This is a story written by Noa Rosinplotz, a sixth-grade student in the District of Columbia public schools. It first appeared on a Facebook page called “Children Left Behind,” a protest site for students and families. Noa sent it to her story, and she also wrote a letter, which follows the story. Students are not widgets; they are not pieces of clay. They don’t like what is being inflicted upon them. Once they become active, everything changes.
Please help Noa’s letter go viral!
The Little Datapoint and the Big Bad Test
Once upon a time, there was a little datapoint named Rosin Plotz, Noa. Her friends called her by her ID number, 9——, or 9 for short. She liked her job-most of the time. But 6 times a year, or 19 days in total, came the Big Bad Test. The Little Datapoint completed the test dutifully each time, mulling the possibilities of Paul Revere’s horse’s emotions and checking her work not once, but twice. She and the other Datapoints together formed a Chart, which was their Job. The Little Datapoint felt very proud at having been a part of such a great endeavor. Then one day, the Little Datapoint felt a different emotion. The Little Datapoint felt ANGRY. The Little Datapoint thought: Is this all I am good for? Providing data on tests? That can’t be all there is to life, can it? These questions are dumb, thought the Little Datapoint. I should not spend my life answering these questions. Paul Revere’s horse will never change the world, she said to herself. Paul Revere’s horse is dead. But I can still change the world. And I will never do that by answering these questions, day after day, year after year. And that Little Datapoint did not answer her questions. That Little Datapoint RIPPED UP HER TEST AND THREW IT INTO THE DEEP DARK RECESSES OF THE TRASH CAN TO FESTER AND EVENTUALLY DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH LASTING FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!!!!!!!”
My name is Noa and I’m a sixth grader in DCPS. I got your name from my friend’s grandmother, Joan Leibovich. Joan sent you the story I wrote, “The Little Datapoint and the Big Bad Test”, along with the link to a protest Facebook page against standardized testing (I attached them both at the bottom, just in case.) She said you might post these on your website, which would be great.
I’m writing this e-mail just to explain my position better: I have spent 28 hours up to now filling in bubbles on the Paced Interim Assessment, or PIA, and I consider those hours parts of my life that were dumped down the drain. These particular tests are confusing and occasionally contradictory. We take them five times a year through most of elementary and middle school.
Entire school systems are judged just on one number-the percent of kids who made proficient on their standardized tests. That’s millions of dollars in funding, the education of thousands of children, and who knows what else depending on that number, which means nothing, since the tests are, for lack of a word that makes me sound less like the twelve-year-old I am, bad.
I have started to read your book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” I’m very interested by the concept of “seeing like a state,” which you mention in the first chapter. While I agree that this is necessary for most federal laws and problems, I think it’s exactly what we don’t need in our current education system. If education officials would descend those 20,000 feet and spend time examining and working with the 49.8 million children and 3.3 million teachers in US public elementary and high schools, they would better understand how actual students, schools, and teachers experience the tests they help to implement and create. We could learn so many things in the hours spent bubble-filling that would INCREASE our knowledge, not just show it. Maybe tests aren’t the best way of assessing schools. Actually, tests AREN’T the best way of assessing schools. So please, please, read on.
The PIAs (our current benchmark assessment in DC) are created by Intel-Assess and based on the Common Core Curriculum. Each testing window has one math test and one English language arts test. On top of that, DC has the DC CAS, which is administered between the 4th and 5th PIA and lasts five or six days, depending on the grade. The DC CAS bears no relation to the PIA at all and assesses a different range of skills. Grades 2-8 are all tested. As a result, about 10% of the year is spent on standardized tests, not counting all the preparation and practice for each test.
Each ELA test has 30 or so questions, give or take a few. The questions are related to several passages presented in the test booklet, which can include poems, nonfiction texts written exclusively for the test, and fictional stories. There are usually two written response questions on each test. Sometimes the questions are fine. More often than not, they don’t make sense in context or have multiple or no right answers. For example, question 11 on the first test this school year was as follows:
If “Nasser of the Shaduf had been written in the third person, the reader would probably have learned less about which of the following?
a) Nasser’s childhood
b) Nasser’s sisters
c) how Nasser felt about working the shaduf
d) how his father felt about Nasser
I think they’re all a little bit wrong.
Another, which I don’t have word for word, has a picture of the general store where the main character works. On the storefront is a list of items sold by the store. The question asked why the author included a picture with the passage. One option was “to show where Joey [the main character] works.” Another was “to show what is sold at the general store.” The question appeared on the first 5th grade PIA this year. If you can answer this, I will be extremely impressed.
