Just as the holidays began, Education Week published a very important article explaining why Common Core testing causes a collapse of test scores.
Since most people were preoccupied with preparations for the holidays, it probably didn’t get much attention. But it should have because it unlocks the mystery if why state after state is experiencing a 30 point drop in passing rates on Common Core tests.
As Catherine Gewertz wrote:
“It’s one thing for all but a few states to agree on one shared set of academic standards. It’s quite another for them to agree on when students are “college ready” and to set that test score at a dauntingly high place. Yet that’s what two state assessment groups are doing.
“The two common-assessment consortia are taking early steps to align the “college readiness” achievement levels on their tests with the rigorous proficiency standard of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a move that is expected to set many states up for a steep drop in scores.
“After all, fewer than four in 10 children reached the “proficient” level on the 2013 NAEP in reading and math.”
I served on the NAEP governing board for seven years. NAEP “proficient” was never considered a passing mark; it signifies excellent academic performance. Only one state in the nation, Massachusetts, has 50% of its students at NAEP proficient.
It is absurd to set such a high bar for “passing.” It is a guarantee that most students will fail.
Why do we want an education system that stigmatizes 60-70% of all students as “failures?”
Is the purpose of education to develop citizens and healthy human beings or is it to sort and rank the population for selective colleges and the workplace?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In addition to sorting and ranking the population, let’s not leave out the training implicit in the Standards and the tests they are a vehicle for. Students and teachers are being trained to accept and comply with ever-shifting, absurd demands armored against feedback, tedium, intimidation, increased surveillance and monetization of personal information.
Welcome to the 21st century school and workplace…
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THAT WHOLE CONCEPT IS COMPLETELY ABSURD!!! What about the dyslexic children or children with “Learning disabilities” ? Will they ever have a chance or you want to throw all of them away. Politicians are idiots!!! Should leave the teaching to the teachers. Obama should be ashamed of himself. He has been surpassing Bush as the worst preseident ever also known as Bush 2.
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Yes, the edu-profiteers want to cut money and expensive services for SPED students. Individualized and appropriate are 2 words in IDEA that Arne & DoEd have chosen to ignore.
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Diane:
Any discussion of scores and, therefore, proficiency levels without examples of actual items makes it very difficult to understand whether any statement about the scores is reasonable or not.
I have used this example before. Here are four Math items from a recent NAEP for 17 year olds. The items classified as easy.
a) Identify when two lines are perpendicular (you pick from four image of two lines intersecting)
b) What is the sum of the interior angles in a rectangle (you pick from four equations)
c) What is 200% of 30 (you pick from 4 answers)
d) Solve f(z)= z +8 for f(6) (you pick from four answers)
Should students who cannot correctly answer items such as these be considered proficient in HS level mathematics?
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“Any discussion of scores and, therefore, proficiency levels without examples of actual items makes it very difficult to understand whether any statement about the scores is reasonable or not.”
Those test examples are the horses and they done left the barn. And you want to discuss whether the sorrel is has better teeth than the paint or whether a Belgium is stronger than a Clydesdale. The discussion needs to start way before the horses have escaped and it shouldn’t be focused on the horses but whether or not the barn, facilities and the door are adequate and appropriate to keep in a Belgium Draft horse and a Clydesdale along with the Shetlands and Thorougbreds.
Bernie, your statement has it backwards, upside down, left for right, starting at the finish line. Because if the epistemological and ontological bases (the barn and door) are not valid (adequate) or shall we say “invalid” as Wilson does, it doesn’t matter what the individual questions (horses) are; the whole process is “vain and illusory” as Wilson states, or as Swacker states “crap in, crap out” or just plain “mental masturbation” (which may be somewhat satisfying but ain’t the real thing-although it may be the rheeal thing, 😉 KTA).
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Duane:
We have different perspective. I am not going to persuade you and you are not going to persuade me. The point I raised remains valid, given the presenting statement.
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Bernie,
Quite correct that right now we may not persuade each other of the other’s position. I was trying to point out that there are more fundamental problems/concerns than just test question validity and the question validity concerns are/should be tertiary at best (which doesn’t preclude their validity).
But I am confused by what you are considering “the presenting statement”. Please clarify, thanks!
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Duane:
The whole piece talks about proficiency levels without a referent.
For example, in the article:
“After all, fewer than four in 10 children reached the “proficient” level on the 2013 NAEP in reading and math.”
And, from Diane
“I served on the NAEP governing board for seven years. NAEP “proficient” was never considered a passing mark; it signifies excellent academic performance. Only one state in the nation, Massachusetts, has 50% of its students at NAEP proficient.
It is absurd to set such a high bar for “passing.” It is a guarantee that most students will fail.”
