Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition sent this commentary by a member of the Ohio State Board of Education, retired Judge A.J. Wagner..
State Board of Education member A. J. Wagner weighs in on testing
Retired Judge A. J. Wagner, member of the State Board of Education, shared his views in a letter to Senator Peggy Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee and the members of an ad hoc committee she appointed to examine issues regarding the current testing debacle. His views are worthy of a read.
Dear Senator Lehner and Members of the Committee:
I am writing to you to share my opinion which is formed by the February 2015 Policy Memo from the National Education Policy Center on “Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Time to Move Beyond Test-focused Policies.” I urge you to carefully consider the analyses and recommendations in this Memo.
A compelling body of research exists about the problems with test-focused reforms, as described in the Memo. (available online athttp://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/esea). Key concerns include:
i) Research suggests at least two major problems with test-driven school reforms. First, the tests themselves have validity issues. The resulting scores are only loosely linked to the wide array of topics and depth that we all want for our students. So attaching high stakes consequences to those test scores results in decisions being made on weak data. Second, and probably even more important, when we attach high stakes consequences to test scores we change what and how our children are taught. This is not always bad, since much of what is tested is indeed important. But the overall effect is to narrow our children’s learning opportunities, squeezing out important and engaging lessons.
ii) Not surprisingly, then, we now face the failure of more than a decade-and-a-half of test-focused reforms. Even though we’ve been focusing on the content of our tests and even though we’ve been preparing students to demonstrate knowledge on tests, the testing trends after No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) implementation are almost identical to the trends before NCLB’s implementation. Not only did we come nowhere near the NCLB goal of almost-universal proficiency on standardized tests, we gained no benefit at the cost of broader, deeper learning – and at the cost of pursuing evidence-based practices that could have helped our children.
I urge moving away from test-focused reforms, and to a state role that encourages a focus on sustained and meaningful investments in practices shown to be effective in improving the educational opportunities and success of all students, particularly those in highest need. There are no magic wands, and the formula for success is very straightforward: children learn when they have opportunities to learn; closing opportunity gaps will close achievement gaps.
Key recommendations from the Memo include:
i) Assess students, teachers, and schools using frameworks that paint a more robust, accurate, and complex picture, with multiple data sources and scientifically credited methods of analysis. For example, for students, we might look at authentic performance assessments (http://fairtest.org/k-12/authentic assessment), and for schools, we might look at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s “Time for Equity Indicators” (http://timeforequity.org) or the National Education Policy Center’s “Schools of Opportunity” criteria (http://opportunitygap.org).
ii) Enrich opportunities through proven interventions such as high-quality early-childhood education beginning before birth. Extend learning time in ways that engage students, rather than just more time on drill-and-kill test preparation. Demand more of our schools, but only when providing the supports for students and teachers to succeed. Address problems not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of systems. Test-focused reforms detract attention from deeper and more systemic factors that can hinder any student’s opportunity for success, including such factors as poverty, racial segregation, inadequate resources, narrow and ineffective curriculum and assessment.
iii) Involve students, families, educators, and educational researchers in more substantive ways in decision-making processes involving educational policy and reform. It is particularly important to have powerful, listened-to voices arising from the communities that have been targets of educational reform.
This is a brief summary of the Memo, a document supported by over 2000 researchers and professors from colleges, universities, and other research institutions throughout the United States. I urge you to, please, consider the evidence based practices put forth by the National Policy Education Center.
My prayers and best wishes are with you for these important Deliberations.
Judge A.J. Wagner, Retired
Member of the Ohio Board of Education
District 3
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great, but too late, no?
Shelley,
It is never too late. We won’t give in
Looks like there’s local push-back to the Atlanta teacher prosecutions:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-atlanta-teachers-20150407-story.html#page=1
He is one of the few Ohio School Board members that gets it.
I live and work in a poor community with ‘failing’ schools, but I consider poverty to be a zip code issue. I secretly supported the untenable NCLB because I know from experience that schools in poor communities can succeed and I naively hoped we would be finally freed from educational fads unsubstantiated by researched evidence, e.g. whole language.
As it turned out, NCLB beat us down even further, but everyone else was fine with that … until the testing drums of doom hit them in their middle class schools. This resultant groundswell of opt-out, I’m afraid, will benefit zip codes with resources and strong teacher pools (the lack of which is my primary barrier.) Witness the proposed NCLB re-write.
Schools are just one institution that must be addressed were our leaders resolved to ameliorate the social costs of zip code poverty to all of us. All I desperately need is a pool of effective teachers to stabilize my staff– and I will not get that if poor schools continue to be judged by excessive testing and teachers demonized to justify their abysmally low pay.
The zip code disparity continues.
Disa: thank you for your comments. They provoked the following thoughts by me…
The leaders and enforcers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” are loath to admit it, but when they make the conversation all about (or keep circling back to) test scores then we don’t have a conversation about the real issues involved, some of which you mention.
At their absolute best the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests are converted into what are termed “summary statistics” or “reductive statistics” or “descriptive statistics.”
The strength of that way of representing the numbers you use (and don’t use) is that you have a simple way to assessing and making judgments about things. That is also their greatest weakness. Depending on what you value and what you don’t value, what you consider & include and what you ignore & exclude—and this involves that human frailty called “judgement”!—you lose nuance. And you can lose nuance to the point of thinking you are making informed “data driven decisions” when in reality you are making a complete mess of everything you claim to care about.
One of the simplest ways to assess the strength and weakness of the test-derived numbers & stats used by the rheephormsters is to see whether or not they mandate and enforce their use in the schools their children attend and those which they lead.
Next. Google “Lakeside School” and see what the school Bill Gates and now his children attend is like. How to judge Lakeside School? Then google “Bill Gates” and “Lakeside School” and “speech” and “September 23” and “2005” to learn what the Rheephormster in Chief thinks a world-class education consists of. Not a surprise that formal indicators of success and failure (like grades) are not… Well, read it for yourself.
Then this blog, 5-23-2014, “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
‘Nuff said.
😎
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
The more I think about it I see our cadre of teachers as being liked trained chefs—experts (even if new or not as experienced) in culinary arts (in this case, child development and learning). But they finish culinary school and are told they can only prepare boxed muffins, potatoes au gratin from a box and frozen peas. Each meal must be measured and reflect exact proportions of prescribed perfection or the chef is a failure. Each meal must be consumed at a prescribed rate and ratio or the student has not met growth and the kitchen receives a poor grade. Nevermind if an oven is out or the microwave doesn’t work! Them’s the rules, you moronic kitchen helpers who thought you were actually going to use your culinary skills. Now hop to it; you’re wasting precious precious dollars just thinking.
I mean really. It’s the best analogy. I challenge anyone to come up with a better one.
Let’s get the analogy out there.
Like trained chefs (not liked)
Typos. Sorry.