I get many thoughtful comments. I read them all because I learn from readers. This reader asks a very good question. Can you answer the question?
“There is an observation regarding these high stakes tests that has been nagging me as I witnessed, another year of my 3rd through 8th grade students painfully struggle through the hours, days and weeks of these insane and brutal standardized tests. All the while wondering what my future will be based on the quality of their performance. Now, perhaps someone reading this, can add their discussion on the topic. Here goes:
The legally mandated student school year in PA is set at 180 instructional days covering from Sept to June. That computes to be the equivalent of 180 instructional days times 6.5 hrs/day or, approximately 1170 instructional hours per school year. These are hours for which I am financially compensated. These are hours for which I am also expected to be accountable for the achievement effect my instruction has on my students during the 11-12 school year. A test administered to each of my students regardless of their variations in strengths, weaknesses, tolerances and language proficiencies will determine my very professional survival, let alone my personal survival, quality of life as well as that of my family. I understand that. These are the life changing stakes. What I realized this year is that this test was administered on day # 125 of my district’s school calendar.
My students are being tested on their recall of content and on their literacy proficiencies assumed to have been ‘acquired’ from their instructional time in my charge during the duration of the 11-12 school year. This, by law, is supposed to be 180 calendar days. However, the actual truth is, my students are being assessed and scored based upon only 125 days of my instruction, or 812.5 instructional hours. What happened to the rest of the legal school year? What happened to those other valuable and precious instructional hours/days of lessons? What happened to the measurement of the other 56 days X 6.5 hours that equal 364 hours? My students, my district and I are facing the potential for major disastrous consequences of these test scores, because it is deemed by the funding powers to be the ONLY recognized accountability measure of our professional worth. When in fact, the state is not permitting the public schools a full legal school year to engage in instruction. This year we were permitted only 2/3 of the instructional time mandated by law before the state imposed its accountability gauge on our practices. Perhaps, the Dept of Ed feels that the balance of that instructional time (April to June) will be assessed the during via the next year’s 12-13 tests. Well, hold on there! That means I was assessed THIS year for 56 days of last year teacher’s instructional time with my students. One third of my students’ instructional time was with another teacher (s), yet my salary, my retention /dismissal, and my certification are to be determined based on the productivity of someone other than myself for 56 instructional days! My students’ 56 days duration with another teacher or teachers from a previous year is an crucial variable which the state has put beyond my control. And yet, I am being held responsible for it as if it were instructional time for which I indeed, had controI!
Logically that makes any assumption regarding my teaching skill, based on the score of test, a faulty premise. Statistically, it invalidates the score as a measure of my functioning during ‘11-12. The truth is: the test score can only assume to measure 125 days of my instruction time, not a full 180 days. At best , the score can only be deemed to represent 2/3’s of my teacher quality, not 100%
I am being held accountable for 180 days of instruction, despite the fact that I have only been allowed to engage with my students for 125 days. This is no petty matter. I can be fired based on this score. I can be denied salary based on this score, or (hah) merit pay. My district can lose funding for the arts, science, music, athletics, counseling and its very existence. This, I do believe, is a scandalous injustice, one which has the potential to cause hundreds of thousands of teachers and school employees to be unemployed.
For those who interpret all of existence from a business model perspective. Let me use corporate jargon…
Would a financial entity allow one of their investment instruments be evaluated for dividends gained derived from only 2/3 of its fiscal investment period? And furthermore, would they see as fair, if the other 1/3 of fiscal investment period assumes the dividend performance of an unknown investment instrument managed by an unknown competitive financial entity?
Certainly not. They would be in a court room faster than you can say, RIP OFF!
We should not stand for it either. Any thoughts?”
Do you think that it is fair to judge a teacher by scores that reflect the work of previous teachers? The teacher might also have added that the tests reflect the students’ willingness to study, the students’ sense of urgency about the test, the family’s support for the student, whether the student has a quiet place to study, whether the student is working after school and has no time to study, whether the student can read English, whether the student is experiencing a major life crisis during the school year, whether the school has good leadership, whether teachers collaborate, whether the school has a strong curriculum, adequate resources, reasonable class sizes, and what the weather was on testing day, as well as about 100 other factors.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s also factor in that this year the students will be assessed on the Common Core, yet 30% of their learning time was not based on the Common Core.
Also, don’t forget to factor in the lost instruction time, due to testing. I bet you’ll be down to the 50% mark.
I can’t wait for the lawsuits to begin once someone loses their job over this.
The state has an underlying assumption that test scores are representative of quality of instruction. I would argue they do not. A role model, sorely needed by kids whose parents work 200-hour weeks, would and should do more than show a kid how to pass a standardized test. In fact, my experience with standardized tests suggests that I’m better able to write meaningful tests for my own students. Now I’m not bragging, because the quality of standardized tests I see ranges from abysmal to “meh.”
It’s preposterous for teachers to be lectured on differentiated instruction when the tests are all the same and the only thing that matters. As a teacher, I know when I’m at my best. I’m at my best when left alone to do whatever it takes to teach my kids what’s important, and I know very well what’s important to English language learners, as well as what they will need to avoid taking zero-credit remedial courses when they enter college. From all I’ve seen, the state and city governments haven’t got the remotest clue.
Teaching is an act of seduction. It’s about making kids love what you’re selling, which is education, their future. The obsession with testing is destroying that. The notion that a teacher can be judged on a test which is likely to be total crap is absurd, and it’s remarkable we even need to discuss it.
“It’s preposterous for teachers to be lectured on differentiated instruction when the tests are all the same and the only thing that matters.” Thank you for reminding us of that. As teachers, we have to be wary of validating the tests, which are canned, badly produced tools that degrade our profession.
