scoring models that are in place. And,
19 that the examination schedule be front-loaded,
20 whereby we could overlap certain exams that the same
21 students are not taking, to give us more time for
22 scoring and follow-up procedures.
23 We've also asked that the State move
24 aggressively toward implementation of a
25 multiple-pathway system. Particularly with regard
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1 to the CTE exams, we would like to allow technical
2 assessments to be put in place of a Regents exam.
3 And we think that that's a good model to pursue.
4 One other issue that's not contained in our
5 testimony, that our members requested that we note,
6 that has been an ongoing issue with regard to the
7 fiscal impact of these exams, and it may be small,
8 but it just speaks to the -- our efforts to address
9 all the issues at hand, is the -- it's very
10 difficult for us to come up with accurate numbers
11 for how many exams we order each year.
12 And State Education Department took it upon
13 themselves last year to charge districts a $1 fee
14 per exam for overages over 10 percent.
15 Now, that may seem small, but in light of the
16 fact that it's very difficult for us to know how
17 many students will be absent, will be sick, will not
18 show up.
19 And, unfortunately, those numbers are
20 relatively significant in the Big Five. All of our
21 districts were faced with bills that they had --
22 that were sent forward in the last few months for
23 last year's administration of last year's overages.
24 It's something that we've asked the
25 Department to address through, not necessarily
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1 eliminating the billing, because, clearly, there are
2 some schools and some districts that are pursuing --
3 that they're ordering is not in line with their
4 enrollment and their testing, but, perhaps, to raise
5 the threshold so that it's a more reasonable
6 request.
7 Thank you so much, again, for your
8 consideration.
9 And, we would welcome the opportunity to
10 bring our chief school officers in to meet with you,
11 and discuss some of the issues that I wouldn't touch
12 upon, that they would be more equipped to address.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Just one quick question.
14 And, I appreciate having had that discussion
15 with Georgia before, about all of the extra exams.
16 I agree with you, I think it's crazy.
17 But, if we were to allow the schools to score
18 the test themselves, do you have any kind of idea
19 what you think you would save?
20 JENNIFER PYLE: I don't, but I can certainly
21 get a figure for you.
22 I don't think that's something our schools
23 could provide.
24 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
25 Thank you.
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1 JENNIFER PYLE: Thank you.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thanks a lot.
3 Next is, Kevin Casey, School Administrators.
4 Kevin never looked so good.
5 JAMES VIOLA: Thank you. I get that all the
6 time.
7 Actually, Kevin Casey wasn't able to join us
8 today due to a scheduled conflict he couldn't
9 resolve. So, he asked me to step in, in his stead.
10 My name is Jim Viola. I'm the director of
11 government relations for SAANYS.
12 But, our main speaker today is going to be
13 Paul Gasparini, who is the high school principal at
14 the Jamesville-Dewitt High School.
15 PAUL GASPARINI: Right. I'm at the --
16 high school principal a Jamesville-Dewitt
17 High School, which is in Onondaga County.
18 And with all due respect to Commack,
19 Rocky Point, and Clarence, our parents and teachers
20 and administrators believe that Jamesville-Dewitt is
21 the best school district in the state.
22 So we're very -- we very much enjoy educating
23 our kids. I love my job, and I truly enjoy.
24 And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be
25 here to talk about the issues that are before us
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1 that we talked about this morning.
2 It was mentioned earlier today that great
3 schools do exist in New York State.
4 "The U.S. News and World Report - Top 100
5 Schools" that was just recently released, 19 of the
6 top 100 schools in the country were from
7 New York State.
8 The "News Week" list, which gets a lot of
9 mention as well, over 10 percent of the schools in
10 the "News Week's Top 1,000" are New York State high
11 schools.
12 Our students routinely outperform the nation
13 on ACT tests and SAT tests. And we also outperform,
14 by a large margin, on AP exams.
15 I will say this: I'm coming from a
16 high school perspective. I know there's been a lot
17 of conversation today about the 3-8 testing, but at
18 the high school, we do like tests, and we like them
19 in this way: They do organize the curriculum.
20 I believe that in my testimony,
21 Senator Flanagan, I did recount the history of the
22 Regents exams, and I talked about the Regents exams
23 as being -- as organizing the curriculum and setting
24 a standard.
25 My own history, prior to becoming an
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1 administrator, I was a social studies teacher. I
2 taught the U.S. history and government. And I also
3 taught advanced placement in European history.
4 And we did use the exams, in that, in those
5 courses, to organize our curriculum, and to direct
6 our instruction.
7 So, we are certainly not anti-examination,
8 and we do believe that the New York State has had
9 the gold standard for many years.
10 They can be very useful. We do get very good
11 information from the exams.
12 At the end, there are now, we do scan
13 scoring, we get item analysis on the exams pretty
14 quickly, and our two teachers do use that item
15 analysis to inform their curriculum and instruction
16 for the following year.
17 However, I am concerned, and this I share
18 with my colleague who spoke before me, about how the
19 3-8 exams are used.
20 If you recall, when we did start, as
21 superintendent --
22 (Cellular telephone interruption.)
23 PAUL GASPARINI: Excuse me. I do apologize
24 very much for this. I will turn this off.
25 That's from my assistant principal. I hope
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1 everything is well. I'm sure it is.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: They're watching you.
3 PAUL GASPARINI: They told me to straighten
4 my tie, I'm sure.
5 I apologize for that.
6 The 3-8 tests should be -- they are used now
7 as end points.
8 And you see quite a bit of press about how
9 the 3-8 exams, students failed this math exam, or a
10 percentage of students that passed in this grade or
11 that grade.
12 When the exams originally came out, they were
13 to be used, not as end points, but as checkpoints in
14 progress toward a Regents examination.
15 And, therefore, if a student scored poorly on
16 the fourth-grade examination, he or she would be
17 given, what were called "academic intervention
18 services" in the fifth grade.
19 In order to support that learning, they would
20 have another checkpoint at the eighth grade. And
21 going from eighth grade into the high school grades,
22 there would be academic intervention services, if
23 necessary, for the students, in order for them to
24 perform well on the Regents test.
25 We think that this is a very useful way to
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1 use the examinations, whether they're 4 and 8,
2 3 through 8, et cetera, not as end points in and of
3 themselves.
4 I'm also concerned, it was mentioned earlier
5 today, I think in the opening comments, about the
6 number of examinations that students had. And we'll
7 go with the number "19" that SED established.
8 That is true.
9 But the problem is, when you go -- when we
10 begin to move to the five core Regents examinations
11 that every student has to take and pass with 65 or
12 above, our students most at risk, our
13 special-education students, often fail an exam.
14 They have to retake that exam.
15 You fail two exams, you have to retake two
16 exams.
17 Et cetera.
18 So, instead of five Regents, they're taking
19 seven, eight, ten, or more.
20 And we're very concerned about that, and the
21 burden it places on some of the students who
22 struggle the most in the classroom.
23 It is interesting to me, we've spoken -- or,
24 the commentators today, from Commissioner King, on,
25 have spoken about the common core. And there had
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1 been several questions from the Senators regarding
2 the common core.
3 The fact is, we've always had standards in
4 New York State.
5 New York State has had standards, often which
6 the Regents exams and other exams have been based.
7 And I think that those standards have been
8 very useful.
9 Senator Flanagan, I think you've asked the
10 question of almost everybody: What is one thing
11 that you would change?
12 And I think, for me, the answer would be:
13 I'd stop changing standards every few years, because
14 it has a deleterious impact on the building of
15 curriculum.
16 Here's an example.
17 They -- the aspirational graduation standards
18 are used, and used, and we need to get to those.
19 The problem is, there's no way to judge
20 how -- what a student in 1999, in math, learned, as
21 opposed to a student here in 2012.
22 Why?
23 The curriculum for math in the past 15 years
24 has changed four times.
