On the website Testtalk.org, there are many interesting comments about the three days of testing English Language Arts. Why does it require so many hours to find out how well children read? No one knows, or if they know, they aren’t saying.
Here is a thoughtful reflection by a third-grade teacher:
“I have been wondering for years now what these tests are really accomplishing, and this year I am more dismayed than ever. I firmly believe that they are not even measuring what they claim to be assessing.
“You cannot measure reading comprehension when the student has to spend all of his or her energy decoding the text. You cannot measure writing ability when the topic of their writing is dependent upon understanding of a text that was above their reading level. You cannot test math skills when the students have to spend so much time just figuring out what the task even requires of them.
“You cannot really measure ANYTHING when students are too fatigued to function (which most third graders are after about 30 minutes of one activity, let alone 60 or more). And most importantly, you cannot measure progress when where the students STARTED is never taken into account.
“As a special educator, this last one is most troubling to me. Year after year, I have to answer for why my students are not progressing, when in reality, they are making TREMENDOUS strides in their abilities to function in school and perform basic life skills and academic tasks. Sadly, these will never come to light if both the baseline assessment AND the culminating assessment are so far out of their reach it is like putting a foreign language in front of them.
“I know we want to be the best and brightest country in the world, but the fact remains that humans do not learn new things overnight. Everyone learns differently, learns at their own pace, and has different ways of showing what they have learned.
“One of the first things I learned in my teacher certification program (one of the best and most respected in my state), was that NO ONE should be judged by tests and tests alone, but that day to day observation data, work samples, and multi-faceted projects were far more valuable.
“Now, teachers are being told by those who never went through such programs, that what they learned doesn’t matter, schools need to run like businesses, and students need to be programmed like machines (and if they cannot be, it is the teacher’s fault – NOTHING else is considered). What are we doing? What are we teaching our children? What are we preparing them for? WHAT ARE WE TESTING????”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very well reasoned, and I completely agree with all points.
I would also pose the question of what exactly is “a year’s worth of growth.” I don’t think I’ll ever be able to figure that one.
Is it stating the obvious to say that the testing is more about evaluating the teacher (with the logic being that an evaluated teacher will work much harder than in the past to raise the level of students…as teacher effort to this point has presumably not been acceptable) than it is about evaluating the students? Or is that just my teacher-centered perspective?
I firmly believe that they are not even measuring what they claim to be assessing.
Of course they aren’t.
The tests are completely invalid.
They are a total scam.
They are accomplishing what they want to accomplish and that is to fail children. That is the only way they can fail teachers in this ridiculous system and then fail schools and close them, only to re-open them as charter schools for profit. They know what they are doing. They are breaking their spirit, creating compliant widgets incapable of thought that will eventually provide worker bees for their corporations at minimum cost. It is a well thought out plan.
The elected and appointed officials who are enabling this are criminals.
The testing situations and formats used for these summative standardized tests are completely artificial, unnatural, and unreal.
Teacher grades are far better predictors of college success than is the SAT, which is the most thoroughly vetted standardized test in history.
These tests are abusive and invalid.
And they completely distort what goes on in classrooms. Like a cancer metastasizing, they spread throughout the curriculum and disrupt and compromise normal pedagogical processes.
The Educrats and Politicians pushing these tests haven’t a clue what they are doing.
Stop them.
Stop the abuse.
Testing should be on curricula. It should be done by teachers. It should disappear into learning. It should be formative, not summative.
I agree with what you are saying. We, in Ohio, have to subject our students to a 2.5 hour window of testing. We set aside all specials and start testing at 9:30 to noon with possible bathroom breaks. The kids are always troopers and used as much of the time as they needed.
It was exhausting and they were always so relieved when testing was over. I had 4th graders. I always wondered how they arrived at the difference in the test questions from 3rd to 4th grades. The practice tests were worlds apart. Smaller fonts, advanced vocabulary, confusing directions, and more than a year’s growth.
Once the PARCC test is implemented with its developmentally inappropriate questions, it will be interesting to me to have someone explain just how VAM can be applied from one year to the next based on comparing two completely different kinds of tests. This is “bad science” at its best.
This is not science, Deb. It’s numerology.
Summative testing via these standardized tests of reading and writing is to educational assessment what astrology is to astronomy.
True. Very true.
In more common terms “It’s pure bullshit!”
Duane: I heartily concur.
