Last week, the Gates-funded group Teach Plus put out a report saying that state testing didn’t take up all that much time, despite the loud complaints of parents and teachers.
The howls of outrage on the Education Week site caused the researchers at Teach Plus to take another look, and they discovered they were wrong.
Reporter Catherine Gewertz follows the story here.
She begins:
Remember that study last week that showed how district-mandated tests take far more time away from students’ and teachers’ schedules than state tests do? It turns out that it had a major error.
As soon as “The Student & The Stopwatch” came out Feb. 5, critics pounced on it for posting far too low a figure for the amount of time students have to spend on states tests in Illinois. You can see some of these attacks in the comments section of the blog post I wrote about it.
You might recall that the report examined a dozen urban districts, and some surrounding suburban districts, focusing on their relative burdens of state testing time and district-imposed testing time.
Gewertz pressed Teach Plus to make corrections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would love a Ravitch take on Teachscape –
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Looked at Teachscape. Looks like another for-profit opportunity in education, a board composed of financiers, not educators.
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As I understand, Teachscape once received a Bill Gates grant. I feel such a system of evaluation degrades both teachers and administrators and ultimately students. A simpler tool locally created, tailored to the character of the district could in itself be with motivation of teachers. What is needed is a higher touch / lower tech solution. Thank you for your comment – yes, I also think it is a money grabber – Google Teachscape invoice.
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Separating time for district and state tests in many places is bogus.
Much district and even school testing is there because of state testing. Much is to obsessively prepare kids for state testing.
Same thing will happen with CCSS
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Anytime is too much time
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exactly
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Same here!!
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To get an accurate read on the time consumed by these assessments, you need to include
The time spent doing diagnostic tests and benchmark tests to predict how the kids are going to do on the assessments (districts do a lot of these because they want to figure out what’s going to happen)
The time spent doing practice tests modeled on the assessments (again, districts are now doing a lot of these)
The time spent training teachers to proctor the assessments and the time spent proctoring assessments
The time spent working in print and online test prep materials
The time that administrators and teachers spend in trainings on the assessments, on the diagnostic tests, on the benchmark tests, on the practice tests, on the test prep materials, and on the tests themselves
The time that administrators and teachers spend in “data chats” about the assessments and about assessment results
The time that teachers spend going over the practice assessment questions with their students
The time spent doing activities and exercises in the standard curricula that have been modeled on the assessments (and there are a LOT of these now)
The time spent doing lessons in the standard curricula that have been rewritten to be test prep
The time spent informing parents about the tests and the test results, and the time spent in meetings with parents about their kids’ results
The time spent redoing lesson plans so that they conform to the test-driven criteria laid down by administrators during “data chats”
The time spent grading all those diagnostic, benchmark, and practice assessments
The time spent by students in afterschool and remedial test prep
The time spent by students in private test prep purchased by parents
And that doesn’t even begin to cover it all.
The devil is in the details. Thanks to NCLB and son-of-NCLB, CC$$, testing has metastasized throughout K-12 education to such an extent that there is little left but testing and test-related activity. Even PE teachers and art teachers and music teachers, in schools where those programs still exist, are now devoting large amounts of time to high-stakes-exam-style practice testing!!!
Teachers and administrators know this full well. But there’s a lot of fear of telling the truth about what’s happening because jobs are on the line.
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Don’t forget the time spent for students with special modifications such as extra time and read alouds. If you happen to be at a school with a high ESL/ELL population, it could take half the students twice as long to complete tests with these modifications.
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“….You need to include…..”
YES!
It is never just the test itself. Time or cost.
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In our district teachers graded parts of the tests…ergo there were swarms of subs in the building for near a month. Student behavior and attitude plummeted during this time and it was mass chaos for teachers left behind. I’d like to see NYS Commy King deal with that aspect of testing!
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You get what you measure, the Rheformish mantra says. Indeed. We are measuring ability to take high-stakes bubble tests, and we are getting schools that are institutions for training students to take high-stakes bubble tests.
Be careful what you ask for.
But we knew this after the UTTER FAILURE of NCLB. When will we ever learn?
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“That which gets measured, gets done.”, Margaret Spellings
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There is also the fact that “90 minutes of testing” will be broken up and structured in such a way as to occupy an entire morning or two of school, plus make-up days for those who were absent. So all those testing times can be multiplied by a number between two and five.
