As Commissioner Stewart hypes FSA cyber-attacks, FDLE dismisses case

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FLDE) quietly closed its Florida Standards Assessment “cyber-attack” investigation this month citing an inability to identify suspects.  Not surprisingly, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart ignored the FDLE finding at the September Board of Education (BOE) meeting. Instead, she worked mightily to keep the notion of an unknown cyber-villain alive. BOE Member Gary Chartrand spoke of imagined “motives” and his fear of future attacks from what he calls “anti-test” citizen groups. Is he really implying that parents with laptops are behind the failures of the American Institutes of Research (AIR) server?

Last spring students across the state were repeatedly blocked from logging on to the AIR website while attempting to take the FSA. Their work often disappeared mid-test and many students were locked out and forced to start over the following day.  Superintendents at their wits end suspended testing for days due to confusion.

For years the state used “test security” as the reason to deny parents, teachers and students the transparency of reviewing their tests and understanding exactly how the state arrived at each score. Because of that, it was truly astonishing when no one, including Commissioner Stewart, cared that students saw test questions, went home and came back the next day or even the following week to re-test.

At first, Stewart put the blame on AIR, as this quote from the Tallahassee Democrat illustrates: “The company’s failure to follow protocol is absolutely unacceptable and the department will hold AIR accountable for the disruption they have caused to our state’s students, teachers and school staff,” said Pam Stewart. FSA failures grew exponentially and soon all eyes turned to AIR and Commissioner Stewart.

Determined to deflect blame away from herself, Stewart has repeatedly blamed “cyber-attacks” for all the FSA testing woes. For districts, tasked with making district-wide online testing a reality without proper state funding, the word “glitch” became synonymous with an FSA testing process that was both flawed and unreliable.

Despite the fact that parents, teachers, superintendents and school boards have warned that the FSA should not be used to grade any one, both Stewart and the BOE have doubled down on their belief that the troubled FSA must be used to grade schools and evaluate teachers. BOE Member Padget has spoken endlessly about giving students a “cold shower” by making the politically-driven pass/fail cut scores so harsh that they induce astronomically high failure rates.

Stewart, late to the party, has finally started talking about seeking damages from AIR. Parents have been demanding this for months after learning that AIR is getting $220M to deliver the test. It’s pretty clear that Stewart, legislators and the Florida Board of Education find it easier to hide behind the “cyber-attack” bogey-man than face the facts. The 2015 FSA was a poorly executed rush job. Its failure belongs to the politicians and “ed reform” lobbyists who pushed school districts into online testing knowing full well that no one, especially the state, was prepared.

Commissioner Stewart often cherry picks pieces of stories she wants to tell. Crying about “cyber-attacks” like Chicken Little does not make them real. Just ask the FLDE who took a politically-hyped charge, did a reality check and found zero suspects. Not surprisingly, all roads lead back to Stewart and AIR. They’re the real suspects.

 

 

FL Sups declare no confidence in Accountability system

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parents, teachers and education advocates across the state are relieved that the Florida Association of District School Superintendents (FADSS) has joined them in declaring an open distrust of the high-stakes FSA testing scheme and its broken credibility.  FADSS issued a unanimous statement today confirming that they had lost all confidence in the state’s school accountability system.  Here are the key elements from the release:

• Suspend any application of the results of the 2015 Florida Standards Assessment, recognizing that no one should be graded by this test, especially in the current high stakes environment.
• If districts must be graded, all should receive an “I,” “based on the availability of limited and flawed data” related to the 2015 FSA and the growing uncertainty about the veracity of the impending 2016 test.
• Reject the concept that the standards set for the FSA mirror the levels of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAEP). There is no evidence that NEAP is fully aligned to or measures Florida Standards. Further, “NAEP is a representative sample assessment designed to report group results, and cannot provide accurate data on individual students and schools. By law, the assessment is required to make sure that all personally identifiable information about students and schools remains confidential.”
• Conduct an extensive review of the entire accountability system.

The statement follows September’s Board of Education meeting where former Chair Gary Chartrand devoted his opening remarks to repeatedly sell his recommendation to use NAEP as a comparative tool to set FSA cut scores as high as possible and somehow close the proficiency gap. His logic mirrors that of Jeb’s Foundation which completely ignores the fact that NAEP is an apple and FSA is an orange.  Chartrand emphasized that, “the FSA is the only objective piece of information the state provides to parents.”  When cut scores are arbitrarily set based on politics, it’s hard to understand how anyone could possibly perceive the FSA as “objective.”

BOE Vice Chair Padget recently displayed a serious disconnect when he wrote an op ed advocating another Foundation for Florida’s Future “reform” strategy – raise the FSA cut scores so high that 50% or more of the students are guaranteed to fail.  His piece included the notion that “it’s better to take a cold shower now,” as if using one test to doom a child will somehow result in future “success” and ability to “compete.” In a comedic twist, Jeb’s Foundation echoed Padget’s words by sending an “alert” earnestly urging people to advocate for the highest cut scores possible.

