The latest NAEP reports on reading and math have been heralded as evidence for the success of the “reforms” that involve test prep, testing, punishing teachers if scores don’t go up, rewarding them if they do, closing schools, and other versions of the carrot and stick method of school reform.
Here is my one-word comment: Balderdash!
There are just as many states using the same misguided strategies who made few or no gains as there were reformy states making big gains.
If test-and-punish strategies work, why don’t they work everywhere?
D.C., Tennessee, and Indiana raised test scores, but the gains in other reformy states were small or negligible.
Below the national average were hard-driving reformy. States including Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Ohio, Connecticut, and. North Carolina.
That highly reformy state Wisconsin made no gains at all.
Michigan, New Jersey, and Massachusetts actually lost ground.
It is impossible to conclude, as some leaders have, that D.C., Tennessee, and Indiana have the right formula because so many states with exactly the same formula made no progress at all. Some of the states that were unlucky enough to win Race to the Top mandates made little or no gains or lost ground.
As a former member of the NAEP board, let me say that I find this statistical horse race utterly stupid. Are students in D.C. getting a better education than those in Massachusetts? Highly unlikely.
Are the students in the states with the biggest gains getting better education or more test prep?
Let me say it as bluntly as I know how: these state comparisons are stupid and say nothing about the quality of education available in different states. Anyone who takes them seriously is either a sports writer covering education or someone who thinks that education can be reduced to the scores on standardized tests.
Will families rush to enroll their children in the schools of D.C. or Tennessee because of these scores? Don’t be ridiculous.
LOL at “Balderdash!” Oh Wise Woman of Words… as always, you tell it like it is!
There is so much emphasis on Test Scores and so much money being given out to publishers of test prep materials that instruction and developing teacher capacity has been left out of the equation. This was the case at Weigand. No one cared that we made gains in the writing portion of the standardize test. There was quality instruction going on in the classroom. We had a plan that was a shared vision and was well thought out. For four years teams went through and reviewed our program. We always came out rated effective and better. But then it was about the education, the quality of instruction and developing teacher capacity. Taking a test and succeeding in life are they really the same? We want our children to be able to read, write, solve problems and make important decision. They need to be able to process information and come to a conclusion, not select the right little bubble. The scantron is not real life. Thanks Dr. Ravitch for shedding the light. We all need to start shedding the light on the everyday truths.
(and now wags finger at Diane), “You can only blog if you have had your nap and vitamins!”
Ditto that!
Oh beautiful phrase: “a sportswriter covering education”!
As outrageous as it sounds, it would be in keeping with our having a non-educator sportsPLAYER dictating education nationally for the past 5 years.
Love your blog but you need to rest !!!!
Look what Bill Moyers reposted this week on his website from WaPo’s The Answer Sheet: “The Real 21st-Century Problem in Public Education is Poverty” http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/06/the-real-21st-century-problem-in-public-education-is-poverty/
Giving credence to these test score fluctuations is the depth of ignorance. There are so many variables that could readily account for gains. Some of those, if causal, could be noteworthy. Others could just mean a scandal not yet exposed. What you’ll never know for sure is that kids actually learned more of what’s worth learning simply based on a rise in test scores.
But the Deformers of GERM don’t care. Because their puppets in the media, the ignoramuses they’ve bought in various levels of government, and many professionals who should know better, are all willing to play “Let Your Knees Jerk Over Test Scores.”
Disgusting.
Diane,
Put down the laptop for a full 7 days and just rest! Read, lounge, relax.
Hope you are feeling better. Sorry to post this here . . . . .
-Robert
Diane, What s/he said (Madame Robert?) Give your IPad a rest and try to relax. This stuff is just too nerve wracking even for those in the best of health.
Maybe it’s time to hire an assistant? There is nothing wrong with getting help –and you’d still be able to say you did it all by yourself until age 75!
My colleague picked up my i-pad, which is identical to his i-pad (we were both housing ours in the same office), and he clicked on “comment” hastily without checking the signature, assuming this was his i-pad. They are both white i-pads. While I am clarifying identities, I should also mention he is not this other gentleman, Robert Rendo, who comments somewhat often, and who I find to be a little ribald but always spot on.
Oh, the follies of technology..
I agree that Dr. Ravitch needs an assistant.
I can’t be happy that Iowa’s scores improved. It just means we’ll be forced to do more of the same. And all that’s reported is that the gain was too small. There is no way to win in this game that’s being played and the biggest losers are the students and the teachers.
Iowa tests who?
