While I was traveling to Denver, I received a request from The New Republic to respond to an article by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, who asserted that we need more tests, because studying for tests makes kids smarter. I wrote this article, responding to Dr. Ezekiel that what matters most about tests is who writes them, how quickly results are reported, and what they are used for. The best tests, I argue, are made by the teachers. They know what they taught. They get. Almost instant feedback. They can see which students need extra help. And they can learn how to improve their teaching.
Yes, Dr. Emanuel is the brother of the mayor of a large US city.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“…we need more tests, because studying for tests makes kids smarter…”
This from a university provost??? Where did he get his doctorate? A cereal box?
I’m sorry, but if the only reason kids are studying something is that it’s going to be on the test, they’re not learning anything. They’ll forget it the minute the test is over. If we want kids to be “smarter”, introduce them to the joys of learning and let them take off on their own to learn what interests them. Those second graders in the post below didn’t need the threat of a test to make them “smarter” about dinosaurs.
Ah, I overlooked this: “Yes, Dr. Emanuel is the brother of the mayor of a large US city.” That it explains it!
Oh my! He did get his doctorate from a cereal box. Who pays him to say such outrageous things like that? Where’s the research? Answer: NONE! What an embarrassment to the university. Save this country from arrogant, ignoramuses like this guy.
Saw him on MSNBC chatting about Obamacare the other night. Intelligent about health issues but based on this article; an abject fool regarding testing. Fly back to Chicagoland and help Rahm solve the homicide problem.
Not only should teachers write them, they should be written and printed by a non-profit cooperative of teachers.
If no one could financially profit from it, it’s unlikely that we would have more testing than we need.
It would probably take a lot of wind out of the corporate ed reformers sails if something like that got on ballots all over the country, and if we could figure out a way to keep non-profit charters from contracting out to for profit ones, it could have a similar dampening effect on that.
I like this line of thinking. How can we help make this a reality?
This is absolutely on the mark. There should be a wall of separation between education and “business.”
I vote for a two-fer, add in a wall of separation between business and state as well. Then we could raise money by selling tickets to “Terror in the Boardroom” The movie would include zombie politicians walking aimlessly in the streets, having long ago forgotten what their actual jobs are. We wouldn’t need a sequel.
The Green Party would be the group to make this happen. We need to get the Green Party in local positions and grow our way up from there. They are the only party that wants corporations out of politics. They are the only party who would even consider helping us. The current manufactured consent, two party system is a hoax that will continue to fleece us and deceive us. They never let candidates like Nadar and Stein in the conversation. Start spreading the word.
Mike… Gosh if teachers wrote their own tests (on a simple desk top computer and hit “the print button” and then made 30 photocopies of the test… the publishing companies would lose a hefty “profit opportunity” where they could print test materials and charge cash-strapped school districts millions of dollars for test materials. And gosh having a teacher grading his/her own tests??? Where is the profit in that? The cost of a pen vs.. publishing answer sheets, using scan machines, mailing the tests to far away places for scoring… paying for extra staff at schools for proctoring, hiring a testing coordinator or two at each school. Our current privatizers know where the profit is at… and what about learning? Who said anything about that!
And he’s a bioethicist to boot. So much for his ethics.
So, Dr. Wainer out of Princeton once said that there are really only two purposes to testing “prod and prediction”. So Dr. Emmanuel is correct that one of assessments main purposes is to prod students to study. But, in my 17 years in Arizona I have never had a student, including my personal children, tell me they are going to study for the AIMS test. I am sure this trend will continue as we transition to ACT Aspire, PARCC or Smarter Balance. The fact is that students study for the AP exam and the IB exam but these same students do not study for the AIMS exam. Why? Because their knowledge level is beyond minimal skills. So, who studies for the AIMS exam? No one! Because the very students that need to study are the ones not motivated to do so. One might assume that motivation would be provided in graduation requirements, or our “Move on When Reading” legislation, but if you read Dweck, Aronson and Steele or Kaufman you might begin to have serious doubts about this type of motivation to students who traditionally perform poorly. How do we motivate students in this category to study? We bridge relationships with caring adults and allow those adults to prod the students at an acceptable level. SDT tells us that students must feel as if they are competent in an area to be motivated to learn in that area. Who better than the teacher to determine the level of prodding that needs to occur for a student to feel competent, and challenged, and stay motivated? Of course, this would acquire an innate trust for professionals in education.
SDT??
Simply Darling Techniques?
No child says to himself or herself, “Gee, I can’t WAIT to get to school so I can do my part to improve the state’s test scores.”
