Readers of this blog know that I have repeatedly argued that standardized scores on international tests predict nothing about the future.
Now comes an article in Forbes–Forbes!–saying that the international scores don’t mean much.
Scott Gillum quotes sources such as Sir Ken Robinson, Carol Dweck, and Yong Zhao to argue that what matters most–creativity, originality, initiative–is not captured by standardized tests.
He concludes:
“The U.S. has had a long tradition (and culture) of producing rule-breakers, game-changers and out-of-the-box thinkers — not easily measured in the form of test scores, but better captured in optimism, perseverance and innovation. Perhaps being “average” is the right result to ensure that we are not, as Robinson would say, “educating people out of their creativity.”
Anyone who seriously believes that the test scores of 15-year-old students in Estonia, Latvia, and other small countries puts our nation at risk cannot be taken seriously. Our competitive edge has always been those who think differently, outside the box, not inside it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree. many other reasons test scores don’t mean much. 1. Only the best scientists need to be highly developed in science. Not everyone. 2. At what point does putting a rover on Mars have anything to do with a test score. 3. Testing takes a completely different mind set developing book learned kids without a lick of common sense. and…. oh well, when will we ever learn
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“The U.S. has had a long tradition (and culture) of producing rule-breakers, game-changers and out-of-the-box thinkers — not easily measured in the form of test scores, but better captured in optimism, perseverance and innovation. Perhaps being “average” is the right result to ensure that we are not, as Robinson would say, “educating people out of their creativity.”
So much for “average”……
Unfortunately, “educating people out of their creativity” is exactly what the obsession with testing is doing in Texas schools. A more accurate statement would be to say, “educating children out of health into mental illness”.
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I feel the education reform movement has jumped the shark, so to speak, but doesn’t realize it.
Slowly but surely, the public is becoming aware of the over-testing, the plundering and the failures that are the hallmarks of the reform movement.
The reformers’ shrill screeds about meaningless international test scores are falling on increasingly deaf ears and are actually helping to undermine their credibility.
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Yippee- the more people realize that having a high ability on a small set of academic skills is not equivalent to success the better. I was please to see more and more discussion on other types of learning skills and working on social and emotional skills.http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/low-income-schools-see-big-benefits-in-teaching-mindfulness
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I was one of the teachers at my secondary school who was assigned a deeply disturbed student; everyone else breathed a sigh of relief that they dodged this infamously disruptive, violent student.
Generally, this over-age teenage student experiences several schedule changes a year as teachers either request removal of the student or the student refuses to remain with certain teachers. Last week, the student refused to come to my class any longer and so was assigned to a different teacher. I did not request that the student be reassigned, but I can see that appeasing the student (which sort of blames the teacher) is the easiest way out.
After 2 days, the new teacher (TFA) sent out a txt that said something like “So-so is new in my room but identified Idaho on the map! #winning!”
“Right” answers are now the definition of learning in America. Those who teach memorized fact are now “#winning.”
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My uncle was always given those types of students in his sixth grade class. It was his job to reach these kids. He was amazing. He even had a ping pong table in the classroom. He taught math by helping the kids figure baseball batting average statistics. (His twin sister was also on his team and she made social studies come alive). He also came to school on Saturdays to play basketball with those wayward boys, my brothers and I often went, too. He even took them on trips to see the Cleveland Indians play.
It was impossible to be a petulant child in his class.
Yet, every once in a while, he sighed and wished he didn’t always have this specific responsibility on his shoulders.
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Completely agree. Unfortunately, at least in the U.S., although we claim to hold individualism, and the notions of optimism, perseverance, and innovation as components of the creative individual, we more often than not discourage those who exhibit true creativity, those who often pursue atypical paths (research findings have supported this attitude). We need to encourage rather than vilify individuals who are creative. My colleagues and I recently presented on this topic a the National Association for Gifted Children annual convention: http://www.slideshare.net/scottfurtwengler/nagc-2013-wap
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What this means is that kids are judged on tests to earn a diploma. Who this excludes are kids who are brilliant because they can articulate and present what they know, but somehow aren’t testtakers let alone those with disabilities and second language learners.
Performance-based grading will reflect more of what CCS is looking for as far as deeper understanding of concepts. A test doesn’t reflect the learners perspective. A test solicits answers from the testmaker’s perspective. Performance-based projects reflect creativity and concept knowledge through articulation and making visual models.
They say if you can teach it; you’ve learned it. Taking tests doesn’t allow kids to do just that.