I second the reader’s comments. The value-added models that are being formulated to evaluate teacher effectiveness are not statistically valid for numerous reasons : size of sample, consistent paradigm over time, student attendance variables,etc. And most definitely, the absurdity of evaluating any teacher’s effectiveness months before the end of the school year adds to the poor construction of these quasi-models.
Evaluating educators is a complex issue. What other profession is called upon to both fail and at times discipline their clients?
How about the situation for NY science teachers? The NYS Intermediate Level Science Curriculum spans grades 5-8. Our students are tested in 8th grade on material they learn over a four year time period. Why is it that the only teacher of record is the teacher of the 8th grade year? I am now held accountable for the performance of three other teachers!
I can go one better — in my district here in southwestern Florida 50% of my final evaluation for the year will be based upon the test scores of children in grades 4 and 5. I taught 2nd grade this year. This is my first year at this school.
So, in effect, half of my ‘effectiveness’ as a teacher is to be determined by test scores from students I’ve NEVER taught and most of whom I’ve NEVER even met.
How anyone could keep a straight face and maintain any moral integrity while telling me that this is a ‘fair system’ is beyond my understanding yet this is the program that my betters in the district office produced, the state of Florida approved, and the U.S. Dept. of Education accepted as meeting the requirements of Race to the Top.
How could I have added ‘value’ or subtracted ‘value’ to students I’ve never even spoken to or been with in a classroom? Osmosis?
Hello, Brian,
I am writing a book on the abuses of “School Reform,” and your story is a great example of the problems. I would like to include it (anonymously, obviously). Please get in touch with me.
John Owens
acibooks@gmail.com
John, you have permission to use my comment anonymously. My union and district attempted to sign an agreement last month whereby the VAM would not be used for last year’s evaluations since the state was so late in releasing the scores and because no one understands the system and it was put in place so hastily. The state retaliated by threatening to withhold several million dollars of Race To The Top money from our district if the agreement was not voided so now we are back to where we started. No one in our district has been given their rating for last year as of this date and we are almost halfway through another year, still not knowing how we were rated last year. A total disaster from every angle.
Brian
There are MANY folks waiting for the lawsuits! Our Superintendent tells us that pretty much the State Superintendents (NY) are waiting for the first lawsuit over APPR and then waiting for the collapse of the plan. What nags at me, though, is why the NY Supts haven’t done what’s been done in Texas – just say NO!
While I do believe that lawsuits will abound, it just serves to use District and Union resources in the hands of lawyers and NOT students!
Florida has a state law that all teachers and administrators must be evaluated by test scores of students. Florida only tests students beginning in third grade. So elementary folks are all evaluated on the gains of fourth and fifth grade students. As an administrator, my input only counts for 40% of teachers’ final ‘score’. So, regardless of what I observe, In reality I cannot rate a teacher any higher than ‘needs improvement’. To reach effective or highly effective, they need positive test score gains. State law also says teachers who have two consecutive evaluations or two in three years of ‘needs improvement’ will be fired. It is against state law to offer a contract to any teacher rated ‘ineffective’. Considering teachers in grades KG to 3 are evaluated based on test scores of students in grades 4 and 5 whom they may have never even met, as the reader commented, I would say a large portion of taxpayers’ money in FL is going to go to defending all the upcoming lawsuits. But, then, large portions of taxpayer money are already defending lawsuits against the laws passed in the last two years, such as forcing public educators to pay 3% of their income to the state supposedly to fund the pension fund even tho the money went into the general fund (that is how Scott balanced the state budget last year), purging the voters’ rolls unconstitutionally, wiping out most of our environmental protection laws, etc, etc, etc. I am a native of FL and I am horrified and disgusted by what has happened to our state in the last few years.
Of course, the standard answer to these concerns is to do pre- and post-tests, and to do testing from the very beginning.
(Will we test in the womb, and then give parents a value added score? Not sure how I would have done, and I’ve got great kids.)
All this testing reflects wooly thinking and poor science. Lawmakers are setting requirements that sound good and appear “tough,” even if they are in fact misleading or meaningless. (A nice example are the “best practices” our schools in my state are required to meet in order to get their full funding. The “best practices” are whatever the governor’s budget director or the appropriations subcommittee chair think is a good idea.)
Standardized testing has its uses, but we are badly misusing tests. We have elevated test scores to be our goal, when in fact what we really care about can only be measured indirectly and over long periods. Or, I suppose I should say “what some of us care about,” because I’m skeptical that many of the lawmakers leading the charge on accountability and school choice really care about a quality education in the sense that I mean it. For them, education means acquiring job skills. Reminds me, sadly, of what one education grad student told his professor (a friend of mine): “I came here to be taught, not to learn.”
The lawsuits will begin in earnest when districts are forced to dismiss teachers whose “less than effective” evaluations are written by administrators who are also rated “less than effective.” How can any such system be legal? Educators will have a 50/50 chance of being above or below average, but the only guaranteed winners will be the attorneys.
In a way, I hate these questions. It’s in the same category as “Kid having a bad day on the day of the high stakes test”. They are all searching for explanations of why scores vary so widely, when the real answer is that all of these effects are dwarfed by the innate inaccuracy of the test. Even though these tests provide nice distinct numbers, there is a large random component to them.
To repeat: These tests are inherently inaccurate at the individual level.
Addressing anything but that just provides fodder for distraction for those who want to use them to loot our educational system.
I’m so proud of my fellow teachers, especially this one! I could not possibly add one word to the outstanding questions. I’m a retired teacher, but one is never NOT a teacher once one has been a teacher.