The best use of tests is for diagnostic purposes, to help teachers learn what students got wrong and where they need more instruction. Students learn too from their errors. But if the results take months to score, they arrive too late to matter. And if the questions and answers are never released, and students never see their errors, then the tests are used only for ranking, not for helping kids.
This NY teacher calls out state officials for their failure to release the tests:
“Why we will never be permitted to see those tests? I always tell my students and even my own child, “go over the question – look at what you got wrong and try to understand why you got it wrong.” And when my own students do poorly on a test I created, I take a closer look at the test items and try to understand why they got the questions wrong – perhaps I made a bogus test – it’s happened to every educator out there. We won’t be able to do that here. Could it be that these kids didn’t really get all that much wrong? Or is it that the construction of the test items were so riddled with ambiguity and multiple correct responses that they don’t want us to see what a poorly crafted instrument it was? Or, perhaps it is because they tested 4th graders with 7th grade materials? Or that the Commissioner of Education in the state of New York doesn’t have any experience teaching (I’m not sure many of us in the trenches would consider 3 years in a private charter school without open-enrollment “teaching experience”) OR at all as an administrator. Or…or…or… #Want2CtheTEST’
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Correct. In Ohio, when they changed the Proficiency Test from diagnostic to punitive, it was the “beginning of the end” … misuse of the tests, fear in the hearts of so many, and they have kept piling it on. In reality, the ONLY use of tests should be to determine what needs to be learned and then to established when the learning is mastered. Using grades to “rank” kids, to pigeon-hole kids, to make kids have a false sense of worth or worthlessness, is wrong. We do all this in the name of “accountability” and it proves almost nothing.
Learning, imo, should be ongoing and interesting. It should be engaging, fun at times, and useful in life. A fallacy in the use of the computerized tests is the short-sightedness of the schools to have even let them in the door. Why? Well, for one thing, the tech upgrades will be forever needed. It is never “good enough” to maintain a computer program or the use of software. Computers get “full” or they don’t work with current upgrades. That costs money.
I think the indignation of many teachers lies in the fact that it seems that it has become easier to rely on computer programs (which are fallable, too) instead of human beings, to spend endless money on upgrades, giving the money to private industry for salaries for non-educators to try to develop the appropriate questions and answers rather than to pay live human beings who have so much more to offer the children than a cold computer. It is a kick in the gut, a slap in the face, a spit in the eye, and a rejection of all that so many have sacrificed to do for so many for so long.
In short, this entire testing business is wrong-headed. Too bad they couldn’t work WITH teachers to make learning better for all, rather than to try to single out people and ruin their lives.
But, some among us won’t be happy until there is a definite collapse of public education with private education only being affordable for a few. It is a sick, greedy, uncharitable time in which we live.
deb:
All professional certifications that I am aware of heavily depend upon standardized tests in one form or another. It seems to me to be silly and fundamentally ineffective to demonize what has been shown to be a useful cost effective tool. I am not saying that they cannot be over-used, misused or abused. I am not saying there aren’t poorly designed tests and badly designed items within tests. The current core curriculum tests certainly need to be carefully analyzed by all the stakeholders in this debate.
There are real legitimate arguments why standardized testing of young children should be the exception not the rule. It seems to me that standardized testing is perfectly reasonable and sensible at certain transition points, namely 5th Grade and 8th Grade. The information at these points can be diagnostically helpful as the student moves from one part of the school system to another and, where necessary, provide access to different types of schools.
Your concern about the funding seems to me to be totally misplaced without a very clear statement as to what $$s we are actually talking about. Why should it matter whether the money goes to for-profit , non-profit or a public entities? The issue is surely the quality of the assessment, reporting and relative cost.
For so long as kids behave like kids, I see no danger of classroom teachers being replaced by computers or on-line learning. These tools will be just that and are not much different from a text book.
What you see as a sick, greedy, uncharitable time – others see as an opportunity to significantly improve the quality of education that our children receive. Reality, as is frequently the case, is probably in the middle.