Here’s a different one, on the second-to-last 5th grade PIA last year. It’s about the sinking of the Lusitania and the start of WWI.
Which is the best support from “Tragedy at Sea” for the argument that the U.S. should NOT go to war with Germany over this incident?
a) Many people in the U.S. were hoping to remain out of a war with Europe.
b) The Lusitania was a British ship and not an American ship.
c) The Germans had warned British ships to stay out of these waters.
d) The American military was not fully prepared for a war with Germany.
Aren’t these all correct?
The math PIAs are less obviously flawed, but flawed all the same. The first test in the 2012-2013 school year had lots of questions asking the 6th graders to count the shaded squares inside a rectangle. The second often asked us to use the distributive property, which we hadn’t yet learned. When I posted one question from test #2 on the protest Facebook page (I included the link at the bottom), several adults debated the answer for a while. If the first test has counting, which is easy for a kindergartener, and the second is appropriate for a grown adult, that’s not going to show progress correctly. I never thought I’d complain that a standardized test needed to be more standardized, but here I am doing it. Our scores might plummet on test two, but only because it was disproportionately harder than test one. I have no problem with challenging questions, they just need to be more reasonable.
Another question, which appears often, in many different forms and using many different math skills, on the PIA goes something like this:“Martin used the distributive property to write this equation: 10(x-y)+5(x-7y)=15x-45y. Explain Martin’s reasonableness and the steps he took to arrive at his answer.” This isn’t word for word, but that equation was the hard one I talked about in a problem asking for the reasoning (not “reasonableness”) of the person who completed the problem (correctly.) We get lots of questions asking us to explain the steps taken to arrive at an answer, which is fine. They just are worded terribly. The way I explained it asks the question SO much better. Mostly the math questions are multiple choice, but ones like my example are written response.
There is an awful countrywide disregard for special circumstances regarding ESL students. I’m not sure if this is very prominent in DC, although I know it’s definitely an issue in other places. According to NCLB, ESL students are given three years to take the test in their native language, and occasionally an extra two, but only under some conditions. Only 10 states follow this rule. In the other 40, a kid can arrive in September speaking as much English as his #2 pencil, and be expected to score proficient on the test in October. So schools with high ESL populations have almost no chance of making AYP on any standardized test whatsoever. A study in California and Illinois showed that schools that made AYP were comprised of 40% minority students or less, while the schools that didn’t were made up of 75-85% minority students. Most of this is due to the kids not being tested in their native languages when needed.
Special education students make up 14% of the country’s public school students, but only 3% of state scores are based on tests modified for the abilities of kids who are disabled in any way. In Maryland and DC the Alt-MSA (Maryland) or DC CAS-Alt (DC), an alternate, individually altered or simplified version of the state test, is given to only 1% of students. According to the Washington Post article by Daniel de Vise, “Trying Times for Special Ed”, Maryland teachers were allowed to guide students’ hands to the correct answers when necessary. The article was written in 2005. In DC, students with extreme cognitive disabilities are allowed to take an alternate exam, and “officials” say they have not heard any complaints from teachers. These modified exams can take hours, even days longer than the standard tests, and if teachers can guide students to the right answer, then that is a supreme waste of time. Children with IEP or 504 plans have their scores counted exactly like everyone else’s. Because improvement does not impact whether a school makes AYP or not, a severely disabled 8th grader can go from not knowing the first letter of their own name to reading proficiently on a 1st or 2nd grade level, but fail the tests because they weren’t up to 8th grade standards.
This is important for very obvious reasons. We can’t afford to waste so much time, money, and brainpower on completely useless tests. We hold the graphs and charts and other “information” we get from tests in bafflingly high regard. Just because it’s printed on expensive paper doesn’t mean it’s good information. If the students guess on a quarter of the questions, and there are three wrong answers and only one right one to each question, that’s a considerable number of the questions gone completely to waste (at least 3-5 a test).
