Under current federal and state laws, test scores are supposed to go higher every year. Every year, the students are a different cohort, but their scores must be higher than those who preceded them. High expectations–no matter how unrealistic–are supposed to produce high achievement. Think of it this way, if students are running track and can barely jump over a 3′ bar, raise the bar to 4′ and see what happens. The assumption (usually by politicians) is that raising the bar will cause students to jump higher. But many will fail because the theory doesn’t work.
A seventh -grade teacher in a Title I (high-poverty) school in Texas writes:
“I can say from personal experience that the “scores” are ripping my department apart. Last year two-thirds of our group were shuffled between grades because of low test scores. Result, even worse scores this year. All I can say is that failure begins at the top. Ugly comments have been made, morale could not be lower.. The students are beginning to check out.
“Is it worth it all?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Sorting Test
A thousand thoughts or more ago,
When I was newly known,
There lived four wizards of renown,
Whose name are still well-known:
Bold Billy Gates from Microsoft,
Fair Rhee from her DC stint,
Sweet Duncan from Down Under,
Lord Coleman from Vermint.
They shared a wish, a hope, a scheme,
They hatched a daring plan,
To test all children in the land,
Thus Common Core began.
Now each of these four founders
Stack ranked to find the best
They value just one aptitude,
In the ones they had to test.
By level 1, the lowest were
There just to detest;
For Level 2, the closest
But failed to be the best;
For Level 3, hardworkers were
Barely worthy of admission;
And power-hungry Level 4s
Were those of great ambition.
While still alive they did divide
Their favorites from the throng,
Yet how to pick the worthy ones
When they were dead and gone?
‘Twas Coleman who found the way,
He whipped me out of his head
The founders wrote the standards
So I could choose instead!
Now slip me snug around your brain,
I’ve never yet been wrong,
I’ll have a look inside your mind
And tell where you belong!”
FULLY AWESOME!!!! I wish I was poetic like that. Well done!
Thanks, but JK Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) gets all the credit.
Yes, but you did the adaptation. I can’t even do that! (:
it is “worth it” if the object is to destroy public education. and that is exactly what is happening. So damn sad. All we see are the walking wounded kids and teachers.
And our 7th grade teacher is only writing from the onset of the dismemberment. We all know that from this year on, the punishments will continue as individuals in the original group are transferred out or driven to other districts. Pearson operatives, or their equivalents, will prowl the hallways and monitor planning sessions like surveillance agents, data point sessions will begin to resemble The Inquisition and as adult professional cohesion is shattered, so will the psyches of the students crumble into mounting incidents of frustration, anxiety, anger, hopelessness and self-destruction. This is what it looks like in action and it has nothing to do with equity.
Wonderful!
But “Billy Gates” is really Voldemort , and Rhee is really Bellatrix Lestrange.
Great. Who’s going to rock me to sleep tonight??
And there are plenty of Dolores Umbridges to go around at the local level.
“feral & state laws”
TAGO❣
Same here.a perfect error, new meme for federal legislation in education.
The Deformers are masters at sloganeering. It’s time we had some slogans of our own. Feel free to turn these into buttons and bumper stickers. And I would love to hear your additions to the list!
There Are No Standard Children, and Our Job Is Not to Standardize Them
We Share in Common the Right to an Un-Common (Core) Education
Persons, Not Pearson; Gateways, Not Gates
Those Who Can, Teach; Those Who Can’t Micromanage Teachers
Extrinsic Reward: The Damaging Kind of Punishment because It Is the Most Insidious
Abracadabra, Hocus Pocus: The Test Results Are about to Speak
Please Add “Uncooperative with Tyrants” to That Evaluation. Thank You.
Warning: CCSS Literature Program. New Criticism for Dummies.
Sorry, but I Teach Writing, not InstaWriting for the Test
Enjoy the Fruits of Learning; Chuck the Core
Teaching: There Is No App for That
CCSS: Reign of Error and of Terror
PARCC: Spell That Backward
not-Smarter, imBalanced
My Third Grader Can Out-think Your Secretary of Education
1984: Rheeformish Public Policy Manual
Bee Eater: Unqualified but Dependably Rheeformish Sociopath in Position of Authority
Lord Coleman: By Divine right, Absolute Monarch of ELA Education?
Common Core: NCLB Fright Night II: The Nightmare Is Nationalized
Outgrit the Singaporeans!
VAM: Vacuity-of curriculum-and-pedagogy Acceleration Mechanism
“All Your Base Belong to Us”–the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Good job, Bob!
CC = Cast in Concrete. Standards that cannot be fixed. Ever.
Traps not Tests. Tricking student into failure.
Common Core ELA – The David Coleman Amatuer Hour
CC: Tests of Math Destruction
Big Data Bytes
lol
Bob,
You out it right for sure!
LOVE this! We need bumper stickers, blimps over sports events, hash tags (even for those of us who still think that’s a pound sign)!!!
Students have been overtested and are “tested out.” Most of the time, they never even find out their scores! Telling them that they have to take another test feels like bringing lambs to the slaughter. Hopefully, the testing mania has reached its tipping point, and in a few years we can look back upon this period as a hideous nightmare–dare I hope?
Texas never adopted Common Core; that quote does not stem from CCSS woes. NCLB (2001) is the federal law that mandated the raising of the bar. This issue is not a recent issue.