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Dr. Ravitch will be speaking at the University of Florida in Gainesville this coming Wednesday, January 22. A response from the venue about the event: “The street address for University Auditorium will not be especially helpful as it does not have a dedicated parking lot adjacent to it. (For GPS) I suggest the following address: 759 Newell Drive, Gainesville. This is for parking garage #4, which is the deck located closest to the venue. Parking is free there after 5:00 pm. Upon leaving the deck, the Auditorium is a short walk north on Newell Drive. You may locate all of these on the campus map by visiting http://campusmap.ufl.edu/ and entering “university auditorium” in the search box at the upper right.
Doors open at 6:00 pm. The venue capacity is around 750 and while I don’t think we will have that many people in attendance you may want to arrive as close to 6:00 as possible.”
Looking forward to a wonderful evening!
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A “happy healthy ” child who still has imagination and humor, and can use “scientific thinking” is now endangered in US culture, thanks to our “delusional” school policy makers. Depression & Anxiety for children is “average”, and increasing.
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The self-styled “education reformers” think the best experts as those who have no, er, specific expertise in education. So borrowing a post-it note from their coloring book/playbook, let’s go with an obscure fella I ran across on the www the other day.
How about the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests?
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
But isn’t it every teacher’s highest duty to bring up test scores?
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
I can hear the groans from the cage busting achievement gap crushers right now. Could he possibly have not understood the importance of labeling, sorting and ranking?
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
C’mon, don’t numbers and stats as revealed in test scores tell us everything we need to know?
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Doesn’t this sounds suspiciously like someone who hated math? Must be—look what else he said!
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
Would he have grasped the Secret Sauce of EduExcellence that is the Common Core?
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Strangest of all, though, is that this guy, so very long ago, described why Michelle Rhee and David Coleman and their peers don’t like discussing ed issues with Diane Ravitch in public forums:
“We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
Señor Swacker, Robert D. Shepherd, Linda, Ang, anybody—
Whatever happened to that Albert Einstein fella? Did he ever get around to thinking outside the box and doing something notable and innovative?
😎
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He probably would have been one of my students!
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KrazyT – this comment is a keeper. Loved it, (and so true).
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Albert Einstein is my favorite also…
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“We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
What a wonderful and appropriate observation! Thank you.
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I can’t argue with this article! It says it all!
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To judge the educational system of any country, look at the productivity and creativity of the adults, and not the children. In that respect, the United States does very well indeed.
And with all the current nonsense with teacher-bashing and testing, we are in danger of losing our competitive edge.
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The creative folks will take care of themselves and not be held back by taking a test. Oh the other hand, it’s pretty useful to know whether our kids know how to read, write and do math.
If Estonian kids do math better than US kids, that’s not a source of risk but should be a source of concern.
And the idea that knowing how to do that stuff is not an asset to the country – culturally and economically – well…that’ll be a pretty tough sell.
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Mr. Duncan,
The tests are NOT administered under the same conditions, nor do Estonian (or any other) students take precisely the same tests. For example, many nations only test their top one percent (China, Singapore) while others (notable the European nations) weed out the students of lesser abilities by the eighth grade and test only the higher academic-bound students. Here in the USA, we test everybody, including those who are learning disabled, other special needs students, English Language Learners, as well as our students of higher ability. American students also take a longer tests than other nations’ students. The PISA test results are simply a confidence job perpetrated on gullible Americans who believe that any standardized test score means anything at all. They do not. Even Albert Einstein did not do well in high school math; he certainly knew mathematics.
Sir, even the publishers of the SAT state inside each test that these tests are NOT measures of what a given student learned in high school. Rather, they are but one minor indicator of the potential for success in college. IT is only the radicalized corporate education reformers who believe that these tests hold value; their value is simply that they are an easy source of income for the corporations publishing the tests. They have no real academic value, hence, they are a scam.
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The reformers do misuse the tests but the problem is the reformers, not that there is nothing to learn from the tests.
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Sir,
Did you read and understand my comments? No test results can be valid or reliable unless the tests are administered to similar students under exactly the same circumstances. The PISA tests, and most standardized tests for that matter, are not so administered.
If you are rational, you will understand that American scores will be less than the scores of those nations who only test their top one or five percent because we test everybody, including our students of the lowest abilities. Additionally, those tests do not measure specific curricula, which are regulated not by the nation or states but by individual districts or even individual schools. Also, there are literally millions of potential dependent and independent variables between student cohorts that make any comparisons meaningless.
Considering this, it is quite remarkable that the United States has improved from the fiftieth percentile of the 1960’s to the twentieth percentiles of today.
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Actually, the tests provide no useful information, which is precisely why teachers object to them.
Do you honestly think I would object to a test that helped me help my students? No teacher would feel that way.
The tests are pass/fail and are mostly failed by low-income kids and minority kids. They are used to berate any teacher who shows up to teach poor kids.
This myth about millions of kids being unable to read or do basic math is just that–a myth. The tests go way beyond necessary, basic skills in order to ensure that a lot of kids fail them.