This storm has been brewing since at least 2009 when parents really started waking up and realizing that the Florida Legislature and “education reform” policy is openly hostile to public schools. Sen. Bill Montford,  Executive Director of FADSS, and former Leon County Superintendent, has repeatedly warned his Senate colleagues, Commissioner Stewart and the BOE that the public credibility of the A-F School Accountability scheme is damaged beyond repair.

In a recent Tampa Bay Times article, Jeff Solochek quoted Montford:

Superintendents “have been there. They have taken a lot of criticism from parents, and other professionals, because of their support and participation in it,” he (Montford) said. “Superintendents in Florida have reached a point where they cannot support the accountability system as it is moving forward.”

Public education advocates have fought so very hard to be heard, all the while being treated with gross disrespect by politicians and bureaucrats.  Education “reform” has hurt our children and harmed their schools.

Parents, teachers, students, administrators and school board members share powerful common ground. We are the people who breathe life into public schools. Is everything perfect? Far from it. There’s massive work to do. But when the superintendents of Florida put their justified fear of political retribution aside to do the right thing for the three million public school children who are counting on us, it’s a good day.

Flawed FSA shouldn’t be used for grading anyone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one is surprised that the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) was deemed valid by the EdCount/Alpine study. What’s odd is that the equally important factor of reliability was not considered. Finding the FSA psychometrically valid does not address the terrible conditions under which the test was administered, nor does it resolve significant concerns about psychometric reliability. Ignoring this, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart assumed that “all Floridians will share my confidence in the assessment.”

There isn’t a Florida student, parent, teacher, superintendent, board member or administrator who doesn’t see through this charade. Superintendents from Leon to Miami-Dade have expressed their deep concerns. The study’s own numbers point out that just 65 percent of the test items match the Florida Standards. It concludes that it would be wrong to retain students or deny diplomas based on the 2015 FSA, yet Commissioner Stewart plans to use these same flawed test results to set pass/fail cut scores, grade schools and evaluate teachers. It’s fundamentally unfair to punish teachers and grade schools based on scores where 35 percent of the test items were never taught to Florida students.

Put another way, if a student answered every question based on the Florida standards correctly, he would receive a 65 or a D letter grade. It’s hard to reconcile this poor finding with Commissioner Stewart’s glowing reaction to the study. Who or what is she trying to protect?

Stewart and the Board of Education have a political problem. Admitting failure is not an option. Years of data manipulation, policy meddling, political favors and cruel stakes have resulted in the sort of public mistrust that has parents refusing to let their children take the FSA.

They know that 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush and his foundation lobbyists will not tolerate the unraveling of his Florida school reform miracle. Legislators also share responsibility for following Bush’s policy lead and wasting billions of tax dollars blindly passing one high stakes testing reform after another. Lawmakers such as Sen. David Simmons pushed for an FSA study that was not based solely on psychometric validity. This is his chance to abandon the “reform” agenda and do something right for Florida public schools.

Sorry, Commissioner Stewart, people aren’t buying the crazy wizardry that says a “partially-valid” FSA should be used for grading schools, establishing cut scores and evaluating teacher performance. We know that using a single test to fail a child or deny a diploma is akin to malpractice. We know that using a flawed test for docking pay or firing teachers based on one test, smacks of big government

Stop pretending that computer-based testing is more efficient when it eats up weeks of class time and is unavailable to many of Florida’s 2.74 million public school students. Stop denying the unmitigated disaster that was the 2015 AIR test rollout. Start demanding that we recover some of that $220 million dollars we paid to AIR. If we can’t afford art and music or enough guidance counselors, we sure can’t afford to pay for the failures of wealthy vendors.

It’s time to take fear out of our classrooms. Standardized tests should be limited and used for diagnostic purposes only. Let’s operate under complete transparency. Teachers, parents and students deserve to see the tests, examine the questions and understand deficits to ensure successful learning. It’s imperative that we shift to what’s best for kids and move away from the cynical, political premise of “education reform.”

Opinion by Kathleen Oropeza, Gainesville Sun Ocala Star Banner

Addendum:

Predictably, the EdCount/Alpine verdict comes with strings. The department made a great show of finding an independent entity, but the two firms share close ties to FSA test creator American Institutes of Research (AIR).  AIR is a client of EdCount, EdCount founder, Ellen Forte, once worked for AIR and AIR researcher Dr. Abdullah Ferdous and Alpine employee, Dr. Chad W. Buckendahl, have collaborated on research papers with titles such as, “Recommending cut scores with a subset of items: An empirical illustration.”  Is it any wonder that the EdCount/Alpine team was the sole applicant for Florida’s $600K “validity” study?