John Thompson, teacher and historian, admires Anya Kamenetz’s “The Test,” with some qualifications.
http://www.livingindialogue.com/kamenetz-test-can-value-truly-measured/
He writes:
“Anya Kamenetz’s The Test comes from the conversation she’s had again and again with parents. She and they have “seen how high-stakes standardized tests are stunting children’s spirits, adding stress to family life, demoralizing teachers, undermining schools, paralyzing the education debate, and gutting our country’s future competitiveness.” Like so many Gen X and Gen Y parents, Kamenetz sees how “the test obsession is making public schools … into unhappy places.”
“Kamenetz covers ten arguments against testing, starting with “We’re testing the wrong things,” and ending with “The next generation of tests will make things even worse.” I’d say the second most destructive of the reasons is #4 “They are making teachers hate teaching.” The most awful is #3 “They are making students hate school and turning parents into preppers.”
“The second half of Kamenetz’s great work starts with the Opt Out movement, the grassroots parent revolt. She recalls the disgusting practices that drive families to opt out. Under-the-gun schools have resorted to “petty intimidation” of eight-year-olds, even forcing a nine-year opt-outer old to watch test takers rewarded with ice cream and candy, and requiring student opt-outers to sit and stare without books or diversions for hours while classmates take tests.”
“Kamenetz then presents alternative approaches to high-stakes testing. She explores four different types of assessments that could replace standardized testing. In doing so, she reminds us that “…education’s purpose in the twenty-first century is to prepare students to excel at the very tasks that computers can’t master …”
“As much as I enjoyed the tour Kamenetz takes us on, describing digital tools to quantify and improve teaching and learning, we should not be surprised that 21st century technology has created such promising, and potentially dangerous, technologies. Even if a magic wand existed and it enabled a ban on all these measures from public schools, would anyone doubt that those tools would be used and abused by affluent families? Rightly or wrongly, in or outside of classrooms, there will be elites who use data-driven techniques to build better Ivy League scholars, to produce faster and leaner child athletes, and more determined ballet dancers. Moreover, those who can afford it will continue to make low tech investments, ranging from field trips, family vacations, and portfolio assessments, that expand their children’s worldviews.
“Is there any doubt that the new metrics will result in modern versions of John Stuart Mill, who are raised to be geniuses and to bring the next generation of utilitarianism to an unprecedented level? Isn’t it also inevitable that some parents will follow in the footsteps of Mill’s father, and lead their children to nervous breakdowns?….
“Corporate reformers have no right to impose these assessments or, for that matter, primitive high-stakes multiple choice regimes on public schools. Neither is there a place in public education for grading students’ character or their states of mind.
“Kamenetz clearly understands the potential downsides of emerging assessments, as well as their dangers in the hands of reformers who believe that they should be empowered to micromanage testing and the learning that it guides. For instance, she writes, “Most troubling to me is the ways in which measuring and holding schools accountable for the social and emotional health of their students, if done in wrong ways, might, once again, worsen the effects of inequality.”
“She also compares the data accumulated through new testing methods to putting computer chips in the ears of migrating antelope. Moreover, “student data, like health data, is extremely sensitive.” The idea that it could be used for marketing, hiring, tracking, stigmatizing children is “creepy.”
“So, while I respect Kamenetz’s effort to frame solutions in a constructive manner, I believe that the focus must be on the way that “standardized testing leads to standardized teaching.” We must concentrate on the way that output-driven accountability means that “whatever subject the kids hate most … takes over all of school.” We should not give defenders of bubble-in accountability (or those who are tempted to collaborate with it) an easy out. We must focus on Kamenetz’s wise metaphor, “Pervasive assessment is a nightmare version of school for most students. It’s like burning thirsty plants in a garden under a magnifying glass, in the hope they will grow faster under scrutiny.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree that using the business approach, measure it and it will improve, has turned out to be a terrible idea for education, and it is a shame that love of learning has been lost as a priority or even as a value in American schools.
My concern is that as well as pushing back against testing there needs to be some alternative to track school performance. Countries like Finland and New Zealand rely on process — if the curriculum is good, the teachers are good, if boards are getting good information — then outcomes will follow. They check process using inspectors that go from school to school on 1-5 year cycles and do very little other testing. This seems like a smart alternative.
“if the curriculum is good, the teachers are good, if boards are getting good information — then outcomes will follow. They check process using inspectors that go from school to school on 1-5 year cycles and do very little other testing.”
I could have sworn that my school district used to follow a system much like this one before test data became king.
2o2t,
More likely than not your state/district probably did school/teacher evaluations that way. In Missouri it was a district evaluation every five years that focused on the processes and was also a discussion at the same time. The false accountability that is so prevalent now focuses on output, as if one can measure what a student has learned. The concept of measuring what a student has learned is the fundamental false problem of education these days. Start with a falsehood, end up with a falsehood.
“The false accountability that is so prevalent now focuses on output, as if one can measure what a student has learned.”
Yup.
Gee.
Assessment technology “measuring and holding schools accountable for the social and emotional health of their students, if done in wrong ways, might, once again, worsen the effects of inequality.”
Ya think? That’s a pretty weighty accusation.
Uhhh, boy, I dunno.
She said “again,” suggesting it’s happened before.
Have there been developments in human socio-psychological behavior that occurred when, perhaps, I wasn’t looking which would preclude that recurrence?
Citations? Links?
Just checkin’…
John,
I’m not quite sure what your point is. It appears that you support standards and standardized testing. Is that the case?
Please clarify what you are trying to say, especially with “Have there been. . . that recurrence.”
Thanks,
Duane
“Is there any doubt that the new metrics will result in modern versions of John Stuart Mill, who are raised to be geniuses and to bring the next generation of utilitarianism to an unprecedented level? Isn’t it also inevitable that some parents will follow in the footsteps of Mill’s father, and lead their children to nervous breakdowns?”
Less “rigor” and less testing (especially using really bad tests) will make for healthier kids all around. Diane’s had a post in 2013 titled “Is Your Child as Smart as a Two-Year-Old”: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/06/is-your-child-as-smart-as-a-two-year-old/comment-page-1/#comment-183242
One of my comments on that post . . .
Randal Hendee
June 6, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Looks like this child could become another John Stuart Mill: Greek at age three. Latin at eight. Nervous breakdown at twenty. Considering how influential Mill became for the spread of democratic ideals, we’re lucky he made it past adolescence.
Chapter I of Mill’s great Autobiography is an amazing read: http://www.bartleby.com/25/1/1.html
“In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in conjunction with a younger sister, to whom I taught it as I went on, and who afterwards repeated the lessons to my father: and from this time, other sisters and brothers being successively added as pupils, a considerable part of my day’s work consisted of this preparatory teaching. It was a part which I greatly disliked; the more so, as I was held responsible for the lessons of my pupils, in almost as full a sense as for my own…”