Gates Foundation exec: Give students, teachers time on tests

Indiana state Superintendent Glenda Ritz’s argument that it is unfair to connect teacher evaluation to student test results during a transition to new state standards and tests is getting a boost from an unlikely source: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A senior executive of the foundation dialed back its position on how standardized testing should be used in high stakes decisions for teachers and students on Tuesday. She was not speaking specifically about Indiana but the case she made mirrored some of what Ritz has said about ISTEP.

“The Gates Foundation agrees with those who’ve decided that assessment results should not be taken into account in high-stakes decisions on teacher evaluation or student promotion for the next two years,” Vicki Phillips wrote in a letter posted on the foundation’s website.

In the letter titled “Let’s Give Students and Teachers Time,” Phillips wrote, “A rushed effort to apply the assessments could punish teachers as they’re trying new things, and any hiccups in the assessments could be seen as flaws in the standards.”

Phillips is director of College Ready, a foundation initiative that seeks to increase the number of U.S. students ready for college or work by the time they leave high school.

The Gates Foundation has been at the epicenter of the debate over the Common Core Standards and over coming multistate tests. (For exhaustive details on that, see this recent Washington Post story, “How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution.”)

The letter hasn’t seemed to have drawn much attention yet, although American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten put out a news release applauding Phillips’ comments, repeating the view that “we have to de-link the high-stakes consequences of the tests from the standards’ implementation for now.”

Last week, Ritz proposed that the Indiana State Board of Education consider delaying accountability sanctions based on state test results for a year. She followed with a newspaper op-ed in which she said penalizing schools and teachers based on new tests and unfamiliar standards, and knowing the first year test scores under the new standards will likely go down from prior years, was unfair.

“I always have been a proponent for strong teacher and school accountability,” she wrote. “However, as we have seen historically in Indiana and across the nation, it is typical for student scores on standardized tests to dip as a result of new and more rigorous expectations, giving the appearance of a decline in achievement. In order for an accountability system to be strong and meaningful to parents and educators, it must also be fair and equitable. That is why we need to look at ways we can minimize the effect of a likely expected drop in performance.”Ritz said her department is research how Indiana could delay accountability sanctions for a year and still comply with state law. At the same time she must convince officials of the U.S. Department of Education, who are pushing Indiana to move faster to implement the new standards and tests.