A few years ago, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, David Coleman, and a merry band of policy wonks had a grand plan. The non-governmental groups like Achieve, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Coleman’s own Student Achievement Partners would write the Common Core standards (paid for by the Gates Foundation); Duncan would require states to agree to adopt them as a condition of eligibility for a share of the billions of Race to the Top funds at a time when states were broke; the Feds would spend $370 million to develop tests for the standards; and within a few short years the U.S. would have a seamless system of standards and assessments that could be used to evaluate students, teachers, and schools.
The reason that the Gates Foundation had to pay for the standards is that federal law prohibits the government from controlling, directing, or supervising curriculum or instruction. Of course, it is ludicrous to imagine that the federally-funded tests do not have any direct influence on curriculum or instruction. Many years ago, I interviewed a professor at MIT about his role in the new science programs of the 1960s, and he said something I never forgot: “Let me write a nation’s tests, and I care not who writes its songs or poetry.”
So how fares the seamless system? Not so well. Critics of the standards and tests seem to gathering strength and growing bolder. The lack of any democratic process for writing, reviewing, and revising the standards is coming back to bite the architects and generals who assumed they could engineer a swift and silent coup. The claim, often made by Duncan, that the U.S. needs a way to compare the performance of students in different states ignores the fact that the Federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) already exists to do precisely that. In addition, critics like Carol Burris and John Murphy have pointed out that the Common Core tests agreed upon a cut score (passing mark) that is designed to fail most students.
As politico.com reports, support for the federally-funded tests is crumbling as states discover the costs, the amount of time required, and their loss of sovereignty over a basic state function. The federal government pays about 10% of the cost of education, while states and localities pay the other 90%. Why should the federal government determine what happens in the nation’s schools? What happened to the long-established tradition that states are “laboratories of democracy”? Why shouldn’t the federal government stick to its mandate to fund poor schools and to defend the civil rights of students, instead of trying to standardize curriculum, instruction, and testing?
So far, at least 17 states have backed away from using the federal tests this spring, and some are determined not to use them ever. Another half-dozen may drop out. In many, legislators are appalled at the costs of adopting a federal test. Both the NEA and the AFT, which have supported the standards, have balked at the tests because teachers are not ready, nor is curriculum, teaching resources, and professional development.
Time and costs are big issues for the federal exams:
“PARCC estimates its exams will take eight hours for an average third-grader and nearly 10 hours for high school students — not counting optional midyear assessments to make sure students and teachers are on track.
“PARCC also plans to develop tests for kindergarten, first- and second- graders, instead of starting with third grade as is typical now. And it aims to test older students in 9th, 10th and 11th grades instead of just once during high school.
“Cost is also an issue. Many states need to spend heavily on computers and broadband so schools can deliver the exams online as planned. And the tests themselves cost more than many states currently spend — an estimated $19 to $24 per student if they’re administered online and up to $33 per student for paper-and-pencil versions.
“That adds up to big money for testing companies. Pearson, which won the right to deliver PARCC tests, could earn more than $1 billion over the next eight years if enough states sign on.”
One of the two federally-funded testing consortia, PARCC, is now entangled in a legal battle in New Mexico, which was sued by AIR for failing to take competitive bids for the lucrative testing contract. This could lead to copycat suits in other states whose laws require competitive bidding but ignored the law to award the contract to Pearson.
Frankly, the idea of subjecting third graders to an eight-hour exam is repugnant, as is the prospect of a 10-hour exam for high school students, as is the absurd idea of testing children in kindergarten, first, and second grades. All of these tests will be accompanied by test prep and interim exams and periodic exams. This is testing run amok, and the biggest beneficiary will be the testing industry, certainly not students.
Students don’t become smarter or wiser or more creative because of testing. Instead, all this testing will deduct as much as a month of instruction for testing and preparation for testing. In addition, states will spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even more, to buy the technology and bandwidth necessary for the Common Core testing (Los Angeles–just one district–plans to spend a cool $1 billion to buy the technology for the Common Core tests). The money spent for Common Core testing means there will be less money to reduce class sizes, to hire arts teachers, to repair crumbling buildings, to hire school nurses, to keep libraries open and staffed, and to meet other basic needs). States are cutting the budget for schools at the same time that the Common Core is diverting huge sums for new technology, new textbooks, new professional development, and other requirements to prepare for the Common Core.
Common Core testing will turn out to be the money pit that consumed American education. The sooner it dies, the sooner schools and teachers will be freed of the Giant Federal Accountability Plan hatched in secret and foisted upon our nation’s schools. And when it does die, teachers will have more time to do their job and to use their professional judgment to do what is best for each student..
Diane, I LOVED your article! It was perfectly stated! My 2.5 hour test is being replaced by 10 hours of online testing (6 hours in February and 4 hours in May.) This is only for one subject!
Pearson is happy, because they will make a billion dollars while Obama and Gates can finally prove that our U.S. schools are so far behind.
