As you may know, there has been growing parent dissatisfaction about the amount of testing that their children are subjected to.
initially, the tests and test prep increased because officials wanted to measure student growth on tests.
Then, the testing increased because officials want to measure teacher quality.
From the vantage of parents, the school day and year are increasingly devoted to testing, not teaching.
Just weeks ago, students sat for the annual spring testing. Now, in New York state, there will be testing in June, but this time it will be a field test, part of the testing company’s trials of its test items.
When parents got wind that there would be more tests in June, and that the tests were for the benefit of Pearson, several parent groups began organizing boycotts. After all, neither the school nor the teachers would be penalized if students didn’t take the field tests, so it is an opportune time to opt out and make a statement.
Last week, the New York State Education Department sent out a memo instructing teachers that they must not tell students that the June tests are field tests. They must pretend that it is a real test.
Parents were aghast that the State Education Department would tell teachers to lie to students.
I’m beginning to sense a trend. Once the public understands that all this testing is counter-productive, that it steals time from instruction, that it has become an end and not a means, the game will change. The bureaucrats are hunkering down. But once the tide turns, there will be no going back.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This should be the wake up call for parents. When NYSED tells teachers to outright deceive or lie to their students something is wrong.
Wow! When will it all end. The insanity just seems to keep increasing.
King and his ilk are terrified that parents are waking up to the true purpose of these tests. Should that happen and parents refuse to have their children used as Pearson guinea pigs and pawns in the hostile takeover of the public schools and destruction of teaching as a career, then the whole house of cards is in danger of collapse.
Infuriating news! It’s only a matter of time before we have the same problem down here in Georgia.
Just another example of the corporatization of public education. The field testing serves Pearson’s interests: they are getting free field testing from subjects and test administrators (i.e. students and teachers) who receive no benefit.
Does Pearson have to compensate the school for the lost instructional time? Do they have to pay teachers and principals for getting the students to follow all the testing rules so that the field testing is valid? No?
Hmmm…it’s almost as if the public school really exists to serve the interests of the corporation.
I’m not angry. I just tell them the truth, just like I did last year, and every other year we’ve had a field test. I just don’t like the fact that our kids get used like lab rats when we’re also being told that teachers don’t teach our students enough.
Public sentiment had been gathered and directed against public schols and teachers by the anti-union “bad teacher” propaganda. Now it is becming clear: schools, teachers and unins are not the problem. People messing with schools and getting involved in a process they are unfamiliar with is the problem. Continual testing under the system they want will only lead to wasted time in the classrom and profits for test-makers. Interesting that the commish and state ed are so eager to push evals under a system that is in “field-testing” mode, and likely to undergo continual change for a few years. Teachers and admins have known what kids and parents are starting to realize. Teachers and admins should not have to defend the reputations of those that seek to do them harm. Schools and families should stick together.
You have to wonder how motivated kids would be if they knew the tests were meaningless. You have to also wonder how motivated they would be if they knew the tests had meaning only to whether or not their teachers kept their jobs, another thoughtful initiative likely to enrich the Pineapples at Pearson.
Terrific example of honesty! Ha! Ha!
The emperor has no clothes. Just how valid would results of JUNE field tests be, considering the following:
–Many–if not all–kids are pretty much “done” for the year.
–Students taking tests in, perhaps, sweltering schools (so far, NYC temps have been in
the 80’s) are seriously able to concentrate?
–Conversely, some air conditioned schools are TOO cold, causing the same afore-
mentioned problems. (In our school, one part of the school was always freezing, &
the other side, boiling hot–this could never be fixed, & we always joked that when the
cold front met the hot front, it would rain in the halls!)
I agree with Michael–this utter stupidity will, hopefully, result in its own destruction.
The inevitable result of mandatory public education, perhaps. When you have to enforce people at the point of a sword to give their children over to authoritarian educators with a license to beat with a stick, and then, decades later, revoke the license to beat but leave in place the one to teach American exceptionalism and home economics, funded by tax dollars, you might as well follow it to its logical conclusion and start mandating child marketing test populations at the point of a sword, too.
The worse they make the public schools, the better the private ones will start to look. This seems “utterly stupid” at first blush, but like most “utterly stupid” plans, it’s designed to destroy the system it purports to help in order to force customers to the shop across the street.
Oh, yes–I quite agree with you! Of course the purpose is to make public schools look worse & worse. But–the “utterly stupid” part I’m referring to is all the mistakes that they’re making–the “Pineapple”
debacle, test questions w/no correct answers, pushing it (June field testing), &–on an IL test (have to say, not from Pearson, but a company called Scantron)–the company included a question having to do with a multimillionaire & the advantage of a charter school!
An alert parent–who happens to head an advocacy group–called them out on it, & they apologized & removed the question.
I would also recommend Todd Farley’s 2009 book–Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry., where you’ll read about all the scoring incompetency, as well.
Those things are still probably in their service. Given the attention span of the average, shall we say, “American voter,” and the level of complexity (not that complex! shall we say, “longer than 90 minutes”) required of someone breaking down this testing scheme, the more bad stuff that happens with the entire system, the better they look.
Take, e.g.: any recent war. It may have been poorly motivated, yes, but it may also have been poorly executed and laden with countless internal mistakes. The original theme, though, is still so useful that it can be trotted out anytime the entire ongoing mess needs to be justified–and the bulk of the populace will continue to be satisfied with that already-farcical story.
It may be time, in the words of any long-forgotten patriot, to realize that the invaders are not going away–that the formal war has already been fought and lost, and that the only thing to do is hunker down for resisting the occupation. The Empire is upon our shores; we are quartering their soldiers, paying tariffs to their lords, and being mocked and derided by our own people, who we gave so much of our lives to defend these past years.
During work on my MA at Texas Wesleyan University years ago we had to study the statistics on reliability and validity of the standardized tests in use at the time. Taking validity out of the question, because it reflects your beliefs on what education is all about and simply looking at reliability which is statistical analysis, the tests still had very poor reliability coefficients. I currently teach in NYS and live with testing every day. As a 1st grade teacher I was asked to look at how I can teach so that children would do better on tests (ie teach to the tests) down the line in 3rd grade and 5th grade. Forget teaching them to read, it was test format in the later grades that mattered. 😦 Currently a PreK teacher in hopes that I can just teach and encourage a love of learning in children.
Maybe Pearson should field test their test makers so that when the real tests come out they will be without error!!!
😀