Deborah Meier responded to an earlier post about the growing movement against testing.
I said that testing is misused now, as a way to punish (or reward) students, teachers, principals, and schools.
Deborah says that standardized testing is in itself problematic, for all the reasons she gives here:
Standardized testing was not intended to serve all its many misused purposes.
But even as a measure of an individual student it has enormous imitations. The score is “accurate” only within a very broad range==a so-called year on or off, and in 1/3 of the cases wider than that. That’s its statistical range of reliability.
However, since it only covers a certain percentage of the skills and aptitudes involved in reading or math it may not reflect how well the students have done on what they primarily DID study.
Nor does it take into account that some work best under timed pressure, and some worse. This wouldn’t show up on reliability studies. etc etc.
In short it’s even a lousy messenger regarding how one particular child is doing–and rarely useful diagnostically unless the teacher had the feedback–actually items answered wrong and right–immediately so he could match it with the kids, do some follow-up interviews, and try other ways of reteaching it.
That’s what good in-class assessment aims at. Such assessment is not, honestly, intended for the purposes of judging students, but rather of judging the effectiveness of one’s teaching. And, if we don’t keep peering over teacher’s shoulders, it might discourage cheating–and might replace all the more critical daily observational and relationship-building skills that good teaching demands.
The greatest moments are when a student actually says–I’m totally lost, or I’m confused, or why doesn’t this way seem to work for me, or…. It’s ignorance displayed that we should cheer about, not ignorance disguised.
I love this last paragraph. Is that you or Deborah Meier who said it?
Dan,
That letter was introduced by me. The rest is all Deborah.
Full disclosure: I tend to ace standardized tests. I always did. I scored highest in my class at my private high school on the SATs. I am a natural born test taker.
What these tests tend to measure is test taking ability. Maybe “mental agility”.
There is one thing that they do very well, and that is put money in the pockets of Rupert Murdoch and others like him.
Fabulous! And I particularly appreciate the acknowledgment of appropriate in-class assessments. I’m working with a group of terrific teachers in one of the lowest SES schools in a large urban district. Keeping track of their students’ progress gives them something valid to hang on to. Not surprisingly, many of their kids are surpassing previous expectations. The kids are goal setting and celebrating their success – AT LAST!
I like your post because it points out not only what the teacher might not have taught well but what the student did not learn well. Let’s get kids back into the equation. When we keep talking about what the teacher did not teach, we are treating students like pillowcases that we merely need to stuff with information. The kids have to have some skin in the game. I can teach; I can’t make them learn. I can, however, help them to buy in to the idea that learning can be fun, exciting, challenging,…
2old2tch: You got to the heart of the matter. I think and feel exactly the same.
Yes, we would have made a good team.
🙂
You have precisely described the dynamics; yet we who toil on are “accountable” for everything. It is all our fault if parents and kids do not care to learn. In my day, growing up in foster care, the responsibility was squarely placed on me. If I wanted to learn I needed to pay attention and ask questions. The school and its staff were not expected to make me learn, they knew that was not possible.
Great post. I’ve asked the same questions about why standardized test scores are accepted as absolute…bad statistics and SEM plus reliability never mentioned. Validity of those tests? That is another story and a big, fat joke.
Opt out and resist the insanity.
Which should we believe, grades given by teachers (presumably based in part on exam scores) or the results of standardized exams?
As a sophomore in high school, my son earned a B- in a precalc class in high school and a 298 out of 300 on the state MAP exam. Which was a better indicator of mathmatical knowledge?
Who says that the B- he earned was purely an indicator of mathematical knowledge? I earned a B- in my AP English class in high school and then aced the AP exam. Do you know why? Because I didn’t apply myself as much as I could have in the English class. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Heh… You just reminded my of the high school science fair I was part of, too. I earned a 2nd Grant in the school fair, but not enough of the 1st grant winners wanted to go to the state fair so I was asked if I was interested. Of course I was, so I went to the state fair and won 1st grant there as well as two special awards (one from the Marine corps, as I recall). I went to a private Catholic high school, mind you.
