Testing has begun in some states and will continue through April on the Common Core standards. Students in grades 3-8 and 11 will take either the PARCC or the SBA tests. The tests cover a full year of instruction aligned with the standards. But students have not had a full year of instruction in March! There are still another 3-4 months of schooling.
Typically, the testing will consume anywhere from eight to eleven hours. Most students will be tested longer than it takes to sit for the state bar exam. These are not the tests that we (the adults) took when we were in school. For most of us, our teachers tested us, sometimes weekly, sometimes at the end of the semester, but never for more than 45 or 50 minutes.
States can expect a big decline in proficiency rates. This may be due to the fact that the tests are given long before the students have “covered” the standards for the year. It is certainly due to the fact that the tests adopted very high cut scores (passing marks). For whatever reason, the testing consortia decided that their cut scores would be the same as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Thus, “proficiency” would be set as high as NAEP proficiency. Understand that NAEP proficiency is not a pass-fail mark; it represents a high level of achievement. In only one state–Massachusetts–have as many as half the students reached NAEP proficiency. In most states, no more than 30-35% of students attain NAEP proficiency.
What does that mean for the scores? It means that most states can expect a majority of students to “fail” the Common Core tests. These results will be used by “reformers” to trumpet the “failure” of public education. This is ridiculous. If a teacher gave a test, and most of his/her students failed, we would say that the teacher set the passing mark too high or did not teach what she tested.
What should we say about tests that are purposely designed to fail most students? This is a failure, not of the students, but of the test-makers and politicians who commissioned the tests and chose a passing mark that was out of reach.
Even more peculiar is that test results are not returned until August, in some places later. The student has a different teacher. Worse, the teacher can’t see what each student got wrong. She can’t give students instruction tailored to their needs because the tests tell her nothing except a score. The teacher knows how Maria compares to other children in her grade across the state and nation, but she doesn’t have any new information about what Maria knows and doesn’t know. The test has no diagnostic value. If a test has no diagnostic value, it has no value.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://www.wcax.com/story/28572311/vermont-education-board-suspends-use-of-standardized-test-scores
I’m confused about the cut scores. I read local news in Ohio and they seem to be saying the cut scores will be set by the individual states.
If this is true, then why were we told that the Common Core tests would allow comparisons across states? That was supposedly one of the benefits to the public- we could see where our state ranked, or whatever. Will there be some kind of national cut score that is used, yet not directly referred to in any Common Core marketing materials?
Chiara, I don’t know. What I do know (and posted about last year) was that the two national consortia agreed to align their scoring with that of NAEP. NAEP basic should be passing, not NAEP proficient.
Utah’s CC-based AIR test cut scores were set last year after the tests were taken. They were sort of set by a group of teachers, but I don’t think they even know what they were basing the cut scores on. That information has never been released to other teachers or to the public.
Here’s a minor question about the idea that “The teacher knows how Maria compares to other children in her grade across the state and nation.”
Our current PSSA reports only give scores and categories like basic etc, but no percentile rankings or other stats like that. Do the PARCC test reports give these?
I am asking because a local Curriculum Director said that the PSSA’s are a benefit to students because they can see how they do compared to other students. Regardless of whether that is useful information to a 6th grader is another topic for discussion, but regardless I do not see that info on the report ( actually I see no info at all because my kids opt out 🙂 )
I don’t think they know what the test reports will look like. I saw that one of the 5000 ed reform orgs put out a mock-up of what ed reform orgs WANT the testing reports to look like, but I haven’t seen anything from the state or the testing contractor.
I was amused by the ed reform mock-up of what a testing report should look like because they used an imaginary 11th grader as the “student”. They probably know issuing a report and ranking for a 3rd grader would turn off parents, so they chose an older student.
Alice in PA: to the best of my knowledge, the reports will rank students like NAEP: advanced, proficient, basic, below basic. Other terms may be substituted, but you won’t learn more than that. Since the teacher will not find out how students answered specific questions, they will learn nothing from the results.
The teacher will not know how the students answered. Assumption is that the teacher will never do simple class room testing to determine progress.
