Testing boycott and teacher ratings

A snowstorm, an earthquake  --  and now we have Pamela Grundy and Pat McCrory on the same side of an education issue. The end times must be here.

Grundy, a founder of Mecklenburg ACTS and Parents Across America,  is urging parents to boycott state exams this spring,  part of a national  "Testing Resistance and Reform Spring"  protest against excessive testing.  Other sponsors are FairTest,  United Opt Out,  the Network for Public Education and Save Our Schools.

Grundy and Carol Sawyer of Meck ACTS

So far there aren't a lot of details about the boycott.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg parents have talked about keeping their kids out of testing in the past;  the official stand is that tests are part of the curriculum and parents aren't allowed to opt out.

McCrory,  the Republican governor,  probably doesn't support the boycott.  But he did get vocal about the hazards of overtesting at last week's Emerging Issues Forum on teachers.   (Speaking of which,  anyone interested in issues raised at that forum can sign up for a free online course on world-class teaching,  sponsored by N.C. State's Emerging Issues Institute.)

No one's arguing against kids taking tests to show what they know.  The controversy springs from the barrage of N.C. exams designed primarily to rate teachers and schools.  A lot of folks who want solid data about the quality of public schools say the state is going too far in the quest to generate numbers that may or may not capture teacher quality.

Meanwhile,  we just got a first look at how those test-generated ratings play out for N.C. schools and districts.  I'll be eager to hear what people are thinking as they check out data on their schools.  The state's site makes it easy to look up schools and districts,  but it's tough to do any kind of big-picture comparison and analysis looking up one data point at a time.  State officials say they'll send me a spreadsheet as early as today.  If you'd like a copy,  shoot me an email at ahelms@charlotteobserver.com with  "spreadsheet"  in the header.

I caught up with Julie Kowal,  executive director of CarolinaCAN,  after I'd filed the story on value-added ratings.  Her group is big on data and accountability,  so it was no surprise to hear her say that  "the wonk in me"  loves this report:  "It is so valuable for the state to make this publicly available in the way they have. We need this data to be able to make responsible decisions."  But she added a note of ambiguity:  "The parent in me thinks it's very difficult to know what it's good for."

The Broad barrage

If only I could have cloned myself, I'd have been out front on the Eli Broad story.

Last summer, in writing an application for a seminar at Columbia University, I outlined the involvement of the Broad Foundation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and discussed my interest in exploring how private philanthropy is shaping public education. When I got there, it turned out a lot of us were asking similar questions.

Now that I've finally broken off time and gotten some information on grant money from CMS, everyone's buzzing about Broad. Readers have been sending me great links. So, for those who want to delve deeper than the print article can go, here's more.

The nudge that finally got me focused on Broad was a recent article in the Raleigh News & Observer about how Broad might influence their new superintendent, who is being mentored by fellow Broad Superintendents Academy graduate Peter Gorman. There's also a WakeEd blog item that explores that issue.

Newsweek just published an investigation of whether investments by Broad, Gates and other education philanthropists have had the desired results. The conclusion: Not usually. The magazine looks at 10 school districts, none in the Southeast.

If you're trying to sort out the Broad/CMS connection, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out the "performance management" project that's gotten big bucks from Broad, Gates and Dell. CMS officials have been talking about this for years, and I've never quite gotten my head around a way to describe it in a newspaper article. When I asked CMS folks to help me with a clear, concise description, they sent me a four-page report. Here it is. The condensed version, from Chief Accountability Officer Robert Avossa: It's about providing educators with data to make decisions and creating systems to hold people accountable for results. Testing and performance pay are part of performance management, but it's a broader effort that includes CMS's school progress reports and school quality reviews.

The Broad Foundation Web site contains some details about the CMS connection, but it takes some hunting (again, thanks to readers who got me started). Here's a description of the Broad approach to investing, and here's where they list CMS as one of the foundation's investments in "redesigned, high-performing institutions." Here's information about the academy that trained Gorman and Wake's Anthony Tata, and the residency program that has placed other administrators in CMS.

An astute reader noted that Gorman is a member of the Broad Center's board of directors, and questioned whether that makes it a conflict for CMS to be a finalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education. Foundation spokeswoman Erica Lepping said it would be if Gorman were a foundation board member. But the center is a separate nonprofit group that's funded by the foundation, she said, and is not involved in awarding the prize, which brings national prestige and hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships.

On the anti-Broad side, "How to tell if your district is infected by the Broad virus," orginally posted on a Seattle education blog, is getting a lot of circulation. And here's the Parents Across America "guide to the Broad Foundation." Those who are interested in the perspective of Diane Ravitch, a PFA founder and national education writer/researcher, can find more about the role of philanthropists in her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

I cringed when I saw that the "virus" checklist includes "Local newspaper fails to report on much of this." I'll take the blame for putting Broad below the breaking news about school closings, performance pay and such. If Broad has a strategy for squelching news coverage, the only part I saw in action was that the school board's Broad-sponsored retreats were often too dull to generate stories.


Got more recommended reading? Post links in comments. The spam filter may snag them, but I'll check periodically to retrieve them. Be patient, though; it is Mothers Day.

Parents mobilize nationwide

Pam Grundy, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools parent activist (and frequent poster to this blog), will be part of next week's launch of Parents Across America, a coalition of parents who support equity, diversity and parent involvement in public education.

She says the idea for a national parents' network emerged as local activists realized that issues they were dealing with often originate on a national level. Big-money donors such as The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation push their visions of reform. The U.S. Department of Education is using Race to the Top money to shape how states and local districts deal with failing schools.

Grundy says she and parents from Wake and Durham counties are working with activists from Chicago, New York and other districts across the country to sort out the issues and make their voices heard. Diane Ravitch, an author, education professor and former assistant secretary of education, will give the keynote speech at Monday's launch in New York City. Click the link above to learn more about the parents group.