25 We went from Course 1, to Math A, to, now we
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1 have the integrated algebra, integrated geometry,
2 Algebra 2, trig. And now we're go to common core.
3 This is extraordinarily frustrating, I can
4 assure, for the teachers.
5 Extraordinarily frustrating for school
6 districts, because we have to then change, not only
7 the curriculum, but the ancillary materials that go
8 with the curriculum: textbooks, et cetera.
9 And so I would say, that the common core may
10 be fine. I have no -- as a document, I have no
11 quarrel with the common core. But I do think that
12 if we stop and applied what we have in front of us
13 now, and did that for a number of years, we'd get a
14 very good baseline for what our students could do.
15 There was then talk, moving from the common
16 core, how are they going to be assessed?
17 And, the future assessment, where we should
18 be going.
19 The Park assessments have been discussed.
20 And there was much discussion at the
21 beginning of the hearing today about the
22 computerized -- the Park assessments being
23 computerized.
24 The Park is moving to a computerized system.
25 There was some conversation about, that some
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1 school districts have resources to do that.
2 The school district in which I work is one of
3 the two wealthiest districts in Onondaga County.
4 And I can assure you, we do not have the
5 infrastructure, nor will we have the infrastructure,
6 to administer computer-based tests.
7 With computer-based tests, you have to be
8 worried, not only about whether or not you have the
9 Internet system, the network support to do that, but
10 you also have to worry about whether or not the
11 software in your existing machines supports the
12 assessments coming through; whether or not the speed
13 and capacity of those machines matches the
14 assessments; whether the visuals on the screen, you
15 can even read the test that's coming up.
16 We did an internal analysis of obsolescence
17 in our district of computers.
18 Computers are obsolete within three to
19 five years.
20 You cannot -- no district, regardless of
21 their wealth status in New York State, can
22 completely change their internal computer system,
23 their internal network system, in three to
24 five years and maintain that sort of capacity.
25 So, while it does sound good as we move into
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1 the supposed high-tech world, the idea of online
2 systems, I think it is a recipe, and a cause, for
3 concern.
4 I do not believe that we have the capacity to
5 move in that direction.
6 I did discuss, I think a little bit in my
7 testimony, the problems with field tests.
8 I think they are enormous;
9 I think the reliability of field tests is
10 very questionable;
11 And, I do think that most teachers see them
12 as an add-on. They're asked to be administered
13 oftentimes in May, when students are being --
14 getting prepared for Regents exams. They're doing
15 cumulative projects for the year.
16 It is a terrible time to administer them.
17 You do not get a huge percentage of students who are
18 involved in the field testing. And, I think the
19 validity of the results that are in question, if
20 that's important, because those field tests are used
21 as a basis for the -- as was mentioned, for the
22 questions, and then the scale scoring on Regents
23 examinations.
24 Which I could talk about if the Committee so
25 desires.
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1 There was talk about many paths to
2 graduation, which I do endorse.
3 Back -- way back when, when I was in
4 high school, I was a New York State student as well.
5 We had a very active BOCES program that supported
6 all sorts of career, tech, and vocational education.
7 Careers and vocations have changed.
8 Certainly, I can think of, auto mechanics,
9 which my cousin is one. His knowledge of computers
10 is vast, because it has to be, in order for him to
11 do his job properly.
12 So, there is training that changes for all of
13 those fields. I think it's important to provide for
14 that. I do think that multiple pathways are good
15 option.
16 And I am concerned, finally, in my final
17 comments here, Senators, about the job changes for
18 the high school.
19 A very wise mentor of mine once said that the
20 high school principal's job is everything --
21 involves everything, from the road in front of the
22 school, to the hedgerow behind the school. And is
23 involved with everything.
24 And most effective principals that I know,
25 know their communities well, know the parents well,
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1 know the concerns of the parents well, know the
2 students, are involved with the students, in a basis
3 outside of the classroom.
4 If the changes that are proposed go through,
5 particularly for the local exams and service of
6 APPR, the principal will become, I think in many
7 ways, a number-cruncher and a paper-pusher, and,
8 really, a desk jockey, much more than they need to
9 be, or ought to be.
10 And I think, again, effective principals in
11 any of the districts throughout New York State are
12 people who are actively engaged outside of their
13 office, with the community.
14 I appreciate, once again, this opportunity to
15 talk; speak to the issues before us.
16 And I will now accept any questions that you
17 might have, Senators.
18 SENATOR FLANAGAN: First, let me say thank
19 you.
20 Second of all, you must be doing something
21 right.
22 I noticed that you were honored as
23 High School Principal of the Year --
24 PAUL GASPARINI: Yes, sir.
25 SENATOR FLANAGAN: -- which is always a nice
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1 thing.
2 PAUL GASPARINI: Thank you.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And, the written
4 testimony, which I've certainly gone through, is --
5 Trust me, this is a compliment.
6 -- you have some really tough statements in
7 there. You have some really hard-hitting points
8 about things, like, cut scores --
9 PAUL GASPARINI: Yes.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: -- and other stuff like
11 that.
12 So, it is worthy of a read for anyone who has
13 not had the opportunity yet.
14 So, in the interest of time, I really just
15 have one question, which I have asked everyone: If
16 you were to grade New York State's testing system,
17 on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you grade it, and
18 why?
19 PAUL GASPARINI: I would give the
20 Regents-exam system, 9 through 12, I would give that
21 an "8." I still think that's a strong system.
22 I'm concerned about the proposed changes.
23 And so I'd say, "8," and wavering.
24 I wouldn't say "8" with a bullet.
25 From everything I hear from the 3-through-8
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1 testing, I do think that that's below a "5," for all
2 of the reasons that were articulated before I spoke.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
4 Thank you very much. Appreciate the time.
5 PAUL GASPARINI: Thank you, Senator.
6 Thank you.
7 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, next,
8 Dr. Kenneth Mitchell, superintendent,
9 South Orangetown Central School District, part of
10 the Lower Hudson Valley Council of Superintendents.
11 I got the whole title right.
12 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: You're right.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Doctor, we have met
14 before.
15 And, you have lengthy testimony, which I know
16 you have no intention of reading.
17 If you could summarize. And I know there's a
18 lot of good backup on cost factors, and everything
19 else.
20 So...
21 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: All right, I'll try to
22 summarize.
23 Actually, many of the points that we had
24 planned to raise have already been mentioned by
25 other organizations today.
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1 However, I would like to focus specifically
2 on costs, because there's some questions that were
3 left unanswered, again, by some of the other groups,
4 regarding specific costs. And we've done some
5 analyses.
6 Now, first of all, again, I would like to
7 thank you. We crashed this party, I know.
8 And we found out in middle of the week that
9 we would have an opportunity to present. So, some
10 of the documents you received on Friday, and some of
11 the documents I believe you received just this
12 morning.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Uh-huh.
14 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: So, if you could place
15 in front of you the spreadsheet?
16 This is a spreadsheet that represents the
17 work of 18 school districts in the lower
18 Hudson Valley, and we've analyzed the cost of
19 implementing various components of the
20 New York State reforms in comparison to the Race to
21 the Top funding.
22 So, I'd like to take you through this, and
23 speak specifically to some of those costs.
24 First of all, the common-core training,
25 you'll see that -- and there are actually three
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1 elements of that.
2 There's the specific common-core training.
3 And I'm prepared to share with you lists of
4 the workshops that teachers have been attending in
5 our region, the cost for the workshop, and the
6 substitute costs.
7 So we, throughout the lower Hudson, have been
8 preparing our teachers for the common-core
9 assessments.
10 We have to. It's not a local decision,
11 because these assessments will be based on common
12 core.
13 And if you look at the bottom of that column,
14 with just 18 districts, these are not projections.