Good Lord they only test the upper echelon…
During “testing season,” a reminder is sent home to make sure that the children are well rested. During “testing season,” the school gives the students snacks to make sure they aren’t hungry. Just imagine if there was as much attention to the well-being of children on the days that there weren’t any tests?
Did anyone go to work today and take a test?
Which careers require test prep and test-taking skills?
Great point! Which careers do require test taking skills? Let’s start asking our legislators that question. I’d like to hear their answer.
It doesn’t seem that your doctors follow your blog. Aren’t you supposed to be resting?
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina and commented:
Exactly, what is our DOE doing? cherry picking the data in between taking swipes at principals for not denigrating teachers with poor evals.
Jack Markell is the worst education governor in Delaware history. He has abdicated all good sense, intellectual curiosity, and intellectual honesty. All in an attempt to cement a legacy of caring for kids he has ironically secured the opposite.
Did he have lunch with the McCrory?
Think the owner of this blog is overstating her case? That no one, much less an expert, has ever said anything even remotely similar?
The late Gerald Bracey in his last book, EDUCATION HELL: RHETORIC VS. REALITY (2009, paperback edition), published just after his death, wrote in his INTRODUCTION, p. 3:
“Perusing an article by Sharon Nichols and David Berliner in the May, 2008, Phil Delta Kappan, I was stunned on encountering the phrase ‘love of learning’ (Nichols and Berliner, 2008). Wait! I’ve head that before! Just not lately. Lately it’s all dreariness and fearmongering about ‘achievement,’ achievement narrowly defined by test scores. Get it through your head now: In the long run, test scores don’t count.”
Marianne Giannis phrased it differently at the end of her comments above: “Did anyone go to work today and take a test? Which careers require test prep and test-taking skills?”
IMHO, Diane’s use of “balderdash” and “highly unlikely” and “stupid” and “ridiculous” show considerable restraint.
“Statistics are no substitute for judgment.” [Henry Clay]
Except, of course, if you’re an edufraud [thank you, Linda!] or one of their accountabully underlings…
Then you take Mark Twain’s admonitory observation as your moral compass:
“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”
Think I am exaggerating? Then why do you think Dr. Steve Perry (“America’s Most Trusted Educator”—it must be true, it’s on his website in big big letters!) has loudly declaimed “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t”?
Only, of course, when the numbers & stats make rheephormistas look good. When they don’t, that’s proof positive that those in favor of a “better education for all” are being “strident” and “shrill.”
😎
Diane Ravitch writes this: “Anyone who takes them [NAEP scores} seriously is either a sports writer covering education or someone who thinks that education can be reduced to the scores on standardized tests.”
I don’t disagree. But there are, obviously, plenty of educators and citizens, perhaps even most, who do disagree. They buy into goofy arguments made by the testing business (the College Board, the ACT, Pearson, etc.). They spout the “data-driven” nonsense. They think SAT and ACT scores actually measure “learning” and “intelligence.” They believe that Advanced Placement courses really are “better” than other college preparatory classes. They adopt and implement teacher merit pay schemes based on student test scores. They tout the test scores of their graduates, and of their incoming freshman classes.
Who are these people? School superintendents and school board members. Teachers, Guidance counselors. College admissions officers, and college presidents and board of trustees members. Parents, Politicians.
These are the same people who gamely embraced No Child Left Behind, and who had neither cognitive presence, courage, nor professional conviction to oppose it until THEIR schools were directly threatened.
Many of these same people have now latched onto the Common Core, as a new and improved model of school “reform.” Unfortunately, it’s one that seeks to cure a disease (public schooling in “crisis”) that doesn’t exist. In the process, there’s an incredible waste of resources that might have been used to move in a different research-based direction and affect genuine, meaningful educational improvement.
And what about education reporting. It’s woeful. Or worse. People like Tom Friedman toss off dreadfully ignorant stuff on schooling and test scores. Amanda Ripley passes herself off as an “investigative journalist” and educational “expert.” Jay Mathews at The Post continues to push the “AP is better” myth, while his editors continue to heap praise on the Michelle Rhee-Kayan Henderson regime in DC. At The Educated Reporter and The Atlantic, they seem to have been former sports writers.
I appreciate Diane Ravitch’s efforts to help educate and enlighten those who disagree with her take on test scores. There are certainly a lot of them, and it’s quite an undertaking.
“These are the same people who gamely embraced No Child Left Behind, and who had neither cognitive presence, courage, nor professional conviction to oppose it until THEIR schools were directly threatened.”
