Grover (Russ) Whitehurst is worried that the public is turning against standardized testing. As George W. Bush’s director of education research, he was and is a true believer in testing. As head of the Brown Center at Brookings, once known as a bastion of liberal thought, Whitehurst wants to see the programs he tended under Bush’s NCLB survive.
Yet they are, as he puts it, “in a bit of trouble.”
He is upset to see that Néw York City elected a new mayor who does not share his love of testing, accountability, and choice. Bill de Blasio is a progressive Democrat.
He is not happy that the Texas legislature rolled back some of its testing requirements, responding to public protest.
But most of all, he is upset that Linda Darling-Hammond, who is senior advisor to one of the federally funded testing consortia, recommends testing in only a single grade in each of the three levels of schooling: elementary school, middle school, and high school.
He frets: What would that do to teacher assessment? How could growth scores be calculated?
Whitehurst’s recommendation: we should test more, not less!
I am not sure I follow the logic here.
How will more testing quell the growing rebellion against testing? There will be more angry moms and dads, more Bill de Blasio’s elected. Maybe he is on to something.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When will these people realize that you cannot, period, cannot, assess teachers on standardized test scores. It’s absurd! I was a very strong student however a terrible standardize test taker. I KNOW I am not the only human in New York with this issue. It makes absolutely no sense to me that my teachers would have been penalized at all for that. Or that it would reflect on them when all the want is “data”!
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State test should not asses teachers! It is not a representation of how the teacher really teaches. It is a state test. As a students I was a terrible test taker, yet I did great in all of my classes. State test did not reflect on me as a student nor reflect how my teachers taught me. There is no reason teachers should be penalized for the state test. Teachers should be allowed to test the students when ready.
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IMHO, the description of Mr. Whitehurst as a “true believer” in testing is a simple descriptor.
High-stakes standardized tests measure very little, are inherently imprecise, and as used by the leading charterites/privatizers are subject to all sorts of abuses, one of the most egregious being to punish teachers and students with low scores in order to justify the destruction of public education.
Mr. Whitehurst and the rest of the members of the High Holy Church of Testolatry with their squishy EduMetrics of $tudent $ucce$$ were well described by someone who knew a thing or two about numbers and stats:
“Insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
And what is the driving force behind such unbounded foolishness?
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
¿? Albert Einstein, natcherly.
Apparently he went on to do something notable. Anybody know what that was?
😎
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This is utterly shocking to me. Before you know it (and it’s not that far off) we will be testing our kids so often that days spent learning will have disappeared. Do these jack wagons get that the kids need to LEARN??? For God’s sake, we are benchmarking in Kindergarten now. It’s disgusting. STOP! Let them learn. Stop saying our kids aren’t as smart as we thought they were. There is more to smart than performance on a standardized test. And saying there isn’t is leaving many, many children behind. Ignorant. That is all I can say.
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“On the other hand, we have what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently described, in-artfully, as the “white suburban mom” factor. These are parents with children in public schools in up-scale neighborhoods to which they moved precisely because they thought there were buying a good school along with their expensive house. They’re fine with testing and accountability for poor kids in bad neighborhoods but don’t want federal or state officials dictating to the schools that serve their surely-way-above-average little darlings. ”
Good to know what they actually believe about “parent involvement”.
I’m not a “suburban mom” ( I live in a rural area) but ed reformers shouldn’t kid themselves that people were “fine” with the endless testing. The fact is there was more of it every year. Add the constant testing of kids to the ever-changing, consultant-produced school grades (which are falling apart in Florida and Indiana, because they’re ludicrous) and the new push to test students to set teacher pay and it turns out testing is all we do in public schools under ed reformers.
That’s the sum total “benefit” of ed reform in our public schools. Lots and lots and lots of tests, and less funding and support to administer all these schemes. Add that to the constant, incessant (and often profitable!) public school bashing that it’s a toxic national environment for public schools.
