Bianca Tanis explains in the AFT publication why high-stakes testing is wrong for children with special needs. She describes a system under political pressure to produce data, where data trumps instruction and the needs of children.
Tania writes:
“I am a special education teacher in New York and a mother of two children on the autism spectrum. Sometimes it is difficult to separate these two roles. Being intimately involved in the education system has made navigating the world of special education for my children easier in some ways, but also infinitely more difficult and heartbreaking in others. Simply put, I know too much.
“When my son began third grade in 2012, it dawned on me that, as required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), he would soon be mandated to take state tests in math and English language arts, aligned to the Common Core State Standards, despite the fact that he reads at a first-grade level and has numerous challenges with language. I was horrified that my child would undergo such inappropriate testing.
“Unfortunately, since the passage of NCLB in 2002, the practice of compelling all students, including students like my son, to take one-size-fits-all, high-stakes tests has become policy. These tests were originally touted as a way to shine a bright light on educational inequalities based on race, class, and disability. While these tests can have negative effects for many students without special needs, they actually prevent many disabled students in particular from receiving an individualized education that meets their needs. Often, they are subjected to emotionally harmful testing. Many special education teachers like myself have questioned why the practice of administering one-size-fits-all tests to special education students persists when it flies in the face of logic and sound pedagogy. Fortunately, many are no longer willing to remain silent about the flaws in this system.”
She says:
“For the past five years, I have taught students with disabilities from kindergarten to fifth grade in an affluent suburb of New York City. My students have a range of strengths and challenges, and although most are classified as learning disabled, they are extremely diverse in their learning needs.
“As our school and state have embraced the Common Core, it has been challenging to bridge the gap between what my students know and can do and what the standards require. The implementation of the Common Core across all grades has resulted in many students receiving instruction without being taught the necessary prerequisite skills. The situation is especially problematic for students with learning challenges who are sensitive to change and depend on sufficient scaffolding of information and skills to learn. Students struggling prior to the implementation of the Common Core suddenly find themselves significantly further behind.
“The problem has only been exacerbated by the advent of test-based teacher accountability required for states participating in the Race to the Top initiative.1 My colleagues and I have found it increasingly difficult to differentiate instruction for our students while keeping up with the curriculum so they will be prepared to take Common Core–aligned tests. Throw in the threat of a poor evaluation and the loss of teacher job security, and you have a recipe for disaster.
“In an ideal world, if my fourth-graders need to spend an extra week or two working on a math concept, I would use my professional judgment to assess their needs. But as things stand, I am forced to move on, regardless of whether they are ready. There are only so many weeks in the school year, and everything yet untaught in the standards must be packed into the remaining weeks because it will all appear on the test. Rather than a fluid process in which students’ instructional needs come first, teaching has become a marathon to cram it all in. I honestly have heard my colleagues telling their students on the fourth day of school, “We have a lot to do today. We are already behind.” Midyear assessments are given despite teachers not having had the chance to teach all the content that will be tested, because administrators “need the data” to assess whether students are on track for end-of-the-year testing.”
– See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/tanis#.dpuf
The CCSS are the product of thinking that you can just shove down the requirements for college courses in a process called reverse engineering or back mapping.
This process is common in the context of adult training for mastery, especially where the questions are always known and have fairly conventional answers. Precisely because the CCSS were imposed on student and teachers midstream of a thirteen-year program, complete with demands for gradel level mastery, Bianca is correct about the need to teach all of the pre-requisites.
Moreover, this cockamaie theory of action USDE’S way of eliminating historical and philosophical concepts in education, along with knowledge of learning and teaching. The CCSS completely fail to acknowledge that learning is qualitatively different in the early grades and middle grades, and that it should be.
The penalty for not honoring joy, exploration, discovery, imagining possible worlds in the context of going to school is not just the premature closing of mindfulness in favor of passing the test. It is also an intended insult to the kids who “do not have the right stuff by the arbitrary grade level standards.
The CCSS forward a deficit-based view of humanity and especially children who can do remarkable things if given the opportunity and support while they are young. The Austism spectrum is wide, and what looks impossible at one point in time should not be treated as the predicate for a life time.
Grade level mastery of the CCSS has been given exaggerated importance by the spin doctors, and by the training gurus who do not seem to know that training is a small subset of ideas and skills that in not the same as becoming an educated person.
Well analyzed. I would add that the crafters of CCSS in their reverse engineering made assumptions that all learners would learn best if they learned in the same ways they did.
How blind and ignorant legislators are if they think they are going to legislate out individual differences! Forcing students that are differently abled to compete on standardized tests with punitive consequences will be harmful to their development and mental well-being. Even my ELLs, many of whom are bright, but woefully undereducated and culturally different, will be beaten down by constant “failure.” When we gave standardized tests at the end of the year, I had to deal with many overwhelmed beginners that sat and cried because the test was way beyond their level of proficiency. From my experience with ELLs, I know I have to meet them where they are and take them to the next level. They need to experience success in order to accept the next challenge with confidence. Ignoring research, parents and the wisdom of experienced teachers will teach these diverse students to hate school and learning, and we will lose many wonderful students that just needed to deviate from the “norm” and required a different type of support to reach their potential.