I guess it depends on where you live. You read into my post things that I didn’t mean. I don’t wish to keep hammering the same ideas to people who want to undermine all education. I believe that there are SOME bad schools, and SOME bad teachers, just like there are SOME bad lawyers and doctors.
Living in Ohio, I have become sick and tired of the things this “governor” has done to so many people, the distrespect he seems to have for so many people, and his propensity for lying with a smile on his face.
If your state is better, good for you.
Bernie: Tools have to be suited to their purpose. One can turn a large Philips screw with a butterknife, but it’s best to use a Phillips screwdriver for the job. One-size-fits-all standardized tests are simply the wrong sort of instrument for measuring progress in reading and writing, for reasons that are quite complex and that I have addressed in many posts on this blog.
In addition, it is not true that all professional certifications are done via standardized testing. Neither is it true that in all cases, there is one, and only one, testing option. A PhD in philosophy or history earns his or her credential–is in effect certified by his or her university–based upon written and oral examinations and the production of a lengthy dissertation that represents a significant contribution to scholarship. It’s a system that recognizes the complexities and nuances and considerable variation in desirable outcomes. No two newly minted PhDs are going to be anything like identically educated, and it would be insane to want that to be the case. It would be insane to replace the current nuanced system for evaluation of PhD candidates with standardized testing.
Robert:
You are right about PhDs. But CPAs, PEs, Psychology licenses, Bar exams, Network Administrators, HVAC technicians, Firefighter exams, etc ., all do use standardized tests or some close variant.
It is a gross exaggeration to think that somehow these tests are going to create a monoculture as you fear IF teachers are high quality.
By the way, I absolutely agree that writing skills are not readily amenable to standardized testing.
Agreed. It is difficult to discuss testing and its uses if there is a predisposition against education and for testing. Many educators want a grade-based, point-based, compairson-based, percentage-based way to “prove” that the students are learning. Many understand or want to understand rubric grading, feeling that the rubrics are subjective because of interpretation and nuance (as if a teacher made test isn’t subjective based upon what the teacher chooses to teach). So, there are many views of appropriate measurements of learning. However, none of them actually have produced absolute outcomes. And, I believe that there is no way to use a nation-wide standardized means of evaluation that is accurate. There are too many unmeasurable inputs to use such a test to determine the future of anyone! But, I don’t believe that is what some who comment here are discussing. They have other agendas and reason to support private schools that are for profit entities. The best idea, to me, is for all the entities to work together. And, in order to provide fairness and equal opportunity, I feel that it should be through the public education system. There will always be those who choose to put their kids in prep schools. And, there is no reason that public schools shouldn’t be able to provide the same type of education, including low class sizes, the arts, sports, languages, and vocational opportunities, too. But, without a tax base that evenly distributes monies throughout the state, there is little opportunity for the middle and lower income families to participate. But, making these schools private siphons the money out of the public coffers and feeds the bank accounts of those who hoard the money because they are “risk takers” and “deserve” so much more than those who deliver the services. It also provides less equity and less oversight and less accountability. This is no different than the corporate monopolies and takeovers of businesses that they know little about (or care little about). They care about “making money” by being “efficient” – which makes workers expendable. And, that is what these school privatizers want – to make teachers expendable. They continue to use anecdotal “evidence” that this is a “must”.
Give me public schools with 15 -20 kids per class, with comfortable, clean environments, great teachers (who are appreciated and paid for their dedication), and excellent educational offerings. Some people want to point to teachers that are inadequate. Think about it, since teaching is one of the lowest paid professions (which I know some here think is a misnomer), does it not make sense that some of the people who go into education do NOT do it for the money and possibly are NOT the valedictorians of their high schools? Americans have created the education systems that we have. But, it should not be something that businessmen or dropouts should endeavor to “improve” based on their own limited experiences and lack of understanding of child development.
I am just tired of the combative nature of a few here who then say the rest are combative … hmmm. Tiring.
Organize, unify, and get this thing off the ground. Trolls can find another place to advocate whatever THEY want. I won’t go to their blog and bug them.
