In a surprise story from the corporate media against charter schools. The Chicago Sun-Times with the help of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) is reporting that Scantron Corporation which is a national testing company that sells standardized tests to the Chicago Public Schools was found to be engaged in
brainwashing our kids to make them think they should be in a charter school
CROSS POSTED from Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)
http://pureparents.org/...
Today, with some help from me, Chicago Sun-Times education reporter Rosalind Rossi exposes yet another standardized testing scandal, this one on a Scantron test that was used several times in the Chicago Public Schools as part of an interim, or benchmark, reading assessment.
Scantron is a national standardized test that CPS has been using for a couple of years as a computerized replacement for the quarterly Learning First and Benchmark Assessment tests. These tests cover a narrow set of skills and are essentially practice tests for the annual Illinois Standards Assessment Tests (ISAT). This is the last year for Scantron; next year it will be replaced by the NWEA, the NorthWest Evaluation Association tests.
I acquired the screenshot of this reading passage, which makes about as much sense as a talking pineapple.
Click here for the full screenshot.
Is it supposed to be non-fiction? If so, then who the h&## is multimillionaire Charles Mendel? I’ll give a dollar to the first person who can find a real such guy on Google.
We know it’s not factual, anyway. Charter schools are NOT “open to all students.” They are NOT “showing improvement in student achievement” and they are NOT “playing an important role in reforming education across the country unless by “reforming” you mean “destroying.”
I sent this letter to Scantron President John Lawler, which said in part:
Parents United for Responsible Education has learned that recent administrations of the Scantron Performance Series exams in the Chicago Public Schools included reading comprehension questions based on a passage titled “Reforming Education: Charter Schooling.”
This passage contains propagandistic, pro-charter school statements that are misleading and in some cases false. For such statements to be used on tests given to non-charter school students is irresponsible at best. Students taking a test should not be subjected to false claims about charter schools which could cause them to feel humiliated, second-class or dumb because they do not attend a “better” charter school. Standardized tests should not be used as an opportunity to brainwash students with propaganda about charter schools or any other strategy of the corporate school reform camp.
We demand that this passage be removed from any future Scantron tests and that an apology be issued to all Chicago Public school students whose tests included this passage.
I did not hear back from Mr. Lawler, but I received this response to a similar message I sent to Corporate Spokesperson Donna Hinkelman:
Dear Ms. Woestehoff,
Thank you for your email of May 9 (copy below). In response, I wanted to confirm that the passage you referenced was part of the Performance Series exam; its purpose was to test critical thinking skills of 7th grade level students. It was not intended to be a comprehensive statement about the state of charter schools in Chicago or the nation, nor a slight of public schools.
That said, we agree that the copy could be perceived as lacking sensitivity. We sincerely apologize for any upset it may have caused the Chicago Public Schools students who took this exam, their parents and your organization’s members. That particular copy passage is being deleted from the Performance Series bank of questions effective this date.
Sincerely,
Donna Hinkelman
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Harland Clarke Holdings Corp.
I sent this response back:
Dear Ms. Hinkelman-
Thank you for your response.
The problem with your solution — simply removing this item from the
test — is that it is just one of many, many problematic passages and
questions that turn up on students’ tests. Because parents are generally
not allowed to review the questions after the tests, we are concerned
that there may be even more problems – that this is just the tip of the
iceberg and our children are being exposed to many other questionable
passages in testing situations which are already stressful enough.
Here are two things the Scantron Corporation can do that would actually
help.
1) Publish all test questions so that we can see the basis on which our
children are being evaluated.
2) Publicly support our national movement to allow parents to opt their
children out of any standardized test. No test should be so important
that a child should be forced to take it against his or her parents’
will.
I would appreciate a response to these suggestions.
Thank you for your attention.
Julie Woestehoff
I never heard back from anyone at Scantron. But I wonder if this new bad publicity was at least one reason why Scantron just
pulled their membership from ALEC?
the full Sun-Times story can be accessed at this link
http://www.suntimes.com/...
with parts reproduced below
A national testing company has ash-canned a reading passage that critics say subjected a captive audience of Chicago Public School children to pro-charter-school “brainwashing.’’
The Scantron Corporation took action this month after the head of Chicago’s Parents United for Responsible Education demanded the company drop the passage and apologize to what could be thousands of Chicago students she said were forced to read it this school year and last.
