The following letter was written by a principal in Néw York City. He describes what so many educators feel: Education is being destroyed by excessive, pointless testing. The sad fact is that testing no longer functions as a way to inform teachers and parents and to help children but as a blunt instrument to wear children down and demoralize their teachers.
Subject: Student and testing burn out.
“Today, we had a few students that did not write a thing for the essay on today’s practice CCLS English Regents. The exam was tough and kids were burnt out.
“Once upon a time, there was an English Regents exam.The exam was a total of 6 hours over two days in which students had to write 2 essays. The new exam requires 2 essays, reading 10 pieces of text and answering multiple-choice questions that resemble AP/SAT subject questions. CRAZY!!!
“The combined testing of city and state, coupled with practice exams to ready the students for the tests are having a major impact.
“We are exhausting the children.
Exhausting testing team staff.
Distracting testing team staff from instructional and professional development work (Testing team personnel are usually out of classroom coaches/pd providers, etc.)
Losing Instructional time when students are taking the exams and when they are covered by subs so their teachers can grade exams.
“Exhausting a lot of money, not just in copying and administrative, processing, mailing costs, but in the hiring of subs so that teachers can score the exams.
Someone should look at the true cost of testing to this degree via RTTT mandates.
“I wonder every day whether the benefits will be worth the weight of the burden.
“I am not an advocate for no testing. I love accountability that results in action (adjustments to curriculum, professional development, intervention plans/actions, or removal, retraining, or reassignment of poor performing staff.
“I am just wondering how these exams can be made more civil for children.
They are almost a form of corporal punishment.
“Eight year olds sitting for 3 days straight for math and ELA state exams. Schools doing all of this testing and being forced by the state to administer field tests.
“It seems like unnecessary overkill.
The city giving exams in fall and spring in order to create these “local measures” for RTTT mandate.
“Perhaps the tests should be only state exams…
A November exam and a late May/June exam that is half the length of the current exams…
This way we eliminate the need for some of the city local measures for pre and post.
We can also garner a growth measure between a child’s results in late November and late May/June which can factor into the teacher rating.
“Anyway, this was a hard year. I would argue harder than Hurricane Sandy…all due to the policies that adults make devoid of practitioner in the field or principal input.
“There is so much talk out there about respecting communication and input from parents, etc.
“Yet, the centralization of power in one place has a few people pushing agendas on localities devoid of sincere and respected input.
“Sort of like the criticism incurred by the community boards in city neighborhoods that have no local code legislative or enforcement power…some argue they are there for the illusion of democracy so that a few powerful entities can make policy that permits developers and other agendas to have their way.
“Sorry for the negative information, but this has been a tough year and the conduits of input from the extremities to the heart are few and far between.
“Sincerely,
XXXXXXX
Diane Ravitch's blog 
““Sincerely,
XXXXXXX”
The FEAR is palpable!!
Duane,
Then it is imperative that educators find their voice. In Connecticut we are holding the first meeting for the Connecticut Association of Professional Educators this Saturday the 31st for the purpose of beginning the process to right the educational ship in Connecticut and once again return professional educators to their proper place in developing education policy for our children. The event is open to all educators and information can be found at http://www.cape-teach.org It cannot be stressed enough that if circumstances are to change then educators must find the courage to overcome their fears and speak out. And they need not speak alone, for if we speak with a unified voice, our voices cannot be ignored.
In reacting to low PISA scores (and other measures), and the perception that the US is falling behind in the “competition” of international “brain-power”, there has been the response (both by the private/corporate stakeholders and the public education ones) to “improve” education by more testing and accountability. Our fear is that is this ever-increasing technological society and world, our students will not be able to “compete” and our capitalistic US Empire will fall.
Yet, improving pedagogy means improving daily practice, not summative exams. If the quality of a car is lacking, then the engineers figure out what is not going well in the assembly line, address it and fix it. They don’t first design and build better test tracks in order to test cars that are still being produced by the same old assembly line. No, they fix the assembly line first, then test the better car on the track.
We don’t need “better tests” but better daily pedagogy, which involved fully engaged teachers, students, families and administration, along with a supporting role of the private sector (not a competitive attitude of the privatization charter-school mongers).