15 These are actual numbers.
16 If you recall, when I presented to the
17 Mandate Relief Committee, and we had the subsequent
18 meeting, I had given you some projections.
19 We went back to the group, and we said: We
20 want real numbers.
21 In fact, we rejected some of the submissions
22 because they were, again, estimates.
23 These districts can back up all of these
24 numbers with receipts.
25 Business officials have been involved,
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1 assistant superintendents for curriculum and
2 instruction have been involved, technology directors
3 have been involved, throughout the Hudson Valley.
4 And the numbers continue to come in.
5 I received an e-mail sitting here, I received
6 several e-mails yesterday, from districts who were
7 scrambling to get us the data for today.
8 And we will continue this.
9 We're also working with our colleagues on
10 Long Island, to gather information. So, we're going
11 to try to extrapolate this across the state,
12 eventually.
13 So, if you look at the bottom of the column
14 for common-core training, you'll see that districts
15 have expended $783,000, just for the training of
16 teachers.
17 And if you look all the way to the right,
18 under "Race to the Top Funding," those districts
19 receive $520,000 in Race to the Top funding.
20 If you go back and look at "Common-Core
21 Revision," again, it is not a choice.
22 Districts are -- in this region, are in the
23 process of converting their local curriculum and the
24 current New York State teaching standards to the
25 common-core standards.
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1 We are not opposed to common core, but we
2 need to make sure that we have the time to align the
3 common core to our curriculum and to train our
4 teachers.
5 Districts are just beginning to purchase new
6 materials.
7 And you'll see that the numbers do vary from
8 district to district. And that's because districts
9 are at different points of development,
10 implementation, and some districts simply do not
11 have the funds to make these changes right now.
12 So, you look across those common-core columns
13 and you'll see: 783,000 for training. $1.2 million
14 for curriculum revision work.
15 And that's substitute teachers, summer
16 training, bringing in trainers.
17 And some districts are spending up to
18 $2 million -- well, the entire region, these
19 18 districts, over $2 million for new materials --
20 new instructional materials.
21 Now, there's just the report from the
22 Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
23 And the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation supports
24 common core, very much so. And what they have
25 identified are three approaches to the
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1 implementation of the common core, and the cost
2 analyses of these.
3 They have the national cost analyses, and
4 also have a New York State cost analyses.
5 They call the first approach "Business as
6 usual."
7 We use text books, we have face-to-face
8 professional development. That will cost
9 New York State $583 million to implement common
10 core.
11 And this is, by the way, just for ELA and
12 math. This isn't for science.
13 The second option is the bare bones.
14 And you've heard folks talk about the savings
15 that we will have when common core when it becomes
16 virtual.
17 Well, there -- yes, with virtual materials,
18 webinars, there will be a saving of $72 million;
19 however, that does not include the technology costs.
20 And I will get to that.
21 I've heard folk allude to it.
22 We have specifics. We've broken it down into
23 classrooms, and into schools, how much it will cost
24 to implement the technology.
25 Then the balanced approach, which is a more
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1 likely approach, is where we use a little bit of
2 virtual learning, bring in some computers, and we
3 also have some of the more traditional approach.
4 That will cost New York State $71 million.
5 Now, remember, this organization supports
6 common core. They want it to work.
7 There have been some other groups that have
8 talked about the common core.
9 They believe that -- the Fordham Institute
10 has underestimated common core.
11 For example: The Pioneer Institute out of
12 Boston believes that common core will cost us
13 $16 billion in seven years. That's nationally.
14 The Education Council in D.C., it's a
15 bipartisan group, and they specialize in public
16 finance. And they believe that there's a lack of
17 consideration for the technology upgrades:
18 servers --
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Let me ask you -- excuse
20 me.
21 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: Sure.
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Let me ask you a couple of
23 different things, because I'm very good at reading
24 numbers, so I can look at this stuff very easily. I
25 get that.
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1 But, what we're really talking about is
2 testing. I mean, that's kind of the purpose of what
3 we're talking about here.
4 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: Okay.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Now -- so, just simple,
6 yes or no: Do you agree with implementation of
7 common core?
8 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: I agree with the
9 implementation of common core, but common core is
10 the basis for the testing.
11 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
12 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: That's what --
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I understand.
14 But, we could have a philosophical and
15 practical debate at the same time about the cost of
16 common core.
17 So, I'm thinking about that, more in a
18 budgetary context, because that's something that
19 would be negotiated.
20 And one of the things that we had done in
21 this year's budget, partially in response to meeting
22 with Senator Ball in his district, and your
23 colleagues, we fought for inclusion in the budget
24 that there would be aid available for school
25 districts for demonstrated expenses, as it relates
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1 to APPR.
2 Now, I'm not talking about, if we're looking
3 at the charts here, I am hopeful that State Ed will
4 look kindly upon the actual implementation of that,
5 and help provide the financial aid that districts
6 will, I believe, be entitled to, because we pushed
7 hard for that.
8 And I was clearly involved in that, and I
9 believe that districts not only are entitled to the
10 money, but they should get the money as well.
11 So, in relation to these testing pieces, are
12 you -- my guess -- part of my question is: Do you
13 think we should be getting rid of tests that we have
14 now?
15 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: Get rid of the tests
16 that we have now?
17 We're in the process of building a testing
18 system, so, we haven't finalized the actual costs
19 and the actual impact of the testing on
20 New York State.
21 And your question that you had asked other
22 folks coming before you, had to do with rating
23 New York.
24 It's an incomplete.
25 We are in the process of developing slow
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1 assessments. That's one the columns that I've also
2 presented in that spreadsheet.
3 And, the reason why I wanted to work through
4 the spreadsheets, is because numbers don't speak by
5 themselves, obviously. They're pretty loud in terms
6 of the discrepancy between the allocation versus the
7 projected costs, but, understanding what's behind
8 that.
9 And you heard folks talk about the slows?
10 The student learning objective assessments?
11 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yes.
12 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: One of the documents
13 that you have is a breakdown of one district's total
14 number of assessments, kindergarten through
15 twelfth grade, to be designed for the local
16 20 percent evaluation of slows.
17 That document indicates over 500 assessments.
18 And, the costs for those assessments have still not
19 been determined. And that's where districts are
20 pausing before they send in the information.
21 But, you see those districts that have done
22 the work, for example, have found initially, and
23 much of this work will take place this summer and in
24 the fall, $262,000.
25 So, I'm not sure if that answers your
190
1 question, whether I support the testing.
2 I support -- I support the State's move
3 towards common core.
4 I am concerned about the acceleration of the
5 process, and the failure of the State to do a
6 long-term cost projection, and to, in the middle of
7 this process, determine that we're going to survey
8 school districts to see how much it will cost them
9 to implement the technology that will support the
10 eventual online of Park assessments.
11 And we've begun to do that work. Again, I
12 have that information for you, broken out in more
13 specific numbers. I can give you a cost per school,
14 I can give you a cost per classroom, what it will
15 take to administer assessments, simultaneously,
16 using technology. We've broken that down. And,
17 again, we're expanding that. The cost is just so
18 much greater than the ideal.
19 And I was hoping that I'd be able to present
20 the pragmatic presentation -- a pragmatic
21 understanding of how this is impacting New York,
22 just looking at the dollars and cents.
23 I have to go to my board of education and
24 tell them that we're increasing these categories and
25 making changes in priorities. Or, perhaps, in some
191
1 districts, they're not going to be able to address
2 the mandates because they do not have the funding to
3 do that, even with the generosity of the
4 legislature.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yeah, and let me say this:
6 When we get involved in hearings like these,
7 sometimes time gets away from us more quickly than
8 we would like.
9 And it's not that I don't have a desire to
10 hear chapter and verse on the financial statistics.
11 But, it will be made part of the record,
12 everything that is being submitted here today.