GAGAers they are. And unless they repent immediately this is what awaits them:
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
A couple of points to add:
First: those bloggers who looked closely at the results noted that the “improvements” did not occur at the low end of the curve: they were, therefore, the result of moving the middle a little higher– which makes it likely that “improvements in achievement” are really “improvements in test prep” and the civil rights arguments for the testing regimen are bogus.
Second: That’s not a problem for the “reformers” who analogize schools to “products” and parents as “consumers” and “tests” to the data sheets on the sides of food products, available at the car dealers, available on line when you’re looking for real estate, and ultimately reduced to a “star system” when you read Rotten Tomatoes for movies or Zagat’s restaurant guides. In their minds the test results are the ultimate metric for measuring “academic achievement” NAEP scores are the “gold standard” in standardized testing. Alas those who use NAEP results to point out the weakness of standards in some states cannot argue that improvement on NAEP scores is meaningless. The message cannot be one test is better than another: the message has to be testing in and of itself is NOT a meaningful metric.
The bottom line is this: we are developing these standardized test metrics on the pretext that schools can be and should be marketed… and every time we pay close attention to the tests results we are playing into that way of thinking.
“. . . the ultimate metric for measuring ‘academic achievement’. . .”
Anyone who looks to “measuring and improving academic achievement” should not be allowed within 500 feet of any educational institution unless they have children in the building and then they should be allowed to only drop off and pickup their kids..
A couple of other quick thoughts:
Washington D.C is getting all of this praise but the numbers suggest that reform isn’t working there. D.C. is one of the few areas that has seen a significant income rise in the last 5 years. My understanding is that D.C. has become increasingly gentrified. The scores there showed large gains in the affluent areas and that the achievement gap there increased. So D.C.’s gains might simply be that more affluent kids than before and greater gains by those kids led to a rise in scores.
Second, the NAEP scores would be adapted to whatever narrative the reformers like. Better scores? The reforms are working! Worse scores? We need more reform!
Steve K, get a clue, poverty is not an impediment. Socio-economics have absolutely nothing to do with “academic achievement”. You must just be jealous of your social bettors, oops I mean betters. Class envy, eh!
(turn of sacasmometer, now)
When they give the first tests…They make a bell curve to determine the A’;s and F’s from that data….Then the skew it to their liking..
They do not have what is passing and what is failing before the tests..
They make up the Passing and Failing after the tests are given..
More failures mean
1. The Testing Hierarchy can keep their jobs.
2. .The Book Companies can sell more Test Prep…
3. The consultants can get more of their $500 an hour..testing
4. Testing Coaches can be hired…..
5. The more F’s and the more students that will improve on the 2nd test after the teachers have given the first….which makes the Plastic Political know nothings in education give misguided stats to the public..
Solution..sorry folks but the Private Schools are still teaching and their kids are really learning..
“Solution..sorry folks but the Private Schools are still teaching and their kids are really learning..”
Based on what? And for whom are they working? Please don’t offer up as proof some success or other unless it is success for any and all who walk through the doors.
“. . . the Passing and Failing. . .”
The failure of failing as a discourse to speak of the teaching and learning process doesn’t seem to bother too many folks. It should! Cultural habitus, anyone???
I just have a hard time accepting that Indiana is doing well….with the scandals of the A-F grading system, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, and Tony Bennett….it just doesn’t ring true.
If the teachers are only teaching to the test and not giving the kids a well-rounded education including art and music and teaching intuitively….the kids aren’t getting an education that is based on curiosity, but rather, the kids are getting better at repeating answers like robots. Not my idea of what it means to educate.
The website actually explains it better. here is the state comparison NAEP page.
http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2013/#/state-performance
On the above application one can interact by picking their state, adjusting the test, the comparative time frame, and then see how each state compares.
Halfway down on the right, is a button that takes you to the data properly arranged to show the gains made over time. This interactive website has the same adjustments as the previous page.
On this application one can see that for example Tennessee’s gains, heralded by reformists as being indicative of what happens when your educational czar was formerly married to Michele Rhee, is a just a lucky snapshot in time. Ranked first with DC when compared to the results of 2011, when compared to 1992 over the long haul, its ranking drops to sixth. Against this time frame it is beaten by Arkansas, Mississippi, and Hawaii. all with completely different educational systems.
Someone actually made a great point. They said this comparison is like you had a race to San Francisco from every part of the country, and you were going to declare a winner on who drove the most miles that day… The Californian living in Oakland is out of luck.