So true. I worked in engineering for over 25 years. First rule is “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. Advancement comes from evolutionary, not revolutionary, approaches to science and methodologies. These scorched earth approaches always just trade one set of problems for another.
Republicans do not value education and it shows. In Ohio, Reynoldsburg schools wants to now implement bonuses and completely base pay increases on the flawed Ohio Teacher Evaluation System where 50% of a teachers ranking is based on standardized tests. The school board said they researched the idea for over a year. Guess they missed the ASA cautions or the Vanderbilt POINT experiment. Wonder if their “research” was limited to browsing Gates Foundation or ALEC web sites? Oh, and they want to drop health care coverage and replace with vouchers. I tell my own kids run, don’t walk, from a teaching career.
While I admire the achievements of Bill G, his view of what the average students “needs to know” in the world is flawed (as if everyone needs to be an engineer or doctor). Yes, understanding that a projectile has a forward and downward vector and a quadratic function is nice, but do all students need to master this.
What about the students who want, and need to, be farmers (without food production we are all doomed, yet the US treats the agriculture sector with so little value [farmers should be millionaires, athletes should not]). All a farmer needs to know is basic business sense, soil and botany, and a commitment to produce (though they will be paid little for all their hard labor…sinful, shameful).
So, BIll G and all those “techies” need to step back and realize not everyone has to master physics, math and engineering to find a productive niche in society.
I think we have to be careful of this growing anti-enlightenment. The problem is uneducated people fill in the gaps with myths, beliefs, and rhetoric. So we have politicians able to easily fool an ignorant populace – dangerous in a representative democracy. People then believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, climate change isn’t happening, cigarettes are healthy. Recently, our governor bragged Ohio was 9th in job creation. Of course, he was comparing Ohio to Rhode Island. But most people simply accepted his statement as true, without question.
DeGrasse Tyson recently stated that the best human evolutionary advantage we have is our intelligence. Humans are not the fastest, the strongest, most resilient, most prolific, nor most adaptable. The best thing we ever did was to develop reason and thought. Scientific method, while relatively new, is powerful.
Knowing the quadratic formula or reading Othello may not have immediate payback. But not learning is instantly limiting.
Gates and the technocrats have no intention to expand knowledge. Rather, the want to restrict learning to a narrow sample, devoid of critical thought.
“All a farmer needs to know is basic business sense, soil and botany,…”
Damn, that sounds like a fairly extensive knowledge base!
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
The first day of high-stakes test reckoning has arrived here in NY. Well ahead of the PARCC/SBAC due to roll out nationwide next spring. This is the preview that matters.
Most 9th (algebra) and 11th (ELA) graders will be taking CCSS aligned tests used to determine graduation. Some districts have opted out. Many districts are using The NYSED waiver allowing students to take these Pearson CCSS exams AND the traditional Regents tests during Regents tetsting week; only the highest score will count toward graduation. One year from now, no such option will exist. Unless we stop the madness.
It behooves all test administrators and proctors to look and report the general nature of these exams. Listen to students comments as they discuss the general nature of these exams. And maybe, just maybe, some brave whistleblower will do more. Parents must know. Special needs advocates must know. Lawyers must know.
Commissioner King just reported that there is no more testing than previously. Our high school students are taking TWO exams for Algebra 1 and ELA. Students are missing CLASSTIME prior to Regents week to take these exams. That is MORE testing than we have had previously, not to mention the pre and post testing of our APPR.
This describes conditions exactly.
My grandchild in 5th grade loves to learn, reads for pleasure 24/7, writes constantly and wants to become an author, among numerous other 10-year old dream careers, is in Gifted, still appears to cooperate with all things testing….until, the 5th grade CRCT Writing test.
She failed the test. What?
Our budding author, lover of words, vocabulary vampire, writer of fantasy, imagination unbound…failed the Writing test?
Upon closer investigation, our grandchild stated that the topic question was LAME, uninteresting, and not worth investing any energy in and fatigue could not override the urgency and price of >>Life Depends in this CRCT Writing TestLIFE< that depends on these scores!