I don’t know: could they get more arrogant and clueless about how their Grand Ideas translate on the ground? Sometimes when people criticize your work, it isn’t because you’re a genius and a great thinker and visionary and they’re “afraid of change”. It’s because you’re doing a bad job.
How many tests were they planning in Texas before they were stopped by parents? They had 15 over 4 years. 20? 30? As many as there were testing lobbyists embedded in that state legislature?
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TAMSA deserves the credit for HB5 that reduced end of course testing by Pearson from 15 tests to 5.
Students in grades 3-8 take 17 of Pearson’s tests.
The TAMSA slideshow provides important facts about how the Pearson lobbyists were unmasked by the moms.
http://www.tamsatx.org
http://res.dallasnews.com/interactives/2013_December/texan-of-the-year/tamsa/
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Chiarra Duggan I always feel like you speak for me too when you post.
I’d like to expand a bit on this idea of toxicity:
The upscale parents Whitehurst (and Duncan) are carping about have been trained all their lives to be “educated consumers” who read ingredient lists and the like and buy the best they can. As such, they are coming to recognize that the new tests and (as they roll out – new curricular materials) are _bad products._ They are not just poorly and hastily manufactured, they clearly contain toxic materials which are observably doing harm.
So these parents are doing the equivalent of alerting/complaining to the manufacturer.
In a comparable retail situation (like the pet food with Melamine it in scandal) the manufacturer would be falling all over itself to fix the problem and re-establish trust. They would certainly get another supplier to replace the one slipping in the Melamine. People would be fired (if the supplier were from China people might be worse than fired.) Instead the consumers are scolded and lectured about how we ourselves (and our children) are inadequate in various ways and that we are working to deny others with fewer options the shining opportunity to get access to this wonderful toxic material which is better than what they have now.
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Mom from District 2: an excellent point.
You have just explained why, when the self-styled “education reformers” declare themselves to be ‘practical hard-nosed business-minded’ types, they neglect to mention that they are following—and I am not exaggerating—
Worst business practices.
Even a cursory reading of W. Edward Deming [aka “the Father of Quality”] would reveal that the very things you mention (as well as others) that he identified as toxic indicators of failure in properly managing private and public enterprises, seem to be the raison d’être of the charterites/privatizers.
Thank you for a perceptive take on the current situation.
😎
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“I’m not a “suburban mom” ( I live in a rural area) but ed reformers shouldn’t kid themselves that people were “fine” with the endless testing.”
Maybe they “Kid” themselves by looking at what people do,
compared to what they say.
To the point: If all this “Testing/Reform” is so bad, WHY do the
people CONTINUE to subject their children to it?
In no way, am I saying the Reform/Testing is a “Good Thing”.
Talking it down, while sending your children into it, or blasting
the Reform BS, while giving the “Tests” that enable it, seems to
be a contradiction in words and deeds.
“Make me stop” (Words) or just STOP (Deed) being party to it.
In other words, this Deform/Testing is enabled by sending the
children to it, AND giving the tests when they get there. DUH…
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That is why the opt out movement is so big. Not every parent has an alternate option but to continue to utilize the public school system while battling the testing machine. A belief in the fact that public education can work despite testing is why my kids still attend public schools even though I despise the testing.
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Diane, can you please share what you think about the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial candidates for the Democratic party? With the primaries approaching, an endorsement can help save our public schools. We need someone to be what Bill de Blasio is to NYC. I am not a member of this group, but they created a report card on education for the candidates:
“Teacher Action Group sent the candidates for Governor an education final exam. Here are the results. Grades were assessed through answers to a survey and written explanations. If a candidate failed to take the survey, we graded them on their policies, statements, and actions.”
Check it out here: http://www.tagphilly.org/reportcards/
Please help us. We need someone who gets the big picture and will not carry on the status quo.
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Even the analytical types leave facts behind when they live isolated from the realities in the real world.
