Todd Farley wrote a terrific book about his 15 years inside the standardized testing industry. It is called “Making the Grades.” It is an exposé of serial, institutionalized malpractice.
Here he responds to an opinion piece that appeared in the Néw York Times defending standardized testing.
Farley writes:
Aholistic Education
“In what may be the most ridiculous thing ever uttered about the benefits of standardized testing (and the competition is fierce), the author of a February op-ed in The New York Times wrote that a reason to continue with annual yearly testing in grades 3-8 was because those tests “allow for a much more nuanced look at student performance.” Of course the guy did work for an organization funded by the Gates Foundation (surprise!), but you still had to admire his chutzpah: He didn’t just say standardized testing allowed for a “nuanced” looked at student performance (ha!), the op-ed’s writer went all-in and argued that large-scale, mass-produced educational assessments written and scored by a completely-unregulated multi-billion dollar industry with a staggering history of errors allows a “much more nuanced” look at student performance than did, you know, a human teacher sitting in a class with human students.
“As someone who spent fifteen years in the testing industry—working for the biggest players (Pearson, ETS, Riverside Publishing) on the biggest tests (NAEP, CAHSEE, FCAT, TAKS, WASL, etc.)—“nuanced” is decidedly not a word I would use to describe our work. In fact, at the end of my 2009 book I went another direction, describing testing as “less a precise tool to assess students’ exact abilities than just a lucrative means to make indefinite and indistinct generalizations about them.”
“The myriad reasons I came to that conclusion are extensively explained in my book, but in a nutshell it came down to this: It didn’t seem to me that the testing industry saw its test-takers (read “children”) as whole human beings, simply a compilation of words on a page. Consider just one thing: If a student test-taker answers, say, ten open-ended questions about “Charlotte’s Web,” those ten student answers are scanned into a computer and sent in ten different directions—they are scored in no particular order, by as many as ten different temporary employees, often on different days or in different states. In other words, instead of one person reviewing all ten answers and thus perhaps gleaning some real knowledge about a student’s understanding of “Charlotte’s Web,” in the name of expediency and profit the testing industry chops up the student’s test booklet and feeds it into its assembly-line scoring process, “nuance” be damned.
“If a holistic education means caring about the whole child (including his or her physical, social, and emotional well-being as well as academic achievement), it seems to me the testing industry offers pretty much the opposite of that: a fixation only on numbers, and numbers that in my view both fail to understand individual children and fail to see any test-taker as an actual, living breathing human being. In fact, based on my experiences I’d say the best way to describe the work the testing industry does is not holistic education but “aholistic.”
“A-holistic education, you ask? Yeah, I think it was named for the a-holes who came up with the idea of judging America’s students, teachers, and schools via large-scale standardized tests.”
No one can ever point to standardized tests for nuanced understandings about students. Their whole construct is based on the binary notion of “right” or “wrong” with no shades of gray as a choice. That is why I have always found authentic reading and writing a lot more revealing than multiple choice tests. It is a much better way to assess a student’s ability to read, write and think.
My son just graduated from a college in Florida. While he did have to develop his writing skills as a freshman and provide some extended responses on homework assignments, he took a lot of business and cyber, technical courses. He has never seen the old “blue book” tests that were the staple of my undergraduate education. With the old blue books, we really had to show what we knew, and we had to analyze and synthesize information. We had to defend or refute a point based on evidence. Very often the learning was mostly about shades of gray, which is most like the real world that is frequently colored shades of gray, not just black or white.
The tests based on the CCSS take the uselessness of standardized tests to a new “aholistic” level of absurd. The tests are so flawed and unfair they reveal even less than other standardized tests! Only Pearson wins as they cash in on our “aholistic” ignorance.
And yet the narrative of how valuable testing persists-not funding, supports, not equal opportunities across public schools regardless of zip codes… those all important tests. There is money behind it and money to be had, otherwise they wouldn’t be so highly promoted.
..and if you haven’t read Tom Farley’s book do it NOW. It is scary.
howardat58: excellent suggestion.
And for those weary of slogging their way through the dreary self-serving clichés of the pitchmen and saleswomen of self-styled “education reform”—Todd Farley writes with wit, verve and clarity.
Want to break the chains of ignorance with which high-stakes standardized testing hobbles and degrades public school staffs, students, parents and their communities?
Follow the advice of a genuine American hero:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
Frederick Douglass.
Get unfit. Opt out of the hazing ritual of standardized testing. Opt in to genuine teaching and learning.
😎
You’re right, it’s basically a hazing ritual.
Reblogged this on Creative Delaware and commented:
Aholistic! I love it! Last paragraph is the icing on the cake.
Agree with you re: Last paragraph. May
Testaholics are like drunken drivers on a crowded highway.
“Testaholism”
Testing drivers
Testaholistic
Test survivors
Just a statistic
Whoops, could not open the N.Y.T. link–“You have reached your limit of 10 subscription-free articles.” Actually, I have not. But–that’s okay–I’ll read the N.Y.T. at the library. As for Todd’s book, I suggest you buy it & read it (I just ordered 3 more copies from the local book store to “pay it forward.”). An easy read, with heavy info. (Also, go back in this blog, & read the interview & 2 other connected posts. All very revealing.)
Just ordered the book. I think we need to get this info to our legislators. We need to END ALL high stakes tests. They are worthless and an expense we can live without.
Thanks for recommending…just bought it on my Kindle.
Based on his accounts it seems to me the real motive behind testing is profit. This is very sad. We have all been fooled. And several of us are delusional. Take the P company out of the equation and we might have a chance at fair testing.
What date this appear in the Times? The link didn’t work, but I’m a subscriber so I went in directly. I used the NY Times search tool and came up empty handed (except for a piece Farley wrote in 2009). I always like to read the original. Thanks!
Reblogged this on donotmalignme and commented:
Great article and great new term, “A-holistic”.
I’d like to add the myriad of Kool Aid drinking test enforcers who manipulate and bully students into taking these tests while silencing teachers who want to do the right thing to the description of A-holistic.
“A-holistic education, you ask? Yeah, I think it was named for the a-holes who came up with the idea of judging America’s students, teachers, and schools via large-scale standardized tests.”
FWIW, the idea of A-holistic education is spreading outside the American soil. Here’s one from America’s ally.
Here are the couple of quotes worth mentioning:
“…[N]ot telling them[students and teachers] what to do” makes it hard to justify your budget if you can’t measure performance through objective, predictive systems that can squeeze the fun and creativity out of just about any learning (or teaching) experience.”
“… [C]reativity may be fundamentally incompatible with the bureaucratic urge to quantify and control.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/06/07/issues/hey-bureaucrats-leave-kids-teachers-alone/#.VXS-qWATuT8