How Standardized Testing Reinforces Inequity

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1. teachingeconomist says:

   December 26, 2012 at 10:01 pm

   Tests make the inequality of opportunity obvious. Without the tests, we could just ignore what is happening.

   Reply
   • Megan Pledger says:

     December 27, 2012 at 2:58 am

     And given that we have the tests and can see the inequality, what are we doing about it?

     Giving more tests.

     Reply
   • Inverness (@Inverness) says:

     December 27, 2012 at 8:14 am

     The response to testing hasn’t been to reduce economic inequality, which has not reduced after years of standardized testing.

     The response to this testing bananza has been a dull, watered-down curriculum. Less time(if any) for the music, painting, drawing, drama, exploration, and more to prepare for the bubble sheets. Unless you can send you kids to fancy private schools, where they will get fine educations.

     Look at the evidence.

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2. Eded says:

   December 27, 2012 at 12:29 am

   Tests aren’t interventions and aren’t designed to change schools, but to assess one dimension of academic achievement.

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3. retiredbutmissthekids says:

   December 27, 2012 at 1:55 am

   Bottom line is: “standardized” testing MUST STOP! The questions are ridiculous, the answers more so. These tests have been shown to be neither valid nor reliable. Incompetent people & computers are “evaluating” the written responses. This is now past the point of debate and discussion. Administrators all over the country: REFUSE to make your teachers administer state tests. TELL your state supers. that you can no longer afford to spend taxpayers money on test preps and testing materials–it’s taking BILLIONS of dollars away from schools. Parents: opt out! Older students: opt out! This must be a nationwide effort.

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4. Mom/Educator says:

   December 27, 2012 at 9:00 am

   The only way to have any impact is if parents refuse to have their children take them. Sorry but my religion is now called critical thinking not short term regurgitation. This is the only way to stop this foolishness. I’m prepared to have our children sit quietly in opposition. I want them to take only the tests that they prepare for reasonably later in life when they are mature enough to handle the anxiety and stress. The SAT’s, The LSAT’s, the GRE’s, the Boards for med school etc.
   If students refuse how can this rediculousness continue?

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5. fremontwatch says:

   December 27, 2012 at 9:33 am

   Parents also have to insist that decent electives be in the school in addition to refusing to have their children tested. Right now the test doesn’t really effect kids- they just take it and move on- it is teachers that the pressure is being put on. Parents simply refusing would be the most powerful tool.

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6. Reading Exchange (@readingexchange) says:

   December 27, 2012 at 12:51 pm

   No test on this planet is advanced enough to capture the complexity of knowledge acquisition in the minds of our students. History will brand the edu-Goliaths of our time as archaic fools.

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   • EdEd says:

     December 27, 2012 at 1:33 pm

     Just because no test is, by itself, complete does not mean it doesn’t provide meaningful information. The problem is not the test, but how it’s used and interpreted – the fact that folks think a single test, administered once yearly, is sufficient to measure academic achievement is the problem, not the achievement test itself.

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     • Reading Exchange (@readingexchange) says:

       December 27, 2012 at 1:44 pm

       Any test is flawed. I have examined student test results for 30 years. The only reliable fact to be drawn from test results is that they are unreliable. They do not fairly reflect a student’s current level of functioning nor do they accurately predict their future successes. The intellectual complexity of students renders them useless. I know that this reality is so inconvenient for the “reformers”.

     • Eded says:

       December 27, 2012 at 4:26 pm

       By your logic any assessment, even formative assessment used to adjust instruction, is fundamentally flawed and unable. Is this what you are intending to say?

     • Reading Exchange (@readingexchange) says:

       December 27, 2012 at 7:51 pm

       Let me answer you here, Eded. My course work at Johns Hopkins and my experience as a teacher convinces me that all testing (formative, summation, standardized, etc.) is flawed. How to I know that my students are learning? I do not use “tests” to adjust my instruction. I observe their behavior as they utilize language. How deeply did they understand the text? Can they interpret the text on several levels? Do they read between the lines? Have they formulated an opinion about the text and can they support it? Which books are they selecting and why? Would they recommend the books to other students? Why or why not? What have they written in their reading journals? How much are they reading each week? How motivated are they as readers? Can they talk the language of readers? What do they know about genres? Do they know what opportunities exist in the Literary Industry? Etc.

       I have a theory. If you know your students as learners, you do not need to “test” them. As a result, my students do fine on the required tests.

     • teachingeconomist says:

       December 27, 2012 at 8:20 pm

       But if the tests are flawed, I would expect some of you students to do very badly on the required tests. What explains this anomaly?

     • EdEd says:

       December 27, 2012 at 9:08 pm

       Starting a new post below so we have more room…

7. Reading Exchange (@readingexchange) says:

   December 27, 2012 at 8:30 pm

   Eded, just because a student is able to pass a test, it does not follow that the test is a reliable measure of their knowledge and skill acquisition. Most tests are very limited in their scope. I want more for my students. Some of my students who pass the state tests do not pass my course. This is why I do not use test results to inform my instruction.