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Teachers continually and regularly assess their students as necessary to inform instruction and keep the learning progressing in their classrooms. It’s what teachers do. The notion that these international tests tell teachers anything about how well their students are learning or how well they are teaching is absurd Mr. Duncan. Apples and oranges. Were all nations on a level playing field we might gain real insight into national differences in educational quality from these tests, but we are not, and therefor do not. Our students, teachers, and schools are pretty darn good Mr. Duncan. America’s global leadership is the proof. Now go thank a teacher.
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Teachers test and nations test, Jonboy, each with a different purpose.
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Also, Mr. Duncan, you seem to be painting American students with a rather broad brush. Because some are not proficient at math, you are making the false assumption that all are not proficient. Because some cannot read, you assume that all cannot. Such is one flaw of reading too much into standardized tests.
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Not at all, Mr. Morrison. I’m obviously responding to the point Diane and others make that there is no connection between schools and the economy and that, unlike you, I believe PISA and other tests not used for high stakes accountability can have something to tell us about that.
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I’m curious, Mr. Duncan, just what do you believe that these tests show?
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I’m curious, Mr. Duncan, just what do you believe that these tests show? And, how do they do so?
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I believe that the extensive analysis on the PISA site is legitimate. It shows, for instance, that “competition” does not improve educational performance, that using assessments for high stakes accountability does not work, that local control and collaborative school leadership do work. And a lot more.
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Mr. Duncan,
If we took the top 1000 students from each country, matched them for various socio-economic characteristics and gave them the same test, we still would be on shaky ground with comparisons. Perhaps someone would feel like they could claim bragging rights, perhaps not, but no one would have any more information on how those students think or how they learn. Right now, PISA tells us very little if anything because of the differences in cohorts and tests. As teachers, it gives us no information that we can use to improve our practice.
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Mr Duncan, I proctored an eighth grade math assessment at a gifted and talented school which had quite a few questions on algebra. Now a portion of the eighth graders were taking algebra, but it was not in the eighth grade curriculum at that point in the year. Their teacher was going to introduce it as a topic at the end of the term, since it wasn’t highlighted in the curriculum. (it was April). Many of the students were crying at the end of the exam. Talk about setting kids up for failure.
Is this a valid test? And what did it show? The math scores plummeted that year and I’m sure that Algebra was taught before the next year’s assessment.
And having inappropriate exam questions seems to be a trend, not an exception.
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Reblogged this on So. Consider and commented:
So. Again. Consider test scores — we’re creating test-takers because we emphasize and focus on passing those tests. We want critical and creative thinkers, and that takes time in conversation and debate, not focus on posted objectives and scripted curriculums to pass a test.
As they commenters say, “When will we ever learn…” — learn that learning is thinking — it is a process practiced and evolving, not objective-ized and paced.
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To answer the question: ABSOLUTELY NO!
As Gomer is saying “Surprise, surprise, surprise” in that inimitable Jim Nabors way!
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Interesting that the comments addressed more high stakes testing than international tests, like PISA, which do not drive curriculum.
PISA does measure more problem solving and higher order thinking than US tests, and if anything provide evidence that US reforms are heading in the wrong direction. In that sense, they matter.
What matters is how we use the data and how the existence of the data collection affects children.
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I disagree. The PISA tests assess critical thinking and problem solving–and American kids do poorly on these tests. I’ve taught h.s. English for 30 years and am now an English Educator at a SUNY college. Expectations for American kids’ performance in typical public schools is very low compared with countries where students are performing at higher levels. Read Amanda Ripley’s “The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way” for three American teens’ experience in Finnish, Korean and Polish schools (as AFS students).
We set the bar very low generally and even lower in urban schools. Our teens do very little reading and writing–and almost no reading of what the CCS would call complex texts. Any 17-18 year old can graduate from most American high schools without having ever read a book all the way through–and sadly–even given that low bar–our graduation rate should be considered, but isn’t, a national shame.
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kestearns, funny thing is I think our high rate of child poverty–nearly 25%–should be considered a national shame. I think our indifference to the health and well-being of children should be considered a national shame.
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Here’s one interesting take on a kind of focus on lower-income students, not a panacea, but something to look at.
Low-Income Schools See Big Benefits in Teaching Mindfulness
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love this article- I posted it above 🙂
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Didn’t I read somewhere that when America’s scores are adjusted for poverty’s effects they are near the top?