Any statement about setting the bar has no meaning without the specification of the items and it does not matter what your philosophy of measurement is. It reminds me of an old British comedy, “Never mind the quality, feel the width.”
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Bernie,
Thanks for the clarification. And I do tend to agree with you that “Any statement about setting the bar has no meaning without the specification of the items” but not with “and it does not matter what your philosophy of measurement is.”
As I said in my other reply, good luck on getting any of those questions to be able to discuss what you would like to discuss in regards to the “presented statements”. So for me that, unfortunately, leaves your questions mute (and I wish we could have those discussions along with the others because I believe that my critiques/criticisms of the questions would further my Quixotic Quest).
Be that as it may, then the second part of your statement becomes the most important, at least in my mind, in these types of discussions as evidenced by my (and Wilson’s) epistemological and ontological stance(s) on what logically and validly can and/or cannot be measured.
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“. . . without examples of actual items. . .”
Sorry, Bernie, you and I don’t count nor do the students, teachers or parents as we are not on the “need to know” level/team. Good luck getting a copy of one of these super extra top secret documents!!
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Duane:
Professionalism should require the publication of items from past tests and the generation of new items after every test. No school district should sign up for tests where there is no mechanism for checking the relevance of the items, the definitiveness of the answers and the precision of the scoring. It is simple: No data, no payment.
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Again, I cannot disagree with your statements, however (don’tcha love that word?), for me a more fundamental and better professionalism would be to not pay for nor utilize a process that is completely invalid.
As Wilson states:
“It requires an ENORMOUS SUSPENSION OF RATIONAL THINKING (my emphasis) that the best way to describe the complexity of any human achievement, any person’s skill in a complex field of human endeavour, is with a number that is determined by the number of test items they got correct. Yet so conditioned are we that IT TAKES A FEW MOMENTS OF STRICT LOGICAL REFLECTION TO APPRECIATE THE ABSURDITY OF THIS. (again my emphasis)”
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a) Euclidean or non-Eucludean geometry?
b) radians or degrees?
c) 30 in base 10 or maybe base 16?
d) “solve”? How about z = f(6) – 8?
Sounds absurd, but tests are inherently flawed and assume a certain perspective. The answers I give are valid alternatives certain students would consider, particularly those that think “outside the box”.
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MathVale:
The questions are multiple choice. The possible range of answers is fixed. Thinking outside of the box is good, but not relevant in this situation. Your response does not answer the question.
Goffman has already demonstrated that you can deconstruct any statement to the point of absurdity.
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Bernie,
You have a link for “Goffman has already demonstrated that you can deconstruct any statement to the point of absurdity.”
I’d be interested in reading it.
Thanks!
(although I have a feeling I know what tack he will take to do so)
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Duane:
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erving_Goffman
Goffman and Foucault seem to have a lot in common.
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Thanks, I look into it in a little bit when my fingers thaw. 0 degrees is a hell of a lot different than 20.
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Duane:
It warmed up the last two days, but I spent most of the two previous days unblocking a frozen shower drain. I plan on putting some non-toxic anti-freeze down there tonight to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It is also tough to think when your mind is frozen. But that is another debate.
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Man, I’d hope that it was only the shower drain to freeze. I left open almost all the faucets last night and today and tonight to prevent the water pipes themselves from breaking. Replacing drain pipes is a whole lot easier than supply pipes. God, I hate doing plumbing work! (This old body doesn’t like to get into the positions one has to to do plumbing work) There’s a good reason plumbers are paid what they’re paid.
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A few questions on a standardized test doesn’t mean the cut scores are valid. You are confusing individual skill mastery with test content validity, meaning the test has a representative sample of behaviors it is supposed to measure and that most errors are controlled for.
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“. . . test content validity, meaning the test has a representative sample of behaviors it is supposed to measure and that most errors are controlled for.”
Quite correct in your statements before the above one, jcgrim!
Concerning the above statement, Wilson has shown that there is no validity whatsoever in “construct validity” by using the psychometricians’ own discourse and that the “errors” can’t and aren’t controlled for. See below for link to his work!
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jcgrim:
That is the whole point. Any cut score has to be based on the content and form of the actual items.
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That EW piece couldn’t be more couched in edudeformer status quo discourse if it tried. I give them an edudeformer A+. But then what would one expect from EPE when sees who it’s funders are.
Be that as it may, to get at the heart of the problem, or at least what should always be at the forefront in these discussions, and Diane hints at it with “Is the purpose of education to develop citizens and healthy human beings or is it to sort and rank the population for selective colleges and the workplace?” Where can we find the purpose of public education and what is the fundamental purpose?