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One of the most offensive statements made by Whitehurst and Lindquist –
“They’re fine with testing and accountability for poor kids in bad neighborhoods but don’t want federal or state officials dictating to the schools that serve their surely-way-above-average little darlings.”
Driven by greed, the No Corporation Left Behind operatives know their high-stakes testing policies have failed children and enriched Pearson, Wireless Generation/Amplify, etc. They are fearful of grassroots movements like TAMSA that blindsided Pearson’s chief lobbyist, Sandy Kress.
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I’d still like to know why charters in Ohio are paying teachers 15k less than publicly-run schools. I’d like to know because I’m paying for it. Where’s that money going? It’s leaving our communities and going somewhere. They’re not paying teachers with it.
What’s the benefit to me of as someone who lives and works here of taking locally-collected funds and shipping them off to a “management organization”? I think I benefit when funds stay here and are spent by wage-earners and re-invested here. Am I wrong about that? Have ed reformers “re-invented” basic economics too? Where’s the money going?
Let’s see…pay local people or pay executives at a multi-state management corp…which one benefits my community as a whole?
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I am a retired teacher. I always thought the SBT’s (Stupid Bubble Tests) had little value for my East Los Angeles 99% Latino students for several reasons.
First, vocabulary necessary both to understand the questions and the answer choices made any test results meaningless, even in math. If you don’t understand the question how can you evaluate the correctness of the answer?
Second, we didn’t get the results until the end of summer. I never gave SBT’s to my students because, as I told them, I grade work, not answers. If a student doesn’t know which answers were incorrect, if there is no way to review how the answers were selected, and if there is no way to give feedback to the students, SBT’s are not education tools at all.
Third, SBT’s are so standardized that they are useless for our most challenged and disadvantaged students. Unlike business models used by the Broad-Gates advocates, you can’t order students to learn and you can’t demand that they all learn at the same rate in the same way. That is like pushing rope.
Fourth, evaluating teachers by student test results is like comparing the driving skills of drivers driving different models of cars built in different years. My students arrived with different levels of knowledge so I taught from the lowest level. This bored some of the better prepared students — but they were “better” because of test scores, not because they understood how they got their scores. By the end of the year, 70% of my students were at grade level and the other 30% had significantly improved their understanding. (As one teacher told, me he would rather have my “F” students than some teachers’ “A” students.) But I could do this because I had tenure.
Fifth, the administrators have lost touch with the classroom. If they have been out of the classroom for more than five years, they have no clue how to teach the “new” standards. Therefore, they abdicate their duty to evaluate the teacher’s teaching schools and use the arbitrary test scores and “measurable” or observable factors such as disciplinary records, pretty bulletin boards, and classroom organization instead. For example, I was once down-checked because I re-taught a topic my students didn’t understand and, therefore, did not follow my scripted lesson.
Lastly, SBT scores are used more as “evidence” to dismiss teachers than they are to identify areas in which to focus attention to improve teaching skills. As noted above, few administrators have a clue about how to teach subjects according to the “new” standards so they use checklists with ambiguous and arbitrary descriptions.
As most readers of this blog will agree, until all students enter a classroom with uniform background knowledge and skills, proper nutrition, and enough time to learn, evaluating teachers by the scores of their students will create false data for the Broad-Gates “data driven” models.
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I agree with all you said. You’re lucky you retired before the current era. Now if you refused to use the tests, you’d be written up for insubordination, although this year the district has decided not to use the quarterly assessments.
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Worse than that…. I’m a lawyer. I unretired and now represent teachers who have been targeted for dismissal because they are close to vesting lifetime, fully paid health benefits. Each teacher is worth a “bounty” of $40k per year (difference between top of scale and neophyte) and up to $500k that doesn’t have to be added to LAUSD’s $11 BILLION unfunded liabilities. LAUSD’s dismissals involve suspensions without pay and benefits before the hearing required by Skelly v. State Personnel Board. These suspensions are patently and blatantly unconstitutional. Since the union won’t file a lawsuit to stop the abuse, I have.