The why of their testing is to try to prove traditional teachers are not effective so they can replace them with one shot wonders and computers. The what and why of the whole deform movement is to increase the size of the lower class and keep them uneducated and compliant and controllable.
However, tests for years and years have not measured what they profess to measure. Poor readers who cannot read the text in math problems are not being tested on math skills. Ditto for science and social studies. That’s why the ability to read is the key to unlocking individual potential for learning in school.
No one even talks about literacy anymore. One of the first things our state “Broad” superintendent in Louisiana did was to dissolve the Literacy Department. This in a state where poverty and illiteracy is rampant.
You don’t have to read to punch the buttons on the cash registers at Walmart and McDonald’s.
I’ve often said that education today should be for the future society we want to create. Now I realize that the 1% do not live in the same society the rest of us do. They do not commingle with the middle or lower classes.
The false reformers are out to turn the schools into assembly lines where children are just another Pinto coming down the line and if too many of the final products are flawed and burst into flame, then everyone on the assembly line will be fired and they’ll hire new, untrained people who will work for less to replace them.
But even in industry, they don’t fire the workers when products are flawed. They fire the management and engineers that designed the product unless they are related to the CEO or the biggest stock holder.
And we know who the managers and engineers behind NCLB, Race to the Top and the Common Core testing are—the false reformers who planned this catastrophe with support from President Obama and his pet secretary of education who will roll over on demand to have his belly rubbed. If his master says attack, he snarls and leaps for the throat.
We first need to look at the issue of power:
Received this post from a parent.
April is official, Child Abuse Prevention Month – make no mistake Common Core is child abuse.
I was the victim of abuse at the hands of my husband. For years he emotionally and verbally abused me. This may sound strange, but I was relieved the first time he beat me. I finally had something to show others. I finally had something that he couldn’t twist and manipulate; something tangible that he could no longer claim was my imagination. When I look at Common Core assignments, I see them as a… physical manifestation of the abuse that is occurring, right now, across our country, directed squarely at our children. Allow me to explain.
For a decade I was told by my ‘loved one’ that I was stupid and crazy. I was told that the things that I knew in my heart were right, were really wrong. I was told that the things that I felt in my heart were wrong, were really right. If I said “I have an idea!” I was told, “Don’t think!” If I said “I feel like this is wrong”, I was told, “I make all the decisions, this is MY domain!” If I cried after being yelled at for 4 hours, and asked to be allowed to care for our small children, I was told I was crazy – you see my priorities were backwards; my allegiance should be to my husband first, not our children.
It’s been four years since I left him and to this day I cannot speak or think the words “I have an idea” without hearing him yell back “Don’t think!” You see, experiences build roads in our heads; frequently traveled paths are readily available for our minds to grab onto and go…like a parkway or a freeway. Try as I might, I can’t seem to shake this well-worn path. Now I look to the children that I ‘rescued’ and I look to these new Common Core standards and every bell in my head is ringing. I ignored these bells in the past and I vowed NEVER to ignore them again.
When you introduce mathematical concepts that are developmentally inappropriate, then test that child on these concepts and mark them as having failed, how is that not abusive? You are essentially giving them a task they cannot do and then telling them they are stupid. Now do that over and over and over again. Are these the rigorous results we are looking for? Or is this simply abusive?
Once the child fails the test they were meant to fail, tell them that they have to forgo music, chorus, recess, lunch and so on…so that they may receive additional instruction to ‘help’ them with the math they had trouble with. Now notice that they are fidgeting about and recommend that they get tested for ADD or ADHD…I have heard this scenario an uncountable number of times. Now we are telling the child that there is something wrong with them mentally. We are telling them that they are crazy. The adults who pulled them out of recess to improve upon skills they should not possess at their age are not crazy; it’s the child that has the issue.
These poor children are meant to make sense out of poorly worded instructions and answer questions in an overly convoluted and contrived manner. And then they are told what they did was wrong. Children naturally want to please; they want their parents and teachers to be proud of them. Let me tell you from experience, if your hand gets slapped every time you reach out, guess what you learn to do? You stop. You just stop trying. Do you want your children to turn inward? Do you want them to give up? That’s what they will have to do to protect themselves. They will retreat away from their parents and teachers. They will no longer feel safe to take that next step, to reach out, to venture out, and to grow.