   Reply
   • EdEd says:

     December 27, 2012 at 9:21 pm

     To Reading Exchange:

     “Eded, just because a student is able to pass a test, it does not follow that the test is a reliable measure of their knowledge and skill acquisition.”

     I agree. I wouldn’t use level of performance on an assessment to measure it’s reliability or validity. Not sure where you are getting that idea.

     “Most tests are very limited in their scope. I want more for my students.”

     This is true, which is why all assessment – both formative and summative – should be multi-method. I would never say that an end-of-year state tests fully assesses a child’s academic achievement that year, nor would I have say that a child’s performance on an oral reading fluency assessment fully describes their reading ability. Nevertheless, both have the ability to give us information about part of the whole. So, while we wouldn’t reduce a child’s reading performance to oral reading fluency, oral reading fluency is certainly part of the child’s overall reading skill set.

     As such, it is very possible to combine multiple assessments to fully assess however much “more” you want for your students.

     “Some of my students who pass the state tests do not pass my course. This is why I do not use test results to inform my instruction.”

     I’m not sure there’s ever been an argument to use state tests to inform your instruction, in large part because you’d never have the results of the test before your class was over.

     Reply
8. EdEd says:

   December 27, 2012 at 9:15 pm

   In response to:

   “Reading Exchange (@readingexchange)
   December 27, 2012 at 7:51 pm
   Let me answer you here, Eded. My course work at Johns Hopkins and my experience as a teacher convinces me that all testing (formative, summation, standardized, etc.) is flawed. How to I know that my students are learning? I do not use “tests” to adjust my instruction. I observe their behavior as they utilize language. How deeply did they understand the text? Can they interpret the text on several levels? Do they read between the lines? Have they formulated an opinion about the text and can they support it? Which books are they selecting and why? Would they recommend the books to other students? Why or why not? What have they written in their reading journals? How much are they reading each week? How motivated are they as readers? Can they talk the language of readers? What do they know about genres? Do they know what opportunities exist in the Literary Industry? Etc.

   I have a theory. If you know your students as learners, you do not need to “test” them. As a result, my students do fine on the required tests.”

   First, you are right in that all tests (that I am aware of) have a degree of measurement (or other) error. However, that doesn’t render those tests useless, but it means that we do need to understand their limitations. Many assessments do have error, but that error is predictable, and we explain our results in the context of that error (e.g., margin of error, confidence interval). Similar, what you have described is also an assessment or “test,” but one that is composed of informal observation. I definitely support informal observation, especially for day-to-day formative assessment. However, informal observation is also subject to measurement error in the same way that standardized “tests” are. As such, if you are going to argue against any assessment instruction that does not have perfect reliability and validity in every conceivable category, you’ve also ruled out your own methods of informal observation.

   With your theory you describe in your last paragraph, “knowing your students as learners” is absolutely the goal of most formative assessment that is of any instructional utility. In other words, I think you are creating an artificial distinction between two forms of assessment that, while different, are also alike in many ways.

   Reply
9. Reading Exchange (@readingexchange) says:

   December 27, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   “knowing your students as learners” is absolutely the goal of most formative assessment”

   But, Eded, why do you insist on assessing your students if one already knows them as the learners they are? You can already know them without formative assessments or any other assessment. Let it go, Eded, let it go. 🙂

   Reply
   • EdEd says:

     December 27, 2012 at 9:43 pm

     Reading Exchange, part of this discussion involves the definition of assessment. My guess is that you are more narrowly defining assessment as something that only involves formal testing. Most folks in education, though, would consider assessment to be any activity – formal or informal, whatever the format – designed to gather more information about a student or his/her performance. As such, as activity you conduct that yields information about a student is, at least in part, an assessment.

     More specifically, though, I think we’d still find disagreement in terms of which specific assessments to use and how to use them. First, we’re probably in agreement that end-of-year state tests are of little use, and of no use in the classroom. That being said, I find that there is information I would be unable to gather as efficiently and effectively through informal observation, such an inventory of a child’s beginning reading skills. While I might be able to gather that information over time, it would take me a while to hone in on exactly which skills were missing, while a curriculum-based assessment would give me that information much more quickly and efficiently.

     Perhaps you teach high school, and a subject with these specific skills that need to be acquired? I can see your arguments making more sense if you were a high school reading teacher with kids that were relatively prepared at the beginning of the year for your class. In that situation, I’d imagine formal, formative assessment would be less useful.

     Reply
     • readingexchange says:

       December 29, 2012 at 6:52 pm

       I work with middle school students who have been identified as, so called, “struggling”, “average” and “above” average readers.

10. LG says:

    December 28, 2012 at 6:53 am

    My first thought on reading this post: Tests not only measure inequality, but they are being used to punish people for teaching in communities where social inequality runs rampant.

    On another note, did anyone catch the advertisement on the top of the article’s page?

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