No one will know how the common core test reports will look like. If a majority of students are encouraged to opt out even God will not know if common core is good or bad.
Therefore change should never be encouraged. The moral of the story should be “Stick with the old and never test any new ideas because we can never predict what may happen.” Leave the innovation to the electronic, automobile, air transport and such industries which improve our quality of life.
Raj, You may have missed reading the many posts by experienced classroom practitioners who clearly stated that they use quizzes, tests, assessments that give them meaningful, real-time information re their students’ understanding. So “Assumption is … to determine progress” is a moot statement as worded.
I’ll encourage progress: Read carefully and think before posting. You’ve never replied to queries about your education/work experience but some might think your prior posts reflect a techie who misses nuances when reading.
Raj says
” If a majority of students are encouraged to opt out even God will not know if common core is good or bad.’
Well, if God were in charge, like any good researcher or engineer, she would have long ago done small scale pilot studies to determine “if common core is good or bad.”
But unfortunately, God is not in charge, so we are faced with the present insanity of just “testing a new idea” on millions of students with no clear idea of what the outcome will be.
God must be shaking her head.
God also clearly doesn’t care enough to stop criminals and corruption, because He gave us all free will to follow His rules or not. But he will get even later—-He made this clear too—when judgement day arrives and God decides the fate of everyone who ever walked the earth as a human. In that case, Cuomo, Gates, Arne Duncan, the Waltons, Eli Broad, the Koch brothers, and the other corporate reformers, are going to pay a big price and no amount of money is going to get them out of it.
Lloyd
I think Bill Gates was already on God’s *%!@ list for Windows (and Universe Explorer, which God has always cursed)
Heaven has a lot of Windows, you know.
LOL
If Heaven relies on Windows and must keep updating, then the Pearly “Gates” must be stuck closed most of the time thanks to viruses and Trojan Horses that keep slipping through the endless gaps.
Also, I hope state lawmakers haven’t completely relinquished their jobs and duties to the testing organizations under some claim that the organizations are somehow unbiased.
Are these multi-state testing orgs supposed to be quasi-governmental- yet another org doing the job of our elected representatives?
This is 100% cheerleading,. They mention nothing that is even slightly critical of these tests. I hope they aren’t supposed to be providing “oversight”.
Read this and see if it looks anything like “rigor” or “critical thought”. They promote ONLY positive news and opinion (it’s 90% opinion) on the Common Core tests:
https://twitter.com/PARCCplace
Ohio newspapers are selling the tests by claiming again and again that the tests are not “high stakes for students”.
When reality intrudes and national and state lawmakers pass laws and rules that make the tests “high stakes for students” can the public safely assume they were misled? Or should we put this in the “unintended consequences of ed reform” category, when it happens?
Chiara, the tests will in time be high stakes for everyone. When they are, other questions will arise. Like, what about the kids (a majority) who can’t pass CC tests? What will we do with them? Will they never be promoted? Will they never graduate? Arne Duncan has unleashed chaos on the nation’s schools.
I just think the Columbus Dispatch shouldn’t be delivering stern lectures to parents with this phony and baseless assurance that the tests aren’t “high stakes for kids”
They can’t guarantee how these tests will be used anymore than I can. They have no earthly idea how our feckless and captured lawmakers will use these tests. In fact, the tests were SO over-promoted as fabulous and determinative I will be AMAZED if the ed reform “movement” doesn’t rely on them for everything under the sun. God knows states paid a bundle for them. The temptation will be to over-rely on the tests. They have to justify the cost.
There’s history and context here. These folks don’t have a great track record with responsible use of “data”. It’s been 15 years. We know how they use “data” to push their very specific policy and political goals. I am dreading the release of the scores in Ohio. Every privatization lobbyist will be using the test scores as a hammer against public schools.
They should tell parents: “we don’t know how the federal and state governments/ed reform lobbyyists will use these tests” because that is the truth.
I’ve been told this same nonsense–that these tests are ‘not high stakes for students.” The kids know darn well that these tests are used to grade teachers. For most students, who love their teachers, they have a lot of pressure to do well to help their teacher and school. I’ve seen my own children stress out about that. That’s a LOT of pressure on a kid.