This curriculum will cause our children’s minds, hearts and spirits to atrophy. I know you’ve seen signs of it. We have only just begun down this path; imagine what it will look like in 10 years. It took one final, massive beating for me to leave. By then, my brain had been hard wired to except bad as good, good as bad and to believe that I was a small minded, crazy woman who didn’t deserve better. What will our children look like in ten years? Will they be thriving, existing or devolving? What are you willing to do to stop it?
Don’t blindly give your allegiance to someone or something just because they tell you it’s the right thing to do. Listen to your heart. Listen to your instincts, they are sound. It’s when we ignore these warnings that we get into trouble. Our children can’t fix this one, we have to. We have to fight for our children. We have to be a chorus of SCREAMING adults during this election year. We have to be UNRELENTING until this is reversed; the price is far too high to allow this to continue. Don’t allow our children to be abused.
You see, experiences build roads in our heads; frequently traveled paths are readily available for our minds to grab onto and go…like a parkway or a freeway. Try as I might, I can’t seem to shake this well-worn path. Now I look to the children that I ‘rescued’ and I look to these new Common Core standards and every bell in my head is ringing. I ignored these bells in the past and I vowed NEVER to ignore them again.
Wow
According to Governor Cuomo, the only reason that students in NY are taking the Pearson math and ELA tests this year is so that teachers can be evaluated. They cannot be used to evaluate students, remediate students, or for placement into selective schools or programs. Thanks for nothing Andy.
That’s the same as shooting the trainer when his horse doesn’t win a race even if the trainer had winners in the past.
So, in the first year of administering the PARCC tests, where is the baseline for growth comparison for the VAN? This makes no sense.
That’s because from the start with NCLB, this false reform movement was designed to make the public schools look like failures.
The goal was never to improve student performance.
The goals was meant to destroy the public education and turn tax payer money over to corporations that are always hungry for more profits.
deb
Does any of this make any sense? Why start now.
Reblogged this on My Thinks and commented:
There are some interesting points in this reflection on testing from a US teacher.
What are they actually testing?
What value are the tests when where the student started isn’t taken into account?
Those who are promoting this testing never had to do it themselves when they were going through school.
What these tests – and most if not all others – measure is just how long can the frog be boiled before it hops out or dies?
A perfect analogy. It describes Duncan’s failure. The frogs are leaving the pond, both students and teachers. In a well-managed pond, there is a nurturing environment to get the frogs to stay and do what frogs do naturally. If the frogs are scared to go to the pond and therefore avoid it, the pond tyrant should be shown, the highway.
The Network for Public Education has called for congressional hearings into the overuse and abuse of tests in our schools.During the month of April, we are asking our Friends & Allies to print out and mail a copy of this letter to the offices of our friends at Campaign for America’s Future in Washington D.C.. We will deliver the letters to Congress.
Click to access npe-call-mailing.pdf
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2014/03/npe-call-for-congressional-hearings-summary/
What would be the consequences of opting out our kids from standardized testing here in Texas? How would I find out more about doing it and who would I have to talk to about opting out.
The crazy thing is, WE ALREADY KNOW WHERE THESE CHILDREN ARE ACADEMICALLY. They just won’t take our word for it.
These “rigorous” goals are straight out of the business playbook. Perform up to standards or be fired. They rarely work for adults, certainly not for children.
It’s POVERTY, not the teachers that is holding these kids back.
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal.
I KNOW I can teach. Why won’t they let me teach? Why do I have to spend my days and nights filling out computerized paperwork. Why do my lesson plans have to be 3 pages long for each day that I teach? Why do I have to tell a child that has gained two years reading progress in one year they aren’t good enough because they still are not on grade level? Why do I spend my days counting who had what for breakfast? I could be spending precious moments with a child who needs me? Why do I have to buy alarm clocks for students’ who have parents that won’t wake them to get to school? And please, someone tell me, how can I be held “accountable” for students that miss 5 or more weeks of school? Seriously, my job depends on those scores. I can’t teach kids that aren’t there. Teachers are miracle workers but we aren’t God. I dare any lawmaker that feels the need to evaluate teacher performance with test scores to spend ONE DAY doing what I do. And what kind of educator is making up these irrelevant, ridiculously developmentally, inappropriate tests? We are sadly, as a country not in a very good place educationally. Instead of looking at methods our lawmakers want it all to be tied to teacher accountability. What’s their point? And meanwhile, back on Earth the U.S. Gets further behind…don’t even get me started on teaching in the SOUTH.