Is the AIMS test an Arizona state test? I immediately thought of the Aimsweb benchmark tests and confused myself royally. It seems to me that the NAEP is more than enough for those who feel the need to compare students especially because it is a test that no one studies for. The state tests my kids took were originally fairly innocuous. No one prepared for them either. They started as a rough measure of the relative standing of the public schools. I liked the days before test prep. None of those tests gave us much in the way of instructional information ( and I don’t remember anyone expecting it).
As far as I can tell, my ability to learn has only continued to mature despite the absence of tests. There are some subjects I choose to leave to others who find them more inspiring than I do. My husband is an engineer and a tinkerer. I find his puttering endlessly fascinating as long as he doesn’t try to explain everything to me in minute detail. We don’t have the same understanding of project completion, but he is challenged and motivated every day by his own interests. One of the nice things about getting older is that less of your life is ruled by meeting arbitrary standards.
We need good diagnostic tests. We need formative testing that disappears into the learning itself.
High-stakes summative testing is a disaster, and anyone with a clue understands this.
We have a lot of politicians and, it seems, some university provosts who don’t have a clue.
Testing “that focuses the the mind like a public hanging”: think Bierce’s “The Hanging at Owl Creek Bridge” that was based a a very real incident–the summary hanging of a civilian ‘spy’– that prompted an angry letter from Abraham Lincoln and a rank busting of the commanding officer in charge.
IN history in the Humanities we need no standardized tests, we need research, papers, documentaries, art of all kinds, performances, etc. We need authentic assessment, we do not need any standardized tests:”Education is not filling a bucket, it is lighting a flame.”
W.B. Yeats
HA!
That wonderful quotation, though, is misattributed to Willie Yeats. It seems to spring, originally, from Plutarch,
“For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, look wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.” –“On Listening to Lectures”
I so enjoyed reading that quote. Thanks.
Interesting quote and thought.
I’ve always enjoyed sitting at a campfire. Got a small pit (a couple of dozen old bricks scattered round in a circle) out back surrounded by huge old oak and hickory trees. I sit and watch dozens of fires in any given year and I’ve noticed (duh!) that not a single one has ever been the same as any other one. No standardized fires! Things of beauty, though, from the glowing coals, to the dancing flames, the various colors and sparks floating in the air as you tend the fire.
Now, all fires need tending to just as learning does and I’ve never seen two learners learning the same thing in the same way at the same rate. By definition all learning is non-standardized. Good teachers know how to kindle the fire and fan the flames of learning as needed.
Nice imagery. I have been sitting here extending it in my head. Not worth torturing your picture with overuse. I’ll just sit by those flames and ruminate.
In Jersey City State College, in the 70’s I learned abut diognostic prescriptive teaching. Test, find out what is needed to be taught, teach it, and test to see if the students learned it. A test could be anything, a paper test, a research paper, a report, a project, etc. Find out what they missed or what you missed in teaching, maybe you needed to teach a different way. teach again. Worked in special ed. The tests were for you to not only check what the students learned but how was your teaching. Did anything needed to be changed in your approach.
I was a consultant test writer (standardized exams) for a private company for five years on a part-time basis. I will say that prior to working for this company, my test writing skills were, like most teachers, rather weak. To no fault of our own, teacher training seems to ignore the technical aspects of test writing; most of us just wing-it. The training I received from the test writing company was quite good and has dramatically improved my every day classroom exams. It also helped me to see how complex and time consuming the writing of standardized tests really is. One of the most interesting complaints voiced by one of the company’s item supervisors related to just how impossible the state requirements (under NCLB) were for ELA exams that could accurately discriminate grade level (3 – 8) reading and writing skills. The supervisor told me that it was a psychometric nightmare writing valid and reliable ELA exams for 8 to 14 year olds, given their developmental variations. So glad that David Coleman (Superman has arrived?) could work out these issues all by himself. If they ever create a metric unit for arrogance, it should be called the “coleman”.
You said it, NY teacher. The Coleman.
I have done item writing training for years, so I know what you are talking about, NY teacher. And because of that, I know just how flawed these tests are. I can generally rip apart most any standardized ELA test you put in front of me.
The biggest problem with the current ELA tests, however, is not the poor quality of the items; it’s what is being measured–abstract skills abstracted from any meaningful content or context. There are many other problems as well. The test makers seem to be entirely cluesless about what they should be measuring when it comes to writing and grammar skills or how one might go about measuring those reasonably.
How much better would you expect the median teacher written test to be over the test written by a testing company? Would you expect to see significant differences between teacher written exams?