To clarify, the PARCC test has TWO testing windows, one now in March (in Chicago the window was March 9-April 2 which the test-makers want all students to be tested at the 75% mark of the school year and then ANOTHER window from April 27-May 22 or the 90% mark of the school year.) Here is how the test is split up between the Performance Based Assessment (PBS at 75% mark) and End of the Year (EOY at 90%):
PBA Language Arts (3 Units): 105 minutes, 120 minutes, and 90 minutes
PBA Mathematics (2 units): 120 minutes and 105 minutes
EOY Language Arts (2 units): 90 minutes and 90 minutes
EOY Mathematics (2 units): 110 minutes and 105 minutes
Previous standardized tests were indeed completely administered in March, but the PARCC changed that ostensibly to “fix” the common complaint that students didn’t have a full year to learn the material, but their “fix” actually makes the test far, far more disruptive. In the past, after the March tests, pressure on teachers was lessened and teachers would squeeze in all the fun projects, field trips, and age-appropriate lessons we actually went into teaching to do. This year, thanks to Common Core and tests like PARCC, there is no end of the year space to actually teach. We are testing until nearly the last day of school.
Add on to that the fact that in Illinois, PARCC doesn’t count and the students are forced to do another very long, disruptive test (The NWEA a.k.a MAP test) OVERLAPPING the PARCC windows AS WELL AS in Chicago our REACH tests for evaluation purposes during that same window. There are about three weeks left in the entire school year when my school will not be testing.
I wrote about how these tests disrupt a little here: http://mskatiesramblings.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-up-is-parcc.html
I really need to write another piece now that I have actually administered the PARCC. All I have to say is I have never seen a more inappropriate, horrible test in my life, especially for my students with special needs. As a teacher, I would never, NEVER administer a task like PARCC asks kids to complete in a testing setting. Why does an 8 year old need to read complex, age-inappropriate texts and write an essay on those passages they cannot even read? But that’s another story…
I think it was deceptive to sell it as one test. Any ordinary person outside testing circles or education would consider that two tests.
My 6th grader considers it 2 tests, and he’s right. I am sick to death of how this stuff is marketed and sold. I’m sick of the manipulation.
The very least they owe the people who are participating in this experiment is plain language and honesty. They couldn’t even present the basic practical nature of the thing without the marketing BS- “one test, two components!”
It comes down to trust. They don’t trust the public to evaluate their program. They have to micro-manage and dominate the “debate”.
I totally agree with your concerns with testing. I do have some questions though. What can schools do instead of testing? What are the alternatives that will be universally accepted as a standard. Also how can teachers work with testing and still be good teachers, especially new teachers. I want to be an affective teacher but testing is also how I will be evaluated so what can I do?
Instead of comparing schools via testing, I believe there should be independent data collection around the specific resources available at school including the types of curriculum, teacher/staff retention rates, numbers of books, class sizes, types of non-core subjects available (i.e. music, art, world language, dance, drama, APs, etc). The states, districts, and even the federal government should be pressured to improve equity based on those measures and demonstrate how they are providing equitable opportunity. Punitive focus on test scores simply punishes the schools serving the neediest kids and rewards many schools engaging in horrible actions like pushout and discrimination against students with special needs or students learning English. We need to redefine how we decide what a quality school looks like and redirect resources to schools that need them.
Katie: That sounds a lot like what schools used to have to do when they went through accreditation. Why can’t something like that be the “assessment?”
Bgaudette, you should evaluate your students; your peers and supervisors should evaluate your performance. The system’s functions can be reviewed by NAEP audits.
“The system’s functions can be reviewed by NAEP audits.”
NO! They can’t with any validity. The NAEP tests are not designed to assess a school’s “functions”. Like any other standardized test it is designed to evaluate a student’s learning. To use the results as an evaluation of a school’s “functions” is UNETHICAL-that’s taught in the first testing class most ed students take, or at least it used to be taught. To use an assessment for any purpose other than which it is designed is UNETHICAL.