13 And I know, having met you and spoken to you
14 before, that you have a penchant for detail, which
15 is -- it is very helpful, because that's the
16 real-life application of things that come from the
17 federal government, find their way through the
18 state, work its way through the legislature, get to
19 the Board of Regents and the State Education
20 Department.
21 And you're sort of giving where the rubber
22 meets the road, which is very help.
23 Just for the purposes of today, I'm trying to
24 get a sense on more as it relates to the testing.
25 I understand the cost factors. And, I
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1 believe the information that is in what this
2 spreadsheet is, plus the written testimony, details
3 a lot of your concerns. So, I'm not worried about
4 that.
5 But, let me go back to my question, because
6 you said, the testing system, you would give it an
7 "incomplete."
8 If I had to -- pegged you to give it a
9 number, what would you give it?
10 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: I would give it a "3"
11 for its concept, that, with resources, and with
12 time, could be a very powerful assessment system.
13 There are certain questions about the use of
14 the assessment that need to be answered. And that
15 takes place over time.
16 This is being rushed.
17 And when we rush, we don't do things well.
18 And so we are -- I give it a "3."
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: In the concept of being
20 rushed, I've heard a number of people speak to this
21 issue, directly and indirectly.
22 How long do you think we should delay, or,
23 how much show it be slowed down?
24 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: Well, there are so
25 many different elements.
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1 First of all, we need to make sure that we
2 have the common-core curriculum in place. And we
3 need to make sure we have -- if we're going to
4 assess students, teachers, and administrators, we
5 need to make sure that the curriculum that will be
6 used to do is in place.
7 If we're going to require districts to
8 purchase assessments, or create their own
9 assessments, which that local 20 percent is
10 requiring us to do, we have to understand that
11 there's cost of doing that, and that it may need to
12 be phased in over time.
13 We need to analyze how much it costs to score
14 the assessments, to analyze the assessments. That
15 takes time.
16 You want specific years? I don't have those
17 specific years, because everything has been poured
18 onto the table, and we have -- within the last
19 two years, and we've been told: implement.
20 And we are haven't been given, not only
21 adequate time, but adequate resources, adequate
22 direction.
23 There are a lot of people -- people a lot
24 smarter than I am who are gathered around this
25 table, to help us to develop an implementation plan.
194
1 It's not going be done well. And there are
2 grave concerns that it will fail and we'll start
3 over again, and say: Remember when.
4 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Well, I certainly hope
5 that's not the case.
6 And I appreciate your time and your comments.
7 And, we can follow up on the, quote/unquote,
8 implementation.
9 And part of the reason I'm asking you is,
10 when we have people come in, if we're going to
11 advocate with SED and Board of Regents and the
12 Executive, "Here are some changes that we think need
13 to be made," having some level of specificity is
14 helpful, I think, to everybody.
15 So, I very much appreciate your comments.
16 DR. KENNETH MITCHELL: And I will follow up
17 with more specific documents.
18 Thank you for having us.
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, Doctor.
20 Thank you.
21 Mr. Dan.
22 And, Dan, take this respectfully; I'm not
23 going to even hazard how to properly say it. You
24 can tell me when you come down here.
25 How about this: Dan, friend of Robach.
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1 Is that --
2 DAN DRMACICH: And Maziarz.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And Maziarz. That's true.
4 DAN DRMACICH: Well, thank you,
5 Senator Flanagan, for the opportunity to testify. I
6 know it was short notice, and we really appreciate
7 being here.
8 As you know, I'm a retired school principal
9 from Rochester City School District.
10 For 23 years, I worked as a performance-based
11 assessment school, which is a different pathway than
12 which the current Regents system goes. Even though
13 they do get Regents diplomas, it's a much different
14 assessment system.
15 And I would be happy to engage in a
16 conversation with you about that as well.
17 I'm also the chair of the Rochester Coalition
18 for Justice and Education, an advocacy group for
19 more fair treatment and education for kids,
20 especially those in urban areas.
21 I'm going to let Don Barlow, my colleague,
22 introduce himself.
23 DONALD BARLOW: My name is Donald Barlow.
24 I'm a lifetime educator. I've been working
25 in public schools for 48 years.
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1 The last time I was in the classroom was
2 Friday.
3 And I want to thank you very much, Senator,
4 for staying to hear our remarks.
5 Of course, you have no choice.
6 SENATOR FLANAGAN: You are more than welcome.
7 DONALD BARLOW: Thank you.
8 DAN DRMACICH: Thank you, Senator Flanagan.
9 I think the other thing Don and I agreed
10 upon, as we came down here, was -- or, at least
11 within the past three hours, was that, maybe we
12 ought to use this opportunity to engage in a
13 conversation as opposed to us just reading our
14 testimony.
15 So, I think -- and maybe one way to get that
16 started, would be, we'll deal with your universal
17 question for all the guests here.
18 And I think what I'll do, in terms of giving
19 New York State a grade on the Regents exams, I'll
20 give them a "zero."
21 And, again, the reasons for that are outlined
22 in my testimony which I submitted, but, just a
23 couple of the items that I want to focus on with
24 that, is that:
25 One: The skills, the twenty-first-century
197
1 skills that kids need in order to be successful, as
2 scholar -- whether it's scholars in college, whether
3 or not it's workers in the workplace, or whether or
4 not it's as citizens, there's a common list of
5 skills that we can identify. And it's been done by
6 a number of people, including, Tony Wagner, out of
7 Harvard University, and -- as well as number of
8 other organizations, including ASCD.
9 That, these skills are neither emphasized by
10 the Regents curriculum, nor tested for it.
11 And, so, when we look at the rates of
12 failure, in terms of why only 54 percent of kids
13 graduate -- or, White kids graduate from college,
14 14 percent of Blacks and Latinos graduate from
15 college, the low number of voter participation in
16 local elections, the remedial tutorials that have to
17 go on for kids coming into workplaces, we know why:
18 Because, the skills aren't being taught. The
19 Regents tests don't emphasize them.
20 And there is a way to deal with that.
21 As I mentioned before, I'm with the New York
22 State Performance Assessment Consortium.
23 And, I've got -- this just came out
24 yesterday, so that's why I haven't mailed it to you,
25 but, I will e-mail this to you.
198
1 And it's got all the data in here, in terms
2 of how kids, in primarily urban school systems, are
3 outperforming other kids; and, how they're -- why
4 they're doing twice the success rate in college as
5 opposed to their counterparts from other traditional
6 urban schools.
7 The answer is, is that those
8 twenty-first-century skills are being emphasized
9 there. And it's a very unique situation, as opposed
10 to finding it anyplace, including in the suburbs.
11 Donald --
12 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Excuse me, I'm sorry.
13 Are you talking about, in Rochester?
14 Or --
15 DAN DRMACICH: Rochester has one school
16 that's a part of the consortium.
17 There's 30-odd schools in the consortium.
18 About 26 of them are in New York City.
19 Ithaca has one, and Rochester has one.
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: So that group is
21 outperforming its peers, essentially?
22 DAN DRMACICH: Yes, yes.
23 And --
24 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Is that -- excuse me.
25 Is that outperforming them on high school
199
1 graduation rates and performance in college?
2 Or --
3 DAN DRMACICH: Yeah, yeah.
4 And you can look at the data when I sent it
5 to you.
6 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
7 DAN DRMACICH: And, actually, I mean, to
8 clarify that specifically: When we're talking about
9 comparison of students who are persistent in
10 college, succeeding beyond a two-year or three-year
11 graduation, or persistence within college, versus
12 those of their peers.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Now, do these kids take
14 fewer exams?
15 DAN DRMACICH: They only take one, which is
16 the Regents English exam.
17 The other ones are all performance-based
18 assessment exams, which, students have to do
19 projects, keep portfolios, and review those.
20 As opposed to having one person review them,
21 they have to present those to a team of two
22 certified teachers, usually a college professor or
23 some other professional person in the community,
24 and, usually there's a student on that group as
25 well.
