Our problem is not teacher quality: Our problem is poverty.

Re: How to ditch the common core and teach kids real skills (Time Ideas, Nov 5, 2014)   Sent to Time Ideas, November 7.


Marty Nemko suggests that we need "dream-team" teachers because American students' performance on international tests is so bad.  A substantial amount of research shows, however, that when we control for the impact of poverty, American test scores are at the top of the world. Our overall scores are unspectacular because there is so much child poverty in US, now 25%.  High-scoring countries have much lower levels of child poverty.

Our problem is not teacher quality: Our problem is poverty.

Many studies confirm that poverty has a devastating effect on school performance:  The dream team, "the world’s most inspiring, transformational teachers" will have little effect when students are poorly fed, ill because of lack of health care, and read poorly because of lack of access to books.

Let's at least protect children from the effect of poverty with improved food programs, health care, and school libraries.  These are the crucial elements of the Dream School Dr. Nemko discusses. Improved nutrition, basic health care and access to books will improve school performance, but in addition, it is the right thing to do. 

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Original article: https://time.com/3559588/how-to-ditch-the-common-core-and-teach-kids-real-skills/

sources:

Child Poverty rate: UNICEF, 2007. An Overview of Child-Well Being in Rich Countries. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Report Card 7. The United Nations Childrens Fund).

Control for poverty: Control for effect of poverty: Payne, K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13; Bracey, G. 2009. The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/Bracey-Report. Berliner, D. 2011. The Context for Interpreting PISA Results in the USA: Negativism, Chauvinism, Misunderstanding, and the Potential to Distort the Educational Systems of Nations. In Pereyra, M., Kottoff, H-G., & Cowan, R. (Eds.). PISA under examination: Changing knowledge, changing tests, and changing schools. Amsterdam: Sense Publishers. Tienken, C. 2010. Common core state standards: I wonder? Kappa Delta Phi Record 47 (1): 14-17. Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/).

Protecting children against the impact of poverty:
 "Strengthening food programs,  increading health care, providing more access to books": Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;  
Krashen, S., Lee, SY, and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is The Library Important? Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level Journal of Language and Literacy Education: 8(1). http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/

NY Voters Approve $2 Billion Boondoggle

Posted as a comment on Bloomberg News
Stephen Krashen
November 5, 2014
"N.Y. Voters Approve $2 Billion Borrowing for School Technology," means voters have bought into the largest boondoggle in history. The computer companies make huge profits and take no risk. 
There is no evidence that "laptops, high-speed broadband and interactive white boards" will help students., and it is certain that most of the technology will be obsolete by the time it is installed.
Taxpayers will pay for the brave new technology, and if it doesn't result in improvement, teachers will be blamed. There will then be calls for more and newer, "improved" technology. In the meantime, there is no funding for the essentials.
A clear case of "take from the needy, give to the greedy."
Posted on http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-05/n-y-voters-approve-2-billion-borrowing-for-school-technology.html#disqus_thread

The Common Core: Ignoring Education's Real Problems

Stephen Krashen

In: Talking Points 28 (1): 26-28, 2014. (Themed issue: Learning English as a New Language)

In this paper, I will not discuss the Common Core standards themselves in any detail. My suspicion is that the standards were made unreasonably hard on purpose. As Susan Ohanian has noted, the language arts standards appear to be designed for English majors (Ohanian, 2012) and feature tasks that are far too difficult and, in fact, unreasonable, e.g. requiring students to ignore context in discussing texts. 

We have been regularly encouraged to comment on the content of the standards. Those who accept the invitation to discuss the content of the standards will have the impression they have a seat at the table. In reality, invitations to discuss the standards appear to be simply a means of control, diverting attention from the real issues:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum … That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate" (Chomsky, 2002, p. 42).

This is a weapon of mass distraction: We are invited to debate issues such as whether 10^th graders should be required to write 40% of their essays as arguments, 40% as informational, and 20% narrative, and we may even win a few concessions. But the "presuppositions of the system" are dead wrong.