My granddaughter has moved on and stocks her Little Free Library with her tons of fun books, for others to enjoy! La-di-da!
My daughter was ranked so low on one standardized test, they thought she had a medical condition. Never mind she was talking and writing a year before peers. Reason? Her friends were playing outside and she watched them through the window.
Not to mention the horrific length of the testing. Most of the kids in my 7th-9th grade school took TWO WEEKS just to finish the ELA test, plus three additional 70-minute periods for math and two more for science. One of my students said that he would have spent more time on the writing if “the topics were worth writing about,” which summarizes the feelings of a lot of my students about this test.
The tests are profit centers for the edu-privateers, weapons against teachers and the public schools, and the kids are collateral damage.
I sympathize with the frustration and exhaustion expressed in the letter. However, the message is obviously not getting out about VAM.
How many educators believed they would be working for testing companies so many days out of the school year? Perhaps it is time for educators to opt out of giving the tests. Educators work for the district not the testing companies. This article discusses the frequency of testing.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/09/11-key-questions-on-standardized-testing-for-congress-to-answer/
Not only are students exhausted but students that demonstrate the joy in learning are rare. Laughter is seldom heard anymore because child centered activities are being replaced by test prep and testing.
Teachers as conscientious objectors. This is an invasion after all.
… some teachers and children are suffering the signs of PTSD.
The reification of standardized test scores as substitutes for real measures of learning, are one consequence of a long history of poorly monitored and developed systems of in school and in-classroom teacher developed assessment. Having dealt with elementary grades as part of a selective admissions process, and having tried very hard to develop a system that used school grades over a one day admissions test, I found it impossible given large, systemic variations in school grades. Grade inflation, grade “meaninglessness”, grade currency/equivalency issues are a very real problem in elementary school, and also in secondary schools. The reasons are complex, but a lot has to do with the poorly developed/inconsistent assessment skills and knowledge of teachers. This can be tracked back to deficiencies in teacher ed programs that rarely give assessment sufficient attention. Many great teachers have great assessment systems in place – better than any standardized test stuff, but many do not, and here is the problem. Unless someone comes up with a way of improving classroom based assessments we are stuck with some standardized tests – and we should focus our energies on improving them – and making sure they are measuring important stuff, well aligned and in sync across the nation. Note I not claiming that present tests do that.
I have an enormous problem with your characterization of many teachers as deficient. When teachers are labeled in that way, schools suffer and testing becomes everything in the system. I also am offended by your insinuation that teacher education programs are deficient.
Furthermore, standardized tests, by their definition, CANNOT “measure important stuff.” If you go beyond the cheap, easy multiple choice tests to writing or creation of some product that requires human grading, the tests will NOT be standardized, because human beings will grade differently, even with the most specific rubric.
Portfolios based assessment systems, used successfully in a subset of NY city schools for decades, if they could actually be rolled out and replicated might be an option. I’m skeptical this can happen given enormous differences in school capabilities in this respect, and because the intensive nature of this approach, would tax precisely those schools that are already on the edge of their technical capacities (and resources). Unless we are willing to massively invest additional efforts, training etc. for more intensive but inefficient systems we are stuck with some kind of common standardized assessment. One might question the geography of the standardization, and whether different scales and cutoffs might be establish to adapt to local realities but a a nation we probably do want to know if a high school degree in Alabama is indeed equivalent to one from New York. We all know this isn’t true, anymore than a degree from Bronx Science or Columbia Secondary School is equivalent to that of schools with less academic pedigree, curriculum, and opportunity experiences.
Please include the test burnout of five-year-olds who sit at a computer taking i Ready ELA and Math exams. In my school, some of the five-year-olds must sit for the NYSESLAT (New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test). This is educational progress?
My 5 year old grandson in kindergarten in PA is taking TIMED math tests. Do 5 year old’s possess the processing speed to be successful on timed tests? When is someone going to address or be forced to address the developmental inappropriateness of these standards and tests.
Educational progress? No, it;s child abuse.
Don’t be fooled by what it’s called…..If it quacks like a duck……..
The previous post should read, “. . .must sit for the NYSESLAT as well.”