200
1 But, they have to have a unanimous vote that
2 they've passed it, and they get feedback as well.
3 So, it ends up being like a college dissertation as
4 opposed to anything else.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Is that somewhat similar
6 to, like, the IB program?
7 DAN DRMACICH: Similar.
8 It's kind of like an IB program for everyone.
9 And what happens is, is that, the standards,
10 there's high standard for everyone, but what we
11 believe in is individualized standards, as opposed
12 to standardized standards. That makes the process
13 much more meaningful for every kid, in terms of the
14 expectations of what they can do, and how they're
15 going to do it.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Is that -- would it be a
17 fair, but, perhaps, simple characterization to say
18 that, in essence, you have an IEP for everyone?
19 DAN DRMACICH: Yes.
20 Yes, I would say that.
21 Yeah, that's a very good way of putting it:
22 Every kid has an IEP.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Which, frankly, should be
24 our goal, even if it's reaching for the stars. I
25 mean, that's --
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1 DAN DRMACICH: Absolutely.
2 Of course, you'll hear from, I think the
3 traditionalists, that every kid does have an IEP,
4 because, somehow, one way or the other, we're going
5 to get them through the Regents tests, and get them
6 to have a score of a "3" or a "4."
7 But, it all becomes much more meaningless
8 when we know that (a) the tests are directed at
9 lower-level thinking skill, and that, (b) that kids
10 are normally turned off with all of the test prep.
11 With our system within the consortium, every
12 kid gets the opportunity to pursue their interests,
13 and have all of the twenty-first-century skills
14 integrated within those courses, classes, or
15 individualized study that they deal with.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Let me -- Dr. Mitchell
17 just talked with a lot of detail about the costs of
18 the implementation of common core.
19 DAN DRMACICH: Uh-huh.
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: And I think he's, like,
21 dead-on, in terms of real-life application, even
22 though we may not see that effect today. I mean, it
23 will happen sooner rather than later.
24 But, how do you feel about common core?
25 DAN DRMACICH: I think common core gets a
202
1 little bit closer to the twenty-first-century
2 learning skills, in terms of the goals of what they
3 would like kids to do.
4 So, I think that's a good idea.
5 What I don't like, is the fact that it looks
6 like look being geared toward standardized tests for
7 common core.
8 If they were performance-based, a -- if they
9 were performance-based, in which a student has to do
10 a project or demonstrate something that they know
11 about, a particular skill, or how to do it, how to
12 apply it to the real world, that would make sense.
13 But, again, it should only be part of the
14 multiple measures of what a kid has to do in order
15 to graduate.
16 That wouldn't be the only thing that I would
17 require. And it's not the only thing that the
18 consortium schools require.
19 So they're on the right track, but they need,
20 I think, to be very cognizant of the fact that
21 standardization is going to -- is a slippery slope.
22 And that it's -- if they're really looking to
23 motivate kids intrinsically, as opposed to
24 extrinsically, then they've got to move more towards
25 student interests, and weave those skills into the
203
1 student's individualized curriculum.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Well, going to --
3 Dr. Mitchell mentioned that he would mark an
4 "incomplete." And, then, you came with a "zero."
5 It seems like, the longer we stay here, we're
6 getting right down to the bottom there.
7 But it's -- I'm actually glad that I had
8 asked that question early on, because it's
9 interesting to hear everybody's comments.
10 But you -- I had also asked another question.
11 If you could change -- within reasonable
12 constraints, if you could change something in this
13 area, what would you like it to be?
14 DONALD BARLOW: That's easy.
15 We've got our Ts mixed up: "T" for testing,
16 "T" for teaching.
17 What we have been doing, Senator, is
18 concentrating on reforming.
19 What we haven't been doing is improving.
20 What I would do -- by the way, I would give
21 it a "1," and I gave extra credit for intention.
22 The system does not pass my father's test of
23 common sense.
24 It makes no sense educationally. It makes no
25 sense personally.
204
1 I have four grandchildren. I'm in schools
2 every day. I've worked in these schools for
3 48 years.
4 We need to concentrate on improving the
5 methods. We are a country without a system for
6 improving teaching methods.
7 What we've done, is we've allowed testing to
8 become the vehicle for improving education.
9 It's not going to do it, anymore than a
10 mother or a father who measures their child every
11 day, and expects them to grow more just because
12 they're measuring them more.
13 I'm not trying to oversimplify. It upsets me
14 to no end.
15 We've waited all this time, and we cannot
16 thank you enough for listening to what we have.
17 This is not my first rodeo.
18 I have been in schools for 48 years, working
19 with students and teachers.
20 I currently develop instructional leaders.
21 You know what they're concerned about,
22 Senator?
23 They're not talking about the joy of
24 learning. They're talking about two things:
25 What it used to be like when we could do
205
1 projects, and the frustration they find having to
2 deal with raising the test scores all the time.
3 We've become a profession that looks backward
4 to see the good things we use to do in education.
5 I have four grandchildren in school, from
6 fourth grade to eleventh. I talk to them about what
7 they do.
8 They rarely do anything that I would call
9 exciting.
10 There's a B word.
11 If you ask most students what you think about
12 school, they will tell you --
13 And she's laughing, because she knows what
14 the B word is.
15 -- "It's boring."
16 And that's what school has become.
17 I urge the Senate in the New York State to do
18 whatever you can to bring that out.
19 My testimony is based on the fact that we're
20 going in the wrong direction.
21 And if the American Dream is to put us, you
22 know, up against countries and for global economy,
23 we're never going to do it this way.
24 We need, not reform. We need a system to
25 improve, and the energy and the talent, and the
206
1 money.
2 I'll give you one example.
3 We should establish schools all over the
4 state, regional schools, in the summertime.
5 Take the $32 million that you give Pearson,
6 and fund those schools, and you tell them one thing:
7 "We're going to stay away from you.
8 "What we want you to do is this: We want you
9 to you work with a variety of students, and we want
10 you to come up with the best teaching methods you
11 can. And we're going to support you in doing that."
12 Look, it is the teachers' and the students'
13 and the parents' responsibility about progress.
14 It's not solely a State responsibility and
15 accountability.
16 That responsibility rests with the students,
17 the teachers, the school leaders -- I left them
18 out -- and the parents.
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: You certainly don't lack
20 for passion.
21 DONALD BARLOW: Absolutely.
22 And I mean every word that I'm saying.
23 Thank you.
24 DAN DRMACICH: Senator, I'd like to add to
25 that, in terms of Don's reference to comparisons
207
1 with other countries, because I know that you
2 probably often hear this: Oh, you know, they're
3 25th in the industrialized world -- or whatever.
4 The interesting point about that, is that, if
5 you were to look at the poverty levels of the
6 United States versus that of Finland or South Korea,
7 you find a very distinctive difference in terms of
8 ours being between 20 and 25 percent, and Finland's,
9 for example, being less than 3 percent.
10 The point is, is that, if you were to
11 disaggregate and not count the kids who are stricken
12 with high poverty within the United States, then we
13 would move up into the top three in just about every
14 category.
15 So, the question becomes, you know, that when
16 we look at the performance of poverty-stricken kids
17 in all of the urban areas, which, of course, the
18 NCLB and all this testing was directed at, to try
19 and get kids to perform better, is that, the reality
20 is, is that the expectation that students who are
21 stricken with poverty-like conditions from that of
22 lead poisoning, with that of poor prenatal care,
23 poor nutrition, and so on -- we can name all of
24 those things, and go on forever with them --
25 they're, generally, not going to perform well.
208
1 Heroically, there will be a few, but there
2 aren't going to be many.