Are our schools broken?

The Common Core State Standards (sometimes referred to as the CC$$, for reasons that will become clear later),  are based on the presupposition, widely discussed in the media, that our schools are broken, and that only a system of rigorous standards and tests will improve things.  But published studies conclude that our schools are not broken. The reason for our unspectacular international test scores is our high rate of child poverty: When researchers control for the effect of poverty, American scores are near the top of the world (e.g. Payne and Biddle, 1999; Carnoy and Rothstein, 2012).

Complaints about progress made by English leaners are also popular in the media.  We are told, for example that most English learners "languish" in ESL and bilingual programs for years, and never acquire enough English to join the mainstream.  A look at the data, however, shows that in general, English learners make acceptable progress (Krashen and McQuillan, 1995).

The silliest compaint about English learners is the observation that most of them score below the "proficient" level on tests of English reading. In other words, the complaint is that English learners are English learners. If they scored at the proficient level on English tests, they would not be English learners.

The real problem: poverty

The Common Core ignores the problem of poverty. Poverty means many things, all of which negatively impact school peformance. Among them are food deprivation, lack of health care, and lack of access to books (Krashen, 1997; Berliner, 2009).

The best teaching in the world will not help if students are hungry, ill, and have little or nothing to read.  Child poverty in the US is a huge 23%, second highest among all high-income countries (Adamson, 2013), and English learners have an even higher rate of poverty, estimated to be double that of the national average (Betalova, 2006).

The power of poverty has been demonstrated by many studies, including studies showing a strong negative correlation between levels of poverty and rates of reclassification as proficient in English among English learners (Krashen, 1996).

Access to books

The lack of access to books among high-poverty English learners makes it nearly impossible to for them to make significant progress.  

Access to books in the first language is very helpful for early literacy development in English. We know that building literacy in the first language is a shortcut to second language literacy, but this requires books for read-alouds and books for free voluntary pleasure reading (Krashen, 2003).  Massive pleasure reading in English is necessary for the full development of English literacy, including vocabularly, grammar and writing ability (Krashen, 2004).

We (Krashen and Williams, 2012) recently described a case of an English language learner who not only acquired English well but who became an author of books in English, two novels and an autobiography. Reyne Grande developed basic literacy in Spanish before she immigrated to the US at age nine, and “successfully completed the ESL program and got rid of my status as an ESL student” at the end of seventh grade (Grande, 2012, p. 240) thanks to her English reading habit.

Grande became a pleasure reader in English when she was a seventh grader, and in grade eight she was a regular visitor to the local public library, borrowing the maximum allowed of ten books every week.  Midway through grade eight she described her English as “almost as good as the native speakers,” except for her accent (p. 242).

Free reading remains important later on: Self-selected reading in our area of interest is responsible for our development of academic language (Krashen, 2012a): Reyna Grande kept reading, and expanded her choice of books, thanks to her English teacher at Pasadena City College, Diana Savas, who introduced her to Latino literature and encouraged her writing. 

Also, continued reading in the heritage language is a powerful means of maintaining and developing the heritage language after we leave school, which results in economic and cognitive advantages (Tse, 2001).

The testing boodoggle

The Common Core movement does nothing to protect children from the effects of poverty. Instead of investing in food programs, health care, and libraries, we will be spending unbelievable amounts of money on tests required by the Common Core. Even though research tells us that more testing does not produce higher achievement (Nichols, Glass, and Berliner, 2006), the Common Core will require about 20 times more testing than No Child Left Behind: we will have summative tests, interim tests and possibly pretests in all subjects, at all grade levels, from preschool to grade 12 (Krashen, 2012b).

By far the most expensive (and profitable) part of the Common Core testing plan is the requirement that the tests must be administered online. My suspicion is that the entire standards movement had this as its goal from the beginning, because of the huge potential for profit (Krashen and Ohanian, 2011).