Sometimes the oldies are the best.
Remember the 1987 anti-drug PSA? From wikipedia:
[start quote]
The 30″ version of the first PSA, from 1987, shows a man (played by John Roselius) in a starkly furnished apartment who asks if there is anyone out there who still doesn’t understand the dangers of drug abuse. He holds up an egg and says, “This is your brain,” before motioning to a frying pan and adding, “This is drugs.” He then cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, “This is your brain on drugs.” Finally he looks up at the camera and asks, “Any questions?”
In contrast, the 10″ and 15″ versions simply show a close-up of an egg dropping into a frying pan. This is accompanied by a voice-over saying in the 15″ version: “Okay, last time. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” The 10″ version omits the first sentence.
[end quote]
The actual ad—
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub_a2t0ZfTs
What if someone like, say, SomeDAM Poet were to remake that cautionary and memorable advert today?
This is what it might sound like: “Is there anyone out there that still isn’t clear about what ‘education reform’ does? Ok, last time. This is your child [holding an egg]. This is ‘education reform’ [cracking the egg and dropping it into a frying pan]. This is your child under ‘education reform’ [showing the sizzling egg in the pan]. Any questions?” The words “Partnership for an ‘Education Reform’-Free America” flash across the ad at the end.
Bianca Tanis would play the role. She would be dropping her children into the pan [hint: just computer animation; no real children would be harmed].
I think just about everybody will get my drift…
¿😳? No, it’s more informational than non-informational…
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
But we knew she would say that. After all, when one drops one’s own brain into the sizzling hot pan of “education reform” not a lot of brain cells will survive the experience, even if one exerts rheeally rheeally hard every last ounce of one’s will power in the most Johnsonally sort of way and inflicts a Rheeality Distortion Field on onself…
But not to worry about the tender sensibilities of her and her peers, They rest easy because they only subject OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN to the frying pan of “education reform.” When it comes to THEIR OWN CHILDREN, there’s always the enriched and genuinely teaching/learning friendly environments of Lakeside School and Harpeth Hall and U of Chicago Lab Schools and Delbarton School and Cranbrook and Sidwell Friends and Spence School and the like…
Yes, the leaders and enablers and enforcers and edufrauds of self-proclaimed “education reform” are safe from the effects of their own creative disruption.
Really!
“Any questions?”
😎
She’s right on, and what she says is true for the average student as well, to a lesser degree. The Reformists most in charge of crafting policy are so intent on making everything bright line rules. Their philosophy of no exceptions ran into such absurdities (kids on life support in hospitals being forced to take tests, kids whose parents died in car crash weekend before tests being forced to take tests — overridden by the principle in that case, not to mention children with disabilities who simply have no chance of passing the test under any circumstance, etc.) that they finally caved with the magic 1% exception (fascinating to see them explain this number).
The bottom line is that much of the Reform policy is guesswork. We’re in the middle of a grand experiment.
Affluent families can afford to send their children to the very expensive private schools designed for these students, as usual, poor families suffer disproportionately.
Rick Lavoie’s video “Beyond FAT City” (frustration, anxiety and tension) discusses how nclb was passed with no regards to LD students. Barbara Bush invited him to the White House for literacy. President Obama, Arne Duncan and Mrs. Obama should reinvite him.
When I taught in a psychiatric hospital on a child/adolescent inpatient unit, every year during testing season we would have direct admissions from schools. That is, students would have a mental health breakdown during and DUE TO testing and begin either self-harming or aggressive behaviors to the point an ambulance had to come to the school and bring the children to a psychiatric facility. Every. Year.
This child abuse was bad enough under the old high-stakes testing in Illinois, I can only imagine how fragile children will react when forced to take the ridiculously inappropriate PARCC test this Spring. I am afraid for all students, but especially students with disabilities and students with mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. This testing has gotten to the point where it is nothing short of evil.
Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up. The mantra of these politicians.
Who cares if it hurts our children, our nation’s future. Someone makes money and of course money, not people, is the bottom line.
And Randi says: “Annual tests, if they are reliable and diagnostic, provide important information for students, parents, teachers and schools.” Of course, if a test is suppose to fill a diagnostic role, IT SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A TEACHER OR SCHOOL EVALUATION TOOL! Arne is not talking about reliable and diagnostic tests. He is talking about ranking and sorting tests that are of no value to teachers or schools.
We are looking at an increase to the NYS drop out rate of 3-5% now that the RCT option has been removed and all SPED students have to pass 5 Regents (with a 55 but still) with Common Core layered on top of it. The Regents are a vocabulary and comprehension exam and out of reach for a subset of disabled students with average IQs and learning disorders that make 5 Regents exams just too much. I can see it plain as day in the Regents presentation on January 11. https://workingmomfromnys.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/notes-on-the-regents-meeting-january-12-2015/