3 What can with do about it?
4 And this has a direct impact on testing,
5 because if you do this, it will raise test scores:
6 We -- and this is very unpopular. Kiss of
7 death, in terms of politics. -- is that, if we were
8 to provide suburban schools incentives for working
9 with urban schools, to form more metropolitan or
10 regional schools, we'd see an increase in terms of
11 test scores, because of the socioeconomic values
12 that would be -- through osmosis, would get into
13 kids, as long as it's not more than a 60 percent
14 middle class and a 40 percent maximum on
15 poverty-stricken kids.
16 This has been proven, in terms of the work
17 that's been done in Wake County in North Carolina.
18 The book "Hope and Despair in the American
19 City," by Gerald Grant, professor emeritus of
20 education in Syracuse, documents all of this, in
21 which he compares Syracuse to that of Wake County.
22 So, there is reason for hope with that, but
23 it's a very difficult thing to do.
24 The other thing: If we can't do that,
25 because of the politics involved, if we can begin to
209
1 negotiate, in order to get more effective -- more
2 effective funding, equitable funding, for schools in
3 urban areas.
4 I think we've got to reduce the class size in
5 half if you're not going to integrate,
6 socioeconomically, to that of, maybe, a
7 1-to-10 ratio.
8 You'll see the test scores go up with poor
9 urban kids, but, not until you do that.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I appreciate that.
11 And I'll just close on this point:
12 Senator Cathy Young has worked very hard with
13 a number of my colleague, but she, in particular,
14 will be an outspoken advocate for regional
15 high schools. Not necessarily in the pretext of
16 what you were speaking to, but, it's interesting.
17 I'm listening.
18 DAN DRMACICH: Another form of regional
19 school.
20 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yeah.
21 DAN DRMACICH: Yeah. Right.
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, thank you very
23 much.
24 DAN DRMACICH: Thank you very much.
25 DONALD BARLOW: Thank you. Take care.
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1 DAN DRMACICH: If you need anymore testimony,
2 information, we would be happy to come back to
3 Albany.
4 Thank you.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Next is Jaye Bea Smalley
6 from Citywide Council on Special Ed.
7 Good afternoon.
8 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Good afternoon.
9 Hi.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Hi.
11 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: So my name is
12 Jaye Bea Smalley, and I co-chair the
13 Citywide Council on Special Education.
14 We are a statutory council. We're elected by
15 parents who have children in the New York City
16 public schools with IEPs, and we're non-elected
17 parents who have children with disabilities with
18 IEPs, and we have two public advocate appointees.
19 So, I'm here on behalf of approximately
20 160,000 students in New York City who have IEPs.
21 And, I want to start out a little bit by --
22 where we are now, instead of where we're coming
23 from.
24 And, in 2011, in New York State, 9.4 percent
25 of eighth-graders were proficient or above
211
1 proficient in reading.
2 9.4 percent.
3 When you look at above proficient, it was
4 less than a percent. It was .1 percent.
5 So, I think that everybody could agree that
6 that is completely unacceptable, and there's a lot
7 of work to be done if all students in New York State
8 are going to be college- and career-ready, including
9 students with disabilities.
10 When you look at the assessments, and the
11 New York State ELA and math assessments for students
12 with disabilities, they are really inappropriate
13 assessments for students. They do not -- with
14 disabilities.
15 They don't look at the progress of specific
16 learning disabilities. They don't look at different
17 learning styles. And, you really need multiple
18 measures of progress for students with disabilities.
19 Also, when you look at the assessments that
20 they're developing right now for these common-core
21 standards, so, New York State is part of the
22 Park Consortium.
23 I recently went to Washington, D.C., where,
24 they had a meeting where they brought together a
25 number of people who were researching grants for the
212
1 assessments.
2 And they had both consortiums: the
3 Smarter Balance, they have Park.
4 And the general consensus is --
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Which do you like better?
6 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Pardon?
7 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Which do you like better?
8 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: They're very similar. I
9 don't -- you know, you look at what they're trying
10 to do.
11 And, I don't really have an opinion on one of
12 them.
13 I don't think that -- I don't think we're in
14 the wrong one, if that's what you're asking me.
15 But, the general consensus among all of the
16 participants, was that, they've done all of this
17 work to ensure that students with disabilities are
18 going to have access to these assessments, but,
19 still, very little has been done to make sure that
20 students are disabilities are getting quality access
21 to instruction, and curriculum.
22 So, when they start talking about --
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Well, let me just
24 interject there.
25 Do you believe that students in that category
213
1 are getting what they need, today?
2 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: No, not at all.
3 Not at all.
4 I'll give you an example.
5 When you talk about the technology, and
6 you've heard a lot about where we are with
7 technology, and the fact that we're not going be
8 ready, that's one of the problems.
9 With the common-core standards, the
10 accommodations that students should get for testing,
11 they should really be getting very similar
12 accommodations now, to be accessing the curriculum.
13 It should be universally designed.
14 So, universal design has to do with, how you
15 are presenting material to students, how the
16 students are able to express them -- express their
17 knowledge, and then, also, how students engage.
18 And when you look at the waiver and the
19 plans, and how New York interprets universal design,
20 the only thing that I really see is, that they talk
21 about teaching -- enabling teachers to really be
22 able to differentiate instruction, which is
23 important. You know, it's -- differentiated
24 instruction is one component of the universal
25 design.
214
1 But a huge piece of the universal design is
2 also giving students the ability to use technology
3 to learn. Text-to-speech.
4 My child, he needs to use keyboarding for any
5 sort of written assignments. He uses them on a test
6 as well.
7 When I tried to get an evaluation for him,
8 first of all, it was very, very difficult to even
9 argue for an evaluation, because he didn't have some
10 sort of a physical disability. It -- I had to
11 almost go into due process over it.
12 So then, finally, when I was able to get the
13 assistive-technology team to come into the school
14 and do at the evaluation, the team is composed of a
15 physical therapist and an occupational therapist.
16 Well, my son has a learning disability.
17 He -- it really wasn't -- it wasn't the appropriate
18 team to do the evaluation.
19 And, as I look forward, and it's time to
20 do -- he's going to be going into middle school
21 soon, still, there is -- there's no plan in place to
22 really evaluate and provide assistive technology.
23 And the districts, as they are purchasing all
24 of this different equipment, I really am very
25 concerned that a lot of it is not taking into
215
1 consideration accessibility, how it will interface
2 with children who use devices.
3 There has not been any sort of professional
4 development around consideration for accommodation.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: You know, let me ask you,
6 and this is going to bring a smile to at least one
7 of the people sitting with us.
8 I had a very interesting meeting last week
9 with the group of behavioral analysts who work in
10 the area of special education and students with
11 disabilities.
12 So, that might be one group that you might
13 want to talk to.
14 But -- and I certainly don't mean to sound
15 ignorant, but, if you -- you speak to the concept of
16 universal design, it seems to -- when I think of
17 that: All right, you're going to design whatever it
18 is. There's going to be some universal application.
19 And, yet, now we're doing something
20 different.
21 So how do you match universal design with
22 particularized needs of, particularly, students with
23 disabilities?
24 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Well, universal design and
25 learning is one of the -- is really one of the goals
216
1 with the common-core standards.
2 Not all of the common-core standards are
3 universally designed, but many of them are.
4 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Do you -- you think that's
5 a good thing?
6 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: I think that's good.
7 I mean, from the perspective of -- you know,
8 when looking at the common-core standards, the one
9 thing that I do think the common-core standards
10 brings to the table, is they do -- they are more
11 universally designed than current standards.
12 So, like when Senator Marcellino was talking
13 about leave -- Oh, leave school districts alone that
14 are doing well, I do feel that they are going to be
15 more accessible for certain students, because they
16 do enable students to have multiple means of
17 expression of -- for -- not for all of them, though,
18 but more so than some of current standards.
19 SENATOR FLANAGAN: All right, so let me ask
20 you, which is, I think slightly different, but, I'm
21 going to give you my understanding.