Universal on-line testing requires that all students have up-to-date computers: 50 million students will each require a new computer every three years.  It will also require a massive infrastructure that requires constant repair, and constant replacement as "progess" is made in technology.

The US Department of Education has guaranteed that substantial repairs and updates will be necessary, all providing a steady stream of profits to the computer industry while frustrating students and teachers. In the National Education Technology Plan, the US Department of Education insists that we introduce massive new technology into the schools immediately, because of "the pressing need to transform American education ...",  even if this means doing it imperfectly. Repairs can be done later: "... we do not have the luxury of time: We must act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we go." (From: US Department of Education, 2010, Executive Summary).

Studies on the spread of innovation (Rogers, 2003) show that very early first-wave adoption of innovations is not a good strategy. The best strategy is to be part of the second wave: The first wave will be imperfect and expensive; the problems of the first wave will be solved in the second wave and the new devices will be cheaper. The US Department of Education is insisting that American educators be very early adopters.

While the fundamental needs of English Learners are ignored, every spare dollar will go into the Common Core standards and tests, accurately described by Susan Ohanian (2013) as a “a radical untried curriculum overhaul and … nonstop national testing.”  

Works Cited

Adamson, P. 2013 “UNICEF Measuring Child Poverty: New League Tables of Child Poverty in the World’s Rich Countries.” Innocenti Report Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.

Betalova, J. 2006. Spotlight on Limited English Proficient Students in the United States.  Migration Information Source.  http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?ID=373

Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;  

Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2012, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/).

Chomsky, N. 2002. The Common Good: Interviews with David Barsamian. Berekely, CA: Odonian Press.

Grande, R. 2012. The Distance Between Us. New York: Atria

Krashen, S. 1996. Socio-economic status as de facto bilingual education. Bilingual Basics Summer/Fall 1996: 1-3,9.

Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership  55(4): 18-22.

Krashen, S. 2003. Three roles for reading for language-minority students. In G. Garcia (Ed.) English Learners: Reaching the Highest Level of English Proficiency. Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association. Pp. 55-70.

Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann and Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

Krashen, S. 2012a. Developing academic language: Some hypotheses. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 7 (2): 8-15. (ijflt.com)

Krashen, S. 2012b. How much testing? http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/25/stephen-­‐ krashen-­‐how-­‐much-­‐testing/
 and: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/

Krashen, S. and McQuillan, J. 1995. Contrary to popular opinion: English language proficiency and school performance of speakers of other languages in the United States. NABE News 18,6:17-19.

Krashen, S, and Ohanian, S. 2011. High Tech Testing on the Way: A

21st Century Boondoggle? Living in Dialogue (Apr 8).

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-dialogue/2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html

  

Krashen, S. and Williams, C. 2012. Is Self-Selected Pleasure Reading the Cure for the Long-Term ELL Syndrome? A Case History. NABE Perspectives September-December 2012, p.26

Nichols, S., Glass, G., and Berliner, D. 2006. High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability increase student learning?

Ohanian, S. 2012.  Read more fiction in the classroom, researchers say.  http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=350

Ohanian, S. 2013. Whoo-Hoo, Occupy the Schools. www.dailycensored.com/woo-hoo/‎

Payne, K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13;

Rogers, E. 2003. The Diffusion of Innovations, Free Press.

Tse, L. 2001. Heritage language literacy: A study of US biliterates. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 14 (3): 256-68

US Department of Education, 2010. Technology Plan: Transforming Education: Learning Powered by Technology. US Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology.  http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

No need to start secod languages at age 3

Published in the Telegraph (London) (Nov 12)  with the title Absorbing Languages


Catherine Ford ("Children should start learning languages at age three," Nov. 10) believes that children start acquiring other languages as young as age three in order to reap the benefits of bilingualism.
Research published over several decades suggests that older children generally progress faster in second languages than younger children; language acquisition is possible at any age; and those who begin as adults can achieve very high levels of proficiency in second languages.
One of the world’s greatest polyglots, Kató Lomb, who mastered 17 languages, started acquiring other languages in her twenties. When I met her 20 years ago in Budapest, she was working on number 18 at age 86.