PURE executive director Julie Woestehoff said the passage, titled “Reforming Education: Charter Schooling,’’ is so one-sidedly pro-charter that its use amounts to an attempt to “brainwash’’ children “with propaganda about charter schools.’’
PURE director goes on to explain the tactics the testing company used to influence children.
“Students taking a test should not be subjected to false claims about charter schools which could cause them to feel humiliated, second-class or dumb because they do not attend a `better’ charter school,” Woestehoff said in a May 9 email of protest to Scantron.
Written in non-fiction style, with pie charts and bullet points, the passage flatly states that charter schools are “showing improvements in student achievement,” even though several studies point to mixed results. In Chicago, charters have ignited pockets of fierce resistance.
The passage also states that the children of a “multimillionaire,’’ named “Charles Mendel,” attend a charter school because Mendel “believes that charter schools deliver the highest quality education.’’
the company responded that this was an innocent mistake.
A Scantron spokeswoman said her initial research indicated the passage, and Mendel, were works of fiction, although she never doubled-back to confirm this, as promised. She later explained by email that the passage was merely intended to test the “critical thinking skills of seventh-grade-level students.’’
“Who the hell is Mr. Mendel?” asked Woestehoff. “To put him in there is aligned with propaganda, not reading comprehension.”
“It’s insidious, if you think about it. If they are passing this off as reading comprehension and they put in some stuff that’s real and some that’s fake and some that’s on the borderline, what are they doing to our children? . . . They are brainwashing our kids to make them think they should be in a charter school.’’
this follows another scandal where New York parents discovered a non-answerable question.
The snafu follows recent disclosures that kids who took some CPS-only tests, as well as Illinois public school students statewide, were among those fed a controversial test passage several years ago about a race between a hare and a pineapple produced by another big test maker, Pearson.
New York State education officials just last month scrapped all student responses to “The Hare and the Pineapple’’ after parents, principals and teachers complained they couldn’t tell which answers were correct. During “Pineapplegate,’’ the New York Daily News quoted the all-time money-winner on Jeopardy! as saying “the story makes no sense whatsoever.’’
Across the nation, organized backlash against standardizing testing is growing. Pineapplegate and Scantron’s charter school passage are just two examples of why test questions — particularly in high-stakes tests — should be released after use, Woestehoff said.
company apologizes after the test and damage has been done.
The Scantron passage exposed by PURE seems to break new ground in that “This is the first bizarre standardized test question I’ve seen that appears to be pure charter school propaganda,’’ Woestehoff said.
In a May 11 email to Woestehoff, Scantron said the passage was “not intended to be a comprehensive statement about the state of charter schools in Chicago or the nation, nor a slight of public schools. That said, we agree the copy could be perceived as lacking sensitivity.
“We sincerely apologize for any upset it may have caused the Chicago Public School students who took this exam, their parents and your organization’s members.’’
Said CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler, “Based on the concerns raised, Scantron seems to have done the right thing” by pulling the passage.
experts agree that the question was a plant and not a mistake
Scantron’s website claims Scantron products serve 80 percent of the nation’s largest school districts, and charter schools from Michigan to California also use them, but a Scantron spokeswoman refused to say which states or school districts were exposed to the “Reforming Education: Charter Schooling” passage.
Scantron spokeswoman Donna Hinkelman, in an email, defended the process that produced the passage. saying it was “written following defined guidelines and protocol by professionals in educational item development and test design.’’
Yet several assessment experts questioned how the passage could have made it through the “bias and sensitivity” committees that often review materials before they hit market.
“I can tell you, that’s a biased passage,’’ said Jamal Abedi, an assessment expert and professor at the University of California-Davis.
“By saying that millionaires send their children to a charter school, you change the direction of the passage and load the passage with social and economic issues. . . .
“The question should have been written much better, much less affected by politics and culture,’’ Abedi said.
“Poor kids might feel bad when reading it. Kids not in charters may feel bad. Bringing the concept of millionaires into the question and taking the side of charter schools is not appropriate.’’
and another expert agrees that question was not proper
Stanley Rabinowitz, who oversees test development for WestEd, said that without an opposing view or explanation that the passage was intended to be one-sided, it “sounds like a lovely story written by a charter school proponent.’’
If he was on a “sensitivity committee,’’ Rabinowitz said, he never would have approved the passage.
“I don’t need, in a Chicago environment, to have passages on charter schools. It’s not worth it,’’ Rabinowitz said. “No matter what you do, someone is going to object because of the political climate around charters. . . .