The secret is out. Pass it on.
Professor Walter Stroup of the University of Texas has determined that the annual state tests are superb at measuring how well students will do on the annual state tests, plus how well they performed on the same test in the past and how well they will perform on the same test by the same test publisher in the future. No matter how hard teachers try, the best they can is to teach students how to do well on that particular test. If they teach them a different way to understand math and solve math problems, the test won’t show it. The test tests conformity to the test, not the effects of study or instruction that is unrelated to the test.
This is a pretty dramatic finding, and it should be analyzed and reviewed by state education departments and scholars.
Are we paying billions to find out what we know on the first test?
This sounds eerily like the early version of the IQ test, whose designers thought were just a pure test that showed who was smart and who was dumb. There was no escaping your IQ score. You couldn’t improve it, and you couldn’t change it. It was you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If a test is designed broadly enough to touch all the basic concepts associated with a set of knowledge, the test can be a valid measure of what a student knows and does not know at that moment in time.
What most education reformers don’t seem to understand, or are unwilling to admit, is that the test results are incapable of telling us “why” a given student either knows something or does not know something. Yet we persist in attaching a cause-effect relationship between that knowledge or lack thereof and the efficacy of the student’s classroom teacher.
It’s much more complex than that. There are a myriad of uncontrolled variables a play in the process of learning. That is not a new or controversial fact. Yet we chose to ignore that fact and settle, quite arbitrarily, on only one of those variables, the teacher. It defies logic and testing principles to do so.
I was taught about uncontrolled variables in my sophomore statistics class and I presume so were many other college graduates who now sit in the ed reformers’ chairs. The concept of uncontrolled variables is fundamental to statistical validity. Why supposedly well educated leaders chose to ignore that fundamental fact never ceases to amaze me.
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Tests measure a limited slice of the domain of whatever was taught. If the teacher taught the curriculum brilliantly but not the particular domain that was tested, the students will do poorly on the test.
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You are, of course, quite right. The criteria I set out was merely for purposes of discussion. I was seeking to point out that, even a test that covers everything has its limitations. I cited one. You’ve just cited another.
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“If a test is designed broadly enough to touch all the basic concepts associated with a set of knowledge, the test can be a valid measure of what a student knows and does not know at that moment in time.”
That’s a mighty big “if.”
Here in Virginia, the Standards of Learning are so extensive it’s impossible to teach them all with any depth, and it is definitely impossible to assess them all. The state issues a test blueprint that indicates the standards that definitely won’t be tested, but even that doesn’t cover everything that can’t be tested in the limited number of questions on the SOL tests.
I won’t bore anyone with the valid arguments with how this leads to narrowed curricula and the impossibility of truly assessing what students know – anyone who’s really been paying attention already is aware of those arguments.
Why “supposedly well educated leaders chose to ignore” those arguments isn’t amazing, it’s a result of a well-funded agenda.
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Again, teachers are forced to teach to a test, not impart learning. Which test tells us how well our children are learning? And what are they learning?
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Again, teachers are forced to teach to a test, not impart learning. Which test tells us how well our children are learning? And what are they learning?
You know those quizzes/tests you use to take in your classes that were developed by your teachers to cover the material that he/she taught? I would guess that your performance on those tests OVER TIME was a fair picture of what you were learning. Especially when your teacher factored in class participation, homework, projects, papers, etc. I would take the informed opinion of my teachers over a single high stakes test any day. They actually could use that information to inform their instruction. My little diatribe is obviously a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.
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I taught g/t classes and tested children with I/Q related tests in order to qualify them to be served in the program. If a child did not qualify, after being recommended by his/her parents/teacher/friend/himself/herself, I retested a year later, sometimes for three consecutive years. It was amazing at the differences of scores for some children from year to year. Some who tested at the 20% in second grade would test at the 98% in third grade. IT’S the TEST and test taking abilities that make the difference! Some never qualified, and I can say with certainty, from knowing the child—IT’s the TEST!
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When I was in school (1963-1976) we were given ONE test at the end of the year, and it was probably some form of an IQ test. Now we are forcing our students to take up to 28 HIGH STAKES STANDARDIZED STATE SPONSORED FEDERALLY MANDATED tests during the schoo year. I don’t see too much improvement in my students, mostly have flat lined. My belief is that a students IQ stays pretty much the same, no matter how many times they are tested. I believe the COMMON CORE STANDARDS are just another hoax, like NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND/RACE TO THE TOP, etc.
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