Having one set of ELA standards and one set of standardized ELA tests is not like having a single set of specifications for number 10 nails. It’s like having a single set of specifications for shoelaces, tour buses, theodices, and football teams. The whole idea is wrong from the start.
And, Bernie, replacing the complex, bottom-up ecological system that was U.S. K-12 education with a top-down monoculture is an extraordinarily bad idea, a dangerous one that is going to do a lot of damage because it’s going to kill important individualization and innovation. It’s also going to reduce, dramatically, the autonomy of teachers and curriculum coordinators and curriculum developers. That autonomy is an essential motivator.
Bernie, it’s not a gross exaggeration to say that the tests are creating a monoculture. Are you a teacher? All over the country, right now, at the beginning of this school year, teachers are taking Common Core trainings at which they are being told that they have to employ particular pedagogical procedures in their lesson planning, make sure that their lessons cover particular standards, etc. And in many cases they are actually being handed scripts that tell them, moment by moment, exactly what they are supposed to be doing. I wouldn’t teach under those conditions.
It’s important that we have open discussions of these matters, and I, for one, welcome dissenting views here. One of the problems with the whole CCSSS phenomenon is that these new standards and tests were foisted on everyone without open discussion and debate (and, of course, without empirical testing against alternative standards and tests and against alternatives TO the standards and tests).
I don’t disagree, but don’t like it when it gets personal. It makes me uncomfortable. It isn dissent that bothers me. Obstruction and diversion bothers me. I don’t think it is productive, other than it lets you inside the other person’s head a bit. I watch/read things that I don’t agree with often to find out what in the world is motivating the other viewpoint. Sometimes, I modify.
I LOVE your comments about the use of computers! We are being pushed to do all our reading including the tests via computer…I like to do my own thing, just makung sure that I teach the Standards before the year is out…and am fighting this.
I’ve done lots of trainings, over the years, of item writers, and I can attest that constructing acceptable test items is extraordinarily difficult to do. I’ve studied a lot of state and national high-stakes tests, and many are very shoddily prepared. It’s not surprising that there should be reluctance to divulge test questions, for doing that will inevitably open the tests to a LOT of criticism.
But I think we need to step back from this whole proposition of giving the same high-stakes summative test to all students in ELA, for a number of reasons. But I’ll limit myself, in this post to one, and I’ll address only the writing portions of those tests.
The very fact that the test has to be acceptable for use with all students makes creating a valid test of writing almost impossible. Good expository and persuasive writing is always based in a great deal of highly specific knowledge of the world–the knowledge, ideas, opinions, etc., that the writer has to express. Writing about permaculture, for example, or about dirigibles, requires KNOWLEDGE OF PERMACULTURE AND DIRIGIBLES. Such knowledge of what one is writing about is the sine qua non of good expository and persuasive writing.
But the writing on these tests has to be of a kind that ANY student can do with only the materials put before him or her at the time of the test administration. So, a key element–one might even say THE key element–for production of good expository or persuasive writing is missing. One gets on these tests a lot of DREADFUL writing prompts that involve producing writing about highly general, nearly content-free topics of a kind that no one in the real world would have any interest in reading. That’s bizarre because, in the real world, writing is done for readers, and to the extent that the writer attracts readers, he or she has done the job well.
So, the writing portions of the high-stakes ELA tests don’t test writing, not real writing, at any rate, and not what’s essential in writing. And they can’t do so because the tests have to be one-size-fits-all and are not tied to, in response to, in-depth instruction, learning, experience, and research on content worth writing about.
Which leads to a paradox: What the high-stakes writing tests test is not anything that remotely resembles what, qualitatively, one could think of as writing. And it only takes a glance at these tests to see that that is so.
correction: One gets on these tests a lot of DREADFUL writing prompts that involve producing writing about highly general, nearly content-free topics of a kind that no one in the real world would have any interest in writing about, and the writing to be produced is of a kind that no one is or would be actually interested in reading.