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I saw that article. It was weird. His claim is that students learn from tests because they have to practice recalling things. Bizarre logic.
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Testing in only one grade at each of the here levels…that makes too much sense. For years the schools in my Archdiocese only gave the ITBS to 4th and 8th graders. Maybe one grade in high school took it, but I am not sure. Then they decided that students in grades 3 and up that weren’t taking the ITBS should take a test put out by Riverside Publishing Co. to help them get ready for the ITBS. Then, they decided to give all students in grades 3-8 the ITBS and now even the 2nd graders take the ITBS. I am still not sure about what testing goes on at the high school level. They are tested in each subject and we have to write improvement plans for Math and Language Arts each year based on the previous spring’s test scores. The second graders are totally stressed because it is developmentally inappropriate and although they normally have decent scores, the scores drop in 3rd grade because the 2nd grade tests are read aloud except for one portion of the reading test and one portion of the math test. That means that even non/low readers can get by and no one has to pace themselves for the most part, unlike in 3rd grade and above where no part of the test is read allowed and the whole thing is timed.
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This is a good piece on the Texas testing situation that parents busted up. It was literally about 5 individuals, people who move from government to think tanks to private companies, the same names over and over again. A closed circle of influence and relationships. 90% of them are Bush re-treads in one fashion or another. It’s a revolving door.
There were apparently no self-imposed limits on testing Texas kids among the reform crowd, no point where they themselves broke ranks and said “enough!” and they were completely hooked into the legislature, so no one stopped them there either.
This is what he’s defending:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/crash-test
The testing craze spawned another reform industry, the publicly-paid rip-off “tutors” in Texas who went into working class neighborhoods and sold computer test prep, so that was sort of a profitable spin-off that kept the momentum going.
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I meant aloud instead of allowed in my last line!
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“. . . recommends testing in only a single grade in each of the three levels of schooling: elementary school, middle school, and high school.”
And that is three times too many to participate in a process that is so full of errors that any and all results are completely invalid. Or as Wilson puts it “vain and illusory”. As Wilson has shown, the process is bereft of logical underpinnings. To understand why 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.
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Here’s a story about the publicly-funded private tutoring industry Texas ed reformers created. All of the money for this came out of low income Texas schools and into tutoring companies.
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/06/texas-stands-while-big-school-money-goes-tutors/
It’s probably relevant to US parents outside Texas, because the South Korean Miracle Arne Duncan is touting depends on a huge private tutoring industry, outside school.
He neglects to mention that part of “Amanda Ripley’s great book”. Odd omission. Did he and Tom Friedman actually read this one book at all?
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I think it is really important in discussing testing always to separate high-stakes, punitive testing from the extremely useful testing that can be used to help teach skills. In ‘mastery learning’ techniques, which have been proven to help learning, they use ‘formative, criterion-based’ tests to see whether the student has mastered a given skill. And then if they haven’t mastered the skill, they are given further instruction to help them come up to that criterion level, to ‘mastery,’ before they move on to a more complex or demanding skill. There is no punishment involved.
When a test is developed or given, always the question should be asked: what is this for? Who does it help? The ‘summative, norm-based’ tests should be done rarely, and only when a purpose is fully and clearly justified.
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“How will more testing quell the growing rebellion against testing?”
In Whitehurst’s mind it is because we can have a “the data don’t lie” conversation each year…for every school!
The part he overlooks is, as of yet, we don’t have an entire nation of “the data don’t lie” true believers like him. That is the uphill battle he and others don’t realize they are fighting. This is why Arne Duncan sees his detractors as merely silly suburban moms. They couldn’t possibly have a legitimate complaint about testing on methodological, developmental, or epistemological grounds!
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“They couldn’t possibly have a legitimate complaint about testing on methodological, developmental, or epistemological grounds!”