Quite awhile back Diane had proposed the following: “What is the primary goal of education? To assure that the younger generation is prepared in mind, character and body to assume the responsibilities of citizenship in our society.”
And my response:
Not quite. There are thousands of missions statements out there, probably at least one for every district and school and more likely than not those are “secondary” statements. What is the primary goal of public education? And where can it be found?
To answer the second question first, in each state’s constitution in the article that authorizes public education. So in essence there are 50 different goals/purposes although I suspect that they are similar in nature to what Missouri’s constitution has to say: Article IX, subsection 1a: “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law.”
I’ll let you decide what “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people. . .” means. But I do not see anything about “preparing students to assume the responsibilities of citizenship”-whatever those “responsibilities” may be nor about sorting, separating and “grading” students. We have assumed a purpose that may or may not be in concert with what the constitution says so I have concerns with these mission statements that go beyond the basic purpose as delineated in the constitution.
Now the “prescribed by law” part can be a problem in that some laws made may be unconstitutional, e.g., segregated schools. And I believe that when we sort and separate students using grades and standardized tests to name a couple of nefarious practices, some of whom then receive rewards funded by the state-scholarships, special treatment, awards, etc. . . , or vice versa, are sanctioned, not getting scholarships, held back, not given a diploma but a certificate of attendance, etc. . . , then we, the public schools are discriminating against a certain class of student, those who through no fault of their own (in essence like skin color) don’t “live up to the standards”. And in doing so we are contravening the fundamental purpose of education and causing harm to some students.
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“Is the purpose of education to develop citizens and healthy human beings or is it to sort and rank the population for selective colleges and the workplace?”
I would answer that the purpose of
educationschooling is to indoctrinate and reinforce the illusion that the 1% are somehow genetically superior beings, and that everyone else is worthless; that is why the masses have to be ranked according to their performance on the tests.LikeLike
“Just as the holidays began, Education Week published a very important article explaining why Common Core testing causes a collapse of test scores.”
Very important if you’re an edudeformer as it doesn’t come close to challenging the whole educational standards, standardized testing and sorting, separating and grading of students. The article reinforces the edudeformer meme of standards and testing that Wilson has proven to be invalid and harmful to students, so that to worry about the “collapse of test scores” is seen to be a correct/logical response to these absolutely insane educational malpractices. Ay, ay ay!!! I wouldn’t give a rat’s arse for those malpractices as it would insult the rat.
Read and understand Wilson, folks! Understand that the whole project is logically bereft and needs to be and eventually will be considered to be no different than those prior destructive practices like phrenology, medieval blood letting, master race theories and eugenics.
Yes, educational standards, standardized testing and the sorting, separating and “grading” of students has caused that much harm and continues to do so.
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Oops, forgot to include the Wilson information for all those new enough here to have not seen it posted by me ten thousand times. JOIN THE QUIXOTIC QUEST, folks, to rid the world of the educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the sorting, separating and “grading” of students. To begin read and understand Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Do not stop with reading the following summary, read what Wilson has to say as there is so much more in the study than I could begin to summarize.
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.
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TY! Spot on.
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Questions: On what basis are scores determined? What model is being used?
Lots ot consider…this is just the tip. There’s more information, but can’t give a lesson in statistics in a few words.
Gaussian Distribution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPFoQEhil9A
Multivariate Gaussian Distribution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eho8xH3E6mE
Laws of Probability: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5WjVgL6Nh4
Random variables and probability distributions: http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/probability_distributions.html
Statistical Distributions: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/StatFile/statdistns.htm
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Yvonne,
Man, that’s a couple of semesters worth of grad study right there!
Thanks for the links!
Duane
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I like the rich discussion on this article. To me, the issue boils down to an uncomfortable intersection of two truths. One is: in any group (students) there are varying levels of excellence, be it math or piano playing. The other truth is: they must be measured, either formally or informally.
The real issue is how to get the *most* students to the level of excellence demanded of them. It’s the HOW part that costs money, and is a hotly debated.
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Andrew:
From my perspective, the issue is how to meaningfully, transparently and persuasively operationalize the selected area(s) of desired proficiency. The notion that all States should agree on cut scores assigned to a given proficiency cannot be meaningfully discussed if content free. Then we need to consider the purpose for the assessment. It is one thing to set cut off scores for HS graduation. It is quite another to establish a cut off for “college” readiness (whatever that means) and another for meeting some unspecified STEM policy objective.
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Imagine the Commissioner stating “the new passing grade on all Regents exams in New York will be 85. Why not be forthright and say we want all children and teachers to strive for mastery performance? Reward schools that increase student mastery with recognition and offer help to schools struggling to increase mastery performance. Whatever NYS does, officials should not call mastery performance “proficiency.”
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It would be more like a 90% to pass. Ludicrous!