My mission isn’t to abolish standardized tests entirely; schools need some way of judging academic performance and I’m not about to suggest something better. I just think if we have to spend 10% of the school year on anything, it should be something a little more worthwhile. Maybe we could have a three-year moratorium, like Joshua Starr (MCPS superintendent of schools) suggests, to focus on improving our assessment system. The only good tests are ones created by teachers who know their students and know what they’re teaching. We could be assessed in ways testing our creativity and knowledge, not only our capacity for making small-minded inferences by looking at short, meaningless passages. If the school system spent more time planning the tests, using information from schools and the people in them, and thinking about the many, many cons of shutting kids in classrooms for 20 hours a year to fill in bubbles on answer sheets, then maybe, just maybe, we could get some valid information from those very answer sheets. Maybe students could learn things FROM TESTS. Maybe we could all spend time thinking about the answers, not because they make absolutely no sense, but because they require our brains to think. And maybe our #2 pencils will grow wings and fly to Montreal.
Thank you for reading this.
Sincerely,
A datapoint
Noa: Bless you!!! You have put a face and a name to these tests upon which so much is based in our world!! I hope that your single voice will carry far and become the voices of many. Continue to have strength!
And a little child shall lead them. . . What an amazing, well-articulated statement. This child clearly understands, through experience, how harmful testing in its current state can be. Maybe if more students speak up, the ed reformers will have to listen. They certainly aren’t listening to teachers. Thank you, Noa, for your voice of reason.
How insightful you are, Noa. Certainly wiser than your years. Thank you for writing your observations about test questions and the “bad” uses of testing. Standardized tests are certainly not being used in the manner for which they were created, and your comments about testing ELLs and children with severe cognitive impairment are spot on.
I commend you for your excellent efforts to change a system gone awry. Keep it up.
Noa, fantastic! I’ll bet that no school standardized test result ever predicted your outstanding performance here. Thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts so clearly and profoundly. ‘Sending this to everyone I know.
I have a tendency to doubt that this was written by a 6th grader. At least not without a whole lot of help from an adult. Sixth graders just don’t write this way.
A simple google search will show that (1) she is an unusually capable child and (2) she has ample editorial capacity at home. 😉 Though I have no doubt that she benefits from her parent journalists, her first hand accounts of specific assessment items lends credence to her perspective. Given what I’ve heard about there being four Common Core assessment times each year for each student instead of one, her central points stand, in my opinion.
Duane,
I googled Noa and found that she came in second in the DC spelling bee last spring as a fifth-grader. Here is a photo. http://www.flickr.com/photos/66676228@N05/6991010041/
Knowing how my 5th grader writes, I’ve no doubts a 6th grader could produce this.
I’ve had the great pleasure of e-mailing back and forth very frequently with Noa this week, as I’m taking one of these PIA’s as part of a project she’s doing for her science fair. She is hilarious, amazingly articulate, and definitely 12 years old–she’s the niece of a colleague of mine. I might add that great as she is, I know other kids like her. What kids need is people around them who expect them to be curious, capable and intelligent. The test-makers Noa’s showing up are not such people! (I remember the pleasure of moving to a school in England from my Ohio village for the 4th-6th grade, how fun school suddenly was, how my little brother learned to write in a month because kids learned earlier there, how at 10 and 7 we had fun talking French in bad accents around the house. I remember telling my parents that “kids aren’t stupid”–I was so mad to discover how I’d been smothered till then. In the 6th grade I wrote a novel of about 150 pages and sent it to a publisher. Nobody said my parents must have written it for me. Granted, they didn’t publish it either!)
I agree with Duane Swacker here.
I know that there are many informed, insightful, and eloquent children, and that adults often underestimate their knowledge and ability. So I am sorry to raise doubts–but they are too strong to set aside. The letter does NOT read as though written by a sixth grader.
Take this, for instance: “My mission isn’t to abolish standardized tests entirely; schools need some way of judging academic performance and I’m not about to suggest something better. I just think if we have to spend 10% of the school year on anything, it should be something a little more worthwhile. Maybe we could have a three-year moratorium, like Joshua Starr (MCPS superintendent of schools) suggests, to focus on improving our assessment system.”
Or this: “Special education students make up 14% of the country’s public school students, but only 3% of state scores are based on tests modified for the abilities of kids who are disabled in any way. In Maryland and DC the Alt-MSA (Maryland) or DC CAS-Alt (DC), an alternate, individually altered or simplified version of the state test, is given to only 1% of students.
Or this: “We can’t afford to waste so much time, money, and brainpower on completely useless tests. We hold the graphs and charts and other “information” we get from tests in bafflingly high regard.”
The letter is full of such examples. The syntax, vocabulary, details, concepts, and overall perspective are highly unusual for a sixth grader, to the point where I would say that an adult wrote this or contributed a great deal to it.