That’s because they can’t comprehend those three “grounds”. That’s talking over their heads-best for them to ignore, as then those things can’t exist.
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The essential question is, “Why do students need to take a battery of standardized tests several times a year? ” Whitehurst’s answer seems to be “to hold teachers accountable” despite the fact that this has been proven to be an utterly unreliable and punitive method of evaluating teachers because children are not robots, able to regurgitate reliable output. They are, well, human.. All the time allotted to testing is detrimental to students because it strips them of the electives that enrich their lives and motivate them to stay in school. Where else will schools find the test drilling time? However, this works out well for the stripped down, billionaire backed, computer driven, private charters. I wonder, Is this the kind of educational experience Mr. Whitehurst wants for his own children? Somehow I doubt it.
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Excellent point about mastery testing vs. high stakes testing!!! Not all tests are bad.
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I LOVE the Dr. Ravitch comment: testing should be our friend, not our master.
Who is to make up the tests: educators or politicians? How are the results to be used: to help the child taking the test – either to reinforce his self image and desire to learn or to grade, degrade the teacher struggling against the mandates imposed by the politicians? Etc etc.
If ONLY the politicians would get out of the way and let teachers educate EVERYONE would benefit.
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YES!!!
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Tha’s too damn logical what you say, Gordon!
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Let us have all of the promoters of more tests organized around the Common Core State Standards show they can pass, at the level of 100% mastery, tests for the 796 CCSS for grades 6-12. Publish the results of their performance in a stack rating system in every major newspaper and on the internet.
Provide a second set of test questions that will require an essay response to questions such as these. What definitions of “art” are explicit in the CCSS and how were these determined?
Explain the reasoning that led to geometry as the only mathematics topic treated at every grade, with more than 50% of the standards for this subject in grade 9.
Explain why students in grade 6 have more CCSS to meet (150) than students in any other grade.
In the last two years, how many national standards in subjects other than the 3R’s in the CCSS have neen generated for the studies in sciences, social studies, studies in the arts, and physical education?
Estimate the time that would be required for students to have annual pre-and post-tests of Ohio’s current basket of 3,203 standards, K-12, which includes the sciences, social studies, studies in the arts, physical education, and the 1,620 CCSS.
And so on. There is no evidence that the CCSS are necessary for college and career readiness, or that test-them-til-they drop policies will improve outcomes for students. Time for everyone to put an end to this reform strategy.
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“In the last two years, how many national standards in subjects other than the 3R’s in the CCSS have neen generated for the studies in sciences, social studies, studies in the arts, and physical education?”
Shhh! Don’t encourage them to dumb down these subjects as well. 🙂
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“Paradoxically, it may also be the case that many of the unintended negative consequences of high stakes student testing would be reduced if we tested more not less. Consider what would happen to the pervasive test-prep sessions that consume weeks of class time in many schools leading up to the end-of-the-year test if students, instead, spent an hour or so monthly being tested on content drawn from their lessons in the previous few weeks. Under this scenario the high stakes tests blend into the tests and quizzes that good teachers have always given their students regularly, and that research shows without a doubt increase student learning.[vii]
Yes, you heard it here: The solution to too much testing is even more testing.”
Yep, paradoxical it is, paradoxical. Doesn’t mean it’s true and/or good, just means it’s paradoxical. Whitehurst has absolutely no clue as to what the teaching and learning process can be, is or should be other than test, test, test and more test and if you don’t like the scores, test some more.
Paradoxical it is! Intelligent, right or just it isn’t
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Your reference to “tests and quizzes that good teachers have always given their students regularly, and that research shows without a doubt increase student learning” is not where the whole emphasis should be in subjects that are academic but nit merely academic– in the visual arts for example where exploration, delayed closure, thinking out of the box, and asking questions with no easily scored right-wrong answers are valued.
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Tearing once at each of the grade groups cited is exactly wagat many othe nations do. It’s high stakes for the students, not the adults.