Stephen Krashen

original article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/11151726/Children-should-start-learning-languages-at-age-three.html

Does Common Core help or hurt in creating more avid readers?

Stephen Krashen

Reading Today 32 (3): 10-11. ("Two Takes" section)

We need to be concerned about developing avid readers: An impressive number of studies confirms that avid or "self-selected" reading is the main source of our reading ability, vocabulary knowledge, our ability to handle complex grammatical constructions, spelling, and our ability to write in an acceptable style.

The Common Core Publishers Criteria mentions self-selected reading: "Additional meterials" should be provided that "ensure that all students have daily opportunities to read texts of their choice on their own during and outside of the school day."

There is good evidence that given access to comprehensible, interesting texts, young people do in fact read them. Those living in poverty (about 23% of the children in the US, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2012) have, however, little access to reading material. They live in homes with fewer books, live in neighborhoods with fewer bookstores, and often live far from public libraries. Their main source of reading material is the school library.

Keith Curry Lance's research in the US shows that library quality (based on number of books, presence or absence of a credentialed librarian, and staffing) is positively related to literacy development. A recent study done by Syying Lee, Jeff McQuillan and myself, which appeared in the Journal of Language and Literacy Education, in 2012, on PIRLS test results, found that the same was true internationally. Our results suggest that access to a good school library can offset, to a large extent, the negative impact of poverty on reading achievement. These results confirm the importance of avid reading.

Despite this research, support for libraries has been dwindling (see Michael Kelley's, "LJ’s Budget Survey: Bottoming Out? which appeared in  the Library Journal. ) In contrast, we are investing an astonishing amount of money on Common Core testing.

The common core requires far more testing than the amount required under No Child Left Behind. It also requires that tests be delivered online. This means billions to make sure all students are connected to the internet with up-to-date computers, billions for upgrading and billions for  replacement of equipment declared to be obsolete, because of the never-ending development of new technologies.

Increasing testing does not result in better student achievement, as evidenced by the 2006 report "High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability increase student learning?" by Sharon Nichols, Gene Glass, and David Berliner  - and to my knowledge, there has been no attempt to determine if the brave new online tests will help students.

In contrast, as mentioned above, there is substantial evidence showing that libraries can improve achievement, and some evidence suggesting that the impact of the library is profound for students living in poverty.

Some people think that because of ebooks, libraries as we know them are not necessary for avid readers. The cost of ebooks and ebook readers make this option impossible for most school libraries, as well as for private ownership by many people. When the price of ebook readers drops to $10 and ebooks to $.50 and ebooks become fully sharable, they will be indeed be a big help.

Rather than invest in libraries and librarians, the Common Core requires that we invest in more testing and more expensive testing.

In other words, we are investing in weighing the animal but are not investing in feeding it.

What about writing? The problem of access. Krashen VAASL breakout session

What about writing?

The problem of access

WRITING

Increasing writing does not incurease writing proficiency: Writing is output, not input.

Recent evidence:  Sari, R.  IJFLT 2013 8(1)   Is it possible to improve writing without writing practice?

COMPONENTS OF THE COMPOSING PROCESS

Writing makes you smarter, inspiration the result of writing, not the cause (Boice)

The CP:  strategies to use writing to solve problems, keep your place

The classical composing process

I. Revision :

Neil Simon:  “mediocre writers write, good writers  rewrite.”

Vonnegut: "Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale's department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time"

II. Flexible Planning:  “experienced writers refuse to leave on a trip with a map." Murray, 1984

Good writers plan, but not always formally, are willing to change their plans

Overplanning: rigid plan – new ideas are an annoyance

III. Rereading: “I rise at first light and I start by rereading and editing everything I have written to the point I left off” (Hemingway, in Winokur, 1990, p. 247).