Robert:
I seem to have difficulty lining up my responses. I wanted to say that there are a number of issues that are in danger of being confounded. Standardized tests may or may not be multiple choice, computer scored tests. Strong standard curricula may or may not drive classroom behavior. Critics should carefully describe which issues they are really focused on.
I went to school in the UK. We had standard curriculum and standard exams at 15/16 and 17/18. Set books certainly placed some limits on our English teachers but, in truth, the weaker the teacher the more they used the curriculum as a crutch. In math we used a textbook and that was aligned with the curriculum and the exam but it left huge discretion to the teacher. Based on this experience I doubt that a monoculture is a real issue. My one caveat is the discussion of scripts for teachers. I have not seen them and have no real idea how they will actually be implemented so I cannot really opine beyond what I have already mentioned with respect to weak teachers.
I do appreciate the common courtesy of an open discussion.
“Critics should carefully describe which issues they are really focused on.
Well, the main issue is that attempts to quantify using a standardized test an aesthetic activity that is the teaching and learning process is logically impossible. The educational standards and standardized testing processes are so riddled with logical errors that any conclusions drawn are, as Wilson says “vain and illusory”. These educational malpractices cause great harm to many students and now to teachers and the schools in which the teaching and learning process takes place. To understand why please read “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700.
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society
Duane:
Thanks to some of your earlier comments I have indeed read the Wilson piece that you referred to. Any competent person who has spent time designing surveys and other forms of psychometric instruments recognizes their limitations. The issue, as I have said before, is the nature of the presenting issue and how to best address it. Attempting to improve an existing process always requires some explicit or implicit measurement process.
Clearly any complex phenomena involving n independent dimensions or attributes cannot be completely measured by an instrument that addresses less than n dimensions and attributes. However, in reality everyday we depend on and function using summary measures that cover less than n dimensions. The price of a good is the obvious example. As for his discussion of error, they simply boil down to a need to work to improve the methods and recognize any absolute limitations associate with the subject matter or the tools for assessment. So I find Wilson’s arguments interesting but of marginal relevance to the points at hand: It is an argument for perfection when perfection does not exist.
The Foucault point on labeling is true for some and not for others: “I will prove them wrong” is thankfully a frequent reaction and powerful motivational force. That said, and as I have said elsewhere, labeling for the sake of labeling is to be avoided. Labeling that is the result of a purposeful act, is simply an unfortunate outcome.
Assertions such as “having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society” is just plain unproven and I would argue disproved on a regular and frequent basis. You have but to consider this blog as a microcosm of a society. In what way are those with differing viewpoints meaningful threats to the majority viewpoint on this blog?
All this said, I am not sure how what you wrote addresses the point I raise with Robert.
Bernie: I am very much aware that there are standardized tests with open-response items. I am VERY familiar with the tests that have been given around the country for the past ten years and with the proposed Smarter Balanced and PARCC items, almost all of which have writing components. I’ve studied and thought about these high-stakes tests for years and probably know them as well or better than any but a few people in the country. It was to the so-called “extended response” writing components of these tests that I have directed my criticisms here. However, and this is a real problem in fora like this blog, the problems with the writing portions of the tests require a great deal of explaining, more than any reader is going to attend to in a blog. At best, in this forum, I can make a point here, a point there.
Robert:
I think that we are in violent agreement with respect to the difficulties of efficiently and reliably evaluating complex skills such as writing. Do you see it differently?
I do have one question that I have posed elsewhere: What are the “high stakes” and for whom are they “high stakes”? I recognize the value of a good slogan, but I don’t understand to what it refers except for the use of student test scores as part of the assessment of classroom teachers or building principals.
I have made two points, here, about the writing portions of the standardized high-stakes tests that have been given and that are being developed. One is that the tests are not valid. They do not validly measure writing ability. The second is that the writing standards and the design of the test items are now largely driving writing pedagogy and curricula and grossly distorting both in unacceptable, counterproductive ways.
