Once again, Pearson produced a test that was developmentally inappropriate, confusing, and an ordeal for children.
This teacher in the New York City public schools sums up the flaws in the 2016 ELA tests here. The test reading passages were beyond the reading levels of most students. The subject matter and vocabulary was sometimes arcane.
The state commissioner MaryEllen Elia thought she could address the concerns of parents by making the test untimed. But instead of relieving stress, the children labored over the tests for hours.
Parents will continue to opt out as long as this punitive regime remains in place.
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Gotta develop GRIT. Could this be where the yahoos decided to measure GRIT?
OMG…watch this. https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en
So STUPID. Just because it’s on TED doesn’t make it good.
Giant government contractor Pearson seeks to run education world-wide!
“But the company has its eye on much, much more. Investment firm GSV Advisors recently estimated the annual global outlay on education at $5.5 trillion and growing rapidly. Let that number sink in for a second—it’s a doozy. The figure is nearly on par with the global health care industry, but there is no Big Pharma yet in education. Most of that money circulates within government bureaucracies.
Pearson would like to become education’s first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves.”
I cannot imagine why any politician or public policy person thinks this is a good idea. I get why PEARSON thinks it’s a good idea, but aren’t elected leaders supposed to provide some kind of public interest push-back to private entities?
Why not just hire Pearson reps directly and skip the public sector middlemen? We can appoint boards of directors and replace state legislatures and Congress. Much more efficient.
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/apec-schools/
Isn’t the government supposed to stop and/or break up monopolies (such as Pearson)?
Re-posted.
This comment from an anonymous 7th grade teacher says its all:
This afternoon I was to correct book 3 of the 7th grade ELA. I can’t believe no one is up in arms about this test. First of all the extended response was based on two EXCERPTS. The question had to do with the “chances” the main characters took and what they learned from them. The “chances” they took involved inviting a guest over to their house (which, if true, makes no sense anyway.) However, in one story the main character didn’t invite the guest at all. (Let me add I was an English major before I was an English teacher and I have my graduate work in English Lit.) The idea of “taking a chance” means to take a risk, a gamble. To “learn from” means there was a lesson taught. Each character, Justin and Basil had a guest over. They may have learned something about their guest, but it wasn’t a lesson, and they took no “chances.” Perhaps the guest took a chance going into a strange house, but the hosts took no chances.This is an example of one of the sentences from the exemplar (a”4″) from the state: “In the “Excerpt from Buddha Boy” and the “Excerpt from One + One = Blue,” both Justin and Basil take chances….Justin takes a chance on inviting Jinson to his father’s studio. He thinks it would be fun to see his dad’s new art piece he is working on…..Basil takes a chance on inviting Tenzie to his house. Tenzie and Basil can get close but Tenzie gets a little too close. Both chances they take are similar. Both are very different.” (First of all Basil doesn’t invite Tenzie to his house, the book makes a point of mentioning that, the excerpt says nothing about it. Secondly, who is “he” in the “Buddha Boy” novel? It is not clear? Lastly, how are either sentences examples of taking “chances?” Yet, this is a 4? In addition, did anyone notice how the word Excerpt is included in the title. That is because Pearson made the word excerpt part of the title, and put it in quotes. This is one of two extended responses, the other made as little sense as this did. I can put up with passages at 9 – 12 grade level written 150 years ago before Webster’s dictionary was printed. I can put up with passages in the same test booklet that at a 3rd – 7th grade lexile with poor book reviews. I can put up with the same question requesting two details page after page after page, but I can not tolerate passages that do not include the answers to questions that have no relevance to the passage. Perhaps those who made the test wanted to say that Jinson was a Buddhist with a shaved head that cared little for material things and the trappings of the Western World; and perhaps they wanted to mention that Basil and Tenzie both had Synethesia, which made relationships difficult. But they didn’t, so the questions made no sense and had no support which made the exemplars ridiculous and nonsensical. In addition to their ridiculousness, the exemplars were poorly written and contained opinion rather than fact. For example in the end the exemplar read: “In conclusion, Justin and Basil both learn something. They both learn something very very different. One situation is better than the other.” (What in heavens name, do those sentences mean? Yikes, yikes and yikes) Where are the rest of the comments regarding this test specifically? Who cares about the planning page? The actual substance is incorrect, misleading and exemplars are poorly written. This didn’t teach a lesson to my students. It made them doubt themselves and the test. Pearson and Questar and those in power should be ashamed.
“.Justin takes a chance on inviting Jinson to his father’s studio. He thinks it would be fun to see his dad’s new art piece he is working on”
Well Justin did take a chance that Jinson would laugh at Justin’s father’s artwork.
