As expected, test scores in North Carolina fell dramatically after release of Common Core data for the state.
“Only 32 percent of students in grades 3-8 were proficient in reading and mathematics in 2012-13 — that’s almost a 27 percent drop from 2011-12, when 58.9 percent of students were proficient. The overall composite proficiency score for all state tests is 44.7 percent, down from 77.9 percent in 2011-12, a 33 percent drop.”
In this country, we used to have a belief that children should be encouraged, given the sense that they can succeed. Now we adopt untested standards written by non-educators, whose only certain result is to mark children as failures.
Is this a plan to demoralize and dishearten and shame an entire generation of children?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Is this a plan to demoralize and dishearten and shame an entire generation of children? ”
No, no plan, just the unintended (but certainly foreseeable*) consequences of policies and practices, really malpractices, that are based on the illogical ideology that is believing that a quality of human interactions (the teaching and learning process) can be quantified through educational standards, standardized testing and or the “grading” of students.
*See Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”.
Well, at least, not a plan to demoralize and shame a whole generation of children. They will make sure their own children escape the shaming and demoralization.
James Robb: the charterites/privatizers who mandate these demoralizing and demeaning hazing rituals for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN are quite solicitous in ensuring that THEIR OWN CHILDREN have an enriched, demanding and joyful educational experience.
Two-tiered education system, anyone?
😒
Bring up the shameful hypocrisy? Every edufraud knows the phrase “ad hominem attack” by heart.
But not to worry. The owner of this blog and others will make sure:
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” [Buddha]
😎
I did well at an elite college and aced the GREs, yet I found the seventh grade sample ELA “Smarter Balanced Assessment” painful to complete. I really had to wrack my brains to figure out some of the questions. If THIS highly-educated, critically-thinking adult stumbles on the test, I really wonder if the test is really measuring anything meaningful other than ability to withstand pain. And if all my years of education and reading do not prepare me to do this test with ease, what in the world can we give our students that will enable them to ace this test? The conventional wisdom seems to be: practice SBA-type activities. But will this work? Is this real education? Will kids really become critical thinkers as a result? Will they know anything when they’ve finished?
I assume those are all rhetorical questions since the answers are obvious.
“. . . practice SBA-type activities.”
What is/are SBA??
Smarter Balance Assessments
Thank you!
Ask, Joanna, I’m a tad slow with acronyms.
I also have difficulty since I have worked in many states and each has it’s own acronyms. I think I have to ask about a group of letters in almost every meeting I attend for the first 2 years of moving to a new state.
“. . . if the test is really measuring anything meaningful. . .”
Nope, the test doesn’t measure anything, much less anything meaningful. So much time, energy and $$ wasted for results of invalid and meaningless data.
By definition the “test” has all the design, implementation and result errors identified by Noel Wilson that render it completely invalid. Invalid in, invalid out! See his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Ponderosa,
One of the best posts I’ve ever read on this blog.
Now imagine being 13 years old and you’re trying to wrack a rather underdeveloped brain to figure some of these questions.
Critical thinking is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, partially true, or false. Critical thinking is a tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process. This process incorporates passion and creativity, but guides it with discipline, practicality and common sense. It can be traced in the West to ancient Greece with its Socratic method and in the East to ancient India with the Buddhist kalama sutta and abhidharma literature. Critical thinking is an important component of many fields such as education, politics, business, and science.
Trying to teach critical thinking skills in grades 3 to 8 is like trying to teach a frog to do calculus. With few exceptions, kids really can’t connect dots; there is no transference. Ask any teacher.
“Deciding whether a claim is true, partially true, or false” is not based on vague or nebulous ideas; nor does it involve some ridiculous 6-steps to problem solving. Real critical thinking is based on complete knowledge of subjects related to any given issue. For example lets ask a 7th grader to think critically (Critical thinking is a tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process. This process incorporates passion and creativity, but guides it with discipline, practicality and common sense) about the claim that the Common Core will prepare them to be “college or career ready”. Or, ask them to analyze the claim that cell phones use can cause brain cancer. Or how about the claim that human activity (burning fossil fuels) is contributing to global warming.
Thinking critically does NOT involve opinions from ignorance. Think about the depth of knowledge and the nuanced subject language that any one would need a command of to begin a reasoned analysis of these claims.
Well, they just haven’t been informed yet that all their local public school leaders were “lying” to them, according to the Secretary of Education:
“The problem is a lot of children, in a lot of places in America, have not been getting a world-class education. But rather than recognize that, for far too long, our school systems lied to kids, to families, and to communities. They said the kids were all right—that they were on track to being successful—when in reality they were not even close.
What made those soothing lies possible were low standards for learning. Low standards are the equivalent of setting up for a track-and-field event with hurdles only one foot tall. That’s what happened in education in a lot of places, and everyone came out looking good—educators, administrators and especially politicians.”
‘Our school systems lied to kids, families and communities’
What nerve. As if “school systems” had anything to do with these ridiculous testing metrics, either the NCLB schemes or Duncan’s new schemes.