What are the alternatives that will be universally accepted as a standard.
bgaudette. I think that this is the problem. There is no need for a universally accepted test-determined standard. You have no professional oblication to work with testing. Your obligations are to you students, as wondersous and sometimes weird human beings who are still learning about themselves. others, and the larger world. You can work to end the regime of thinking test scores are important measures of a teacher’s “effectivenes.”
” What are the alternatives that will be universally accepted as a standard.(?)”
NOTHING!!
Educational “standards” and the accompanying standardized tests do not meet any valid definition of what a “standard” is. Noel Wilson has proven as much in his never refuted nor rebutted treatise on those educational malpractices. Read and understand what he has shown in “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 description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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. And 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 attempts to measure “’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.
Schools could try teaching instead of testing.
Bgaudette If you want to be an EFFECTIVE teacher, the first thing you need to understand is Quo Bono, who benefits. If you give a chapter test based on a text-book series, you can see the questions AND the curricular material. You also have the option to modify, reteach & retest. If US students still took norm referenced tests, like the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) , you would know that the testing company spent many years norming that test. Now, they are trying to “build the plane in the air” and create the test while they use it. They want to keep their question bank secret because that means more $ and fewer questions from the peanut gallery (students, teachers & parents.) So, you must ask yourself, why are they rushing a beta level test (free debugging) and trying to belittle and intimidate anyone who questions them?(them?=The Powers That Be)
“Driving Miss Crazy”
Standards drive the testing
And testing drives the teaching
And teaching drives divesting
From outcomes worth the reaching
Same tests should be given to ALL schools–private, charter, whatever.
I love your sense of humor!
My first thoughts when I finished reading this post was how evil the corporate reformers are; how evil Bill Gates is, and how evil the Waltons are. I know there are more servants of the devil besides them, but they were the ones I thought of.
Diane – I’ve been looking for the total amount of time an elementary age student sat for standardized in 2000 or prior (say for an old CAT/Iowa exam). I’m trying to compare it to the hours and weeks they sit now. Additionally, what were those tests used for, when were those results returned to the teacher and when during the school year were they given? I am trying to combat the question ‘you used to take standardized exams…’. I have an arsenal of answers for that, but I’m looking to compare some numbers. Any help you can provide would be appreciated!
Thank you!
Ericka
@scout510
There are a few good articles on capitalnewyork.com about the new teacher evaluation plan.
These are the articles:
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/03/8565167/details-begin-emerge-new-teacher-evaluation-system
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/03/8565148/state-ed-aid-increase-tied-new-evaluation-plans
Testing is big business. it is unregulated. It supports a web of vendors of services for test surveillance, data mining, and sales of data.
The arts of intimidation preserve the testing regime. All of the testing guidance being provided to state departments of education and then pushed down to districts and schools comes into existence from the combination of federal and state mandates for testing in tandem with what the testing companies want to market as legitimate activity.
In various guidance documents on high stakes tests, you will not find any criticisms of tests. They are assumed to be well-designed, necessary, and valuable as “accurate measures of TRUE learning.” That marketing hype protects the investments of the testing companies. It also supports the development of the shoddiest and cheapest tests the industry can sell.
The best ways to expose cost-cutting and misrepresentation are well-known–publish test items, and entire tests, and accounts of how useless they are in predicting anything, especially when the arc of learning is truncated to a single test score, and the arc of learning is less than a year of instruction, or multiple years of test scores are treated as somehow more valid and reliable, even if the tests are not critically examined
The testing industry thrives insofar as it can market these short term and radically reductive measures as super-important–so important they can predict future income, and a future that is going to assure that students will not be a “burden on society” IF they just score high on tests. Prophets of doom and gloom love test scores.
The testing industry and those who support it require a sustained marketing campaign based on the pre-judgment that students, teachers, administrators cannot be trusted. They are guilty of being lazy, indifferent to learning, without merit, untrustworthy until they have passed muster on standardized tests–one size fits all, so TRUE winners can be named and losers can be shamed.