Didn’t I read one time that Gates made the comment that everyone will be shocked when we get the low scores from the PARCC assessments? Well, duh….the PARCC assessments are based on a harder curriculum . .along with the fact that our students are so burned out with testing. It hurts to be a teacher anymore…and I can’t stand the pain I put innocent children through. I can’t wait for my career to be over. I love kids, and I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. I can’t stand to see innocent children suffer, so the rich can get richer.
Good riddance to Arne, Coleman and the Gates USDOE. Their day is coming.
My look at PARCC coming to NY schools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAA8pp1_R3w
Pearson and other test companies are going to collect some scalps if this collapse continues. They are counting on a ceaseless flow of funding forevermore.
And it’s not just the SBAC or PARCC that are long and awful. Utah went with its own CC testing, created by AIR. The 7-9 grade students at my school were forced into NINE 70 minute testing sessions per student, and MANY students took much longer than that. This included TWO major essays. There were several topics instead of one: how can you reliably compare students who wrote essays on different topics? The essays required reading several articles and then formulating and writing the essay. The test designers estimated that the expository essay would take a total of 30 minutes to read the articles and write, and that the argumentative essay would take 60 minutes. The tests were not timed, so theoretically the kids could take weeks to write the essays, and some did. No one, including the extremely talented, high-level writers, could finish the essays in the short time the test makers estimated, which, in my mind, calls into question the entire enterprise and the entire test writing company. ALL of us who work with students KNEW that these essays would take far longer than the estimated times. So if this company really knew how to write tests, how is it that they so grossly underestimated the time these essays would take?
I have tried to let parents know how ridiculously long these tests are. I have now been told that I cannot do that, or the state will take discipline against my license. So how do parents even know what is being done to their children?
Threatened Out West
In the view of my administration, it is not your job to notify the parents of anything. I have been in schools where we were instructed not to send even a notice to parents informing them of the time of the class play without administrative approval. Your administrators are far better versed in how to sling the s–t to the parents.
Weird. At my school, we cannot send a kid to the office unless we have communicated with–and received an answer from–the parents. A child cannot receive a failing grade unless a teacher has notified–and gotten a response from–the parent. So the administration basically never talks to parents at all.
ToW,
Same policies in my school about notifying and speaking with parents before doing those things. I basically ignore the send to the office one, but then again I send a student to the office only about 2-3 times a year at most and the admin knows that the student must have been completely out of line-“What, Mr. Swacker sent you down? What did you do to make him kick you out of class because he never kicks students out.”
The second one is built into our parent teacher conference system and we contact them at that time (since the ones we really need to speak with almost never show up at conferences).
Why in the hell would one want to “compare students” in the fashion of which you speak??
What good does that “comparing students” do in enhancing the teaching and learning environment??
It appears the language of the edudeformers has captured your mind, ToW, that one of the goals is to “compare students”. Resist, ToW, resist!!
Exactly. Going to a state-specific test is going from the frying pan into the fire.
Threatened Out West
I just retired and they can have my license! I have been and intend to continue to advocate for parents to opt out. I don’t know how I can get the message out but I intend to try.
Retired teachers unite. You have the experience and knowledge and absolutely no fear of reprisals. This work will be my calling after I retire.
I too have retired and I am talking and writing to various parent groups. The best thing is that no one can threaten us or our license. By just giving parents legitimate state regulations to opt out, no one can say a word. In New York, the child has to refuse, but as long as a parent writes the refusal in the form of a letter and give it to an administrator, most will concede to the parent’s wishes. I was a test coordinator in my school and when the principal and I received such letters, we did not test the child. By the way, we both were yelled at by a higher official in the department of education for doing this. But being that my principal was also retiring, their bark was worse than their bite.
Stunning to hear that the child must refuse to take the test. This really is child abuse.
As I posted at an earlier time in this site, the end will be more at hand after Obama is gone. Look at how his cronies are planning a blitz in the courts to attack teacher tenure. They know that they have maybe two years left of Obama’s “hatred” of teacher’s due process rights to completely gut those rights. It’s similar in a way to the end of Bloomberg’s tenure in NYC when he rushed through authorization of many new charter schools knowing very well that authorization may not be supported after his departure.
With all of the money at play in elections these days, whoever is elected next will not be any better.
I’ll agree to a point. But Obama has been especially hostile which is why I think there will be a better chance of fighting these “reformers” after he’s gone. By the way, Obama was a supporter of privatization (charters) before he became president. Joe Biden’s brother is a charter operator in Florida (Frank Biden). The Obama administration has been one of the most duplicitous administrations in my memory. I’m 70. The bottom line is that this administration is wedded to the charter movement and the ending of teacher protections.
Brocoum,
Who is leading the fight for public school education on the national level? I can think of no one. I am inclined to agree with Threatened out West.
Blame our union leaders. They were bought off by Gates. If they called for a national one day strike that would get a lot of attention about what is really happening to education. The wherewithal exists. Perhaps if unions lose the right to collect dues (agency fees) from non-member teachers (and risk insolvency) they would become more militant in order to give non-members a sense that the fees of membership would be well spent.
this is not controlled by Presidents but CEOs. It was seamless from Bush to Obama.