Our state, as John Young noted above, is using its growth in 4th grade math dating from the arbitrarily date of 1996 in all its headlines, because against that marker we come in tied for 2nd place, but if the same is done with starting at 2005, we are 16th from the bottom…..
Our states mileage was covered between 1996 and 2005. (Back then… Bill Gates was still designing software.)
What is most important, is to see how every state reacted to Common Core’s implication. I have a vested interest in Delaware. For at every public interaction, our Governor and Secretary of Education said: “Wait for the NAEP. It will justify every reform we will do”. Well, it didn’t. $191 million thrown away for nothing.
I would recommend those interested in Common Core in general, look close at data from New York and Kentucky, two states which have implemented the actual tests Common Core is bringing with it. (My state will first test them this spring) That in my humble opinion is the harbinger of what is to come….
And as a side note, what is particularly scary is that Massachusetts, which as a state ranks first among all nations whenever tested, went backwards under Common Core.
It is exactly what those of us who have seen the Common Core teaching materials,,… predicted.
“. . . then see how each state compares.. . .”
I don’t give a crap “how each state fares”. So much mental masturbation that wastes time, energy and money for information that has no validity whatsoever and to get that information it sucks the life out of the teaching and learning process. AY, AY, AY!!
It’s a mad, mad world these days and there’s no magical W to get us out of this mess. To paraphrase L. Black “I took acid when I was younger to prepare myself for times like these!”
I was just browsing Twitter and I saw that Arne Duncan had a tweet about NAEP and that Michelle Rhee retweeted. I am so glad that you clarified this, Diane. Thank you and rest, fell better… blessings and prayers headed your way.
Retreating rephormista twats retweeting rheality results, eh!
The other thing to keep in mind here is that virtually everybody who’s studies the NAEP proficiency standards have found them to be “deeply flawed” and “unusable.”
But politicians and the press keep on using them, out of ignorance or to advance partisan agendas.
“Let me say it as bluntly as I know how: these state comparisons are stupid and say nothing about the quality of education available in different states.”
And yet – using the “NAEP” tag on this blog, I found three posts in the last 14 months that use state by state NAEP comparisons to support conclusions about the quality of education available in different states – what gives?
“Bruce Baker Demolishes Hanushek’s Latest Crisis” – 9/24/2013
“Hari Seveugan Responds: UPDATE!” – 1/9/2013
“Jeb Bush: There Should Be No Public Sector Unions” – 9/20/2013
Also there’s this from the post titled “Arne Duncan Praises Tennessee and Race to the Top” on 7/24/2012 – “Perhaps Secretary Duncan should wait for the release of the 2013 NAEP before boasting about the dramatic gains in Tennessee.” So?
Is NAEP useful in tracking trends over time? Yes. But the policy conclusions that can be drawn from NAEP are very limited. NAEP says nothing, nothing whatever, about cause and effect. States following the same mean-spirited policies as Tennessee in the past two years saw small or no gains. So what is the lesson to be drawn? Tennessee has almost reached the national average. If Tennessee and D.C. are to be national models, why did other states doing exactly the same things–threatening teachers, offering carrots and sticks for higher scores–not get the same result? Tennessee must have very good teachers (who are under-praised by the Governor and the Commissioner) or some mighty powerful test prep. Maybe if you beat up the teachers even more, you will get even higher scores in 2015. Is that the lesson?
My observation was that this blog post is inconsistent with a pattern of statements that you’ve made in the past, most notably that in July 2012 you suggested that looking at any gains made by TN on the 2013 NAEP would be a meaningful thing to do, and in this post you call doing so stupid. I’m not sure what the lesson of that is – do you see one?
Amy,
Let me begin with a quote and answer. Diane wrote “So what is the lesson to be drawn?” My answer “Absolutely nothing as all standardized tests suffer the same errors of construction, epistemology and ontology, giving of and disseminating the (supposed) results of that make them completely invalid as shown by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”.
Perhaps, just Perhaps, Diane has started to see the wisdom of joining the Quixotic Quest to rid the world of these nefarious educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. She has proven to be quite capable of changing her thinking on many practices which she had supported prior. I hope that it is a case of an evolving for the better change of mind on those nefarious educational malpractices.
Diane — here’s an Indiana columnist who is blaming current political polarization in our nation on…..drumroll please….lack of an educated citizenry! And though it’s not listed in her byline Ms. Neal is also on Indiana’s State Board of Education.
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/andrea-neal/andrea-neal-lack-of-historical-knowledge-taints-public-debate/article_aa16d7b9-914d-57f4-b2e4-0bfa181d6714.html