Diana,
Me too:(
Is it possible that an adult “guided Noa’s hand” to write these words? Obviously, the average sixth grader has neither access to nor interest in such detailed research as that which was required to write this piece. I tend to agree that this was not “solely” the work of a 6th grader, as eloquent as it is.
Outside of the expectation for the reader to suspend his disbelief about the age of the author, the part about the ridiculous nature of some test questions is one of the most outstanding lessons from this piece. (Has anyone here ever used the noun “reasonableness” in a sentence?)
What is extremely appalling to me is the use of testing techniques with one correct multiple choice answer for questions where more than one could be correct depending on a point-of-view. The divergent and creative thinker would surely get more of these answers “wrong.” I fail to see the reasonableness (ha) for using this technique–without allowing for the correct classification of multiple answers–apart from an attempt to be clever. Would I be so cynical as to believe this practice exists to prove “the failure of” the education system by purposely setting up its little “data points” to fail those questions? I’m not so sure I want to believe such deviance-in-plan although the possibility has been discussed in this blog. No matter what the purpose, the existence of such preposterous test questions presents clear evidence of the misuse of assessment, and such evidence dictates the lack of validity of these tests. Just as with any conceptualization, the test is limited to the intellect and imagination of its maker.
Perhaps ALL test creators and scorers should have to complete a university-level School Assessment Certification Program where they get teaching degrees with specializations in the subject matter for which they write the tests, intern with certified and experienced teachers at all levels in the subject area, and then pass teacher-created standardized tests that align with actual/practical curricula in order to earn the job of test developer and scorer. Then the validity of their work ought to be scored by a teacher-created rubric, the results of which should be released to the public. If they are found to be “below proficient,” their companies should be ordered to shut down and pay restitution for wasting the public’s time and resources.
The letter from Noa was forwarded to me by a college classmate, a woman in her 70s who is a psychiatrist. Her grand-daughter is a friend of Noa. I have no reason to doubt the letter’s authenticity.
I do not doubt that is was indeed written by a 6th grader, only embarrassed that I usually less perceptive and articulate than she is!
I don’t know about other states, but in New York, English Language Learners (ELLs) are required to take their grade level ELA exam (in English) after being in the country for over one year. This means that an eighth grade student who has been here for one year and a day must take the exam. When they score a 1 (out of 4), the school is punished for not meeting the needs of all of their students. My challenge to the New York State officials is to go live in China for a year and a day and then take the college level entrance exam in Chinese. When you don’t pass, please punish yourself!
I actually believe that this is indeed written by a child – if you google her name you will see that she has won spelling bees etc. etc. I am currently trying to get her to come and speak at Occupy DOE 2.0: The Battle for Public Schools in D.C. Noa -if you are reading this please contact me at writepeg@juno.com. Diane Ravitch will also be speaking at this event! Happy New Year everyone. When the students wake up the world will change. I have hope for 2013.
One of the reasons for the vague questions/answers is so the testing company can create a bell curve. Just like an IQ test. In fact, many studies have shown that there’s very little difference between and IQ test and most of these standardized assessments. When you have a bell curve, it’s impossible for all students to meet the standards. If all students DO meet standards, they have to make the test harder and more vague so they can once again create a bell curve. Failure is built into the system. Thank you, Noa, for providing concrete examples of how testing companies “game” the system to ensure that many students flunk the tests–not through students’ lack of knowledge/failure to meet standards, but through trick questions used to ensure failure.
This corresponds to what my son’s elementary school teacher once told me, that the OAAs (Ohio Achievements Assessments) always contain questions that on areas that have not yet been taught to ensure that no one gets a perfect score.
The thing about a bell curve is, it represents random chance. It’s what you get “by accident,” by flipping coins willy-nilly. But what goes on in a classroom is not random, it is planned, focused and intentional. It’s the opposite of random.
This compelling story and the accompanying article, whether written independently by a sixth grader or not, exposes the absurdity of the nature and uses of high-stakes standardized tests as promulgated by the powers that be. I especially found Noa’s descriptions of the test items illuminating. More of these questions and answer choices should be available to the public, so that their appropriateness for the purposes alleged can be judged. I happened to find a released ELA 3rd grade test from NY online. The passage was a poorly translated one page story by Leo Tolstoy. This was a story without a plot. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found (along with a better translation) that it was an allegory about Tolstoy’s religious beliefs. Of course the students were not expected to interpret the passage at this level, but who would make this selection to assess a 3rd grader’s reading comprehension? The points about the effects of the inflexible rules about who must be tested and at what level on the scores of special needs and ELL students, and the negative consequences of these scores for the students, teachers, and schools that serve them, are even more disturbing and in need of public discussion. Forty years of progress in addressing the individual needs of special ed students who have a great variety of challenges is poised for demolition in the name of fairness and high standards for all.