Fun fact #3 — the subject matter of my science project? Determining whether or not mazes were accurate tests for animal intelligence. I ran humans through a computer generated maze that was identical to one used in previous research with blind, anosmic rats. I then compared the data I had collected with the data other researchers had collected concerning their rats.
That pattern of higher standardized test scores than grades is standard for boys.
After the B- in precalc, he proceeded to take ten hours of calculus (the science and engineering track), honors vector calculus, linear algebra, skip three graduate algebra classes to take the fourth semester graduate algebra class along with two semesters of physical chemistry at the local university. All A. Oh, and he did this before he turned 17. Seems like applying himself was not really the issue. ( he also earned 5’s on all 9 AP exams he took, but I understand that is not meaningful as it is a standardized exam)
Ask him how relevant he thinks the standardized test scores were.
He did not graduate in the top 10% of his class. How relevant were his high school grades?
Again, you have a very bright son who chose not to put his all into classes. He is obviously bright just has his own agenda. His high school grades tell you that perhaps he did not see the value in putting the effort in to getting all As. I hope somewhere along the line he learns(ed) good study/work habits. That really seems to be a better determiner of whether they will find success in their jobs. Not many of us get to put effort into only work we want to do and only when we want to do it. That discipline is very important.
I think the 4.0 that he earned in the 25 credit hours of university courses he took while in high school suggest he has reasonably good work habits.
But the broader question is about the usefulness of standardized exams. I believe standardized exams do have value, especially for high performing adolescent males. Consistently high scores can indicate something about academic ability that is independent of a teacher’s filter. It was especially important in his case because it convinced the public high school principle to basically leave him alone to learn.
That’s great, teaching. What is the purpose of your argument?
That standardized exams are not worthless.
I don’t know, teaching. What are you trying to use the data for? To determine how well he can take a test? To determine what kind of a worker he’ll be, coupled with the caliber of work he can perform?
If you were hiring, or admitting into a program, would you want the candidate with the best potential, or the one with maybe less potential but a better track record of applying the potential they had?
It’s a complex question and not easily answered, I know.
Here’s another question — which of his teachers was superior? The one who gave him a B-, or the one who gave him an A?
Does your son deserve any of the credit for his accomplishments, or do his teachers deserve all of it?
Or do teachers only get credit for failure?
What I am trying to say is that standardized tests have value. If you want a metric outside of the standardized test, my son’s work as a high school student is cited in a mathematics masters dissertation at my university. He served as an outside member of the dissertation committee for that masters student.
In my son’s case, and I suspect this is a general problem with adolescent males, the grades for a class were not a good measure of academic achievement. Standardized tests can also give important insight into a student’s abilities and should not be discarded.
Teaching, I don’t think anyone is advocating the complete abandonment of standardized tests. The national debate seems to be about whether or not student standardized test scores should be used to evaluate teachers. I think this experiment is doomed to fail; unfortunately, many good teachers are going to lose their jobs before it does.
There is a previous entry titled “Are Standardized Tests Worthless?”. If the answer to that is yes, why would you want to have any standardized exams at all?
Also (and this is what the article here is really about), standardized testing is being OVERdone in many places, as required by new mandates that go hand-in-hand with using student test scores to evaluate teachers.
Let me give you an anecdotal example. Due to a combination of factors, of which standardized testing is one, I have only taught one of my courses this quarter two or three times in the last MONTH. This is an ESL III class in a high school. Newly mandated standardized tests in our district accounted for about six class days of loss (the rest was a combination of February break, a blizzard, and a new schedule were every class meets only twice every three days).
The testing only accounts for a little over a quarter of the lost days, but it is a significant percentage. Especially considering that the two tests involved were both NEW tests, which have been added to the usual battery of standardized tests our students have to take.
At some point, the amount of testing becomes excessive. Can we agree on that?
I certainly think standardized exams can be overdone.
Teachingeconomist wrote: “There is a previous entry titled ‘Are Standardized Tests Worthless?’. If the answer to that is yes, why would you want to have any standardized exams at all?”