Even know, as I am writing this, millions of teachers in the US (there are about 3.5 million total in K-12) are going back to school and receiving CCSS trainings in which they are being told precisely how they must teach and with what materials so that they can prepare students for the all-important tests. Now, professional development is valuable. But it should be presenting ideas for possible adoption by teachers not presuming to tell them that their expertise doesn’t matter and that there is a single right way to teach that has been decided upon by a few distant authorities, a procedure they must follow slavishly.
Hi, Bernie. You asked about the use of the term “high stakes.” You mentioned that fact that the test results play a big roles in evaluations of teachers and schools. Those are important stakes. Again, even now, as I am writing this, teachers are in beginning-of-the-year trainings in schools around the country being told what sort of test prep they have to do to turn around their scores. The consequences of this kind of thing for pedagogy and curricula are dire.
But there are other high stakes involved as well. Under the current ESEA, there is no FEDERAL requirement that promotion and graduation decisions be linked to standardized test outcomes, but individual states do make such links, and making such links is a long-standing goal of the accountability-based ed reform movement. According to Fairtest (www.fairtest.org), 26 states now have test score requirements for graduation, and some have such requirements for grade promotion. Here’s a bit from a recent report from the Literacy Research Association: “Several states in the U.S., such as Florida and Texas, have longstanding test-based
retention policies, while others, such as Tennessee and Arizona, have only recently adopted policies. Still other states (e.g., Indiana, New Mexico) are in the process of proposing legislation
relating to test-based retention.” (http://www.literacyresearchassociation.org/publications/LRATestBasedRetentionPBFinal.pdf)
In the world of high-stakes testing, the devil truly is in the details. There are complex reasons why one-size-fits-all high-stakes testing doesn’t work in ELA, and it takes a lot of learning, in many cases, to understand those reasons. Unfortunately, educrats and plutocrats and politicians and pundits don’t have the patience or interest or desire to hear those reasons, and communicating them to the general public is not easy to do. One the surface, a lot of this stuff sounds great: Let’s hold students and teachers to rigorous standards. Let’s not make excuses for failure. Blah blah blah. From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs sounded great, too. But then came forced collectivization under Stalin. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley,” wrote Burns. Often, horribly, horribly astray, and often the implementation proves that the great idea wasn’t so great after all.
I happen to believe that we are well served, as a society, by teaching kids how to write (with the qualification that not all kids will grow up to be writers). And that’s one reason why I am so dismayed by the state and national standards and by the new high-stakes tests. These encourage teaching kids to produce awful, formulaic writing; they encourage awful pedagogy that doesn’t address highly specific tools for writing and doesn’t found writing in having something to say; and they lead to the production of terrible writing curricula directed toward the sort of writing that is done on the tests.
It is all data mining.
lets see who chooses this answer and who chooses that answer, whether all answers could be correct or all are absurd or all are wrong. the information desired by the testing groups is, what do the answers given by the learner say about the learners life and values? ( so we can push more BIG IDEAS to correct or lead or cajole or change them if necessary, if they don’t GET IT)( shades of the phony Werner Earhart and EST training, he eventually admitted that ” getting it” was realizing that there was nothing to GET).
like the video game minecraft, its free, it addicting and parents think oh its so creative! but really they are collecting data points on the player how he or she behaves. it is behavior or value viewpoint data collection, nothing more. the nonsensification of education including these tests illustrate that knowledge memorization does not produce the compliant worker of the 21st century sought by the educrat globalists who fund and control and seek more power so they need to trick everybody into thinking knowledge is so passe! so 20th century! so unsophisticated and old news! oh okay. sure you can tell my kids to deeply engage in some illiterate rap lyrics or some government drivel, like it willl make them smarter and a better thesis writer at Harvard or Yale ,
( pssssst, be sure to drive the BIG IDEA to a top ten victim idea) when your language tricks really mean that college and career ready is a 2 year community college and training as a DATA LOGGER!
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/tag/21st-century-learning/
this attorney blogger can explain exactly what these new and increased tests are all about.
where are the test questions available for viewing?
What actual evidence do you have to support these rather extreme assertions.