I agree that big money is a big factor. Obama brought it to the next level however with RttT forcing teachers to compete with one another rather than collaborate. Obama’s policies strengthened the “reformers” takeover of public education. There is a reason why Obama has such low approval ratings and the privatization of public education and Obama’s duplicity in general are at least partly responsible in my opinion.
Reblogged this on Scarlet Rialto and commented:
“Frankly, the idea of subjecting third graders to an eight-hour exam is repugnant, as is the prospect of a 10-hour exam for high school students, as is the absurd idea of testing children in kindergarten, first, and second grades. All of these tests will be accompanied by test prep and interim exams and periodic exams. This is testing run amok, and the biggest beneficiary will be the testing industry, certainly not students.”
One day Diane will read this wonderful post at the grave of CCSS and PARCC/SBAC, plagues finally buried. These toxic policies so damage teaching and learning, families and communities, kids and teachers, that we are right to look for non-educational reasons they are being forced on us. First reason is the enormous looting of school budgets b/c they will unify the national education market in the hands of digital super-suppliers like Pearson and Gates. Second, these poison policies will finally smash the most unionized profession in America, teaching. Third, they drive troubling real issues out of public discussion, silencing and hiding the inconvenient problems we should debate, like runaway child poverty and homelessness, banks repossessing family homes, low-wage jobs and under-employment, minimum wage impossible to live on, health care impossible to afford, vast income inequality and grossly unequal investment in pupils, global warming nearing no return. Instead of these real issues, we are tied up debating bogus testing and invalid curricula which lie in their promises of making all kids “college and career-ready.” Shifting attention, shifting blame from the status quo. If Gates and Duncan win, the 1% will handsomely improve their wealth and power. Many have already said so on this extraordinary blog, keep doing so.
Totally agree!
“Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!”
-Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator
Clearly the corporate education reformers are not Nazis/fascists, but their relentless promotion of standardization and test-based accountability finally appears to be backfiring. People are starting to realize that these “reforms” only serve to exacerbate or turn our attention away from the underlying problems plaguing the American education system. Hopefully we can soon begin to address serious issues like inequitable funding.
Great summary of the context, issues, stakes, and stupidity.
Duncan put his tail in a legal crack by doling out $30 million to the two testing consortia for “curriculum development” suitable for the tests. I don’t think that was legal.
What curriculum did taxpayers pay for with the $30 million?
When will it be published? Is it in the public domain or proprietary?
Who at PARCC and SBAC developed the curriculum materials or outsourced this work? How could Arne et al NOT know that tests and standards require the “glue” of curriculum to make sense?
Why were all the “experts” in USDE, PARCC and SBAC part to a fiasco that might have been noticed by undergrads in a decent curriculum course?
Laura Chapman,
We do not need curriculum. Just give us the tests and we will figure out the rest.
Let’s set aside the testing for a moment. I think everyone here hates that. But looking at states as “laboratories of democracy” is a bit naive. Many of us in the South live in “laboratories” where the conservative elected leaders don’t believe in the basic tenets of science. What kind of standards are they going to write in NC if they successfully get rid of the common core standards there? And when they do write new anti-evolution and climate change denying standards, how much do you want to bet that they will still be tested just as much with state tests that are just as poorly constructed and designed to show that teachers are to blame for everything.
I don’t believe common core addresses biology standards.
The same with pretty much the entire state government of Utah, which is north AND west.
Oops. Meant to respond to NJ Teacher. Climate change denial is pretty entrenched in a lot of places, not just the South.
evolution and climate change are two different things, even Darwin knew that he didn’t have it right with his linear cause and effect model.
and requested his papers be burned at his death, both evolution and creationism are flawed in their own rights. even Big Bang has been knocked down, some cling to evolution as a liberal enlightened cause due to an antipathy toward religion, The false objective ideas of evolution is what is causing the flawed thinking in education today.
“and requested his papers be burned at his death, ”
Myth
Darwin continued to write and speak about natural selection until his death. He never ” changed his mind” or recanted.
Evolution is the underpinning of all of modern biology.
It is not in question.
It is not a false idea.
It has nothing to do with religion. It is a very researched, vastly supported scientific theory.
Read finding Darwin’s god. Excellent book by professor ken miller.
Possibly so, was looking at recent biography of him just today.
Evolution is a foundation to genetic research. I agree with you, and that Darwin is considered the most famous scientist by other scientists. He claimed to be an agnostic until his wife died, then atheist. There are many variables in science and nature that we have learned through quantum mechanics, that have questioned dogmatic views in science and religion, or at least speak of variables that deny us perfect knowledge. In those days many were against the dogma of religion and, for Darwin, the Anglican Church. My point is that we can not be dogmatic about ideas of science or faith. This is the kind of dogma coming from these “one size fits all” educational programs. Isaac Newton was very philosophical and spiritual in his time. Many recognize in this new biography of Darwin that there are just things that are unknowable to the mind, which is why we need to give teachers the freedom to see and hear all ideas without prejudice and take what is working for them.
http://carm.org/secular-movements/evolution/did-darwin-become-christian-his-deathbed
Yep, I believe everything that CARM puts out. Bestest site ever!