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Duane Swacker: since you are channeling Noel Wilson today, let me channel a little bit of Banesh Hoffman (THE TYRANNY OF TESTING, 2003 edition of the 1964 edition of the 1962 original, from Chapter 10, “Challenge to the Testers,” p. 149):
[start quote] UNDERMINING BLIND FAITH in statistics is crucially important. But it does not exorcise statistics—nor is it meant to. For statistics, when viewed with healthy skepticism, can be a valuable and often indispensable tool.
Unfortunately, even when the layman is amply forewarned he is apt to be helpless against experts who wish to influence him by statistical arguments. Undermining blind faith in statistics, therefore, has only limited effect. It may weaken the impact of statistical arguments, but that alone is not enough to bring about reforms in testing.
Nor are general criticisms of multiple-choice testing effective in bringing about reforms, as has been abundantly demonstrated. [end quote]
So what strategy did Banesh Hoffman find helpful as an entry to making his more general arguments against standardized testing? From p. 155-6 of the same aforementioned chapter:
[start quote] Not only does such a strategy exist, but it is one of extreme simplicity: the critic merely exhibits defective multiple-choice questions, declares that they are defective, and challenges the test-makers publicly to defend these, their own questions, specifically. [end quote]
These are truncated excerpts and I apologize if they mislead. Let me just state in advance that, IMHO, Hoffman and Wilson would have had no major disagreements whatsoever.
The point I am making here is one of “extreme simplicity”: since high-stakes standardized tests are not part of the public domain, very often being rented out to users and then scored by third parties, it is customarily illegal to “leak” their contents to teachers, parents, and other concerned persons. In other words, they’re “protected” from scrutiny.
Hence calls to get more specific about test questions are wrongly directed to the critics of standardized tests rather than the test-makers.
This explains the “Pineapple and Hare” fiasco—a [theoretically preventable] testing debacle that almost rivals the LAUSD’s [equally theoretically preventable] iPad disaster. Google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.” I provide one useful link to a piece in a supporter to the High Holy Church of Testolatry but there are many many others—
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/04/20/daniel-pinkwater-on-pineapple-exam-nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense/
And let’s just take a glance at what the author himself had to say:
[start quote—first paragraph and heading] OK, here is the deal. There are these companies that make up tests and various reading materials, and sell them to state departments of education for vast sums of money. One of the things they do is purchase rights from authors to use excerpts from books. For these they pay the authors non-vast sums of money. Then they edit the passages according to….I have no idea what perceived requirements. Here is the story as it appears in BORGEL, a novel I wrote. Borgel, who is 111 years old is telling this story and similar ones to his great-great nephew while riding on a bus:
The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant [end quote]
[start quote of last paragraph] I don’t know how the test publishing company changed the story. I gather they decided to call the rabbit a hare, and made the eggplant into a pineapple. Also there appears to be something about sleeves. And they made up questions for the students to answer. I would not have done any of these things. But it has nothing to do with me. I cashed the check they sent me after about 8 months, and took my wife out to lunch at a cheap restaurant. I believe, she ordered eggplant. [end quote]
Link: http://www.pinkwater.com/the-story-behind-the-pineapple-and-the-hare/
Again, if my examples are misleadingly incomplete, I apologize in advance. In that case, though, please go to the original sources.
Excuse the overly long comment.
😎
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The purpose is to create a crisis in all communities, not just low-income communities, a la Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” in order to bust the unions and privatize the entire system. What’s scarier to a suburban parent than hearing that their child is not “college ready”?
This is why… http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
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My reaction to the article was “Oh my God!” (No offense meant).
But my reaction wasn’t so much on the NAEP scoring system (although that in itself is beyond ridiculous), but in the fact that these tests will determine whether a students goes on to the next grade. It’s bad enough we are using these tests as assessments, but to use them as pass or fail scores for a year’s worth of work, where the rubric is expected to fail six or seven out of ten students, is inhumane.
Then there is the matter of graduation. The idea that these tests will determine whether a child gets a high school diploma is cruel and unusual punishment. In NYS it was bad enough that students had to pass five Regents Exams to graduate, but at least these exams were weighted and relatively reasonable. It also helped that an invalid test would have questions deleted, grading scales re evaluated, or entire tests tossed out. There was some sense of fairness. There were also old exams to practice. Still, many kids are dropping out because they can’t succeed, especially in the inner city.