Thank you for posting this teacher’s concerns about the stonewall top education officials have built to keep parents, teachers and the public in the dark about their flawed testing programs and other critical matters pertinent to public education and the well-being of school children.
Change the Stakes, a parent advocay group to which I belong, feels sunshine is the answer to many of the problems that exist and are exacerbated by so-called educational leaders who practice non-disclosure of information, which leads them to distort data and dissemble rather than respect and level with the people they are supposed to serve.
Our campaign is growing in strength to demand sunshine, transparency and truth-in-testing. The virtues are obvious and speak to all interested parties–parents, teachers media and politicians–even if these concepts are foreign to those who are accustomed to keeping power through intimidation, concealment of facts and news management. We believe the time to end their reign is now!
Please read our statement and visit the Change the Stakes web site. Thank you.
As a teacher, I find it frustrating enough that I can’t see the standardized test questions, along with my student’s responses to them. It would be very helpful indeed. However, as a parent, I am enraged. If I want to see a test that my child has taken in school, I simply ask. What has happened to parental rights? Why are parents so quick to accept so little? For years I have blindly accepted the form letter that accompanies my children’s PSSA scores (We are in Pennsylvania.). My daughter took the Algebra 1 Keystone in the spring, and I am still awaiting the score. I am outraged that I cannot see the questions and my daughter’s responses to them. It is one thing to expect parents of children who score well not to bother with wanting to see the test. It is entirely another thing to send parents a less than advanced score and not allow us to see the questions and our children’s responses. What are they afraid of?
I am learning more about the opt out movement, but perhaps we should also start an accountability movement where we demand to see the entire test and the essay/open-ended questions with scorer comments. Wait a minute, that means they would have to slow down and write some comments…maybe they would have to actually read the responses, as opposed to skimming them.
Just a thought.
Danielle:
Your issue is an important one and one that needs to be addressed. Pushing for transparency makes perfect sense to me and Pearson has no real justification for resisting disclosure of items and answers.
The test makers don’t want to release the questions, in my opinion, because they would have to go to the trouble and expense of writing all new items for the next year and thus couldn’t do inter-year validation studies, and thus couldn’t make as much money. On the other hand, perhaps “no one” is correct that the whole point of the test is data acquisition and mining and has nothing to do with measuring level of “education” attained.
Didn’t the old SAT at least measure something?
Harlan:
Test developers, like ETS, will typically have batteries of equivalent items. You raise a basic question about measuring change and inter-temporal comparisons but these are essentially well understood and statistically manageable. Pearson do, however, have to demonstrate that they have done their due diligence.
Ever since NCLB ushered in the testing mania in this country, a couple major vendors has been preparing tests for the states, and the states have been releasing, each year, SOME of last year’s test items or, at least, representative samples of the test items. This hasn’t been an issue in the past. There may be some reluctance to release these new test items because they would, doubtless, be subjected to enormous and scrutiny and to negative reviews, and those reviews would fuel opposition to the nationwide implementation of the new tests.
Pearson will not release the test questions because they are: culturally and socially economically biased, ambiguous, poorly worded, incorrect, trivial, do not test what they claim they test, just plain silly and lots of other unimpressive things.
And those “things” cost the taxpayers lots of money.
You may be correct, but what evidence do you have to indicate that the test items are culturally biased in any meaningful way?
bernie for goodness sakes do you work for pearson? pineapplegate for starters and the article on this blog about low wage workers hired from craigs list to grade tests and cheating scandals…serf the web and youtube. As for no one’s comment well where is the proof he is not correct? We are not privy to either the questions or to the rubric of grading them, or the qualifications of the graders so the onus is on the testing companies to prove they are not what is suggested. the facts of test scores dropping radically this year and last because of common core seem to imply fishyness. as for cultural bias, common core practically oozes it. have yourself a look.
it would go a long way for teachers and parents trust if the tests were made public after they were given, because right now there is mucho mistrust…..
Thank you all for the excellent comments above. I have nothing to add but want to tell particularly Deb and Robert Shepherd how much I appreciate them. This commentary it a true teaching moment…unlike some diatribes I read yesterday.