Other sights have this information, not just CARM,
I don’t support or deny. It is just a subject for debate.
What do you think is correct Duane?
Christie does not believe in climate change and last I checked NJ was still in the North.
You make an excellent point, Chris. But let’s not forget that human evolution is already forbidden as far as test questions are concerned; we can teach about it (so far), but the tests cannot test on it. That is already forbidden, at least under e SBAC guidelines
Every test publisher avoids any reference to evolution.
As evolution moves into “creationism”, it does, by default, enter a spiritual realm on how it is defined. The scientist who created the “Big Bang Theory” has abandoned it. What about the textbooks and testing about that topic? I suspect that everyone recognizes the poetic and mythic seven days of creation, but not certain that is the entire issue. Biology was a high school subject when I attended. There must be a way for all ideas to be examined and not become a litmus test for labeling and dividing, neither party is doing very well and we can’t allow hot button issues divide us. I welcome anyone against Common Core and testing, who believe in the 7 day creation story. Who cares if evolution is taught, like kids won’t know about it? They may embrace it more, it not being taught, like some adults do. It should not be an issue to defend dogmas about science or religion. There are bigger fish to fry.
Can Gates or anyone write a test that can accurately evaluate the worth of any human being, let alone a child? Is education about expanding parameters of perspective or “the paper chase”? Do we look to humankind’s most perceptive and important teachers, philosophers, thinkers, spiritual leaders et al or to Gates and his cohorts? How these questions are answered will determine the fate of our nation, indeed the world.
Well said, Diane!
We have yet to see the real breakthrough–a state that decides not to give one of these tests at all, and we won’t see that as long as states are held hostage by NCLB or by Son of NCLB legislation (assuming that the feds can get their act together to enact some such). Unfortunately, the states that are deciding not to use one of the new national tests are choosing to replace it with something almost as poorly conceived as the national exams are.
One issue that deserves more discussion is the abysmal quality of these summative standardized tests generally, both the new national ones AND the ones that were given under NCLB. I can do a pretty good job of teaching kids how to take these, and in a time when high-stakes decisions are made on the basis of these tests, I have a moral obligation, as a teacher, to do that. But there are limits on what can be done, given how poorly conceived and constructed these tests generally are. A few observations:
1.The ELA exams are invalid.
First, much of attainment in ELA consists in world knowledge (knowledge of what—the stuff of declarative memories of subject matter). The “standards” being tested cover almost no world knowledge and so the tests based on those stan dards miss much of what constitutes attainment in this subject. Imagine a test of biology that left out almost all world knowledge about biology and covered only biology “skills” like—I don’t know—slide-staining ability—and you’ll get what I mean here. This has been a problem with all of these summative standardized tests in ELA since their inception.
Second, much of attainment in ELA consists in procedural knowledge (knowledge of what—the stuff of procedural memories of subject matter). The “standards” being tested define skills so vaguely and so generally that they cannot be validly operationalized for testing purposes as written.
Third, nothing that students do on these exams EVEN REMOTELY resembles real reading and writing as it is actually done in the real world. The test consists largely of what I call New Criticism Lite, or New Criticism for Dummies—inane exercises on identification of examples of literary elements that for the most part skip over entirely what is being communicated in the piece of writing. In other words, these are tests of literature that for the most part skip over the literature, tests of the reading of informative texts that for the most part skip over the content of those texts. Since what is done on these tests does not resemble, even remotely, what actual readers and writers do in the real world when they actually read and write, the tests, ipso facto, cannot be valid tests of real reading and writing.
Fourth, standard standardized test development practice requires that the testing instrument be validated. Such validation requires that the test maker show that the test correlates strongly with other accepted measures of what is being tested, both generally and specifically (that is, with regard to specific materials and/or skills being tested). No such validation was done for these tests. NONE. And as they are written, based on the standards they are based upon, none COULD BE done. Where is the independent measure of proficiency in CCSS.Literacy.ELA.11-12.4b against which the items in PARCC that are supposed to measure that standard on this test have been validated? Answer: There is no such measure. None. And PARCC has not been validated against it, obviously LOL. So, the tests fail to meet a minimal standard for a high-stakes standardized assessment—that they have been independently validated.
2. The test formats are inappropriate.
First, the tests consist largely of objective-format items (multiple-choice and EBSR). These item types are most appropriate for testing very low-level skills (e.g., recall of factual detail). However, on these tests, such item formats are pressed into a kind of service for which they are, generally, not appropriate. They are used to test “higher-order thinking.” The test questions therefore tend to be tricky and convoluted. The test makers, these days, all insist on answer choices all being plausible. Well, what does plausible mean? Well, at a minimum, plausible means “reasonable.” So, the questions are supposed to deal with higher-order thinking, and the wrong answers are all supposed to be plausible, so the test questions end up being extraordinarily complex and confusing and tricky, all because the “experts” who designed these tests didn’t understand the most basic stuff about creating assessments–that objective question formats are generally not great for testing higher-order thinking, for example. For many of the sample released questions, there is, arguably, no answer among the answer choices that is correct or more than one answer that is correct, or the question simply is not, arguably, actually answerable as written. I’ve reviewed a LOT of these tests. None of these tests would survive careful scholarly scrutiny, and that ought to be a national scandal.