Because the business of testing is really of little value in improving education, it has to market that very idea as a major benefit. It is not a major benifit. But saying so will bring profits, as sustain the equally questionable belief that “data-driven” everything is the same as “best practice.” The pushers of tests like to soften language, purging documents and professional development efforts of hard language–“this is a test with winners and losers,” to ” this is an assessment of learning,” or the absurdity of “this is an assessment of your teaching.”
These are important rhetorical moves. conflating assessment and tests, but the biggie is posturing about “test integrity.” Test integrity is to be protected, even if there is little or no integrity from the get go. PARCC and SBA tests should be exposed as unethical. They are being used as blunt instruments to rate students and teachers on standards that are not well-founded in knowledge of young learners. The tests are based on unpublished curriculum materials found or rushed into existence so the tests could created.
Testing companies and supporters of tests want students, teachers, and administrators to live in a constant fear of being caught doing something that will damage the “integrity of the test.” That is precisely why test security firms are getting rich on contracts for doing “testing forensics” with these ranging from computer aided pixel counts of erasures on paper to recording dwell times and paths to rigth or wrong answers on a computer, to monitoring social media for signs of cheating. That monitoring is conducted by companies that often do the same sort of work for data hoarders and sellers, for financial institutions, and on behalf of national security.
It is time to expose the absence of “test integrity” in this industry. The integrity of students, teachers, administrators and education is being eroded by treating test scores as if these are the most precious, trustworthy, and “objective” indicators of being well educated and being well taught. Expose that fraud.
“Integrity of Pearson Test”
Is oxymoron at its best
To test a standard that is junk
Is nothing more than purest bunk
six stars out of five for your latest poem. Love the rhyme pattern. :o)
Reblogged this on The Sharing Tree.
Diane–your last paragraph absolutely pounds the last nail into CRRAP–what is the most egregiously offensive part of CCRAP (&, actually, the consistent, psychological child abuse is the worst part) is that it delivers absolutely NO valuable information to educators & parents…NONE. As bad as the previous Pear$on IL $tate Achievement Te$t$ were, schools not making AYP (Average Yearly Progress) for a # of years could get results earlier, &, for each student, an individualized report on areas of strengths/weaknesses, so that teachers could actually devise complementary lesson plans (which could work in sp.ed., but not so much with ESL & gen. ed.–so many kids, so little of 1 teacher to go around). Even then, however, the tests were so flawed
(go back & read Sr. Swacker’s Wilson rant) that one would wonder exactly WHAT was being tested. (That’s why Pear$on is SO secretive about the te$ts–$ecurity for them, to avoid the Pinepple Expre$$! Evaluation & microscopic examination for students & teachers, but NO quality control/oversight of Pear$on te$t$–EVER!)
Also–one must question WHAT skills are actually being tested, here–computer skills or math, eye-hand coordination or written word, transference or actual reading comprehension, & so on, ad. nauseum (& I DO mean nauseum!). Is the kiddo ACTUALLY answering a question, or is he caught up in the mire of having to think through/process all these other activities? And then, of course, there’s the scoring–I refer you all to Ken Previti’s excellent blog, Reclaim Reform–his 2 postings March 27th & March 25th give a clear picture of the idiocy, as in–nothing much has changed since Todd Farley’s book Making the Grades–published in 2009!!
In summary, it is time for blame to be assigned, with the finger correctly pointed at the culprit–Pear$on, the company that is Alway$ Earning and NEVER Learning. It is high time that we educators & parents teach THEM (specifically, Sir Michael & the new CEO) a lesson–that’s our job, after all.
First, tell EVERYONE (most certainly, your state reps. & senators–call them, e-mail them, go & meet w/them–they represent YOU & your family–they are public servants {just like teachers}, & WE pay their salary. We have been doing this, & it’s been very effective) you know the $$$ amount that your state wastes on this lousy te$ting/te$t prep material (it’s easy to find–in IL “state officials
said $34 million is available for tests in 2014-15”–Chgo. Tribune). Plus, find out for how many years/what $$$ amount your state has contracted (& probably a no-bid) for future te$ting/material$). Taxpayers will be amazed &, more importantly, angry. Then, organize a protest at a Pear$on campus near your town/city (if you have one). Go to the Class Size Matters website & look up their “Pineapple Protest” at Pear$on’$ Manhattan headquarters in 2011. Finally, for all you states taking other, non-Pear$on owned assessments, do the same at those publishing companies, should they be near. Otherwise, organize a protest somewhere visible, such as state capitals, board of ed. buildings, etc.