Arne Duncan is the single, brave truth-teller in America. Everyone else is a self-interested liar. You know, Duncan doesn’t talk like this when he’s out on the campaign trail, parachuting into schools for photo ops. I wonder why that is? He should have to visit these “school systems” that are doing all this ‘lying’ and confront them directly.
http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/duncan-pushes-back-attacks-common-core-standards
“That’s what happened in education in a lot of places, and everyone came out looking good—educators, administrators and especially politicians.”
I can’t wait to tell our local school superintendent that Duncan says she was “lying” when she administered the tests she was ordered to administer under the LAST ed reformer in DC.
She’s resting up after walking precincts with parents for the last nine weekends, trying to get some funding passed to replace the 1.4 million in yearly funding we lost under the “reforms” Duncan and his merry band of “ed reform” state politicians instituted in Ohio.
We got the funding levy passed, no thanks to Arne Duncan, Governor Kasich or the national ed reform punditry cheering squad at the NYTimes and the Washington Post.
The terrible thing is that parents have been being told for a while to expect lower test scores, but that it was “going to be ok”. Teachers have even been given “talking points”. However, at the same time that parents have been consoled, behind the scenes teachers are being held to the fire. Lots of demoralization of some of the states best and brightest teachers. The past three weeks have been an absolute nightmare.
TY for your comments, Diane. Sharing them as an intro to this post. Whenever I give a test to may way-over-tested struggling readers, who always always want to do well, I hear my conscience singing in my poor ears, “whatever happened to first do no harm?” I will never get out of my head the image of one of my most magnificent 14-year-olds, who was doing so very well for the first time in school, seeing the results of one of the abominations of “standardized tests” and (literally) crawling under her desk, banging her head on the floor over and over again, chanting, “I’m so stupid; I’m so stupid . . .” This is just not not not not ok. Not. Thank you for championing our children, as we attempt to do the same on the ground level and beyond.
Quit giving the tests since you know they are “causing harm”.
To do so would violate contracts and orders.
You are correct!
I think the best solution is simply not to waste time teaching to the test. I never did, and my students did extremely well on their mandated exams. CC is just a different hoop for them to jump through.
Da Coach. I think you are probably right. Follow the instinct of good teaching and hope for the best.
My observation is that in the lower grades there is a lot of micromanaging making that wisdom harder to follow.
Of course this is no surprise…every state is coming in with the same 30% proficiency rate. That is by design. Guaranteed they used the same SAT scores to set the cut as Kentucky and NY.
This is being nationally directed.
Carol,
“This is being nationally directed.”
Do you have more info on this?
Thanks in advance,
Duane
So I wonder with our new Read to Achieve program (which I understand comes from our legislature and not our state school board) if this means if scores stay similar to where they are if they will retain half of the third graders in the state.
I am interested in learning more about what our state board of Ed does in correlation with what the legislature mandates. I don’t understand the co-existence of the two in regards to education policy.
Always something to read about.
A dear friend who teachers 3rd grade across the state tells me they call it turd grade because that’s where everything new falls: our cursive law, our reading law.
Also have we just reached a point where we will head back to having community schools that do not look for help from the state or Feds? Can communities just use property taxes and have “public schools” that are not beholden to the state? If the state is out to get us, wouldn’t this make more sense?
Obviously I am speaking in a ridiculous extreme sort of way here. But I do not know what the answer is when a state forces public schools to take on all these mandates.
I find it woefully disingenuous to say “20% of teachers did not meet growth.” They are not measuring teachers. They are measuring students and using that as a measure for teachers. Right or wrong, at least get the verbiage accurate.
Wow, I can’t believe how dumb those kids got in just one year. It must have been those awful teachers giving them stupid pills. It’s a good thing the government has plans to rescue them from a life of failure. Yes, the education of their parents was such a disaster that NONE of them could graduate from college. That’s why the current politicians are all high school drop outs.
Take a read of a new book called “Dollarocracy” and while you are at it take a look at Bill Moyers interviewing the authors … it has everything to do with why our nation’s children so unfortunate as not to be able to afford elite private school must endure corporate driven nonsense also known as “ed reform”…
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-how-dollarocracy-is-destroying-america/
Just had to assure our 5th grader that his test scores from this year will not effect where he gets into college. He said, “I thought they did because they are preparing us to be college ready.”
Ok. So navigating through this mess as a public school teacher is one thing. How to wisely navigate your kid through it is even more complex. The propaganda is everywhere!
I loved my child’s school for the past three years and EOG test scores have always been less than stellar. As expected, they are worse this year. I still love my child’s school and he is still excited to go to school every day. I doubt that he would give a hoot about test results. .
The only reason why I worry about test scores is I fear a test-prep strategy is going to be mandated from the top. So far, I haven’t experienced any homework horrors that seem to be the norm elsewhere.
Unintended consequences? When amateurs are at work this is what can be expected. Sadly those in power believe that somehow, no matter how they obtained their fiscal wealth, they are justified in believing that they have superior intellects and knowledge. It seems to me that sometimes those who seek only or primarily fiscal wealth and power are trying at some level to make up for a lack of understanding of who they are as a human being so that void has to be filled with money, power, or some other physical attribute to fill that void. Ergo, what can one expect of people who may be so devoid of humanity.