Second, at the early grades, the tests end up being as much a test of keyboarding skills as of attainment in ELA. The online testing format is entirely inappropriate for most third graders.
3. The tests are diagnostically and instructionally useless.
Many kinds of assessment—diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, performative assessment, some classroom summative assessment—have instructional value. They can be used to inform instruction and/or are themselves instructive. The results of these tests are not broken down in any way that is of diagnostic or instructional use. Teachers and students cannot even see the tests to find out what students got wrong on them and why. So the tests are of no diagnostic or instructional value. None. None whatsoever.
4. The tests have enormous incurred costs and opportunity costs.
First, they steal away valuable instructional time. Administrators at many schools now report that they spend as much as a third of the school year preparing students to take these tests. That time includes the actual time spent taking the tests, the time spent taking pretests and benchmark tests and other practice tests, the time spent on test prep materials, the time spent doing exercises and activities in textbooks and online materials that have been modeled on the test questions in order to prepare kids to answer questions of those kinds, and the time spent on reporting, data analysis, data chats, proctoring, and other test housekeeping.
Second, they have enormous cost in dollars. In 2010-11, the US spent 1.7 billion on state standardized testing alone. Under CCSS, this increases. The PARCC contract by itself is worth over a billion dollars to Pearson in the first three years, and you have to add the cost of SBAC and the other state tests (another billion and a half?), to that. No one, to my knowledge, has accurately estimated the cost of the computer upgrades that will be necessary for online testing of every child, but those costs probably run to 50 or 60 billion. This is money that could be spent on stuff that matters—on making sure that poor kids have eye exams and warm clothes and food in their bellies, on making sure that libraries are open and that schools have nurses on duty to keep kids from dying. How many dead kids is all this testing worth, given that it is, again, of no instructional value? IF THE ANSWER TO THAT IS NOT OBVIOUS TO YOU, YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ANYWHERE NEAR A SCHOOL OR AN EDUCATIONAL POLICY-MAKING DESK.
5. The tests distort curricula and pedagogy.
The tests drive how and what people teach, and they drive much of what is created by curriculum developers. This is a vast subject, so I won’t go into it in this brief note. Suffice it to say that the distortions are grave. In U.S. curriculum development today, the tail is wagging the dog.
6. The tests are abusive and demotivating.
Our prime directive as educators is to nurture intrinsic motivation—to create independent, life-long learners. The tests create climates of anxiety and fear. Both science and common sense teach that extrinsic punishment and reward systems like this testing system are highly DEMOTIVATING for cognitive tasks. The summative standardized testing system is a really, really backward extrinsic punishment and reward approach to motivation. It reminds me of the line from the alphabet in the Puritan New England Primer, the first textbook published on these shores:
F
The idle Fool
Is whip’t in school.
7. The tests have shown no positive results.
We have had more than a decade, now, of standards-and-testing-based accountability under NCLB. We have seen only miniscule increases in outcomes, and those are well within the margin of error of the calculations. Simply from the Hawthorne Effect, we should have seen SOME improvement!!! And that suggests that the testing has actually DECREASED OUTCOMES, which is consistent with what we know about the demotivational effects of extrinsic punishment and reward systems. It’s the height of stupidity to look at a clearly failed approach and to say, “Gee, we should to a lot more of that.”
8. The tests will worsen the achievement and gender gaps.
Both the achievement and gender gaps in educational performance are largely due to motivational issues, and these tests and the curricula and pedagogical strategies tied to them are extremely demotivating. They create new expectations and new hurdles that will widen existing gaps, not close them. Ten percent fewer boys than girls, BTW, received a proficient score on the NY CCSS exams–this in a time when 60 percent of kids in college and 3/5ths of people in MA programs are female. The CCSS exams drive more regimentation and standardization of curricula, which will further turn off kids already turned off by school, causing more to tune out and drop out.
Quite correct in your analysis Bob (as usual)!
“. . . standard standardized test development practice requires that the testing instrument be validated.”
But they can’t be validated as Wilson has shown the epistemological and ontological errors involved in the standards and testing regime process that render the regime COMPLETELY INVALID. In essence the standards and testing regime is one big f…..g farce-which unfortunately harms many, many students and not just those who don’t do so well on those tests-all the students.
If you haven’t already, Bob, take a gander at the test-Item guidelines @ http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TaskItemSpecifications/Guidelines/BiasandSensitivity/BiasandSensitivityGuidelines.pdf. Further proof that there is no way these tests can actually assess the CCSS.
I know them well, thanks!
Diane
If you review the latest data from the independent budget office for NYC
Click to access 2014edindicatorsreport.pdf
it does say in chart 3.1A that 11.3% is received as Federal Funding, which is used to manipulate instruction, since, of that, 54% of the schools’ budgets for “Instructional Support” is from the Feds and 70% of their supporting programs (undefined) Title 1? others? This could help the Fed define how Common Core is implemented and a Federal boon for publishers.
The Fed $ is not from generosity, but control of the masses (and teachers?)