I’d like to pose a question I’ve been thinking about to see if anyone has any knowledge to share:
Has anyone studied the linguistic sophistication of multiple-choice test questions and the logical constraints with which they are constructed to ascertain whether or not this type of test is intrinsically biased against students who do not have a native speaker mastery of English (and that group includes many deaf students)?
On another point–the immense waste of money on tests, practice tests, and data collection that not only produce effects counter to those claimed, but also make limited resources for essential wrap-around services fall by the wayside–
Could the ACLU bring a case against the federal DoE for over-reaching their mission and strong-arming cash-strapped states to implement untested educational policies (through RttT and the waivers) that end up costing the states much more money than they receive, especially when the added costs go into private coffers rather than into what’s really needed–the social safety net?
Isn’t this fraud on a grand scale?
You make such excellent points, elegantly stated as well.
I believe there have been many research projects on the cultural bias inherent in standardized tests. While I still have access to it, I’ll research the university databases for more current studies.
Fraud doesn’t begin to color these practices given the weight that has been applied to these assessment instruments. No assessment is without its flaws, but it is extremely short-sighted to rely on the standardization of a system as complex and diverse as our country’s culture as a measure of whether or not this system should be supported by the state.
Tests reveal a mere fraction of learning and can be more a reflection of the test creators than of the test takers themselves. Since many public schools are locally controlled, standardized tests can be used to standardize (i.e. control) the culture of our country. Is it any wonder that some “reformers” are painting their movement with the “civil rights” brush? It kind of makes cultural manipulation palatable and appealing if those in positions of power cop some “savior” image. We all know that opportunists show up at the scene of accident, but many in the “reform” movement are actually creating these accidents themselves.
Thanks for your response. I’m aware that cultural bias has been an issue in standardized testing. (For instance, when a test that a deaf student is taking starts off with an ELA passage about playing the flute.) It’s possible that current test makers think that they are controlling for this type of bias. What I’m trying to get at is a much more subtle analysis of the linguistic/thought processes that are required to score at a high level on these multiple-choice tests, and how this would work against students who do not have a native speaker competence in English. The test is actually assessing this acquired ability, rather than the students’ knowledge of the subject matter.
WOW! “Out of the mouths of babes” as the saying goes. This girl tells it like it is. I teach 6th grade and she sure has it all together. Our NY state last year had several ambiguous questions that even teachers were not sure of the correct answers. Keep up the good work. Would love to have Noa in my 6th grade class !!!!!
Maryland has allowed reading the test or test items to a student in IEPs. They recently discovered, at a national Common Core meeting, that other states don’t.
So, what did Maryland do?
Continue to allow reading the test, especially on the items that are meant to test comprehension or thinking skills?
No.
They have told the 24 school districts to remove “reading to the student” from IEPs by the March when the MSA(Maryland School Assessments), the NCLB test, is given.
Are special ed teachers going to be paid overtime to do this?
No. They will need to cut service hours to do so.
Noa and her family are close friends of mine. I can assure you that she conceived and wrote that letter, and everything else on her Facebook page, by herself. She is an unusually smart thinker—not just for her age but for any age. I love that a student is joining the conversation, with specific examples from her school life.
Noa, I bet my daughter would love to meet you! I think your letter was extremely eloquent, and I know you have at least one sympathetic soul in Montgomery County MD! 🙂
http://crunchyprogressiveparenting.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-childs-response-to-standardized.html
That is the smartest 6th grader ever with that statement of what it is like. Excellent. It raises real questions as to what are the questions and what do they mean in the sense of learning and how to deduct what the answer is.
Just thought I’d mention that anyone in AZ who handles the state test, has to sign a confidentiality agreement that they will not read the test questions, while students are testing or at anytime. We have to check out the tests every day and collect and lock them up each night. I love the fact that Noa remembered the questions well enough to recreate them and discuss the analytical dilemma of choosing an answer. I hope more people read her essay.
When I covered education for The Washington Post and wrote my book “Tested,” school employees in Maryland were of course not allowed to reveal test material. Students were never bound by the same obligation, and were a great resource for what was actually on the tests.
Wow, Noa! Your assessment of the assessment is spot on! Thank you for speaking up and doing so with such eloquence.