I just heard they released “some” of the questions. This is worse than none, in my opinion. It proves negligence.
If students can’t see what they got wrong, they learn nothing from the tests.
In Ohio, the process has been to release questions from the previous year’s test. These are available online at the Ohio Department of Education’s website. They release about 1/3 of the questions in the form of practice tests. Teachers and parents have access.
Apparently, there is a testbank of questions from which they select test questions. I taught 4th grade.I’d give my students practice from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade levels. They actually had some good practice work for making outlines, integrating science and soc studies into the reading.
The poetry was terrible. The fiction was seldom engaging. Sometimes the answer choices were unclear.
The math had some very long responses required. They had to show their work within a designated frame so the scanners coukd search for correct answers or methods. So we practiced making sure students had confidence with all the formatting issues.
We had to learn the “tricks” through the many years of testing since we didnt get instructions on the formatting. All we could do was to figure it out from correcting the old practice tests.
Each year operative verbs were changed so we had to teach students multiple synonyms for stories or paragraphs – passage, selection, etc. Learning the testing vocabulary was part of the whole experience.
In the 2011-2012 testing years we also had to teach students how to understand scoring criteris within rubric guidelines, seldom using concepts they truly comprehended.
The students didxwell and our scool made some high national ratings, but we were told that when the PARCC Tests would be used we’d not do so well because it was more difficult and ouldn’t know what to expect ahead of time. We shall see.
“If students can’t see what they got wrong, they learn nothing from the tests.”
This is a great point. If the tests are designed to measure student progress, then why not let students and parents see them? Let’s say I log on to ARIS and find out that my daughter scored a 99 in “number sense” and an 80 in geometry. Knowing better than to ask what the heck “number sense” is, my daughter or I might ask, what areas of geometry does she need to improve in? None of our business, apparently. Take your number and step to the side, sir, there are others waiting to receive their scores.
Mom/speducator:
I would settle for some to begin with. If they are inappropriate or badly designed items it will be relatively easy to force the disclosure of the rest – if that is even required. If they turnout to be appropriate and well designed items then some of your concerns may be assuaged.
In any event the disclosure of a subset of questions does not “prove” anything and certainly not negligence. On the other hand poorly designed items would be negligent.
how have we gotten to this place where parents are forbidden to see their children’s work? if all parents refused then they would have no power. they are a joke on all of us. they make money and hide what they are testing our children about. it is madness. who could possibly defend this lunacy. it would be an argument akin to that of common core where their excuse to impose nationalized education was to make it easier for kids who move across state lines…
http://educationviews.org/kids-who-move-across-state-lines/
Wikileaks for education anyone?
It won’t happen. One must have principles to engage in such and if there is any career where folks check their principles at the door –if they had any– it is Education. The mere fact that they will accept these discredited and phony MEds is proof. There are many such examples of the NEA and the AFT being asked to join, even in amicus briefs, requesting discloser of inaccurate, inappropriate, and invalid test questions which those teacher groups declined..
Too many teachers aspire to work in school administrations positions, or the testing firms after “doing their time” in the classroom. With the utmost respect, this is where Ravitch’s naivete, and deference to union leadership as not being self-serving, actually collides with reality.
they can’t release the test questions because they’re a matter of “National Security”
just like any other criminal act the federal or state governments commit.
Are you serious, or just being sarcastic?
I would have thought it was the cost to Pearson to write whole new tests.
I know about the criminal acts of the federal government, NSA listening without warrants, deliberate targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS, the coverup of Benghazi, Fast and Furious, refusal to enforce laws it doesn’t like, attempts to legislate by regulations when it can’t get congressional approval for a change to the law, unilaterally declaring congress to be in “recess” when it wasn’t, a host of other abuses like the attempt to impose a national curriculum through CCSS, but I am NOT so familiar with the criminal acts of state governments. Can you mention a few?
Or are you using the word “criminal” in a metaphorical sense as part of your communist critique of capitalism in general?