Nothing long. Amen!!!
Agreed, the best writers are the briefest. No patience to wade through dissertations. The paragraph is something of beauty to convey a response with an element of poetry.
“No patience to wade through dissertations”
And then you have closed your mind to the vast majority of “knowledge” that is in the world. Perhaps that explains your citing of CARM in a prior post.
Simple reading = simple thinking = simple mind.
Is that statement brief enough?
To understand why the CCSS and the accompanying tests are COMPLETELY ERROR FILLED, ILLOGICAL, and UNETHICAL please read Noel Wilson’s work. All one needs to know about how and why these educational malpractices cause great harm to the most innocent, the children read and understand his never refuted nor rebutted “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 description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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 attempts to measure “’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.
Duane.
chuckling because of your dogged pursuit
Sometimes the truth needs to be doggedly pursued.
Especially when the consequences of relying on falsehoods (that the truth exposes) have such dire consequences for so many innocents, the students
Add to the states that almost derailed the SBAC from taking effect… Delaware… The bill to ratify the SBAC as the new test was defeated in our Senate!!!…… .and then intense lobbying by our Governor and large donors, was able to force the vote to be retaken and passed. But for the record, during one hour..between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Thursday, June 26th,.the number of states still taking the SBAC…. dropped to 9………
What that means… that if it can almost succeed in Delaware, it can succeed everywhere else. So, as encouragement, don’t give up… Put another way, Delaware is a corporate state. Corporate from the top all the way down… We are more corporate than the Grand Cayman Islands… So I would have bet Delaware would be the very last state still forcing its kids to take the SBAC because our politician’s financial donors, said so….
Yet here, it was almost overturned… It almost happened here because of parents educating other parents and turning them on to blogs like this one…. If we can almost do it… YOU CAN DO IT….. (so get busy, now; it’s not hopeless).
(btw, if you want to see one legislator’s price asked for flipping the vote, he is scheduled to appear on Chuck Todd’s 9 am show tomorrow Friday morning…. )
But are these states simply going to replace SBAC with something equally bizarre and disruptive, are they rejecting federal funds, or what??
Good post.
It must die. It will die.
Can someone please direct me to more reading on the following (aside from the Federalist Papers, of course):
‘What happened to the long-established tradition that states are “laboratories of democracy”? ‘
In referring to CC and all its connected testing, Ravitch says, “the sooner it dies, the sooner schools and teachers will be freed of the Giant Federal Accountability Plan hatched in secret and foisted upon our nation’s schools. And when it does die, teachers will have more time to do their job and to use their professional judgment to do what is best for each student..”
Now I wonder very seriously, how many teachers will be willing to get back out of retirement imposed or otherwise or back into public education again to use their real experience to help clean up the giant mess made by “ed reformers”! I know SO MANY TEACHERS who have left the profession since this has begun. TFA teachers will be in no shape to figure out how to clean up the mess as they do not have the requisite years of REAL knowledge. How many teachers are going to get back into the game with absolutely no job security??? Pensions are under attack. Salary is stagnant. Constant need for updating credentialing is expensive. Common core is one part of this large mess. The other is restoring a sense of dignity and professionalism in public education and bringing back the true meaning of the union.
Good point and all of the current teachers will need to be “deconditioned” and debriefed, like someone being released
from captivity.
TAGO!
Kelli,
I encourage you to send this message to all of your super moms.
Dad
From: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment-reply@wordpress.com> Reply-To: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment+p6kq961q1730x57bel670kxi@comment.wordpress.com> Date: Thursday, July 3, 2014 at 11:01 AM To: James McDermott <jmcdermott@clarku.edu> Subject: [New post] Good Riddance to the Common Core Tests!
dianeravitch posted: “A few years ago, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, David Coleman, and a merry band of policy wonks had a grand plan. The non-governmental groups like Achieve, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Coleman’s own Student”
The one constant in the Common Core program is money – how much the states will have to spend and how much the designers of the tests, administrators of the tests, and scorers of the test will receive. Not to mention, as in the Los Angeles Unified School District and others, how much companies like Apple and Pearson stand to make from the introduction of computer technology and curricula into classrooms.
While the Obama Administration and Arne Duncan’s Department of Education are directly responsible for the big push to insinuate Common Core into our schools, don’t be hoodwinked by strong Republican resistance to it. After all, they were the party that gave us No Child Left Behind. And when Common Core is eventually overturned by a Republican Administration, how long will it take them to come up with a similar program, only with a new name? The privatization of our educational system isn’t a republican or democratic event; it’s a corporate one. The real demagogue here is big business and its greedy strip mining of our educational resources.
I’m a pretty simple person in my thinking about education. My focus, and that of most teachers, is on what is best for students. Trying to provide students with the best possible education that I am capable of is my goal. I don’t like politics, I have no interest in politics, and I certainly don’t know the latest of what is going on in Washington or even in my own state. Some may say that I am somewhat ignorant about what is really going on and I am far too trusting. When I hear and see someone say something I believe it. That is until I see proof that what they said is a lie.