As I have said to teachers in the past who use this reasoning, there’s a major difference. If I goof on a writing a test, and I have, I don’t penalize the kids for that. If Pearson or some other company goofs in writing a test, teachers and students STILL get penalized.
Plus, I know that what I have on my tests has been taught. I don’t know that in a standardized test. In Utah, I’m not even allowed to LOOK at the test.
TE,
well, at least, as a parent you would have access to the test( and the answer key) of your kid’s test. Probably within a few days of the exam administration.
Surely we can agree that is better than a mystery test with a mystery cut score delivered the next year.
The scores on the standardized tests have no impact on my children’s graduation possibilities, GPA, or class standing, so I (and they) worry much less about the standardized exams than the teacher graded exams.
LP/Ang
SPOT ON.
In NY, teachers who scored the Pearson math and ELA exams were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I sent two emails to NYSED inquiring about public viewing of the exams. I was rebuffed with claims of “test security”. Really? The only security issue after administration and scoring would involve re-use of items. The lack of transparency regarding the tests should be a huge red flag for everyone involved. If the tests were really valid and reliable, what are they so afraid of? I administered both ELA and math assessments last April and I know what they are afraid of.
Another issue often overlooked is the inter-rater reliability of ELA writing items. Imagine one hundred teachers and thousands of exams packed into a large conference room. You have one day to finish – GO!
As classroom teachers we cannot overlook the importance of the feedback we get when grading our own exams. Clearly CCSS assessments were never intended to improve teaching or learning.
@LP,
How are the students penalized for exam scores in your state. There is no consequence for students in my state.
In NY students in grades 3 to 8 who score at levels 1 or 2 can be placed in remedial AIS classes. NYC has talked about using scores for determining promotion to the next grade; a logistical impossibility when nearly 70% of students in NYC “failed” the new CCSS exams.
Current freshmen (Class of 2018) will be required to pass CCSS math and ELA exams in order to graduate. that includes all ESL and special education students (with very, very few exceptions)
Unless of course we stop the madness.
Hasn’t New York always required high school students to pass exams in order to graduate?
Is the objection to these standardized exams the future policies that might be taken up? I was only addressing the current policies in my state. I look forward to hearing about the stakes for students in these states. I have been perplexed about the claims of stress on students. My children felt far more stress with teacher written exams that actually impacted their future, and little with tests that had no impact on their grades or future.
teachingeconomist: The problems with the standardized exams public school students and teachers are being subjected to around the country are as follows: 1) They waste time better spent on something else. 2) They waste money better spent on something else. 3) In the case of the upcoming Common Core assessments, they are deliberately administered online so as to force schools to waste even more money on computers that, again, would be better spent on something else. 4) They provide a pile of statistically useless data with which to inappropriately evaluate schools and teachers, and to publicly blame schools for social problems beyond their control so as to further politically and financially driven privatization agendas. 5) They force teachers to teach to the test and thus narrow the curriculum to only that which is tested, severely damaging the quality of public school instruction.
The appropriate use of standardized tests is to gather information for diagnostic purposes, not to evaluate schools or teachers or to reward or punish. If these tests were used appropriately there would be no “prepping” for them; they would be administered quickly and the teachers would be, like test proctors should always be, disinterested parties.
Diane has gone over all this stuff so many times, and you’re a frequent commenter here, so you must know all this already. That these tests are doing damage to public schools is pretty much established. There are those who say otherwise, like those who think that global warming is a liberal conspiracy; but such voices are empty talking heads with no integrity behind them.
NYS high school students must pass a minimum of five state Regents exams in partial fulfillment of the graduation requirement. Required exams include, 1) comprehensive English; 2) global history; 3) US history; 4) math; 5) science. The new CCSS exams scheduled for next school year will replace the current state exams in English and math.
When students (typically 9th graders) take the high school Regents math exam they are required to sit for a minimum of two hours (max of 3). If they fail this criterion referenced exam, they are free to re-take it until they pass; some students need three, four, or even five re-takes in order to pass some of the Regents exams. Regents exams became true high stakes tests in 1995 when former state ed commissioner Mills required all students to pass Regents exams for HS graduation. Prior to that, struggling students could earn a local diploma without taking Regents exams. This “all-in” policy resulted in the de-facto dumbing-down of the required Regents exams.
The stress you are referring to involves the CCSS math and ELA tests administered to 8 to 14 year olds. The ELA and math exams administered last April involved SIX DAYS of TESTING for a combined NINE HOURS. Special education students with extended time were provided up to 18 HOURS to complete their tests. Test fatigue was a major factor as students gradually lost their will to work; it was a CCSS beat-down the likes of which you would have to have seen to believe.
