Would ADE Director Ken James Article Qualify as Gov't. Propaganda?
Amazing "Academic Progress" ADE Director Ken James says, B U T
*Test Scores are 11 Percentile Points lower than in 1990 (a 22% decrease).
*College Remediation Rate is 51.6% (46.6% in 1995); National Average is 33% .
*Only Nine States Scored Lower Than Arkansas in 8th Grade Math on NAEP Test.
*US Dept of Educations says Arkansas Benchmark Tests May Be Too Easy
*Only 28% of AR students pass test on AP courses, while 59.4% pass nationawide
*Fordham Foundation Gives Arkansas an F on Standards Preparation for college.
*Educational Reforms Have Cost $1.4 BILLION which equals a 3% sales tax in AR
See details and documentation below:
Ken James, State Department of Education Commissioner, wrote a guest editorial, Sept 10, 06, for the Democrat Gazette. James said, “Never in this state have we been able to boast the academic progress we’ve experienced in the last few years. To be able to do so in such a short time is nothing short of amazing.” See this link for Ken James guest editorial: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Perspective/166241/ 1
Read the following statements by Ken James and the following Facts and decide if his guest article would fit the description of propaganda?
To continue reading this article click September 14, below or go to this link or if sent here just scroll down
posted by Debbie Pelley at Thursday, September 14, 2006
1 Comments:
ADE Ken James touts the scores on nationally normed test in his article, saying, "Scores on the Iowa Test of Basic skills were well above the 50th percentile in most cases." James didn't tell the readers the following:
FACTS: The composite score for 7th graders on the nationally normed test (ITBS) just released for this year is 50% - 11 percentile points lower (a 22% decrease in scores) than in 1990, and 7 percentile points below 1984 (a 14% decrease) when the accountability system was set up in Arkansas billions of dollars ago. Score for 5th grade this year was 58% which is 9 percentile points lower than in1990 and 4 points lower than in 1984 when the accountability system was set up in Arkansas. Another paper reported that Ken James was jubilant over the scores this year. And 8th and 9th grade were below 50% on this test even this year. See this link for more details on these scores: article: http://www.wpaag.org/Test%20Scores%20-%20Scores%2006%2011%20pts%20lower%20than%201990.htm 2
James said: "For the first time ever, Arkansas students scored at or very near the national average on The Nation’s Report Card the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP )."
Fact: Only 22% of Arkansas students scored proficient or above on this 8th grade math NAEP test to which James is referring in 2005 - only nine states in the nation scored lower than that. Only 34% of Arkansas students scored Proficient or above on the NAEP 4th grade math test in 2005; 29% scored Proficient or above in 4th grade reading and 26% in 8th grade reading. Only twelve states scored lower than Arkansas on the 8th Grade Reading NAEP Test in 2005. Are these scores something to brag about and do they sound like national averages? For more explanation and links to the scores, see this link: http://www.wpaag.org/Testing%20-%20NAEP%20Score%20Scam-Spin%20vs%20Fact.htm 3
James said Arkansas has become "a model for other states to replicate in terms of Advanced Placement policies."
FACTS: A recent article reported that in Arkansas 28% of the students score a 3 or above on a 5 point scale while 59.4% of students in the nation score 3 or above. Students can earn college credit only if they score a 3 or higher on the exam. What a model Arkansas makes! http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/165029/ 4
James said: " The number of students scoring proficient or above on Arkansas Benchmark test scores increased this year across all racial groups in all grade levels in both subjects with one exception—6th grade literacy for Hispanics."
Facts: Please remember that benchmark tests are designed by the ADE and they can make them as hard or as easy as they want. "Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James on Monday defended Arkansas’ Benchmark and End-of-Course exams against suggestions made by the U. S. Department of Education that the tests given to more than half of the state’s students every year may be too easy," according to a newspaper article. http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/160160/ 5
Just how high is the bar or cutoff scores for Basic on the "easy" Benchmark Tests now after the bar was raised last year? Starting this year, those 4th grade math students have to reach that whopping high score of 32 points out of 80 in math (a 40%) to make Basic on these so called rigorous benchmark tests. Third grade math students only had to get 23 out of 80 pts to score Basic. (Teachers are required by the ADE to give an F to any student who scores anything lower than a 60 percent.) Further, the cutoff score for 8th grade Proficient was lowered 8 points this year. I chose Basic achievement level here for comparison because ADE chose to use Basic scores to tout their good scores on the ADE website.
Cutoff Score for Basic Achievement Level in Math on Arkansas Benchmark Tests after the Bar Was Raised, Fall 05. (Of 80 possible raw points)
Grade 3 - 23 out of 80 pts.
Grade 4 - 32 out of 80 pts.
Grade 5 - 31 out of 80 pts
Grade 6 - 30 out of 80 pts.