22 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Okay.
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Part of what we did with
24 APPR was, obviously, 20 percent based on State
25 tests, 20 percent based on local, 60 percent to be
217
1 collectively bargained. But within that, and I've
2 had plenty of conversations on this subject, is the
3 implementation and adoption of student-learning
4 objectives.
5 So, there are students, maybe like your son,
6 or others similarly situated, who won't be taking
7 the, quote/unquote, conventional tests.
8 It will be other measures of assessment for
9 them, which I believe are incorporated in these
10 student-learning objectives.
11 So, do you view that as a good thing or a bad
12 thing?
13 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: I think -- for the
14 purposes of -- for the APPR purposes, I think it's a
15 bad thing, because you've heard a lot of testimony
16 today about the fact that, right now, teachers are
17 going through a major shift.
18 They are trying to learn new content
19 standards, and, at the same time, they're being told
20 that they're being evaluated, largely on criteria
21 that's really meant to evaluate students.
22 They're mutually exclusive.
23 I mean, ELA and math scores are meant -- are
24 for students, and then you also have ways to
25 evaluate teachers.
218
1 So, for the time being, I don't think that
2 it's a good idea. And I think that there's going to
3 be too much differentiation between different school
4 districts on how they're going to develop these
5 different SLOs.
6 I think that, right now, that what needs to
7 be evaluated, is how teachers are going to have the
8 right tools to be able to deliver the common-core
9 standards, with the right curriculum, and also be
10 able to deliver it with the universal design.
11 I think that that's really the most important
12 thing.
13 And I think until you have that, we're not
14 going to be able to effectively -- I don't think
15 those -- I don't think those sort of measures are
16 going to benefit students, because teachers have
17 to -- they have the tools to be able to provide
18 instruction.
19 And, right now, when I look at our State's
20 waiver, all that I really see, is I see a lot of
21 different turnaround models. I see that there's
22 going to be webinars for teachers.
23 There's no at-the-elbow professional
24 development for teachers.
25 The other problem is with the accommodations.
219
1 I mean, there's been no sort of professional
2 development, or even consideration for developing
3 professional development, to even talk about how to
4 deliver these accommodations.
5 So when I start seeing the different mandate
6 relief proposals: Oh, flexibility. They're not --
7 you know, we're currently not using -- "We're not
8 getting bang for our buck," is what I hear.
9 We're not getting bang for our buck with all
10 of these additional above-the-federal mandates.
11 Well, I think that if we actually had the
12 right evaluations, and the teachers actually knew
13 how -- what was available, if we standardized
14 accommodations, and they were delivered through
15 instruction, it would be most helpful.
16 But, I don't think that we're going to be
17 able to -- I think we're putting the cart before the
18 house, as everybody else said.
19 I think we need to work on solidifying
20 delivering the content, and then worry a little bit
21 more about how we're going to be assessing it.
22 Does that make sense?
23 SENATOR FLANAGAN: It does.
24 DONALD BARLOW: I mean, it's really --
25 it's -- you can't be expected to deliver a
220
1 completely new content standards, and they're saying
2 that you can differentiate, and not have any of the
3 technology to do that, and be worried about how
4 you're going to be assessed.
5 I mean, you should be assessing your students
6 every day. And I think that the good teachers are
7 doing that; they're assessing their students every
8 day.
9 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yeah, I have two questions
10 for an end, but, just a comment: Part of my
11 concern --
12 And you have a child in middle school;
13 correct?
14 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Two children, with very
15 different issues.
16 Yeah.
17 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
18 -- the idea of slowing down implementation,
19 part of my reaction is, as a parent, is saying: Why
20 do I have to slow down and wait? Why can't they be
21 taking care of my kid properly right now?
22 So, that's a rhetorical question.
23 But, the same question that I asked everybody
24 else: If you were grading New York State's testing
25 system, what would you give it, and why?
221
1 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Well, I would definitely
2 give it a "zero," because it really is not the right
3 assessment system to measure progress and students
4 with disabilities.
5 And that's the one that is used for
6 accountability purposes.
7 I think that what we really need, is we need
8 legislation that is going to provide for some sort
9 of a task force, like Maryland did, on universal
10 design, so we can make sure that all of this is
11 being implemented properly.
12 We need educators on that task force.
13 And that will, actually, I think all of these
14 cost concerns that are being brought up, all of that
15 can be addressed, and we can make sure that we're
16 not making any mistakes, in terms of how we're
17 implementing things.
18 And you can also -- one of the things that I
19 know they addressed in Maryland, is: What do you do
20 in areas where you have a lack of infrastructure and
21 technology, when you are rolling out these Park
22 tests that are available online?
23 So, I think we need to do that.
24 I think that we also need to give parents of
25 students with disabilities the right to opt out of
222
1 these tests, if they're not going to be appropriate
2 for the students, and they're not going be accurate
3 measures of what the students are learning.
4 If you can't -- if the test is not
5 accessible, and it's not -- if you have a child with
6 an intractable reading disability, and there's
7 nobody who can deliver the proper accommodations for
8 a New York State ELA test, math test, why should --
9 why should you have to -- what -- why should your
10 child have to take that test?
11 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I'm going to assume that
12 yours is a rhetorical question, but let me ask you
13 one last thing, please.
14 Same thing: If you could change something,
15 within reasonable constraints, what would you like
16 that to be?
17 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: In reasonable constraints,
18 I would amend the APPR bill, to -- to not enforce
19 any of -- to not put the pressure on the educators.
20 To, basically, like a "hold harmless" for two years,
21 as we go through the implementation, so educators
22 can really be more focused on truly developing the
23 skills that they need, and, also, really focus on
24 implementing the right assessments, the right growth
25 models.
223
1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Yeah, I completely agree
2 with you.
3 I think our move to common core is largely a
4 good thing, but, it is a work in progress.
5 And if we are going to be basing evaluations
6 ultimately on that, I think -- personally, I think
7 that three years is probably better.
8 But, I appreciate you coming here, and I
9 appreciate your patience very much.
10 And the last thing is: This goes to show you
11 can learn something new every day.
12 I don't know enough about universal design.
13 I will pay more attention.
14 And, I sit as the Senate's representative to
15 the Education Reform Commission, formed by
16 Governor Cuomo. So, I'm sure that could be made
17 part of our discussions.
18 But --
19 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: Yeah, I would love to -- I
20 can -- I could give you a whole presentation on
21 universal design and learning sometime.
22 And, they have introduced the bill in the
23 Assembly, 8196.
24 And, when I submit all of my documents to
25 you, I'll make sure that you have that. Okay?
224
1 Thank you.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Thank you very much.
3 JAYE BEA SMALLEY: You're welcome.
4 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, last, but by no
5 means least, Lisa Edstrom, Parent Voices of
6 New York.
7 Hi, Lisa.
8 LISA EDSTROM: Thank you, Senator, for this
9 opportunity to speak.
10 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I married a Lisa, so I
11 have to listen to everything you say.
12 LISA EDSTROM: Good.
13 I'm here today -- I have 20 years' experience
14 as an educator, but I'm really here as a parent.
15 And, I'm part of an organization called
16 "Parent Voices New York," which started up
17 recently in Brooklyn, New York, but we welcome
18 parents from all over the state.
19 And we're really just trying to get parent
20 voices out there, so we really appreciate that
21 you're allowing me to speak as a parent today.
22 I'm not as an educator, and not as an expert,
23 in that respect, but as an expert on my children,
24 and representing parents who want to have more of a
25 voice in the conversation.
225
1 In thinking about where we've come from, and
2 where we are now, with testing, I have a lot of
3 concerns as a parent.
4 As an educator, I've experienced 20 years of
5 what testing has looked like in New York State.