Jonathon Kellerman rereads  to “segue into new material” (Perry, 1999, p. 178)

IV. Delay Editing:  This draft may not be the final one!

Disturbs the flow, coming up with ideas. “Tony” (Perl, 1979): a concern with form “that actually inhibited the development of ideas. In none of his writing sessions did he ever write more than two sentences before he began to edit” (Perl, 1979, p. 324).

Peter Elbow: “Treat grammar as a matter of very late editorial correcting: never think about while you are writing. Pretend you have an editor who will fix everything for you, then don’t hire yourself for this job until the very end” (Elbow, 1973, p. 137).

Additional elements of the composing process

Incubation: "Composition is not enhanced by grim determination" (Frank Smith)

Problem-solving often requires “an interval free from conscious thought” to allow the free working of the subconscious mind (Wallas, 1926,)

Helmholz: After previous investigation, "in all directions," .. " happy ideas come unexpectedly without effort, like an inspiration ... they have never come to me when my mind was fatigued, or when I was at my working table ... They came particularly readily during the slow ascent of wooded hills on a sunny day" (Wallas, p. 91).

Tolle (1999): “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness … Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came a a time of mental quietude” (p. 20).

Einstein: "'Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work … he would take refuge in music, and that would resolve all his difficulties.'" (Clark, 1971) … "with relaxation, there would often come the solution.”

Poincare (1924) there must be a "preliminary period of conscious work which also precedes all fruitful unconscious labor.”

Incubation not allowed in school writing.

Rosellen Brown:  writing “is a job, not a hobby … you have to sit down and work, to schedule your time and stick to it …” (Winokur, 1999, p. 188).

Walker Percy  “You've got to sit down and follow a schedule. Unless you do that, punch the time clock - you won't ever do anything” (Murray, 1990, p. 60). 

Irving Wallace: vast majority of published authos keep, some semblance of regular daily hours..." (Wallace & Pear, 1971, pp. 518-9).

WHEN is variable: Michael Chabon:10 pm - 4 am, Maya Angelou 6:30 am- 12:30, 1:30.

Time keepers:  Irving Wallace (Wallace and Pear, 1971) (Balzac, Flaubert, Conrad, Maugham, Huxley, Hemingway).

Page counters: (Updike, West, Bradbury); Word counters: (Haley, Wambaugh) (Murray, 1990, pp.  48-65). 

Kate DiCamillo:  “When I turned 29, I had an epiphany: I’d never get published if I didn’t actually write” 

Source of inspiration is writing:

Stephen King: don’t “wait for the Muse.  Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you are going to be every day from nine 'till noon or seven 'till three”

Susan Sontag: "Any productive writer learns that you can't wait for inspiration. That's the recipe for writer's block” (Brodie, 1997, p.  38),

Madeleine L’Engle: "Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it”

Regular writing vs binging:

Woody Allen, "If you work only three to four hours per day, you become quite productive. It's the steadiness that counts" (Murray, 1990, p. 46).

Boice (1982):  junior faculty members who had a “regular, moderate habit of writing,” were compared to those who were “binge” writers  (“… more than ninety minutes of intensive, uninterrupted work)” over a six year period. The regular writers produced more than five times as much, and all got tenure or promotion. Only two binge writers got tenure.

The regular writers more relaxed: The binge writers showed three times as many signs of "blocking":  When binge writers actually wrote, "they more commonly did nothing or very little (for example, recasting a first sentence or paragraph for an hour; staring at a blank screen).” Binge writers "were three times more likely to be rushing at their work … three times more likely to put off scheduled writing in favor of "seemingly urgent, no more important activities.”

Why DRW helps: incubation between sessions, warming up

Flaubert:  "I have the peculiarity of a camel - I find it difficult to stop once I get started and hard to start after I've been resting” (Murray, 1990) Gore Vidal: "I'm always reluctant to start work, and reluctant to stop."