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kesterns, I was not overly impressed with Amanda Ripley’s findings since I can find quality examples just as impressive across the US, even in my own neighborhood school district. But her criticism of Diane on international score comparisons by socio-economics made me cringe because so many people were quoting it. Then Mercedes Schneider made a mockery of Amanda and I now laugh anytime someone quotes her. Read this if you want a few laughs http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/ripleys-botched-attack-on-ravitch-a-euro-is-not-a-dollar/
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Thanks for sharing Janna. No one here, however, seems to be able to refute my years of experience in public schools. I’ve been teaching for 47 years–a lifelong passion. But I stand by what I said previously about schooling in America–bar way too low. We care more about raising huge amts. of money to see that elite athletes, a small % of any student body, play football on turf, than we do about what is or isn’t in our school libraries. Too much to say here. Ripley’s general argument is accurate. Many other countries’ success is owed to a fiercely competitive teaching force. If you assume that only the best and the brightest should be able to teach children everything changes. Interestingly we would say this is what we want in almost every other profession but teaching. I don’t get it.
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I agree (and so does Diane) that we need to raise the bar on who gets to be a teacher. It is one of her recommendations in Reign of Error. I have taught at teaching factories where the entry requirement was a high school diploma and the ability to breath. We tried to screen out people whose teaching was inadequate but the sheer numbers meant some who had no business teaching got through. So I left. I am now teaching students who were among the top in their class. It hurts me to know that that my current students will be treated like they know nothing when they graduate even though they are well prepared professional educators. But since we let anyone be a teacher in the past we perpetuated myths that teachers came from the bottom of the barrel and other nonsense that Duncan recently quoted. I have fought for years- not as long as you but over 30 years trying to improve public education. As a semi expert on assessment I have to assure you that the PISA scores have enough issues in how they are developed and administered and scored that I am not so sure they are a valid measure of much of anything. I like having data to inform my decisions but I would not make any decisions about the quality of a country’s education based on PISA scores.
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Ripley is the print equivalent of Davis Guggenheim. She wrote the hagiographic TIME Magazine cover story article on Michelle Rhee that accompanied the infamous “with-holding-a-broom” cover photo.
Her TIME article on Rhee was like one of those Tony Robbins infommercials that used to play on late night TV.
I’ll never trust TIME again… on anything. There will always be doubt when I read that rag.
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Yes, Jack, and now Ripley opposes Rhee’s punitive high stakes testing. What’s a person to think? Has she made a transition similar to Diane’s in how she looks at education?
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Amanda Ripley is a fatuous clown, at least when it comes to discussing education.
See:
Also numerous posts on the Dailey Howler blog exposing the nonsense contained in her book.
Lots of dissembling , equivocating, and other rhetorical tricks.
# notbuyingit
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Ke sterns – my children had to read many books, some classics, as did the students I worked with in the Buffalo Public Schools. They were also required to write a term paper – not the thirty page paper I had to write in HS, but a five to ten page typed manuscript. There were also short papers in other subjects. We called them research projects which they researched with me in the library using print and non print media.
I suppose education depends on the district and the state. I was always proud that NYS had a good program – now it’s being destroyed. I thought we’d fare well against the other states in a nation wide assessment, but the grading system fails the majority.
If destroying children’s confidence is the new norm, then maybe the Finns have it right.
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There will be a screening of the film “Standardized” in Philadelphia on February 6 at 6:00 p.m. A discussion after the film will be led by Helen Gym, Mark Naison, and Jim Horn. Details about the film and a link for tickets can be found at:
https://sites.google.com/site/rockfishproductions/standardized-background-info
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Standardized – Looks like an amazing film. An answer, perhaps, to Waiting for Superman. Can’t wait to hear more about the content.
From the trailer – mainly white students. I hope they address the inner city, minority issues of those standardized tests (as well as the rural).
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One thing that I have noticed among corporate education reformers when discussing PISA international standardized test scores is that they use the generic phrase ” American students” yet they never specify just which students. Are they saying that ALL American students do badly? Are they referring to all but the top five percent? Ten percent? The lower 25%? Urban students? Suburban students? Students from impoverished families? Students who have no families? Students from wealthy or comfortable families? Hungry students? They never specify; they only speak in general, meaningless terms.
And, they NEVER recognize that there are many American students who actually perform magnificently on these meaningless tests!
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It is important to recognize that a test is not an indicator of academic achievement, simply a snap shot in time. However, many public supporters are inclined to praise high scoring public schools. That damages our credibility as we are now saying tests are an indicator of achievement.
We must speak with one voice on that issue. Tests suck!
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I couldn’t agree more! The tests are meaningless. In fact, the manner in which they are used, whereby one cohort’s scores are subtracted from those of another cohort to show a failing trend makes absolutely no statistical sense. But, it is part of the corporate education reformers’ con game.
My point was that the reformers are simply playing a game of smoke and mirrors by claiming that “American students” are behind students of other nations.
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>Right on target, I was just making a side comment. Your point is well taken
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