A reader comments:
“In all seriousness, the level of absurdity is reached when a profoundly disabled student is required to be tested and the testing looks something like this… a teacher pulls a chair up to the student’s wheel chair and reads a test question to the student. The student has nearly no use of his limbs or body but can turn his head. Then the teacher reads the possible answers “A”… blah blah blah “B” … blah blah blah and then the teacher holds up a sheet with letters on them and tracks the students eyes trying to guess at where the child’s eyes are looking at A, B, C or D! Meanwhile most of the test material (if not all) is not even relevant to the child or part of the child’s learning day. His day is focused on physical therapy to learn to swallow or to increase motor movement in his very stiff arms and legs. He is well below grade level because along with his physical issues there are cognitive ones too. Is this really the best use of this child and teacher’s valuable time to force him to endure a grade level test based on his chronological age because EVERYONE MUST BE TREATED EXACTLY THE SAME so that data crunchers are happy?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
if nothing else…….it gives charter schools an incentive to make sure these children are not allowed to enroll and mess up their test results, and require them to spend money which could go…….elsewhere.
This happened regularly at my school as we have 6 self-contained classes. I watched a 4th grade child, with an IQ of about 30 and multiple disabilities, be asked which planet is closer to the sun, Mercury or Mars, with the process used in the above post. All 4th graders take a science standardized test in AZ, and as NCLB declared, students with disabilities deserve to be tested too. smh.
Don’t you mean “. . . students with disabilities deserve to be tortured too.”
A close friend of mine, steeped in South Asian philosophy, tells me there are just two principles needed to live a moral and happy life:
Rule #1: Be kind to people
Rule #2: Don’t be a dumb ass
So why can’t our Deformer friends follow two simple rules?
Because behaving that way excludes so may profitable opportunities.
Apart from the stupidity of this I see that this teacher gets to see the questions, but no doubt must promise to forget them all as soon as the test is over.
Thanks howardat58,
You have identified our source of the testing materials. We need civil disobedience with teachers taking fotos of the pages and posting them on the internet-anonymously of course.
There has got to be a better way. Absurd.
Reblogged this on Dave Alexander & Company with Ukuleledave and David Edgren — This is the original Artisan Craft Blog and commented:
I have helped teachers administer tests just like this. If little Johnny rests looks at a letter on the page long enough, that is the student response. This is NOT fiction. What craziness.
Special education teachers in New York City have been dealing with this for years–and it is as frustrating as this teacher makes it sound.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
As the mother of a profoundly disabled child, I wholeheartedly agree! In 2014, in Florida, a courageous mother of another profoundly disabled child, Andrea Rediske, helped to pass legislation to get exemptions for children like ours. I tried to obtain the exemption for my child, but the Education Commissioner, Pam Stewart, denied the request without reason. I am in the process of requesting an expedited hearing expressly provided for under the same statute, but the district was told by the DOE’s general counsel that I was not entitled to a hearing because it was not an IEP matter. I immediately called the general counsel and advised her off my rights per 1008.212(5), Florida Statutes, and she backtracked. Under the statute, they have 20 school days to schedule the expedited hearing. It has been one week and still no word from the DOE.
If I were the tester, that student would get whatever score I could get because I’d be guessing that his eyes were on the correct answer!
But then again, if I was the student’s teacher, I’d tell the admin to go eff themselves as that student wasn’t being tortured, oops I’m supposed to say tested, by me.
In a society when a liar like Trump gets the bully pulpit then this is not only possible,it is the way it is in a society that has lost its way. An identity society is one William Glasser wrote, “The Identity Society,’ in which he “as long as televisions exist in its present form it is doubtful we will ever become an identity Society.”
TV sells this ‘data’ mind-set. The national narrative on testing was sold to our people, and this teacher was mandated to do this by the honchos at the top who do not identify with ‘self-worth’ or ‘respect’ which are the cornerstones of true identity. “Doing worthwhile tasks increases self worth” “whether one is a teacher or a manufacturer, the task must have a goal that increases self-worht.”
How I can this teacher increase her self worth or that of the child in such a task.
This book, published in 1978 is must read. It also about what it takes for a society to survive, and this is an example of the opposite.
Trump is just a symptom of the problem – the festering pustule that demands attention. But the illness has been there long before he showed up – we’ve just been ignoring the symptoms because we’re too scared and lazy to go to the doctor. After all, treatment can be difficult and painful (and expensive).
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads.
BTW, thanks Dianne for being one of the dissenters on testing for “grit”
I don’t know that it will help. Ohio probably already has a “grit score” in the works loathe as the ed reformers in this state are to reject any random ed reform idea that comes down the pike and pile it on top of the 500 other unfunded reforms, but maybe they won’t “scale” grit testing national just yet if there’s a dissenter or two.
Sounds distressingly similar to the discredited “Facilitated Communication” method for autistics which resulted in false criminal charges against parents, settled for millions.
That “settled for millions” idea is intriguing. There have to be so many instances these days where abusive but clueless school reforms/reformers have forced teachers and students into situations against the law…
Taxpayers have committed enormous sums to fund public education. If a “profoundly disabled” student is incapable of testing, aren’t these students inappropriately placed in the public school system? I understand a parent’s desire to have their child included, but aren’t we asking the public school system to provide programming of which it’s incapable?