With this in mind, making the exams even more rigorous with a harder grading system will not lead to harder working students and teachers. Instead, it will result in more students dropping out of school, thus achieving the opposite result. In essence we will be like other countries who weed out the bottom population by test score cut offs. We used to be proud that we educated ALL our youth. Now, in the name of competition, we are reverting to an UnAmerican system which dooms some kids (now a lot of kids) to fail. This is unacceptable. I shudder to think what will happen this year when the Regents exams will be correlated to the CC. I am hoping for the best, but expecting the worse. Luckily, I have no personal stake in the results as all my kids are out of school. I do have a deadline though, as my grand daughter is in sixth grade. We’ve got three years to straighten this out. Fortunately, NYS does not hold the kids back indefinitely in the younger grades, as they do in some states, until they pass an exam.
Another point is that some kids will never be college ready. Nor do they want to be. Their gifts lie in other directions. And that should be okay. We should not stigmatize a youth for wanting to become a plumber, or an expert on refrigeration, or cooling and heating systems. Somebody needs to climb that utility tower when the power goes out (and they make good money, rightly so).
So boys, although your arguments are well founded, they skirt the main issue – the actual, not the hypothetical kids.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
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I think that you have highlighted a couple of important issues.
First, what should determine if a student moves on to the next grade. Several high school teachers who post here talk about students who are reading at primary grade levels. Is it fair to these students to pretend that they have succeeded when they have not? Is it fair to the others in the class who might learn more deeply if all in the class had a reading comprehension level close to the grade.
Another interesting question is what should be the criteria for high school graduation? I have occasionally asked the experts here if all high school graduates could read at a particular grade level or do some basic arithmetic, but the many teachers who read this blog have not answered. Should there be a set of academic skills that is required for high school graduation?
I think the education community has gotten a little of track by confusing a correlation with causation. High school graduates generally have better more productive lives because they are the sort of people who can graduate from high school. Giving high school diplomas to everyone does not mean that everyone is the sort of person that can graduate from high school, it just means that even the sort of student that can not graduate from high school get to graduate.
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TE – lots to respond to:
There is a difference between not passing a student who can’t read the test and penalizing students for not getting an 85 or even 90 on the test. Where I come from a 65 is passing. It’s not the best grade, but it is considered passing. According to NAEP scoring rubric, only a handful of kids will graduate (if graduation is based solely on the test). That was my focus from the article.
To deal with some of your questions:
I think a teacher is a better judge of whether a student should pass than a test score. In Buffalo, a student can pass the course without passing the Regents. However, to graduate they have to pass 5 Regents Exams so, say, they didn’t pass The Biology Exam, they’d sit in the class for the Fall Semester and retake the exam in January. If they pass, they are done with the course. Or they can simply challenge the exam. Now some kids pass the Regents and don’t pass the class, they have to sit through another semester, and if they pass they are done. If they already have passed one Regents Exam in science, then if they don’t pass, say the Earth Science exam, that’s okay, but they must pass the course.
The Rubrics for grading the exam are very strict – 2 teachers must grade them and if there is a discrepancy a third teacher is the tie breaker. Teachers must sign the exams and the state can review them. If a student gets a 63 or 64, that’s too bad – it is almost impossible to find an extra point or two. Although there are multiple choice, there are also short answer and problem solving questions. So, even if they have an IEP which says the exam is read to them, they still need to know the content.
Is it fair to hold a child back if their reading skills are below par when they understand the subject? Every test is not an English Exam. My son, who was a non reader in fourth grade, did extremely well on the hands on science assessment, much better than the majority of the class. Sometimes we have to identify what we are testing. He was also good in math. He passed the GED exam, which was read to him on a tape, but he had to answer the questions correctly plus pass the writing portion (he just squeaked by on that one). My son is not stupid, just not a proficient reader (although he can read well enough to get through life). I use him as an example, because there are a lot of bright kids out there that have difficulty reading, but are excellent in science and math or even history.
TE, are you suggesting that perhaps we should go back to the days of my grandfather where you were lucky if you graduated from eighth grade? And only the elite went on to college? That’s where we are headed.
And it’s only been recently that the rigor movement has been in effect. In my Mom’s day, heck, in my day, not everybody was on the Regents Tract, and could get a School Diploma. One size fits all means that everyone needs to be College Ready, but not everybody can be college ready. Should attending college be the criteria for a high school diploma? It doesn’t make sense. A high school diploma and going to college are two separate things. Or, at least, they should be. Otherwise we need to accept the European model where the seventh or eighth grade exam determines whether you complete your education or not. (I’m glad that wasn’t the case for me, for various reasons, Middle School was not the best time for me academically, I didn’t start to excel in school until 9th grade.)
Of course, then there is a case to be made for nervous test takers. They freak out at the sight of a number two pencil. Should they be penalized for not doing their best or failing, especially when the teacher realizes that they know and understand the topics in the curriculum?