So all of this leads me to my beliefs. I having been teaching math for 10 years. I truly believe that the CCSS are better standards and even more important, the teaching strategies that are emphasized by the CCSS and NCTM are better for students than anything that we have had in the past. The strategies are new and reflect a big change in how we teach math. Many parents, teachers, and others may not understand the change in math education and may be against it. However, take some time and talk to the kids. Ask them if they like sitting and taking notes then do 100 problems that are all pretty much the same then repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating…Then ask them if the like learning through discovery. By discussing, trying, rethinking, experimenting, and collaborating to make sense of the math. And then having the teacher connect their ideas and the procedures that we have in math. Ask them if the like using technology to explore math concepts and discover the unique and beautiful properties that exist in math. Ask the kids. See what they think.
We do spend way too much time with testing. However, I don’t understand how a 10 hour test can lead to 1/3 of the year being spent on test prep and testing. Focus on teaching kids to understand and be able to use math guided by the standards and you won’t have to worry about test prep. It will already be done. Do your best to teach kids to the best of your ability and don’t worry about the best. If you are doing the best you can to the best of your ability that is all anyone can ever ask of you. Model this for your students. Live it. Own it. Doing so will help them find value in themselves and not worry so much about some score on some test. Worry, Complain. Freak-out about some test and so will the kids.
Yeah, if you taught in the past the way you describe, the “new” strategies you describe would appear to be nirvana. Even the math instruction I received 50 years ago wasn’t as mind numbing as you describe. From what I have heard, most of the math material came came from NCTM work. I could almost “buy it” if they had bothered to consider child development. Not quite, though, since they went to such lengths to avoid involvement of teachers. Don’t even try to justify ELA CCSS. The testing cannot be defended.
“When I hear and see someone say something I believe it. That is until I see proof that what they said is a lie.”
Educational standards, i.e., CCSS and the accompanying tests are conceptual falsehoods as proven by Wilson. If you want proof of the fallacies of those educational malpractices read and understand what Wilson has written about the complete invalidity of those processes. See my post above for a link to his study.
kcota, I can respect the commitment you have to excellence for your students, but you are taking your own situation – one teacher in one school – and extrapolating it as a net positive for the whole nation when other teachers and other schools have very different circumstances.
More importantly, you defended the CC standards without addressing the issue of the inaccurate, punitive evaluation regimes they have been packaged with. You did mention that you ignore politics, so many you just haven’t noticed, but the CC comes with teacher evaluations based on test scores which, in my state of NY means that most teachers are beholden to scores in Math and ELA, subjects THEY DO NOT TEACH.
So it’s reasonable to ask if the standards need to come inextricably tied to VAM, the accountability practices that are wasting a fortune in taxpayer dollars.
I get that you like the standards, but in inner city middle schools like mine, kids enter 6th grade 2-3 years behind grade level and so this ‘raising of the bar’ ignores them – they weren’t approaching the old standards in the first place. Their most pressing academic need is basic catch-up in reading and writing, not college readiness or higher order, multi-step critical problem solving projects in flexible groups using the Socratic method. And their most pressing need in general is to cultivate a love of learning and joy in attending school which the testing and “rigor” has visibly destroyed for a generation.
In my district, the CC standards are not only beyond the average student’s current functioning, but have also been difficult for teachers to interpret and make work. Dr. Louisa Moats, a co-author of the CC standards said plainly that many US teachers are “unqualified” to teach them, because they were developed exclusively for high achievers but were abruptly hijacked to bring “to scale” for all, regardless of developmental appropriateness.
You did mention the tests are “excessive”, but it seems you are unaware of how many days in the inner city are devoted to them. In my school, we devote a week of Math and ELA periods to practice tests, another two weeks to the actual tests, and then teachers leave for 5-7 more days scoring the tests, so the kids get subs. We are told to use 30% of class time for the month leading up to the test on prep for test strategies and drills, and that all adds up to well over a month lost.
The kids get very anxious around test time too (acting out) because they have a very negative connotation after years of threats of non-promotion for failing. And after the testing is over, many kids feel the entire rest of the school year doesn’t matter. So the tests have all but ruined the school experience for many kids.
They ask for Art a lot, which used to be given only to 66% of the kids, until last year when it was taken away completely. I’m not sure where you teach, but my wife teaches in a very high-achieving school in an affluent suburb where the bureaucratic interference from the federal mandates has been a nightmare. Good teachers already did the good things in the CC standards, but they have to actually lower their standards to comply with the new “pacing” and the quotas for instructional texts, etc.
So the CC are failing low and high achieving schools alike, making Pearson rich. I guess you fell in the middle and didn’t already know about the non-rote practices of teaching, but please consider how much local autonomy you are relinquishing when you speak in praise of the current CC implementation.
Bob Shepherd listed a number of observations about standardized testing in his comment from earlier today. Number 6 was the one that caught my attention as I was thinking about those future plans to test kindergarten through second grade students as well.
6. The tests are abusive and demotivating.
If the tests are in fact abusive, and if they are to be given to these young and vulnerable children, it is not too much of a leap to realize that they are, in fact, a form of child abuse.
As teachers, are we not mandated reporters of suspected child abuse?