I am so disgusted with standardized testing, I wrote it a letter. “Dear Standardized Testing….” http://oldschoolteach.blogspot.com/2012/12/dear-standardized-testing.html
Noa has done an excellent job of pointing out what’s wrong with standardized testing! Great job Noa!
If this was truly written by a 6TH grader, then I would say all that testing was successful. The quality of this letter supports testing. What a memory, Evidence of critical thinking.
By the way, the question was “best reason.” All have merit, but the people in the USA did not want to be involved in Europe’s war. The President was elected in part by having a platform for not going to war. That is my take on history.
Joe: If this letter was written by a 6th grader, I don’t think that speaks to the success of testing. My son started university at 14 two decades ago–well before NCLB. His writing skills were also phenomenal. This writing has more to do with early childhood development (parents read and talked to her a LOT, like constantly), her own reading interests, and innate ability. I can assure you that increased standardized testing will NOT produce a nation of little Noas–6th graders that can reason and write like this.
Memory is not an example of critical thinking
Unfortunately, we did not know this piece of information when taking the test. We did WWI afterwards. On the question, we just had the text to go by, and every answer appeared in the text and sounded like a perfectly good reason to not go to war with Germany. But thank you, now I know.
Regarding the Lusitania question (and some comments on testing):
You (Noa) wrote:
[[Here’s a different one, on the second-to-last 5th grade PIA last year. It’s about the sinking of the Lusitania and the start of WWI.
Which is the best support from “Tragedy at Sea” for the argument that the U.S. should NOT go to war with Germany over this incident?
a) Many people in the U.S. were hoping to remain out of a war with Europe.
b) The Lusitania was a British ship and not an American ship.
c) The Germans had warned British ships to stay out of these waters.
d) The American military was not fully prepared for a war with Germany.
Aren’t these all correct?]]
It’s hard to respond without seeing the passage. I googled “Tragedy at Sea” and stories about many different events came up. As you (Noa) mentioned, some passages are specifically written for the test; so, the correct answer would depend on the historical accuracy passage. If the passage was accurate in describing the sinking, depending on the focus of the passage, either a or d could be correct.
Answer b can’t be correct, because the big, giant-headline blaring issue for Americans was that 128 Americans were among the 1198 passengers that died. That made the fact of it being a British-flagged ship irrelevant.
If written as it appeared on the test, answer c is a nonsense selection, possibly a teaser. The German consulate warned Americans not to travel on British ships that would enter the war zone around the British isles that Germany had proclaimed.
The entire testing regime is completely distorted. It is fundamentally unethical to evaluate teachers or “a school” on the basis of student test performance, especially on a test that is low stakes for the students. If students do poorly, the only potential consequences are for teachers.
The DC CAS tests could be administered in two days. You have seen how much time is wasted.
DC OSSE and DCPS and the DC charters cheat with the DC CAS tests. They post the test “blueprint” which informs teachers which standards will be tested, thereby signaling to teachers which standards can be skipped (See: “Teach to the Test?” by Richard Phelps, http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?AID=2014 ).
These tests classify schools as good or bad. What makes a good or bad school? The school building doesn’t “teach well” or “teach poorly.” It doesn’t teach at all. So, “school” is a euphemism for teachers who are being judged, in part, by student test results, which don’t take student readiness or grade-level reading skills into account. Take, for example, DC’s Wilson HS (where I taught for 25 years: http://tinyurl.com/6q5dxvp ). Is it a “quality” or “performing” school or an “underperforming school”? Wilson has more “proficient” students than all other DCPS schools (School WO Walls, Banneker, McKinley). But guess what: It has more non-proficient students than Columbia Heights, Cardozo, Coolidge, Dunbar, Spingarn and Woodson high schools. Most Wilson teachers teach both proficient and non-proficient (per DC CAS) students.
So, if a school gets a good number of well prepared students, sufficient in number to counter-balance the number of students who are not proficient, the proficiency percentage will be high enough for the school to be classified as a “quality school.”
Regardine the Lusitania question, I assumed it would be a given that all that information was in the passage, which it was.
Certainly the doubters, whose understanding of human intelligence as static, view children as blank slates.
“No one can predict how far an individual child may go in dynamic education settings when an understanding teacher (or parents), using all the resources of the community, awakens his/her imagination and interest and thus releases his/her own emotional drive.” Clara Belle Baker
Noa’s essay blow’s up the misguided gibberish from David Coleman that nobody gives a “shit” what you feel of what you think.