So, if in college you can graduate with lower grades or you can graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude, then why does everyone have to achieve the same level to graduate from high school? For example, in NYS, you used to be able to graduate with a school diploma, a Regents Diploma, and (now they have) a Regents Diploma with High Distinction. Now that the lower criteria of a school diploma has been eliminated – those students are our current drop outs. Do you want to relegate them to a substandard life because they couldn’t pass a test written for those who should be college ready?
You would shudder to know that in Med School at UB, you can graduate with a 50%, with all the classes being pass/fail. However a dental student has to maintain a B, and a PhD candidate is going for that A.
I think I touched on all your points, but feel free to re ask any question you are still hazy about. They were excellent points that need to be discussed as they are relevant to why parents are pushing back and will determine where we should go from here.
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I will reply in several posts to keep things (including my own thoughts) organized.
It is my understanding that New York’s exam requirement for graduation is unusual in this country. In my state, high school graduation requires students have 21 units. Four of these units must be ELA, three in mathematics which must include geometric and algebraic concepts, three in science distributed across earth and space, physical, and biological sciences, three of history and government, one in PE/health class, one in fine arts, and six electives.
These minimum graduation requirements are not what is required for admission to our state universities. To be “college ready” a student must have a mathematics class that requires algebra 2 as a prerequisite and must take either a physics or a chemistry class as one of the science units. The students must average a 2.0 over the required classes. (This difference is why a good number of the high school valedictorians in my state are not eligible to go to a state college or university)
High school graduation is entirely in the hands of the classroom teachers and the grading methodology that they choose (my middle son missed an A- in a class by two Kleenex boxes, for example).
In New York, having a high school diploma means, among other things, that two independent teachers looked at samples of a student’s work and agreed that it passed. In my state having a high school degree or not might well depend on bringing Kleenex boxes to class. In which state is a high school diploma more meaningful?
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TE – one other thing – there are a lot of emotional repercussions from holding a child back. The proper time is in kindergarten, if the child is immature. Otherwise, you only retain a child (in the elementary grades) if you think it will make a difference and an extra year in a certain grade will bring that child up to grade level. If not, then they need to be tested and provided with special services to assist them in meeting predetermined criteria (an IEP). This, of course, is what costs so much money. Even in middle school, there is a question if a child should be held back for not turning in their assignments when they know the subject matter. This is very controversial. I know the teachers at my school were furious when the child failed all four quarters but passed the course by passing the final exam. High School, you have to complete a certain amount of credits which vary by district with a certain basic required curriculum, such as 4 years of English (ELA). Then in NYS, you have those five Regents. Other states have their own criteria.
I hope this answers your question about retention. It is usually determined with the teachers and the parents (I agreed to have my son repeat second grade, but I had conditions which I made them follow – we bartered).
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Second installment.
I did not mean to suggest that reading skill should be the sole criteria used to decide when a student might advance (after all, reading is just one way to access a learning technology), but I used it because it is generally thought to be important and high school teachers who post here will talk about the range of reading abilities in the same ELA class.
The more general point is if there should be something that an outsider (including the downstream teacher) would know about, say, what a sixth grade student knows about the world, what skills they have, and their academic preparation for junior high school?
We are in little danger of going back to a time when many did not go to school beyond the eighth grade. As Dr. Ravitch points out, almost everyone reports, at least, that they have graduated high school, and postsecondary enrollment is at a high.
The interesting question is if we have achieved that by educating almost every student up to the level that your grandfather would have reached as a high school graduate or does high school graduation today mean something more like eighth grade graduation meant for your grandfather? I think the answer is probably some mix of both, but I am sure the percentages differ greatly by building, district, and state.
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TE. – responding to part 2:
Slight of hand – at least in NYS, non graduates include those students who are counseled out or don’t meet attendance requirements – usually the ones that won’t pass anyway. Some get their GED, like my son, some don’t.
The graduation rate in NYS is 74%, with Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse less that 50%. I don’t call that passing every student. The national rate is 74.7%, which is considered high. The best average is in Vermont with 85% and the lowest is in DC at 57%. (That’s for 2010 -2011). Over one million high school students won’t graduate this year and the majority won’t have jobs. Of those students who attend college full time, 59% will graduate in six years and 38% will graduate in four years. Students in private schools have better graduation rates than in public schools.
There is a big discrepancy between the graduate rates of the various races and demographics. Native Americans have the lowest rate and this will only get worse because of deep funding cuts due to the sequester.
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TE – continuing part 2:
I guess you could say that the CCSS is an attempt to standardize requirements for each grade level. So passing the assessment would result in being promoted to the next grade. Unfortunately, these are not accurate assessments or realistic standards.
In general, the individual teacher decides to promote based on the given curriculum in a given school. And that’s one of the keys to the problem – can the teachers be trusted to make the correct judgement call? Or do we need a standardized test to make that determination?