But who will listen? Does not anyone other than the readers of this blog care?
NJ Teacher asked: “Who is leading the fight for public school education on the national level? I can think of no one. I am inclined to agree with Threatened out West.”
NJ Teacher is reading the blog of THAT individual who is leading the fight for public education on the national level. Without Dr. Ravitch’s experience, wisdom, insight, knowledge and boundless energy, the fight against the CCSS, excessive standardized testing, the corporate takeover and the demise of public education (with all its implications) would be very different than the way it is developing and evolving.
The titles of her books speak for themselves. The DEATH and LIFE of the GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, and REIGN of ERROR The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. She has been and continues to be the “Paul Revere” of this revolution, warning us that it is not the British that are coming, but rather the corporate reformers.
Thanks, Diane, for your efforts in behalf of all of us involved in education in any way, but more importantly, for the children who are the true victims of this form of abuse.
I happen to be a liberal and I don’t care if you like President Obama or hate him, I care more about how you feel about children. Furthermore I don’t give a fig about your religious views or lack thereof. We need to put aside our differences and put the children first. We have become a nation of Don Quixotes attacking windmills, meanwhile the corporations are doing their best to discredit our public schools, teachers and students. If you believe that high stakes testing (particularly in elementary school) is a form of child abuse, we are on the same page. Common Sense, not Commom Core must prevail.
Common not Commom, no edit function!
The foothold in this battle is the anti-elitism stream of dialog. You can’t win an argument in this country defending organized labor or bashing entrepreneurialism — not under the reign Roberts court. You can, however, find common ground with the “out of touch” conversation about the usual suspects. The propaganda and funding for their mercenaries or store front corps. is being funded by the very rich, the 1 percent, it’s plain and simple. This is the inequality discussion, the tax loopholes discussion. The more those connections are documented, the more public sentiment can be shifted and outrage mounted.
Common core is just a hurdle in this race. We have to get off the track, for it will soon be another administration playing the same tune with different players, and it won’t matter from what side of the aisle they come.
PS It would be grand if NPR would refuse to be underwritten by the Walton Foundation and those of their ilk. I might begin listening to them again.
I have to leave one more reply. In the final analysis, there are still several million public school teachers in this United States as opposed to a significantly fewer number of charter school teachers (and many would want to be public school teachers for obvious financial reasons). I still think the next Democratic Presidential candidate would want the votes of those several million teachers. However, we must stand united and support only the candidate who will really support public education. We still have power in numbers, but we must use our ballot and lobbying efforts wisely.
There is much wrong with the current testing regime, but let’s get our facts straight. PARCC says 8 hours TOTAL for both English and Math, performance-based and end-of-year, for the entire school year. No third grader is sitting through an 8 hour PARCC assessment. I’m afraid that truth is a major casualty of the war both for and against common core.
And you are directly responsible (in the classroom) for administering the Gates USDOE mandated tests to children? What state are you?
Stefano, That is 8 hours TOTAL for Math and 8 hours TOTAL for Language Arts. Some grades will have a total of 40 hours of online testing. They are dividing testing up between February and April/May. The teacher will have a lot less time to teach much harder standards. My district does not have enough laptops to even begin to fulfill the silly new requirements. My students are already miserable with testing. I have no clue how I will break this bad news to my students.
It’s 8 hours for both ELA and Math, not for each. Just google it. It’s not state-specific.
It’s obvious stefano doesn’t administer with live children. Throw in extended time for sped, glitches, etc and we are well past 8 hrs. Something you just can’t google from an office far away from children and schools.
Look, my point is not that difficult. Contrary to what Ms Ravitch says, a PARCC test is not an 8-hour test. Is this really debatable, or must we all move in lock-step now to demonstrate our loyalty? I teach high school in Arizona ( which just decided not to move forward with PARCC assessments), I was a trainer for NWEA, I don’t like standardized testing. Sheesh!
Scrap the map it’s crap. Hate NWEA what a waste of time. You’re a trainer for NWEA and you hate testing. Did you mean to crack a joke? That was funny. I’m a vegetarian but I eat beef.
Stefan’s, politico.com said that PARCC is an 8-hour test for third graders, a 10-hour test for high school. Read the link.
Diane, I read the link: “PARCC estimates its exams will take eight hours for an average third-grader and nearly 10 hours for high school students.” That’s total, for both ELA and Math, performance-based and EOY. Look at the PARCC website, and talk to someone who is responsible for implementation at a school or school district. This doesn’t mean the testing is fine. But we are all too quick to believe the worst when it buttresses our views.
Linda, past tense. Please don’t turn this fine blog into something Breitbartian. It should be possible to disagree on the facts without getting subjected to ad hominem attacks.
And did YOU administer federal/state mandated tests to children this year? Many of us did. It was easily 10-12 hours with extended time, computer problems, etc. I lived it. Did you?
Linda, we’re talking about PARCC, not your state test. Do you want to talk about PARCC? If not, I’m done here. Good luck to you.
It’s all common core testing. It’s all crap. It doesn’t matter. Both are way over 8 hours. We give it. You don’t. Goodnight