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Yes!
And don’t forger the extra time afforded to ESOL and sp. ed students . These assessments really suck up a ton of time for these kids.
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When I complained to my district about the number of days we have to test, the district testing coordinator said that it wasn’t nearly that long, since the tests don’t take all day. The problem that she didn’t acknowledge is that the rest of the day is shot when standardized testing happens. The kids are so wired after the tests that not much gets done the rest of the day.
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“B” for Bill Gates at the end of the wood
Who tested all the children and found they tasted good.
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TAGO!
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LOL!!!
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❤
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I’ve been following a very interesting story in New Jersey that’s a little off topic. It’s not VERY off-topic, because it asks who is profiting from all this testing and tracking. And then, in a relatively new departure for the mainstream press, it answers.
N.J. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf Will Benefit Financially from his School Reform Efforts
WEDNESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2014 09:24
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/nj-education-commissioner-chris-cerf-will-benefit-financially-from-his-school-reform-efforts
Cami Anderson’s boss is getting out of the Christie administration, and cashing his Golden Parachute chit with Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein’s Aplify. You know what I think? I think he’s getting out of Dodge because there’s a smoking memo out there somewhere.
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ChemTeacher:
Unbelievable!
It borders on criminal.
It certainly is unethical.
I hope this is widely publicized to prove that the system is corrupt.
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I think it would be quicker to calculate the hours that I teach that have nothing to do with the test: so far this year about fifteen.
We had a fun poetry contest and researched a social justice issue to write a fiesty speech.
I actually like some of our literature but I can’t have the kind of rich discussions that I want to have due to endless “responsive writing tasks” that must be done in a formulaic manner and then sent to my instructional coach like I am an errant child…
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I would estimate the average US student at 800 hours a year at $10,000. Standardized testing and state assessment at 40 hours or $500 per student. Plus the cost of the tests. What’s reasonable? 10 hours a year.
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Do you know that at the moment longer school day/week and longer school year is debated? They say that it is necessary for Common Core. So the longer hours would include the testing and the test-prep and there you go. I will not list the links of current debates they are easily found. What is much more interesting is that the following government document comes up and it is dated 1995. And it is talking about Common Core and longer school day required to implement it. It even has this term “common core learning time”.
https://www2.ed.gov/legislation/ESEA/sec10993.html
What I don’t understand is that if Common Core was already developed in 1990s beginning and even carried the same name as now, why talking about all the states participating in its development in 2007, and why so much money was spent paying all the big corporations to develop it when it was already there in 1995?
????????????????????????
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I would like to give Teach Plus and “ineffective” rating for providing incorrect information.
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The next logical step in this debate is to add more days to the school calendar to accommodate all the testing plus added curriculum. Advocates in our district are pointing to the agrarian calendar as outdated ( and it may be) and suggesting we go to first a 195 then a 210 day calendar with no more then a month of in summer, and the school year punctuated by several one week breaks. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I think kids do need to learn critical thinking skills and higher ordered skills, but I have yet to see evidence that the education they are getting under the common core rollout is leading to this. What I see are frustrated kids who are starting to hate school and take on a mentality of “what’s the use…I’m going to drone on like this my entire life, what for?” I feel like they have very few “joyful” learning experiences, it’s all about acquiring skills so they can demonstrate success on tests.
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They would never pay staff for the addition; days. There isn’t the political will.
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Charlotte – Extra days for learning over the break – isn’t that called “Summer
School”?
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Los Angeles hasn’t funded summer school for years. Even before, it was for secondary schools only.
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So sorry.
Penny wise, pound foolish!
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How can you say that? After all, everyone’s going to get an iPad so they can take the Common Core tests!
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Charlotte – My mistake – pound wise, penny foolish!
Why iPads? There are other tablets out there with a much cheaper price tag that are just as good.
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Yes, but the superintendent made the infomercial for Apple. He had to leave the room when the board voted for the iPad contract. Wonder where he;ll go when he decides to leave the district……?
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Charlotte The one word which stands out in your response is he;ll – just remove the “;” and you’ll get his ultimate destination.
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lol Good one!
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It is there in Chicago. It is bad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-wapole/thirty-minutes-tops_b_3861853.html
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Preeti – everyone should read this link. It’s so humorous because it rings true. Thanks for sharing.
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