Your other question – Basically is whether people were smarter then or now? The regents exams of the thirties look difficult, but the curriculum has changed over the years. It’s also different now than it was when I went to school. So comparing exam results wouldn’t help. Perhaps we could compare SAT results, but those too have changed. Plus, more people take the exams now.
I think the better answer is that more people have the opportunity to go to school. No longer do they have to quit school after fourth or eighth grade to get a job to support the family. And that’s not a model we want to revisit. (Or are child labor laws the next target? If so, where does it stop?).
Part of this fight, whether you agree or not, is not to backslide. Many people in this country have been fighting for our rights throughout our history. The labor movement was one of sacrifice. My great grandfather was a tool and dye man who helped Samuel Gompers form the union. He was blackballed for his efforts and ended his life living off the kindness of my grandfather. This movement is another attempt to bust the unions – this time for the teachers. All these little attacks are chipping away at our rights as teachers. And that is a big part of this pushback, because without the teachers, where will the children be?
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Last section responding to the original post.
I do not think possession of a high school diploma will mean anyone is or is not “relegated to a substandard life”. A high school diploma (or college diploma for that matter) can help a person get a foot in the door of a job or anything else because it signals something about the person, perhaps their skills, determination, ability to learn, grittiness, etc. If a diploma does not have a meaning, it will not function as a signal, it would no longer serve as a signal and will not get anyone in the door. Something else would be required.
Responses to responses
The status dropout rate nationally (the percentage of 16-24 year olds who are not high school graduates or equivalency credentialed and not currently in school) has dropped from 12% to 7% nationally. The numbers for Buffalo seem very high (here is a link to the NCES Fast Fact: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16 )
I do think people have gotten “smarter”, the Flynn Effect seems real (see this short essay by James Flynn: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444032404578006612858486012). I do think that the upper tail has grown much much faster than the lower tail, and that is why you see increasing education gaps.
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You end with a question you probably know the answer to.
“Is the purpose of education to develop citizens and healthy human beings or is it to sort and rank the population for selective colleges and the workplace?”
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The people who have engineered this fast and furious takeover of public education are not just interested in ranking and sorting for college and work. They are interested in eliminating “useless eaters.” Bill Gates is a big eugenicist who believes there are just too many people on this earth, eating too much food, drinking too much water, using too much energy….it would all be so much more sustainable if we could just cull the herd a bit. Bill Gates purchased $500,000 of Monsanto stock. Monsanto is busy buying up every seed company in the world to secure a monopoly of the food supply. Bill Gates knows a lot about how monopolies work. He knows exactly what he is doing in education and agriculture.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is well known for funding pro-abortion population control measures. Since its founding in 1994 the Gates Foundation has given millions of dollars to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the largest abortion provider in the world, as well as to the United Nations Population Fund, which Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, has exposed as being a direct participant in China’s coercive one-child policy.http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bill-gates-proposes-universal-birth-registry-to-help-control-population
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I know this will make me unpopular, but, as far as education is concerned, I think that Bill Gates has been listening to the wrong people. I don’t think he is this evil man out to destroy the world. We have to be careful that we don’t sound like extremists or even kooks. We don’t need to exaggerate or name call to prove our point.
You vilified Bill Gates for supporting Planned Parenthood. This organization does more than provide abortions. There is a real need in the works for information on human reproduction, birth control, AIDS, female castration, cervical and uterine cancer, and other women’s issues. And don’t forget, in other parts of he the world, women are, in essence, slaves to the men. They are often raped at an early age and forced to give birth to multiple children. On top of that, there is little knowledge of prenatal care and often the baby and even the mother dies. Look up the infant mortality rate of countries around the world (in the world Almanac under each country). It will make you cry. And our rate in the US isn’t something to be proud of either. Too bad these death tolls don’t get the same attention as test scores. So, yes, planned parenthood is needed in the US and throughout the world.
And don’t use the old “guilt by association”. I know several people who have been arrested for inappropriate behavior with a minor, but that does not make me a child molester. When we write outrageous statements, we are hurting our cause. No one will take us seriously. We need to stick to the issues, share our first hand stories, and debate the issues based on our experiences and knowledge of education.
Sorry, these things have been bothering me for some time. Plus, we are tucked in waiting for a blizzard with freezing temps and wind chills here in Buffalo, and I just drank two wine coolers.
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Has anyone actually READ all the Common Core Standards? You’ll be surprised at how benign they are. Do your research folks! And yes, the scores SUCK because the overall standard of what we expect from our students SUCKS!