The opt out movement (of which I’m proud to be a part of) is tremendous & effective–top billing, front page, Chicago Tribune!
That having been said, it’s time to take the next step & to behead the monster & stop this–once & for all.
Yes, WE did…yes, WE can..& yes, yes we WILL!
Here is another flaw I have noticed in the Common Core math test:
Because the Common Core aligned math test wants to assess critical thinking, it is very language dependent. Practically every question on the PA state math test is a word problem with often convoluted phrases and difficult language. As I review/preview the core aligned 4th grade math sampler, issued by the State Ed Dept. (and available on their website), I know it assesses reading comprehension skills, as much as, if not more than, discreet content knowledge in math. I can see how the questions are designed to require critical thinking, but, the almost obsessive preponderance of rigorous, critical thinking questions has overshadowed the actual math, and marginalized students who are stronger in math, but not in reading. What are we measuring with this math test?
You got it, Jonathan. The heavy emphasis on word problems and verbal explanation, marginalizes the knowledge of the student who thinks in “math. ” The verbal explanation is almost superfluous to them, but they communicate very well, thank you, with other people who are math literate. I don’t mean to dismiss the ability to translate the math, but I question whether that ability is really as important as the current testing regime suggests especially without some developmentally appropriate breakdown. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that children become competent in many skills that they cannot explain well verbally. Their ability to verbally describe an action or a process lags well behind their ability to perform or complete the action or process. For instance, however correct it might be to declare someone to be computer literate/educated, the term literate implies a reliance on verbal communication beyond what all disciplines require.
I think studies have pointed out that the ability to socialize is FAR more important than doing well on bubble tests or even having high reading and math skills. I think it’s called social intelligence—the ability to get along well with others and to get them to cooperate with you.
I should add that I have no training in mathematics that would allow me to make all these assertions. Perhaps someone who has some appropriate credentials can add to this discussion.
Jonathan: you have hit on something that psychometrician themselves see as a fundamental problem that is difficult to avoid: constructing standardized tests that assign numerical values to a student’s “performance” aka “achievement”—
And thinking that you’re testing for one skill or quality when you are really testing for others. Understand that I am leaning more than a little bit here towards how the psychometrician themselves frame things, but there is no getting around the endless difficulties caused by this.
There are almost endless dimensions to this that takes one deep into territory best left to delusional “education reformers.” For example, imagine VAManiacs that loves them some PISA scores and other international comparisons and rankings and think that mathematical intimidation and obfuscation are just the cat’s meow.
Ok. By the end of elementary school the average student in the USA knows the 26 letters of the alphabet. Bazinga! By the end of elementary school the average student in a Japanese school knows almost 900 kanji [literally, Han {Chinese} characters], Romaji [Roman characters, i.e., the 26 aforementioned Roman characters], and the two Japanese scripts of katakana [mostly used for words of foreign origin] and hiragana [used mainly to make the kanji meaningful in Japanese and to write Japanese words not expressed by kanji].
Just how do you “adjust” for the two kinds of literary skills when you are doing the standardized testing dance that requires fluid usage of written language?
Frankly, I think this is one of those instances where rheephormistas rush in where angels fear to tread. There are very serious considerations of culture and usage that come into play here that are not solved by the simplistic pretense of (thank you, Duane Swacker!) assigning a single number to a large number of elusive qualities.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
KTA,
“And thinking that you’re testing for one skill or quality when you are really testing for others.”
What you are talking about is “construct validity”. Does the test/question actually assess the “construct” that it purports to assess and how does one know if that is true. Just one of the many errors involved in the educational standards and standardized testing regime that render said malpractices COMPLETELY INVALID.
I recommend Cleo Cherryholmes’ book “Power and Criticism: Post-structural Investigations in Education” for an excellent primer on these issues.
Duane
….and this is why high stakes testing in education doesn’t serve the academic needs of schools or students.