First and foremost, everyone is entitled to a free and appropriate education (FAPE) by federal law. The keyword here is “appropriate”. This type of testing done solely to rate the teacher and school and which offers zero diagnostic value to the student is NOT appropriate and students actually miss out on a true education due to the enormous amount of pre-testing, teaching to the test, and actual testing. By the way, it’s the law for ALL children to go to school!
If anyone thinks this is exaggerated, it is not. I spent years testing special ed students on information far above their grade level. I had children cry, break pencils, leave the room (what we would all feel like doing as well). All it taught them was that they were failures. Not only days of testing but days and days of “practice tests” which I was required to give them. I wrote letters to district and state officials, but to no avail. The testing began only a few weeks into the school year just to defeat them from the start. It was given so the district had information on who would pass in the spring. I could have easily told them that giving a test 3 grade levels above a child’s skills would not give them any chance of passing. The school professionals would spend weeks identifying a child with a disability and then expect them to do the same as the typical students. All the time practicing and testing was time wasted in their education. Having accommodations like reading the questions aloud means nothing when the child has not been able to read one paragraph of a three page story. Wasteful, cruel and defeating for all. It was what made me want to quit teaching.
Q: Where does the American Psychological Association stand on all this torture?
A: behind the one doing the torturing.
This is one reason why the testing absurdities continue and who is supporting them.
Well before ESSA was passed, civil rights groups demanded the continuation of NCLB testing requirement. Several letters, with a changing number of signatories, were sent to Congress advocating the retention of NCLB tests.
Here are excerpts from the most recent The Advocacy Letter, dated after the passage of ESSA (01/21/16). It comes from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. It is addressed to the U.S. Department of Education
“ In direct response to the request for information regarding regulations to implement programs under Title I of ESSA, as discussed in more detail below, we encourage the Department to propose regulations regarding (the topics of) accountability, assessment, supplement not supplant, educator equity, data reporting, and inter-district resource equity.”
“State Accountability Systems
…in order for disaggregated data to be meaningful, “n-sizes” must be kept low so as not to hide student performance, as had been a practice in the past. It will be important to ensure that regulations reinforce the statutory requirements of identification and intervention in schools in each of the three categories identified in the law—the bottom 5 percent, schools with grad rates below 67 percent and schools with consistently low performing groups of students….
Assessments
Regulations to implement the assessment provisions of the law should ensure that the 95 percent participation requirement is enforced so that the performance of all students is taken into account. It must be affirmed that the 1 percent cap on the alternate assessment applies to student participation in the assessment by subject….( and that) in order for disaggregated data to be meaningful, “n-sizes” must be kept low so as not to hide student performance, as had been a practice in the past.” ….”it will be imperative to ensure that assessments meet the highest standards of validity, reliability and comparability and that students with disabilities and English learners are fully included in the assessments with appropriate accommodations. These assessments should not be an excuse to provide vulnerable students with lower quality assessments or obscure disparities in student outcomes.” (last sentence was in bold face type).
This letter was signed by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (a group with over 200 members) with slightly more than 30 explicitly signing on.
Here is the list. Alliance for Excellent Education, American Association of University Women (AAUW), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) ,Association of University Centers on Disabilities, Children’s Defense Fund, Council of Parent , Attorneys and Advocates, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, Easter Seals, Education Law Center – PA, The Education Trust, Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens, MALDEF, NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, National Center for Learning Disabilities, The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, National Council of La Raza ,National Disability Rights Network, National Down Syndrome Congress, National Indian Education Association, National Urban League, National Women’s Law Center, New Leaders, Partners for Each and Every Child, PolicyLink, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Stand for Children, TASH, Teach For America, Teach Plus, TNTP, UNCF, United Way Worldwide.
It is no small irony that the list includes many charter school supporters and that many charters schools work hard to exclude who have disabilities. It also well known that the Gates and other foundations provide operating and “advocacy” support for some of the groups so they will advance the policy preferences of Billionaires.
Insanity. Even a child who is less disabled but still struggles with autism or traumatic brain injury. I feel the extreme need to do something about this but I don’t know what.
If ever a word represented so much of this reform it has to be absurd.
Absurd premise, absurd design, absurd implementation, absurd funding, absurd reliance on data and testing, absurd devotion to age inappropriate expectations, absurd political interference … and the absurd defense of the absurd.
I’m out of absurd … and out of accepting it as an educational reality.
“Absurd Reform”
Reform, in a word
Is just absurd
Like wingless bird
And one-elk herd
Like roof-less tents
And hole-less vents
And gate-less fence
It makes no sense
I would like to add that the absurdity can also be applied to English language learners who are given the same standardized tests as their English speaking peers and are expected to score as well as their peers. Not only is it cruel to put a non-English speaking child in front of a test that he can neither read nor comprehend, but it is a waste of time and taxpayer’s money. It also does nothing for their self-esteem that we teachers work daily to strengthen. There are better ways to assess a non-English speaker’s progress, especially the first year or two that the student is trying to get a grip on the new language. Portfolios and work samples are in my opinion much more valid although I understand such representative works don’t fit well on a spreadsheet.