That doesn’t necessarily make it wonderful, but if you go by international comparisons, it tells us something: over the past 12-13 years the USA have gone to a regime where we test incessantly from grades 3-8 and in grade 10 — tests that Only have consequences for teachers and nine at all for students, but our international ratings on any if those tests (TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA, etc) haven’t changed. Supposedly the big reason for our current testing regime was that the USA was so far behind our competitors!
So if we are to judge by results, then the current regime of NCLB/RTTT/TFA/charter schools/privatization/choice is a failure, needs to be thrown out, and we need to try something else.
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Sorry for the typos
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It all depends on your purpose of school. If your purpose of school is just teacher evaluation then the authors are correct. Then more testing with a large bank of test questions and the use of multiple measures can lower some of the issues with sampling errors and test taking variables.The current system of one high stakes test using one error filled data point to make decisions about a teacher without controlling or adjusting for the other dozens of variables is completely inadequate., Much more information would need to be collected and analyzed to figure out impact of student factors, school factors and other issues impacting student achievement. Since teachers only account for a low percentage of student achievement ( 10-30% depending on which studies you believe) this is a completely inefficient use of instructional time.
But evaluating teachers is hopefully not the purpose of school. The purpose of school is to educate students. And curriculum based and performance assessments are much more useful to teachers in giving them immediate feedback on student understanding and progress so they can make adjustments to the student’s instruction. I am a fan of collecting data to make better informed instructional decisions. I am not a fan of standardized tests used as some sort of single point decision making mechanism when all people with a little psychometric training know all the confounds to reliability and validity. Standardized tests can be one additional data source and helpful for some decision making. But not how they are being used now.
The goal of education is to make lifelong learners. Not to make anyone pass a test. If all we focus on is the test and not the process we are missing the whole point. It is kind of like the person who rushes through life never thinking about or enjoying life so they can achieve the goal at the end. Death.
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Janna-I love your last quote. I put it on Facebook but I don’t want credit for it. Is that you or a quote?
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Thanks! I did not quote anyone else but since I read so much I doubt anything that I say is truly ever my own. But I could not tell you where I got it from. You can quote it as me (Janna) if you want. I am flattered. Anyone who knows me from my “real life” has figured out who I am by now on this blog. My friends, colleagues and students say they see me here. But I also do mind if I do not credit you are welcomed to steal it! I am past the point of caring about getting credit or not. Anything I come up with is free to share! 🙂
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I meant do not get credit! I really need an edit feature here !
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You sound like me!!! I read so much, too, that I have bags under my eyes. Would love to hear more mjwhyte@yahoo.com
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Whistle-Blower on Student Aid Is Vindicated
[Whitehurst, Spellings, Paige and Nelnet]
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Mind blowing story- thanks for sharing LLC. You article does not make me feel that Whitehurst has real understanding of a lot of things.
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If you read Russ’s post to the bottom he advocates external testing be given every few weeks so there is less time wasted on end of year prep. In other words he really wants to replace all teacher unit tests with external tests. Why bother with someone familiar with the pace and needs of the actual kids and who can understand their own diagnostic test results? As it is districts are already leaning on many grades/subjects to use a packaged diagnostic anyway and to use benchmark tests at the roughly 45% and 75% marks through the year as guidance on where the teacher should remediate most furiously.
If Whitehurst had his way there would be at minimum four high stakes testing periods per year and maybe even many more. All because he is worried there won’t be enough data to grade teachers and schools if people turn away from testing. Does this help outcomes for kids?? What happens when 50% come in a grade behind? We’re going to have high stakes right from September??? Or does he think no one will ever, ever be left behind under his model??
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i entirely agree, when i first learned about NCLB i thought it would be a great idea! the initial intension was a good one. but these days standardized testing is taking a turn for the worst. i still believe that those behind the test are woking with the best intentions, but that they have become best intentions with ill informed answers. this only leads to one test after the next only hurting those it is supposed to help.
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