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Michael, I have read the CC standards. In the early grade, they are developmentally inappropriate. Most of the other grades (in ELA) are benign. The problem is more the testing, not the standards. The passing mark has been set absurdly high. What is the reason to fail 50-70% of the students based on an arbitrary passing mark?
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Diane:
You may be correct in your assessment of the test standards but how do we know that the passing mark is “absurdly high” without examining the items? The main issue I had with the NYS tests was the absence of information on the items and scores to determine whether or not the standards are too high for whatever the agreed upon purpose of the test. The fact that X% fail a test does not say much until you understand the items in the test and the purpose of the test.
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Bernie – I bow to Diane’s assessment of the scoring system as she is one of the country’s experts on NAEP.
I also disagree with you on your analysis of the results. If 70% of the children fail an assessment, then obviously there is something wrong with the assessment. Especially when you consider that the majority of the children passed a different, but similar assessment the year before.
What bothers me is the allusive passing rate. When the assessments were originally introduced in NYS, the teachers worked hard to improve the students chance of success. And, low and behold, their efforts were answered and more and more students were getting passing scores. Instead of applauding the teachers, a few years ago they changed the cut scores, moving them higher, so now, the kids who had been passing, were now failing again. (To make matters worse, they did not inform ANYONE until after the fact.) In addition, formerly competent students were also caught in the net of needing extra help. This caused a problem for the schools who had to provide additional seat time for the increased number of identified students – sometimes delegated to before or after school. Parents were livid at this arbitrary change (with a predetermined outcome).
Again, progress was slowly being made. Again. A new assessment and an even more difficult cut score. Now this test and mode of evaluation identifies the majority of the school or even the WHOLE school as being behind in development. You can’t keep changing the rules so the outcome is rigged against the players. You can’t create a test and announce the expected outcome before even one child has lifted a number two pencil. How can you call that fair?
And, since I don’t think they are putting stupid pills in the cafeteria food, there must be some other explanation. It’s like the elusive carrot on the stick, every time you have it in your hand, it’s pulled away. Taunting us.
So you see, this isn’t just lamenting a test score. It’s decrying an entire system.
And the they I am referring to is Commissioner King, The NYS Board of Regents, and Pearson backed by Arne Duncan. And soon, you will be adding the educational administrators of your state into the mix.
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Ellen:
If the test was used to determine whether you could skip 100 level math courses at MIT or Carnegie Mellon, would you use the same yardstick? Is the purpose of an AP math exam the same as the SATs?
My point is that it is impossible to state that any test is too hard or too easy or the pass rate too high or too low without looking at the actual items, understanding the purpose of the test and reconciling the two.
Clearly any test for the very young that sets a very high bar is problematic in that it seems mean to have young people fail. But that attitude also has it problems, since it leads to such inanities as not keeping score in soccer games or insisting that everybody should play. (Note: I think that you could do the latter for baseball, i.e., everybody can try to hit, but in soccer the child with weak skills would never get the ball. The other children recognize the issue very, very quickly.)
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Bernie – you are comparing apples to oranges. Of course, the French exam I had to take in college to see if I had completed the foreign language requirement, needed to show a mastery of French 101 and 102.. (I didn’t pass and had to take a year of college French). And the AP exam is an exam towards college credit (a whole other pet peeve issue) – you need to score a 4 or a 5 – we are talking college. The SAT is different as well – more a ranking tool. That also has issues to be discussed another day. Three assessments with three different focuses. Exams which have been vetted over the years. Exams that measure specific things for a specific reason. Exams whose scoring system are not constantly changed for exterior motives.
For let’s face it. The reason the Grade 3 to 8 assessment scores were purposely set so high was to “prove” that the schools were failing, to sell curriculums and textbooks from companies like Pearson (who design the test) and to further the cause of Charter Schools and CCSS. There is a good reason you can’t see the tests, then you would realize how flawed they are. Remember the pineapple? They can’t risk that happening again.
That’s why King knew 70% would fail in advance. That’s why Arne laughed at the suburban parents. Those arrogant men had a plan. And it’s working, unless we stop it.
And you cannot compare this to scoring in children’s competitive sports. It is not the same at all. We are calling out a CORRUPT system. One does not lead to another.
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Ellen:
You may be correct, but without seeing the items nobody can make any definitive statements.
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Bernie, we will table this discussion until such time as that is possible.
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Diane, I respectfully disagree with this assessment of the CC$$ in ELA. There are really significant problems with their conceptualization of learning in each of the covered domains.
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Bottom Line..’NOT all students need to go to a 4 year college!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“One-Size Fits All” is WRONG..
Individualization is the key..Each child has something to offer to the world….That idea has been tossed and Education is now an assembly line…..Quality Control are these Horrid Tests that do not measure how each child can achieve the goals needed to be a productive member of our society..
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