Grade 7 -28 out of 80 pts
Grade 8 -30 out of 80 pts
http://arkedu.state.ar.us/whats_new/pdf/recommended_benchmark_cutscores2005.pdf 6 This is the link for this year’s cutoff scores but not for previous years
FACT: The college remediation rate in Arkansas for 2005 is 51.6%. The national average remediation rate is 33%. In 1995-96 Arkansas college remediation rate was 46.6%. Why is the remediation rate increasing if our educational reforms are working so well? Yet, Ken James says, “Never in this state have we been able to boast the academic progress we’ve experienced in the last few years. To be able to do so in such a short time is nothing short of amazing.” http://www.aradvocates.org/_images/pdfs/v2n2.pdf 7
Perhaps the following information will give a clue as to why the college remediation rate in Arkansas is still so high. "Thomas B. Fordham Institute gave Arkansas’ world history education standards an “F” because the 2000 standards don’t refer to specific world events and provide no guide to what high school students should know by the time they graduate…. The standards used in Arkansas received 25 out of a possible 110 points (that's a failing grade of 22%) for the content or material identified to be taught in its world history standards, and 13 out of a potential 60 points (that's a failing grade of 21%) for instruction or the approach in the standards to teaching in a way that is of interest to students.
"The institute has routinely given Arkansas’ education standards low grades. The same set of history standards earned an F in 2003 for treatment of American history. It also gave the state an overall F in a 2000 study that covered standards for five subjects." The Fordham Foundation is a well known nonprofit, Washington-based institute headed by Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant U. S. secretary of education in the Reagan administration. http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/156824/ 8
FACT: To add to that dismal information, "Arkansas received a D-plus in how well high schools in the state prepare students for college-level work according to 'Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Higher Education'. "The report also noted that a small proportion of 11th- and 12th-graders scores well on Advanced Placement tests and college entrance exams. Only 133 out of every 1, 000 high school graduates scored in the top 20th percentile nationally on the SAT and ACT college entrance exams." http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/165812/ 9
FACT: Ken James did get one thing right in his guest article when he said, " Funding for schools has grown dramatically."
Following amounts were added to K-12 education in Arkansas:
· 380 million in 2003
· $170 million in 05
· $200 million in 06 in special session,
· $277 million for school facilities just allocated August, 06.
· The Adequacy Experts in August, 06 recommended another $340 million for the coming year.
· Altogether that would equal $1,367,000,000 – ($1.4 billion) or an increase equal to a 3% sales tax in Arkansas. 10
As a retired teacher am I disillusioned with education in Arkansas? No, not with education as such, but I am definitely disheartened and angry with the deceptive government education reforms and the tax burden that is being imposed on the citizens of Arkansas and making students hate school and causing teachers to leave the profession. I am joined by a vast majority of other teachers in Arkansas. In an Arkansas teacher survey in 2000 and another in 2003, 87% of teachers said, "The recent educational reforms have contributed to more job dissatisfaction or caused me to look for other employment." (86% in 2000 and 87% in 2003)
http://www.wpaag.org/Teacher%20Survey%20Results%202003.htmlhttp://www.wpaag.org/TeacherSurveySummary.htm 11
I believe that educators for the most part have done a terrific job in overcoming the burdensome hurdles they have had to overcome with all the faulty curriculum, excessive paperwork, absences from school to participate in all the worthless staff development, and other things imposed on them by government control?
Where do we really stand on education today in relation to the rest of the nation? Probably about the same place we stood twenty years ago before they started all the educational reforms and wasted hundreds of millions on educational reforms. The testing system has been so corrupted that the tests prove nothing any more. See this article for details on how tests have been corrupted. http://www.wpaag.org/Testing%20-%20Debacle-No%20Correlation%20NAEEP-ITBS-Benchmark.htm 12
Arkansas is a poor state. Isn't it statistically proven that students in poor districts score lower than those in more affluent districts? Why should it not be so with states? No amount of money in the world will change the culture and emphasis on education by the parents.
There are ways that could help change that. However, forced government control; forcing teachers out of the profession; taking away the community schools; making students hate education by reducing them to a test score and reducing the curriculum to the three T's - test, test, test; and tying the hands of teachers so they are unable to use the gift of teaching with which they have been endowed by their Creator will never help the situation. We teachers don't have to be very visionary to know without a doubt (like most of us knew in the beginning of the reforms) that educational reform as we know it in Arkansas will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER succeed. See these links for teacher and superintendent surveys that tell you how educators feel about the reforms. http://www.wpaag.org/TeacherSurveySummary.htm 13
Therefore, our government officials have no choice but to put out propaganda to cover their failures.
For documentation and the footnotes go to the end of this article at this link: http://www.wpaag.org/Testing%20-%20Ken%20James%20Guest%20Ed%20Propaganda.htm
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