I am unfamiliar with that entry. If standardized tests were really worthless, I would say that there would be no point in having any of them. What would you say? Your question seems irrelevant.
It is the post after this one.
Here is the link for you: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/04/are-standardized-tests-worthless-2/
“In my son’s case, and I suspect this is a general problem with adolescent males, the grades for a class were not a good measure of academic achievement. ”
I would argue that the grades may very well have been an indication of his achievement in those classes. He chose not to put the time in to get the As. It was not important to him. Grades are given for what you produce in a class not what you are capable of producing. In his case, he probably saw the standardized testing as a worthy challenge, so he he took the tests seriously. I suspect he comes from a background for which these tests are a fairly good measure of what he knows.
It is not like his high school GPA was bad (3.85 out of 4.0), just not top ten percent.
From his perspective much of the work was pointless busy work. Grades reflect many things that happen in the class, a good deal of which has little to do with mastery of the subject. When challenged in classes where mastery of the subject was reflected in the class grade, like in the seven university courses he took while in high school, he did extremely well. Same kid, different environment, different result. His experience is why I am a strong advocate of allowing students to choose the educational environment that best suites them.
So he didn’t play the school’s games in order to get in the top 10%, not a negative as far as I am concerned, and his performance on standardized tests was, in his case, a more accurate picture of his ability. It sounds to me like he has reached the age where what he accomplishes is really entirely on him. He has the tools; it is up to him to use them. That is kind of the last school test we all have to pass that also will serve us well in the rest of life. Life is certainly not always fair, but the choices we make to deal with it are all ours.
And what grades do you think that his son would have received in a typical urban (not magnet) school? In every inner-city school that I’ve taught in (4 so far) I can’t imagine getting anything less than a 4.0 GPA. The is simply no comparison. I could have tested out of every high school that I taught in, but not the one that I actually went to. GPA is meaningless unless you are comparing apples to apples, and even then, not so meaningful.
You also seem to be making the argument that the kids didn’t put in the time. What does time have to do with it? Why is a grade adding in anything more than proficiency? Somehow ‘great’ effort is worth part of the grade and mere competence and excellence is not? If I can ace the tests, it shouldn’t matter if I did homework, or participated, or whatever else.
“If I can ace the tests, it shouldn’t matter if I did homework, or participated, or whatever else.”
You sound like a younger version of me! Of course, back then, the faculty and staff of the private Catholic high school I was attending shot me down. Do you think they were secretly unionized or something?
It seems we have arrived at a place of agreement. Standardized tests can be valuable because they help us know that we are comparing apples to apples and because it gives another, independent assessment of how much individual students have learned.
I guess I wasn’t as clear as I could have been in my posts although I did say that not playing the school’s games was not a negative from my point of view. I was not making any “argument” about not putting in the time. TE was talking about achievement in his classes, not proficiency. They are two different things. I suggested that his grades might reflect his choice not to spend the time on class material. If your grades are based on homework, participation, and tests, not participating or not completing all assignments will affect your grade. It seemed to bother TE that his son’s grades were not perfect. They are not based on the same criteria as the standardized tests, so their is no reason necessarily to expect them to be identical. In any case, my questions were not a criticism. I was trained as a special education teacher to look for any and all explanations before making decisions about a student. I look at a lot more than whether a student can pass the tests. TE’s son seems well equipped to face the world.
The grades in his high school classes did not especially bother me precisely because he had other opportunities to demonstrate his academic abilities (courses at the university, SAT and SAT Subject Exams, AP Exams). If this alternative measure was not available, the grades would have had a far larger impact on his life.
Re: high school work habits v. standardized test scores. Often, for lack of student perceived challenge/relevance, some very bright students may not apply themselves in high school. They already know the material or the class may not be “worth their time and attention;” therefore they do not apply themselves. A college setting may present more rigor and might offer a setting deemed more appropriately worthy and indeed more challenging for the student who has grown tired of “baby” work. Gifted and talented students have been known to drop out of high school because they were not given the opportunity to face interesting and appropriate academic challenges.