And Jinson took the chance that if he laughed at the artwork, Justin might punch him in the nose
And the lesson? Don’t invite someone to see your father’s crap artwork if you think there is a chance they will laugh at it and you will punch him and then end up being brought up on assault charges as a result
Ashamed — and sued. It’s past time to hold test makers legally accountable for each and every testing ambiguity or mistake, and there have been MANY over the years.
“MaryEllen Elia thought she could address the concerns of parents by making the test untimed. ”
Well, in Elia’s defense, she probably thought (not unjustifiably) that if the kids had unlimited time they would certainly be able to translate form the original ancient Greek that the test was written in.
Flawed tests equal flawed results. While I do not support standardized testing, some tests are better than others. Parents should look at the performance of their child on former tests and the current Pearson debacle. They will most likely find a huge drop in performance which will confirm my statements. This drop is not due to the failure of the child, teacher or school. The tests based on the CCSS are not trying to “raise standards.” This is a corporate lie. These tests, in addition to all the problems listed above, have an arbitrary cut score designed to to fail about two third of the students. They are trying to prove our public schools are failures that must be privatized. These tests are a data mining tool to deliver public schools and students over to privateers.
This is what I think as well. That’s why I love that the suburban parents are leading the opt out movement. The more unethical charter school chains in NY State are salivating about educating the affluent children of college educated parents, and these tests were specifically designed to make them think their excellent public schools were “failures”. It isn’t working. That’s why the privatizers went nuts about the opt out movement. The students in failing public schools were taking the tests in large number and the opt outs were in the most successful public schools. And the pro-charter folks are going nuts because all their efforts and money can’t convince affluent parents to trust their lying eyes over the Pearson tests.
^^sorry, correction:
And the pro-charter folks are going nuts because all their efforts and money can’t convince affluent parents NOT to trust their lying eyes. Instead, the pro-charter folks want educated parents to agree with the charter industry that their child is only as good as his test score.
This is amusing:
“Not surprisingly, the Wellesley Class of 1969 valedictorian doesn’t believe in skipping exams, and she probably wouldn’t opt out granddaughter Charlotte from New York’s standardized tests, if it were up to her. Hillary Clinton has never skipped a test in her life. Based on the knowledge level she displays on even the most arcane policy points, she’s probably never skipped a study session or glossed over the footnotes of a book.”
Got that? SUCCESSFUL, SMART people take tests. It’s only the complete losers who would ever question one!
Isn’t this the opposite of the “critical thinking skills” that are supposedly admired by this “movement”?
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/hillary-clinton-wouldn-t-opt-out-her-granddaughter-on-common-core-tests-1.11680325
There’s also something really unappealing about all these adults who were never tested to this extent strutting around scolding people on how 3rd graders need “tough” tests.
I’m confident Hillary Clinton never took a test that was as long as the bar exam when she was 12. Where does this tough talk come from? I’m younger than Clinton and I was never tested to the extent that my son is now.
Sometimes “opting out” (eg, on the invasion of Iraq) is the smart thing to do.
Agreed, Chiara. I never took standardized tests in public school. My teachers wrote their tests.
I was class of 1960, Wellesley, and I endorse opting out. I think Jillary has no idea of the ordeal now inflicted on children by hours and hours of pointless testing, whose only purpose is comparative, not diagnostic.
Smart people often advocate for tests as they confirm the “natural order of things.” This sounds like colonialist thinking to me.
If Hillary believes in the tests, she should criticize all the private schools that are opting out of the state tests.
Opting in to CTP-4 exams instead of the state tests is proof that private schools know that the state tests are a bunch of malarkey. They are all free to do so, and nearly every single one — including the ones that Chelsea attended and the ones where she will more than likely send those grandchildren — will opt out.
Maybe a reporter will ask Hillary if she will be concerned if Chelsea sends her child to a school that opts out of the NY State tests? Not another standardized test — the NY State tests that she believes are so valuable. Because she should be informed that those schools are opting out and the few private and parochial schools that do opt in get mediocre to terrible results. And I feel confident that Hillary’s grand kids won’t be attending a private school that opts in.
In Utah, the tests have been untimed for years. I have had students work on an essay for SIX DAYS (70 minute class period each day). It’s appalling.
Watch out, Deans for Impact have a doc out on cognition, and they are going after the “developmentally inappropriate” argument: “Content should not be kept from students because it is “developmentally inappropriate.” The term implies there is a biologically inevitable course of development, and that this course is predictable by age. To answer the question “is the student ready?” it’s best to consider “has the student mastered the prerequisites?”9” (Willingham, 2008)
see http://www.deansforimpact.org/pdfs/The_Science_of_Learning.pdf
Mastery of prerequisites sounds like personalized learning eduspeak.