Guy Brandenburg here reproduces the listing of anti-testing news from FairTest, an organization that has been ringing the alarm bells about standardized testing for years.
If you want to see the explosion of test boycotts, opt outs, and rollbacks, read the FairTest update.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have administered middle level math and ELA tests since NCLB legislation first spawned this disaster. I have watched test construction and cut scores be used to manipulate results. I hang my head in shame over the punitive nature of this reform movement and our complacency and compliance that let it continue for so long. After 12 years of this madness we have less than little to show for countless hours of test prep and billion of billions of dollars spent chasing our tails.
Its time to starve the data beast.
Refuse the 3 -8 Tests NY
OPT OUT NOW
The new CCSS/Pearson math and ELA assessments
are TRAPS not TESTS
They are designed to TRICK, CONFUSE,
and WEAR DOWN your child into FAILING.
Parents do not let your child’s bogus test scores be used to dismantle the public school system that you cherish. REFUSE the TESTS
Don’t play the fool on April Fool’s Day.
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Fair Test is a good organization to manage this list. Think you meant “explosion,” not “expulsion.” Freudian slip?
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CUOMO has officially declared that
CC/Pearson, 3 to 8 NY TESTS are
“premature, cause anxiety, and are UNFAIR!”
He himself, the great protector
and lobbyist for the children of NY,
the grand and glorious wizard of Albany
has also publicly declared the he will
,”not allow scores to be used against them.”
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SO WHY ON ANDREW’s GREAT GREN EARTH ARE OVER ONE MILLION STUDENTS ABOUT TO TAKE THEM??????????????
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The nearly incomprehensible reply is,
so that districts can evaluate teachers.
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And if they can’t count against them, how can they count for them.
Living in the rabbit hole takes a little getting used to.
Oh wait is that a sign post up ahead or a looking glass?
.
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of suspended disbelief. It is an area which we call “The Cuomo Zone”.
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“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of suspended disbelief. It is an area which we call “The Cuomo Zone”.”
This is great! Can I share this?
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The end… this sham of this TESTING/DATA obsession era cannot come soon enough. Corporate ed strategy is to create a “spider webbed” linkage of testing with all components of what goes on in the classroom. If anyone argues that testing is not linked to Common Core or to “guiding” how a teacher instructs in the classroom… read this IRONIC blurb sent to MD teachers where reading between the lines is barely necessary. The govt gives MD money for training in common core, PARCC and in the almighty SLO (which for those few of you fortunate enough to be free of this, requires teachers in MD to target a sub group of students within the classroom and to create baseline data which is monitored over the course of the year in intervals and must show student growth… ) Mind you, this is supported by the NEA sadly. Here is a cut and paste from an email sent to MD teachers:
“Teaching Despite the Test”
“March may be the month we associate with testing because of MSAs, but students receive assessments throughout the year. Preparing students for high stakes assessments can start on the first day of school. Teachers who refuse to teach to the test want to ensure students receive a 21st century learning experience that is authentic and relevant to their lives. View tools to help teachers keep lessons creative and lively and reduce test anxiety for students in NEA’s Teaching Despite the Test Toolkit.
Authentic PARCC Sample Online Test Questions Now Available
Following initial field testing, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has made available new online sample test questions similar to those students will see when the test goes live in Spring 2015. To experience the new sample questions for elementary, middle, and high school assessments, visit the PARCC website. The website also has more detailed information about the test and student accommodations.
MSEA Awarded Common Core and SLO Training Grant from NEA
MSEA has been awarded two grants by NEA: a $100,000 grant to develop a statewide training program on Common Core—which will be delivered by the MSEA Common Core Cadre, a group of expert member-trainers—and a $423,000 grant to provide focused professional development on student learning objectives (SLOs). A key to implementing the CCSS and ensuring student success is to provide teachers with support, training, and resources to assist with instruction. Specific training needs will be identified from feedback by MSEA members. Click here to read NEA’s press release on how the Great Public Schools fund is assisting and investing in members through programs like these”…
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Indeed, artsegal, the corporate tentacles are everywhere and they are strangling PUBLIC education.
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No test measures everything a student has learned or not learned. Classroom test measure what the teacher wants students to know. Standardized test measure what the test taking companies want the students to know. Knowing something and actually learning it are not the same. We should be using multiple forms of assessments to gauge student learning such as; portfolio assessments, authentic real world projects or experiments, self evaluations, classroom assignments. These types of assessments allow students to demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving skills. The money spent on standardized test and the punitive nature of standardized tests have not served the best interest of students in public education.
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I have developed a Pearson ELA simulator. Try this on for size and you will experience the emotions of NY third through eighth grade students on April Fools Day:
Read carefully and answer test items 1 – infinity.