Like Shelley, I too hope that we have reached the tipping point with testing. But it has been over 13 years.
All things being equal, it doesn’t make sense to raise the bar every year because on the other side there’s nothing there.
Elin, you have hit the nail on the head! The supreme push to intellectualize our kids, and push them all to college…why? Are the jobs there to support them?? I don’t think so.
Raising the bar is easy when you don’t have to jump over it yourself and you don’t have to watch the kids fall when the try to jump over it. Far far removed from the reality of their decisions they pontificate and strut and cry reform when they don’t even know the damage they are doing to the kids of America. The word fools doesn’t do this justice. Is there any word that does. Clueless comes to mind.
Your comment makes me think of the death penalty. Easy to say, not so easy to do. When you read about the small group of people tasked with carrying out the death penalty, and the trauma they go through, it’s not so easy.
As usual, the devil is in the details.
julie: you have touched on a very important part of this when you write “[r]aising the bar is easy when you don’t have to jump over it yourself and you don’t have to watch the kids fall when the[y] try to jump over it.”
Let me rephrase a little: ‘Raising the bar is easy for the self-styled “education reformers” when they send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to schools where THEIR OWN CHILDREN are not forced to continually jump over it and you don’t have to watch OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN fall when they are forced over and over and over again to try to jump over it—and when they clear the bar, it’s raised until they fail.’
In other words, a two-tiered education system. And consider this: unlike the real civil rights movement where people literally put themselves at risk—think of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, murdered in June 1964 while on Mississippi Freedom Summer—
The self-proclaimed leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” not only don’t put their own skin in the game, they don’t subject THEIR OWN CHILDREN to the punitive hazing rituals of failure that they mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
A complete and total lack of moral leadership, i.e.,to lead by exemplary personal example.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
As a mental health professional who also experienced this in Texas schools, I can relate to this teacher’s comment: “The students are beginning to “check out”.
Dissociation is how children often cope with stress which they are developmentally unprepared to process. When it becomes chronic in their daily environment, it can lead to mental illness, since it impacts their social and emotional development.
The age inappropriate focus on performance and data with age inappropriate material and methods related to high stakes testing, has created an authoritarian environment of fear, intimidation, and boredom for children in elementary schools. This performance based reward/punishment environment is the same punitive classical conditioning (behaviorism) that is used to “train” dogs and zoo animals.
I have observed the increasing symptoms of emotional desensitization in children in Texas elementary schools and spoken up and written articles about it for the past two years . After a time in this environment, many children will begin to look more like prisoners of war than normal healthy children. They lose vitality, spontaneity, and the ability for imaginative play. They have difficulty with scientific thinking and using higher level thinking skills. They become obedient and submissive to authority, and function more robotic. The symptoms of traumatic stress: Regression, Dissociation, and Constriction, are similar in PTSD, BOS, and “Battered Child Syndrome”: In these children’s daily school environment, it is not “post” as after acute trauma, but it is “chronic”, and has high potential to cause permanent psychological damage in the form of personality disorders (mental illness).
What many of us in Texas schools originally thought to be soaring rates of High Functioning Autism (HFA), which also has symptoms of regression, dissociation, and constriction, is now thought to be stress related rather than HFA. For young children who still have a developing brain, being forced to function in a chronic state of hyper vigilance and/or hypoarousal or hyperarousal, will become “hard wired” into the personality. It changes their brain chemistry. CCSS is creating Anxiety Disorders and Depression that many children will suffer for a lifetime.
Few politicians or “reformers” have listened to the voices of mental health professionals or educators who are warning about the potential for psychological harm in this CCSS (and Texas STAAR) environment. After writing numerous professional articles and reports for state legislators, only to have them ignored, I wrote the same message in the rhyme of Dr Suess: Here is my warning about CCSS and Texas STAAR, which I will keep repeating until someone listens:
FairTest.org had a similar comment on an article last fall. To paraphrase: If a child can’t jump a 3′ hurdle should you raise it to 4′ and then fire the coach if he doesn’t make it?
The “agenda” has NOTHING to do with students. It has EVERYTHING to do with decimating my profession. I am taking it personally.
The tests will never correspond to what the CCSS says should be read by students. Under the test question guidelines, Hamlet’s “To be,or not to be…” soliloquy would be BANNED from the test:
Click to access BiasandSensitivityGuidelines.pdf
A lot of Shakespeare deals with controversial themes. I think that’s why it resonates even today. Most of Shakespeare would be banned from these tests. Another reason to like Shakespeare! (:
When I took the SBAC practice test, the only thing touching at all on all those centuries and worlds of literature kids are supposed to read was this: A story (lame, and clearly written by testmakers) about two students working on a Shakespeare project. Their personalities and situation were supposed to parallel those of characters in the play. No one need ever have been in the sake ROOM as a Shakespeare play to answer the questions on the passage!
Rigor
1 a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity (2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness (3) : severity of life : austerity b : an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty
2: a tremor caused by a chill
3: a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable; especially : extremity of cold
4: strict precision : exactness
5: a (obsolete): rigidity, stiffness b : rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli c: rigor mortis
Amplify on “impact,” another preferred term for how teachers should influence students.
Not worth it! But they keep on chipping away at us anyway.