Thank you Noa for the eloquent letter. I am certain your family is very proud of you.You expressed perfectly the wasted time and meaningless nonsense of these standardized testsI I hope we get to see you on at least one of the morning news shows or talk shows. I shared this on my facebook page and sent it to all the teachers in my district. I wonder if anyone at Pearson (that evil testing company for profit only) is shaking in their shoes yet!
In addition to being right about the negative impact of high-stakes standardized tests on students in general, Noa inadvertently illuminates another problem: The stifling effect of standardized testing on gifted students who routinely produce academic work well above their grade level.
Yes, our gifted learners and the super smart kids suffer maybe more than anyone. They are over looked and not scaffolded in their learning because teachers know they will pass and have to focus on the “bubble kids”
Why wouldn’t the Montessori approach, where the “gifted, talented” students teach those who are lagging behind? Our children attended Montessori school in pre-K and K, and I found it fostered confidence, reinforced learning, creating both a love for learning AND a love for teaching. I don’t think we have to think about who is winning/losing when we allow children in the classroom to excel, help, teach, while developing people skills along the way. By the way Noa, I would love to hear more from you as you make your way through the school system. Dr. Starr once tweeted “we don’t have a student learning problem, we have an adult learning problem.”. How true!
Why do people always think having the smart kids teach the struggling kids is appropriate? Why couldn’t I just have been taught at my pace, instead of being the teacher’s unpaid assistant? This may look like a lovely solution to those who haven’t had to do it, but I can tell you that it gets old FAST.
Great letter! Why is it that every time a bright kid critiques education policy, people think she’s just a mouthpiece for an adult? I’ve seen this happen over and over.
Let’s hope they don’t try to prosecute her for revealing test items publicly. A friend of mine nearly lost his teaching license for sending a letter critiquing test items to the state Dept. of Ed. The reason? Teachers are forbiddento look at the tests.
Oh, they won’t care. All the test questions are old, and I was given back my test booklets. I didn’t smuggle them out of my English teacher’s desk in order to illegally reveal questions.
Lots of data points are speaking out. It is important to capture and share their words as well as to help them stand up and opt out of this insanity that we know is not good for them.
Here are letters from two more elementary students:
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/09/kids-know-best-they-dont-want-test.html
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/06/5th-graders-smart-advice-about.html
Thank you Noa for your eloquent letter. I teach 8th grade ELA and actually love the Common Core standards but hate what they’ve been used to do. I have taught all middle school grades and this letter could have been written by a number of my students. I want to speak to a couple of points that were made in the comments.
-The passages that are given in the tests are terrible. My administrators had to do a training and used a sample question from the PIA and I vehemently argued with them about the validity of the question. We can’t even get decent professional development because most of the district level programming is based on the test.
-Our gifted students are suffering. I was fortunate to work soley with our gifted population for two years and I marveled at how free these kids were when they were in a setting that was unfettered by testing pressure.
-Brief Constructed Responses (BCR) are taking over real writing instruction. Students are not being taught how to write. Noa and her ilk exist because of the reasons that many stated here, family involvement and inane ability but unfortunately, we will not be able to teach a kid to write well because the focus is on answering these questions in a formulaic and nonsensical way that does not reflect how we really communicate in the real world.
Lastly,
I had it out with my principal because she kept referring to students in need of extra help as “below basic” kids. I refuse to have any student in my purview be referred to as “below basic”. Their scores may be, but they are not. This especially hit home because my son has an IEP, and while he is exceptionally bright and his teachers say he can tell you how to do the work, the tests do not capture this at all. My son is not “below basic” and neither is anyone else’s child.
Noa, thank you for your well-thought post on standardized testing. As a teacher, it is great to hear a student’s views on issues that directly affect her. Sadly, I do not hear many student voices in the mainstream discourse. I should listen more closely. I would appreciate more links to similar writings by students. Thank you, Ms. Nielsen, for those posted above.
I find it interesting that there are several readers who do not believe a young person can write so eloquently. I think this confirms the view that students should not be limited by their chronological age, and that our current education system, as Ken Robinson and other education reformers state, relies too much on the “date of manufacture.” Maybe the roots of standardized testing are found in this pervasive mentality?
Sorry, I don’t for one nanosecond believe this was written solely by a 12-year-old. A bright 12-year-old with a great deal of parental editing and help, yes, perhaps. But the bottom line is that most of my students (community college, with a generous sprinkling of running start high schoolers) don’t write anywhere remotely this well.