If someone had handed Coleman a copy of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and sent him to a cabin in the woods to write a set of standards for the practice of medicine, it’s unlikely that he would have come up with standards more amateurish than are the CCSS in ELA. These are extraordinarily backward and misconceived. The author clearly hadn’t the slightest familiarity with best practices in the teaching of the various domains that the standards cover and no familiarity whatsoever of what is now known about language acquisition. The CCSS in ELA are the work of an amateur.
Arrogance and ignorance are a toxic cocktail.
cx: no familiarity whatsoever WITH what is now known
There is another brother? At least no one is remembering being beat up by him!
http://forward.com/articles/165239/rahm-and-ari-emanuel-beat-me-up/?p=all
what is interesting is how many of those who advocate for the (ab)use of tests are people who themselves did very well on such tests, which therefore indicates since they think highly of themselves that doing well on the tests MUST be a measure of excellence.
I did very well on such tests, and view my performance as an artifact of (a) reading over 1500 wpm; (b) being able to do a lot of math in my head; (c) figuring out very early in life to use process of elimination on multiple choice tests. They were never an indicator of what I knew or could do. Still, my performance enabled me to win a National Merit Scholarship to college, and to get funding for graduate studies. I benefited.
I also did SAT prep for a number of years until I decided it was unethical – those who already had high scores were getting higher scores because their families could afford it. There was something peverse about that, and I eventually decided it was not worth the money to me.
TK,
It is also interesting how a number of us who managed to figure out the right formula for taking those multiple guess tests and got high scores have figured out that they are a crock and are fighting against the, as you say, (ab)use of them.
I did very well on tests. Extraordinarily well.
And so it took me a long time studying them to disabuse myself of notions like a) IQ tests measure intelligence and b) high-stakes ELA tests can validly measure general reading and writing ability. I now know both to be demonstrably false.
I have to call them as I see them. It seems my friends here didn’t read the article by Rahm’s brother dispassionately enough. I too, being human, am vulnerable to knee jerk reactions. Been there done that & I expect to jump that shark again. Human. So….., Diane’s rebuttal was spot on, in this case because, as usual, she freely acknowledged where Mr. Emanuel was correct. I ask that all re-read both Emanuel and Diane’s articles. This is what I posted there. “Ms. Ravitch’s analysis is correct, but she missed one minor associated detail. The kind of testing Mr. Emanuel proposes are diametrically opposed to the testing policies now being inflicted on Chicago’s children by his brother, Rahm and the school board he appointed. If those and other wrong headed policies were abandoned as they should be and replaced by real solutions for improving our schools, like smaller class sizes for example, teachers would once again be able to write and give tests that actually contribute to their ability to improve their students educations, and the testing effect might have a chance at once again taking place inside America’s classrooms. Sadly, sibling rivalry, even of a positive nature will never be able to overcome the money driven testing industrial complex.” One additional note, Mr. Emanuel only referenced NCLB and FAILED to point out that Obama’s RTTT is just as bad as it’s previous iteration. There are many other subtle fails like that from him, but it becomes boring to list and rebut what we have all seen far too many times already.
He mentions that the reason teacher’s can’t write their own tests is because, in the internet age, students would cheat and teachers couldn’t reuse tests and writing new tests would be too time consuming. At some point, the individual has to take some responsibility for their own education and that includes earning grades honestly. Perhaps we shouldn’t automatically assume the majority of students would cheat.
Cheating predates the internet – older siblings had copies of test, kids had key to teacher’s desk,etc. I know when students cheated in my schools (elementary and HS), the teachers were quick to figure it out – not so much in college (but in college, the students who valued education didn’t cheat).
I think everyone knows the answer to why teachers should create the tests. But those who have the power – ed reformers – know there is a profit to be made in standardized testing… henceforth… standardized testing it is!!! Ughh.
Some comments here refer to the fact students feel little motivation to study for standardized tests. NCLB introduced sticks for these tests, but no carrots. When Arizona introduced the AIMS test, they offered scholarships to State Universities for students who scored at the highest level on 2 of the 3 tests. My son graduated in 2009 and was in one of the few years the full tuition scholarship was offered. Then, due to the recession, the State cut it. So much for motivating kids to do well.
My institution offers scholarships based on high school GPA and ACT scores (or SAT equivalent). No one has ever suggested using the academic progress exams as a basis for scholarships.
I understand, TE, that there are other types of scholarships available. The AIMS scholarship was not limited by income requirements and was available to all state students. My comment was in reference to providing motivation for doing well on the state exam.