A pair of centuries and some late wickets put South Africa in a strong position with Australia 4 for 112 at stumps on day two of the second Test in Port Elizabeth. South Africa was bowled out early in the final session for 423, after AB de Villiers (116) and JP Duminy (123) both ground out tough, vital centuries for the home side. Nathan Lyon finished with 5 for 130 after bowling tirelessly all day, while Australia’s fast bowlers uncharacteristically struggled on a lifeless pitch. Wayne Parnell’s (2 for 19) first three balls featured the wickets of Doolan and Marsh, as the left-armer made the most of his Test recall. Parnell coerced edges out of the Australia pair with fine line-and-length bowling, needing only a fraction of movement to earn the scalps. Warner and nightwatchman Nathan Lyon (12 not out) faced a number of close scares to reach stumps unbroken. De Villiers grassed a regulation chance behind the stumps when Warner was on 39, while Lyon was also dropped by the usually safe hands of Duminy and given not out when replays proved he nicked one behind to the keeper.
1) Which best describes the “fraction of movement” needed to earn scalps in this cricket match?
a) nicking behind the keeper
b) edging out a lifeless pitch
c) breaking fine-line wickets
d) stumping vital centuries
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I am wondering if the reformers will give us the opt-out choice, but proceed to privatize the schools. I am not a fan big testing and how the results are used against schools. Part of me worries we will stop the testing, but still lose our public schools.
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I remember the “good old days”, when the first NYS assessments were created. The message to teachers by the powers that be was that these tests were designed to improve student learning and teacher instruction but NEVER to be used as part of teacher evaluation. I remember sitting together as a middle school math department, grading our students’ assessments, discussing the questions and student responses. We were able to contact NYSED with our concerns about test questions and grading policies. There was a camaraderie, with the single goal of improving the education for our students. I was given a complete copy of the assessment as well as results for each student, identifying every correct and incorrect response. How useful this was in informing my instruction! More often than not, it was a fair test for the average student. There was a part of the student population who should NEVER have been required to take these assessments.
Contrast this to the present. I must not discuss the assessment questions with my colleagues for fear of losing my job. Feedback to NYSED is not encouraged. I receive sterile student test results which give me little useful information to inform instruction. I am allowed to see a few “select” questions as released by NYSED. My school packages the completed student assessment papers and sends them to be graded by people who are strangers to me and my students. The purpose of these assessments is not to inform instruction but to evaluate teachers and schools. I live in fear of how the results of cut score manipulation will reflect upon my wonderful school district and all the amazing people I work with.
Rethink the new assessments, NYSED! Something has gone horribly wrong!
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Anyone interested in receiving “Testing Resistance & Reform News” should go to http://www.fairtest.org and click on “Signup Weekly News Updates.” Editions are usually emailed out on Tuesday afternoons — they are also published on FairTest’s Facebook page and on our website
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The word “explosion” is accurate. And Fair Test is dong a great job staying on top of the stories.
Just about every day we can watch some really good Resistance work from someplace. Yesterday, it was and hour-long public TV talk show on the Colorado testing program –and opt out. Etc.
Here in Chicago, nobody has an accurate count of all the children whose parents opted them out of the recent ISAT testing. And Chicago Public Schools officials and the Illinois State Board of Education went into a panic to try and bully, intimidate and lie to everyone in a vain attempt to stop the explosion. The results ranged from the ludicrous (a “Communications” memo from Chicago’s administration basically proclaiming — in bad prose — that reporters had to be trailed by the local KGB wherever we went) to the evil (children who opted out being denied the “ice cream party” and made to watch because their parents had opted them out. As of today, we’ve reported more than 80 elementary schools in Chicago that had opt outs, small and big. But the list is longer than that, because, like many really significant historical movements, this one did “explode” and so no one was in a position to count. The best places to get information about the Chicago explosion are on a handful of websites:
More Than A Score
CORE teachers Chicago
The Chicago Teachers Union
Raise Your Hand coalition Chicago
PURE Chicago
and of course yours truly, substancenews.net.
One of the results of the unsurprising but still amazing amount of monstrous pressure to reduce the number of opt outs in Chicago is that we began our daily “Proctology Report” at Substance. The report was to highlight the biggest ______ from reports of the previous day. The queue of ________ is longer than we’ve had time to publish, but each one has to have done something specifically nasty to rate the honor. I don’t know what the trophy for these ________s will be, but the competition for the design should be fun. Already rejected is a suggestion using a parody of the Oscar (as you know, the statuettes are make in Chicago) from the side our proctologists would be examining…
Only in Chicago.
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