Even if Miss Data Point did write (most) of this, so what? There are outliers on both ends of the curve. Why on earth would national policy be written for outliers? Eighty, perhaps ninety percent of students don’t write this well, and schools are charged with educating all of them, especially those who don’t. Noa is not the student anyone worries about (except, perhaps, that she is bored; meh… so was I, throughout my entire time in public school).
None of the above should be construed as favoring or supporting high (or low) stakes standardized testing. But cherry-picking an unusually bright, articulate student from the crowd does not a valid argument make. The challenge is to help the overwhelming majority of students who don’t have Noa’s parents, socio-economic advantages, and presumably safe, well-fed, sheltered background.
Read the kind of writing I routinely get from students who aren’t so blessed and get back to me.
Sam, sorry but I know the writer. She was on national television in fact, on “Education Nation.” I did not cherrypick Noa. She sent in her essay, and I posted it. Can you think of a reason why I should not have posted it? Should I have told her she was too bright and therefore I couldn’t post her essay?
I’ve had several e-mail exchanges with Noa, and I know her uncle. That’s her writing, though I do agree, that’s not the point. Your boredom at school wasn’t good for you–it’s made you bitter, cynical, even nasty about Noa (“Miss Data Point”–hope she didn’t see that!), and somehow kept you from knowing kids like her. I know lots of smart, curious, funny 6th-graders! But fewer smart, curious, funny college students. Why? Boredom in school, tests too dumb to answer, they do things to your head. Not good things.
Noa and her kind are indeed people I worry about as an educator, just as I worry about all the other kids. Everyone needs a good education; no one gets it from being manipulated into thinking the questions on such tests are reasonable or real. Real curiosity is so marvelous a thing, real questions susceptible of so many answers, real minds unique and surprising. Why ruin all that? Noa has more empathy for your students than you seem to. Or maybe you just didn’t say exactly what you meant?
Wow, Isobelclinton… “bitter, cynical, even nasty,” not “empathetic to [my] students…” Little did I realize one comment would so bare my soul and summarize my life’s work to your judgmental eyes. Here I foolishly thought critical thinking included a dose of skepticism. Mostly I feel really bad for all the students who have told me I was the best teacher they ever had. What dregs they must have suffered under before me!
“Data Point” is what she called herself; is a 12-year-old supposed to be referred to as “Ms”?
No, Dr. Ravitch, you shouldn’t have declined to publish her essay because it was too good, or she was too bright. But it’s still an outlier. There may well be many “smart, curious, funny 6th-graders.” As I said, I teach community college, and at no point in my 28 year career have I ventured below high school level. But over that span, from high school to university, I have encountered very, very few students who could or would have written that essay– with or without adult assistance.
My point remains the same: how are supposed to teach — and assess — those who are not so blessed (by socioeconomic background, genetics, family dynamics, and so many other factors)? By no means do I suggest ignoring the Noas of the world, any more than the severely developmentally challenged outliers at the other end of the spectrum. But neither Noa nor the severely challenged represent the majority of students every teacher encounters.
I’ve got perhaps a decade more before I pack it in, and if I come up with any ideas, brilliant or otherwise, I’ll let you know. However, I suspect I’ll be busy trying to help struggling single parents, the economically less fortunate, the students sleeping in their cars for lack of anywhere else, and those who come to us out of K-12 unable to read, much less write like Noa. Cuz ya know, that’s what bitter, cynical, nasty old curmudgeons do.
Sam, did you read my reply? I’m saying (agreeing with Noa), that EVERYONE would benefit from elementary and middle schools that encouraged students’ curiosity and didn’t warp their brains with questions designed to tell them, against the nature of reality, that there’s only one right answer. Your students, mine, students of disadvantaged background in particular. I think the work you’re doing is great! Crucial and difficult work, for which you should be congratulated and honored. But I don’t see why it makes you mad when an unusually smart kid makes cogent complaints against the mind-scrambling effects of tests and test questions like these. Noa herself speaks strongly to the needs of poor students and disabled students in her piece. (Maybe you didn’t read it all, too annoyed by the fact that she seemed to come from a middle-class family and was so articulate.) We’re not on opposite sides. I did find your response bitter, and mean to the 12-year old who monitors this conversation. But I honor the work you do, and I know exactly how hard it is. Our work would be, I suggest, easier, if kids in our public schools were taught to be curious, and to express their actual thoughts.