UPDATE, October 10, 2011: Governor Jerry Brown vetoed SB 547, sponsored by Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg, on Saturday calling it “yet another siren song of school reform,” reports John Fensterwald in Thoughts on Public Education.
In a sharp, two-page veto message of SB 547, Brown mocked “academic ‘experts” backed by “editorialists and academics alike,” who have “subjugated California to unceasing pedagogical change and experimentation.”... Instead, Brown indicated that he favors a “focus on quality” instead of quantity – with measures such as “good character or love of learning,” as well as “excitement and creativity.” As to how to do this: “What about a system that relies on locally convened panels to visit schools, observe teachers, interview students and examine student work? Such a system wouldn’t produce an API number, but it could improve the quality of our schools.”
In his veto message, he also criticized the timing, taking effect at the same time that the state was switching to Common Core standards in math and English language arts, with their own set of demands. The combination would “add significant costs and confusion,” Brown wrote....
Writing in the Huffington Post, EdSource's Louis Freedberg noted:
Brown's critique of testing is significant not only because it marks the most outspoken critique of testing of any governor, but also because it comes from the chief executive of a state which educates 1 in 8 of the nation's public school children.
Brown's remarks also puts him at odds with the Obama administration which, as a condition for states to compete for a series of government grants, including the administration's signature Race to the Top competition, has relentlessly pushed states to develop even more extensive data collection efforts. That includes a new drive to pressure states to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations.
"The current fashion is to collect endless quantitative data to populate ever changing indicators of performance to distinguish the educational "good" from the educational "bad," Brown wrote.
Peter Schrag, at left, the weekly columnist for California Progress Report, and former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee, writes in his post yesterday of the shift in education accountability- from a rigid reliance on test-based numbers, the pendulum is slowly swinging back toward breadth, flexibility and moderation. SB 547, a Bill by Senate President pro-tem Darrell Steinberg, he argues would be one step in the right direction. It would replace the Academic Performance Index (API) assigned to schools by the California Department of Education to measure quality with the new Education Quality Index (EQI).
The criteria would still include the standardized tests – accounting for a minimum of 40 percent in the elementary schools, a maximum of 40 percent in the high schools -- on a new Education Quality Index (EQI). But they would also comprise, in the upper schools, dropout and graduation rates, readiness for college and careers and a set of other items yet to be determined, among them, possibly in the future, a Pupil Growth Index, a Pupil Engagement Index and an Innovation Index.
While it leaves much to be worked out by advisory committees, the move away from linking performance to standardized testing is welcomed by most in the educational community
Starting the 2014 school year, the bill would void the enormously important API that for 12 years has been the standard measurement for schools and districts, even influencing the local homebuying market. The Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, is charged with filling in the finer details of this broad framework. The importance of the API cannot be overstated- the curricular drivers in education are those educational goals that are required, funded, and measured. As a result, schools, focused on accountability for a narrow set of standards, are unable to offer classes that lack the essential funding stream from the legislature. The number of students enrolled in Career Technical Education courses on high school campuses has dropped from 75% to 29% since 1987. With 100,000 students dropping out annually, this bill may be one step towards the breadth and flexibility required in a broader educational reform that Schrag writes about in his post.
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