If Charles Dickens missed a day of writing, "he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow" (Hughes, in Plimpton, 1999, p. 247).

ACCESS to reading material and POVERTY

Child poverty in the US:  Now 25%: The reason for our unspectacular international test scores: When researchers control for poverty, American scores are excellent: Carnoy, M. & Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/).

Improve schools to cure poverty (US DOE), or cure poverty to improve schools?  "We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”   (Martin Luther King, 1967, Final Words of Advice)

Dr. King was right:

1. No correlations between test scores and economic well-being (Zhao, 2009)

2. Devastating effect of aspects of poverty on school achievement (Berliner, 2009)

a. Food deprivation/nutrition

b. Environmental toxins (eg lead)

c. Lack of health care (eg school nurses in high and low poverty schools)

d. Lack of access to books: home, school, community

The Beverly Hills/Watts study: (Smith, Constantino & Krashen)

(1)  Available books in the home: BH = 200; Watts = .4

(2)  Classroom libraries: BH = 400; Watts = 50

The Philadelphia study (Neuman & Celano): middle-class children "deluged" with books, high poverty have difficulty getting any access

SOLUTION

1. Full employment at a living wage for honest work

2. Short term: protect children from the effects of poverty

a. No child left unfed (S. Ohanian)

b. Improved health care at school (eg school nurses)

c. Provide access to books: support libraries

The importance of libraries

1.     Children get their books from libraries

2.     Better libraries >  better reading (Keith Curry Lance, Jeff McQuillan)

3.     Libraries/access to books can offset the impact of poverty

Predictors of achievement on PIRLS reading: Krashen, Lee, & McQuillan (2012)

predictor	Beta	p
SES	.42	0.003
SSR	.19	0.09
Library	.34	.005
Instruction	-.19	0.07
r2 = .63

Other evidence: S. Krashen, Protecting students against the effects of poverty: Libraries (New England Reading Association Journal) http://sdkrashen.com/

Closing the gap between African –American and white children: Fryer & Levitt (2004): SES accounts for 2/3 of gap, books in home accounts for the rest.

Meanwhile library funding is being cut: American Library Association, 2010. The State of America's Libraries. Kelley, M. 2010, Budget survey: Bottoming out? Library Journal, 2010. School library cuts greater in high poverty areas.

WHERE WILL WE GET THE MONEY? REDUCE TESTING  The NUT Principle

The increase in testing: NOT supported by research

More standardized high stakes tests do not mean better performance: Nichols, Glass & Berliner, 2006

Adding SATs to grades does not improve prediction of college success: (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009; Geiser & Santelices, 2007).

The cose of online testing: Must connect all students/provide computers/upgrade and replace/new "innovations".  The winners: the .001%

-    

.001% invests little, takes NO RISK: Taxpayers pay for everything, and if it fails: teachers blamed, but corporations win: Call for more tests and more technology.

A modest proposal:  rely on teacher judgment – the most valid

Can we make tests more sophisticated? Requires years of careful research.

NOW: An improved NAEP, drop the rest. Need not test every child every year.

Are we falling behind in STEM? "… the impending shortage of scientists and engineers is one of the longest running hoaxes in the country" (Bracey, 2009).

1. Three qualified engineers for each position

2. the PhD glut

3. US labor statistics – no shortage of engineers (but electricians, plumbers, construction jobs)

4. Teitelman: cycles of shortage panic > oversupply

Salzman, H. 2012. http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-foreign-stem-graduates-get-green-cards/no-shortage-of-qualified-american-stem-grads.

Teitelbaum, M. 2014: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-teitelbaum-stem-fears-20140420,0,120851.story#axzz2zYCn7SCA

More Ph.D's than the market can absorb: Weissman, Jordan. The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists—in 7 Charts. The Atlantic, Feb 20, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/