Kentucky was the first state to implement the Common Core standards, and the first state to test them. The state has another distinction: It is one of the few states that has no charter schools. Communities in Kentucky are committed to their community public schools–so far.
Kentucky has a school that is very different from most other public schools: this school has no standardized testing.
Bate Middle School in Danville, Kentucky, decided to ditch the tests and to adopt performance assessments. As they searched the nation looking for a successful, they discovered New York City’s Performance Standards Consortium, which has been thriving without standardized tests for years. Students are expected to create projects to demonstrate what they have learned. This is the model that Bate selected, and it is working well.
98% of the staff voted to approve the new test-free plan. But the legislature was divided:
“A bill to allow Danville to skip the state tests unanimously passed the House in April of this year but was shot down in the Senate. The state Department of Education says discussions to find alternatives are ongoing. Regardless of what happens, the district will still give the ACT and its practice tests in 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th grades. (ACT scores are tied to scholarship money for public university students in Kentucky, and the nationally recognized test will help them benchmark student learning.)
“But the yearly grind of prepping for weeks for state tests is over for now. Swann says it’s making a big difference in what teachers do every day, especially in their ability to tailor instruction to each student’s needs and interests.”
Bate may have found a felicitous combination: the schools uses the Common Core standards, but not the Common Core tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is the felicitous combination that I hope many, many other schools and districts might follow. While some might argue that CCSS are problematic because they lead to more testing, I really do believe that the standards can be used to improve student performance regardless of the specter of testing, as long as the CCSS are looked upon as a guide for student work, not a series of hints for gaming a system of tests that almost invariably do not get to the behaviors that the tests are meant to assess.
CCSS has lead to excellent conversations among my school staff about “what does good writing in a science class look like?” and, “how can we use data in a history class?” …with creative curriculum (in the form of projects) emerging from the answers to those questions. Instruction focuses on those projects, and our students do well on the state-mandated tests, despite our lack of attention to them.
Performance seems to be the key here, doesn’t it? The standards, particularly around reading and writing, are best manifest through longer-effort student products. Bate’s approach to assessment sounds better-aligned than any instrument that can be graded with a machine.
“I really do believe that the standards can be used to improve student performance. . .
Well, Kevin, you have a FALSE BELIEF then. What does “improve student performance mean”????
To understand all the myriad epistemological and ontological errors that are involved with educational standards and it’s conjoined (with the emphasis on ‘con’) at the head standardized testing see Noel Wilson’s “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 logical 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 crap 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.
Kevin: You mean to say to me that your school had NEVER had conversations about, “How can data be used in a history class?” or, “What does good science writing look like?” BEFORE the advent of CC? Those kinds of conversations have been going for YEARS at all of the schools in my area. Creative curricula and projects have been going on for YEARS in my area. I am constantly annoyed by the insinuation that teachers didn’t know what to do until the savior of CC came along.
Yeah for Kentucky!!!!!!!! The leader in the movement! Get rid of standardized test and spend quality time teaching- “tailor instruction to each student’s needs…”! No standardized tests until 8th! Yeah! Use the saved money for instructional purposes such as a support system from day one. The teachers will do their own assessing be it performance assessment , portfolios, or project-based learning…
More power to the teachers of Kentucky!!!!!
That is a great point! Our district is struggling with that aspect of Common Core implementation in early elementary. We have started a great learning community with the GPS Network regarding this issue. See the link below! I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Casey
http://www.gpsnetwork.org
GPS, Yep the NEA is completely on board with these educational malpractices!
The only thing “this helps” is for the edudeformers and GAGAers to continue deceiving themselves that CCSS and standardized testing is fine and dandy.
“No standardized tests until 8th!”
Why? Why any at all??? (other than perhaps to diagnose a disability)
Exactly. This overabundance of testing is hard on the middle level and high level kids, too.
They’re refering, I’m sure, to the ACT EXPLORE assessment that all 8th graders in KY are required to take. Technically, that is a standardized test.
The so-called “standards” are a vague, puerile, unimaginative prior restraint on curricula and pedagogy. But because they are so vaguely formulated, the tests end up being their operational definition. Kill those, and you kill the curricula-and-pedagogy-narrowing operationalizations of the “standards,” leaving people free to interpret those “standards”–to adapt them. AND THAT IS A VERY, VERY GOOD THING.
More of what Bates has done. More of this!
I hate to burst people’s bubble, but to set the record straight—while Bates MS does have performance-based assessments and Danville Independent is deemed a “District of Innovation”, they are still required to complete all state-level assessments. This is the bill that is referenced in this artlce.
Glad to hear that there are still test-free education in some places. I’m pretty sure Kentucky teachers and schools won’t be drown in the ‘McConnell’s Cove.’
They are getting closer, however, do they know what to do next. It simply cant be just another test. Demonstrated proficiencies are the direction to go. We judge science fairs don’t we? My book, upcoming in a couple months will give you and ear full. Brainstorming the Common Core: Salvaging the Fiasco of reform watch for it at http://www.wholechildreform.com