6 I started off as a kindergarten teacher in
7 Mount Kisco many years ago. And, now I'm in teacher
8 education.
9 But as a parent, what I've seen in the last
10 five years or so, has really distressed me, as I see
11 it distressing my children, in terms of the stakes
12 that are put on.
13 I think the concern for parents is really
14 around the high stakes of testing.
15 We want assessments. We want to know what
16 our children are doing, what our children are
17 learning, what they need to improve on.
18 We want our teachers to have those tools.
19 And we think that assessment really should be
20 about helping improve children's learning in the
21 classroom, but our concerns, that these high-stakes
22 tests don't do that. That these high-stakes tests
23 that are being used to evaluate teachers, evaluate
24 schools, and school closures are based upon these
25 test scores, put too much pressure on our children,
226
1 and put too much pressure on the teachers.
2 And what we're seeing is, now, teaching to
3 the test.
4 One of the earlier speakers talked about how
5 four to six weeks, on average, is spent now in test
6 prep.
7 In New York City, in some schools that I
8 visit, more than that. Test prep start starts in
9 beginning of the year.
10 I have a child now in third grade.
11 When he was in first grade, he got homework
12 that was called "test-prep homework." And, there is
13 no test in first grade. This is getting him ready
14 for third grade.
15 These are the kinds of concerns that we've,
16 as parents. You know, what are the impacts on our
17 children?
18 My older child, who is now in high school,
19 when he was in seventh grade, developed a facial
20 tick around the time of testing.
21 And we realized, as soon as his testing was
22 over, the tick went away.
23 So, there are risks associated with the
24 pressures that are put on our children around these
25 tests. And I think that the pressure is put there
227
1 because the testing is now driving the curriculum
2 because there are so many -- the stakes are now so
3 high for our teachers in our schools.
4 When assessments were really about
5 understanding what our children knew, so that we
6 could improve what was going on the classroom level,
7 we didn't have that -- those kinds of issues that
8 we're having -- that we're seeing now.
9 I want to speak briefly to the field tests,
10 because I -- that did come up. And it wasn't
11 something that I originally had planned for my
12 testimony, but, I definitely was part of a group
13 that protested at Pearson last week, against the
14 field tests.
15 And, one of the concerns I have, as a parent,
16 with regards to field testing, is that, as a
17 professional, as an educational researcher, I'm
18 required to get informed consent.
19 But, field tests are, essentially, research
20 being done on our children, about tests, for
21 Pearson, for State Education Department, and nobody
22 is asking me, as a parent, for my informed consent
23 to use my child for that research.
24 Again --
25
228
1 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Let me just interject.
2 LISA EDSTROM: Yeah, sure.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: I agree, to a certain
4 extent, but, if at some point we are going to have
5 reliable tests that do proper assessing, that the
6 field test is the precursor.
7 LISA EDSTROM: Well, I don't disagree with
8 this idea of the notion of field testing, but I do
9 think that parents should be informed.
10 And, in New York City, in most schools,
11 parents weren't even told that it was happening.
12 And it became --
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: But whose fault is that?
14 LISA EDSTROM: I would imagine school
15 administrators.
16 I mean, what happened within New York City,
17 is that, a network of parents informing parents, got
18 the word out to as many people as possible.
19 But, even in my own school, as I was talking
20 to parents, the parents in the grades that were
21 testing were saying: What are you talking about?
22 I've never heard of this.
23 So, again, I don't know whose fault that is.
24 But, as a parent, I want to know when my
25 child is being asked to sit for a test.
229
1 I know about the mandated State tests, but I
2 wasn't informed about the field tests from my
3 school.
4 And that's a concern to me.
5 And, again, like I said, there are risks
6 associated with this, in terms of doing the
7 research, because there are reactions that children
8 have, that parents have, that teachers have, around
9 these high stakes, that are stressful to our
10 children.
11 And we want to be able to say: Maybe I want
12 to opt out of this field test, because I don't think
13 that my child needs to be put through that stress
14 again, after having sat through the mandated State
15 testing for six days.
16 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Do you agree with the
17 implementation of common core?
18 LISA EDSTROM: I do agree with the
19 implementation of the common core.
20 What I don't agree with, is the high stakes
21 that are put on the tests.
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, so which tests would
23 you get rid of?
24 LISA EDSTROM: If I had my way, I'd get rid
25 of all of the high-stakes testing, and I would go
230
1 back to local classroom assessments that are
2 designed by teachers, for teaching.
3 SENATOR FLANAGAN: So, you would get rid of,
4 virtually, all the New York State tests?
5 LISA EDSTROM: I would get -- I'm actually
6 not against the Regents. I think they're good
7 standard benchmarks, although, I, as a parent, only
8 just heading into that, because I have a
9 ninth-grader.
10 But, I really don't think that testing
11 grades 3 through 8, every year, for these standards,
12 and not to measure what my child knows in a way that
13 informs me as a parent, or my child's teachers, to
14 help improve the education that they're getting in
15 the classroom; but, rather, to judge the school,
16 externally, in a way that just puts pressure on my
17 kids.
18 I'd get rid of those.
19 If there was some way that they could be
20 tested earlier in the year, that that information
21 could be used by the teachers so they could say, Oh,
22 your child needs to work on X, Y, and Z, and we're
23 going to do that, I wouldn't be against that.
24 But, I --
25 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Well, I had asked that
231
1 question early on.
2 The test, right in the beginning of the year,
3 as a diagnostic test. And then --
4 LISA EDSTROM: That would be okay.
5 But, right now, what we're seeing is, way too
6 much time spent on test prep, not on good
7 instruction, for these tests that don't inform us of
8 anything, as parents or teachers.
9 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, the other two
10 questions that I asked everyone, so you've now had a
11 chance to listen to everyone else's answers --
12 LISA EDSTROM: I have.
13 SENATOR FLANAGAN: -- on a scale of 1 to 10?
14 LISA EDSTROM: On a scale of 1 to 10, I would
15 give the tests a "1."
16 And the reason I don't give them a zero, is
17 because I do think that the current state of the
18 accountability has raised at least more of an
19 awareness of the failures of our education system to
20 really address the needs of children of color and
21 low-income children, by --
22 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, if you could change
23 one thing?
24 LISA EDSTROM: I would ditch the system we've
25 got, and look at how we can really, maybe go towards
232
1 portfolio-based assessments that are asking children
2 and teachers to look, over time, at the improvements
3 that are being made.
4 Or, even what you suggested earlier,
5 pre-testing and post-testing.
6 But, not these tests that are really about
7 high stakes, and only judging teachers in schools.
8 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay, last, but by no
9 means least: If you had to pick out, what's the
10 best thing about education in the state of New York,
11 today?
12 LISA EDSTROM: Oh, that's a tough one.
13 I think it varies, but I think the best thing
14 about my children's education in the state of
15 New York, has been the diversity of the experiences
16 they've had.
17 However, I will add a caveat to that.
18 My younger child who is this third grade now,
19 is not getting quite the diversity of experiences
20 that my older child had, because of the focus on
21 testing now.
22 He's not getting as much science or
23 social studies.
24 He is getting a strong arts program, but
25 that's because it's an enrichment program that's
233
1 supported by the PTA.
2 SENATOR FLANAGAN: Okay.
3 Thank you very much.
4 LISA EDSTROM: Thank you.
5 SENATOR FLANAGAN: For those of you who are
6 still with us, I really appreciate your patience.
7 And, the room finally cooled down after a
8 long period of time.
9 But, as I had said in the beginning, we will
10 make sure that, ultimately, there's a record of
11 everything, including all of the comments that we've
12 gotten, that were submitted today formally, and
13 those that we've gotten in our office more
14 informally.
15 Thank you.
16
17 (Whereupon, the public hearing, held
18 before the New York State Senate Standing
19 Committee on Education, concluded.)
20
21 ---oOo---
22
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