This teacher expresses frustration with the policymakers’ obsession with testing, thinking of it as a form of instruction and a measure of instruction, and as a measure of teacher quality and school quality. In New York, for example, State Commissiomer Zjohn King recently a bounced that he would release more questions and more results earlier. But he steadfastly refuses to tell teachers how students answered specific questions, so they will learn nothing from the tests about their students’ needs.
This teacher wrote:
“I personally am not opposed to standardized assessments that inform our instruction, but the high-stakes testing of today does not do that. Getting results after the school year has ended doesn’t allow a teacher to change anything. Retaining a child to repeat the same instruction and curriculum he/she supposedly failed the previous year doesn’t help either. The “cut scores” on these tests are designed to fail almost half of the student body which tells us nothing. If we assessed at the beginning of the year and were able to see test items and responses in order to be able to specifically target missing foundation skills it would be better (not perfect, but better). Then give teachers time to collaborate to create a plan for those students who need additional support…teachers know who those kids are and often know what needs to be done, but the time, personnel, and differentiated materials are simply not available. Nor will they ever be when districts are forced to spend ad nauseum for tests and data entry systems.This “test ’em and then test ’em more” is devastating public education financially and emotionally. Students, teachers, schools and districts are being held to an accountability which is impossible to achieve or change, so all are left feeling like failures. There’s no benefit in that but there are other ways. Plus, we should never be making high stakes decisions based solely on the results of tests that are only testing 3-4 subjects anyway (of which usually only 2 matter: reading and math).”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Again, where are the unions? Is the best they can do is recommend that parents exercise their right to opt out. Here is a link to valarie Strauss blog about looking at what these test : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/01/what-do-standardized-tests-actually-test/
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Thanks for the link.
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I agree our unions are not doing enough to mobilize teachers all over the country to help fight against reformers. The reformers have a definite plan they are rolling out. Where is our plan? Where are our lawsuits? Where is our public relations reaching out to the community to educate them on the horrible things being done in education?
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The unions are doing nothing. They are in bed with the reformers.
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Union representatives need to have oversight. I think it should begin with their salaries. Paid union officials should at best get one step beyond their teacher pay. When they bargain at the table, let them feel their constituents (teachers) pain! It is bad protocol for a union head to get a high six figure salary. This is a job that should be taken because one has been a teacher, moved up the ranks and feels a passion and obligation to further support teachers on a larger scale (and yes… so that students may benefit). There are too many “union presidents” who want nothing more than to increase their final pension payout. Going from a teacher salary to a union head salary for them is the almighty dollar. This must change – do it for the passion for education….
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Some anthropologists suggest that the fall of the Roman Empire was due in part at least because the Romans “discovered” lead pipes in England, brought that technology back to Rome and used the lead pipes for their water supply with results one could expect.
I sometimes wonder when I see the kinds of decisions being made by our politicians if there is something, or more than one somethings, which is undermining the ability to reason in our country. Something is sure happening AND we know that many of the rising incidences of some human physical problems correspond directly to the rise of our poisoning our environment.
Whatever the reason, it should be discovered soon before it is too late.
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Isn’t there benchmark testing done to point out weak areas for teachers to focus on?
That’s the way it works in our schools. I would agree that if there are no assessments taken early on to gauge the existing status of students, then you are kind of shooting in the dark as far as preparing them.
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Do you have any evidence that your benchmark testing is remotely useful, i.e., can be and is actually used to identify areas of weakness for the mandated state tests?
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Ohio has had benchmarks for objectives/standards in grade level bands, like k-1, 2-4, etc. These were designed to be diagnostic and shared, but, frankly, there is little time or true application of what could be learned from the tests. You jump right in to the next year, plunge in to teaching to the amorphous cloud of hidden changes and hope for the best. Individual student needs aren’t really tracked and treated. We don’t group students so all teachers have kids in classes of 30 with 20 different levels and we try to differentiate to meet all their needs, but we have to be the ones who discover the needs, since it isn’t transferred in any predicable fashion.
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Note two sentences from the posting:
A), “Getting results after the school year has ended doesn’t allow a teacher to change anything.” Yet remember that those promoting/selling/mandating high-stakes standardized tests and their conjoined twin, VAM, tout the miracle “diagnostic” tools they provide.
Yet again, vacuous selling points and fine-sounding rhetoric that doesn’t match reality.
B), “The ‘cut scores’ on these tests are designed to fail almost half of the student body which tells us nothing.” In the standardized testing industry this is called “discrimination,” meaning, a fundamental purpose of the test is to spread the scores out. It is a feature, not a bug, of the design, production and pretesting of standardized tests.
If, as is most typical, most students pass such a test then the education establishment whines that they lack “rigor” and “challenge” and are “too easy”—so they order a test that they already know will be designed, constructed and pretested so that the requested fail/pass rate will match their order.
Yes, the standardized testing industry is capable of producing tests to specifications. It’s no secret. It’s how it works.
The only surprise is when we are surprised by the results.
😎
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What ^he^ said.
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Don’t tests have different purposes and designs? A test that is designed to discriminate should have a good spread of scores, but one that is designed to identify mastery, identify disabilities, etc. should often have a narrow spread. The problem today is that the cut scores are deliberately set so that the majority of students are designated as “non-proficient,” specifically so schools can be labeled failures. We also know that states manipulate the cut scores so that they can claim success in later years, even if the students score about the same; lower cut scores give a higher “pass” rate.
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More teachers should have the courage to speak out regarding this obsession with testing. I applaud the teacher for taking a stand and stating the facts for all to read.
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It’s not just a matter of courage, Marian. In Utah, we have been threatened with discipline against our licenses if we speak out or refuse to give the tests. See what happened to a teacher in my area that simply refused to grade her own students’ benchmark testing: http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=30550267&itype=storyID
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Nice link TOW!
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“Cut and Dry”
Set the cut core low at first
So it seems they’re dumb
Move the cut score up in bursts
So it seems we’ve won
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opops, should be the other way
Set the cut core high at first
So it seems they’re dumb
Move the cut score down in bursts
So it seems we’ve won
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Perfect- can we share?
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Sure, but just be careful you share the right one!
It’s all so confusing.
I’m not sure how even the reformers can keep it straight.
oh, wait….
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This was written honestly from a teacher’s perspective. After teaching for 30 years, the last 20 of those years in a public school setting, I couldn’t agree more with this teacher. Pearson is a for profit company. They have been pushing their business to the states, especially NJ, for years. The Common Core and the standardized tests are making many people rich. Our representatives are in their pockets. The charter schools and their corruption are bleeding the districts of needed money to educate their students. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Wake up America. Our children are being used and not educated. Teachers are the scapegoats.
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It appears education is being used to stimulate the economy.
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The fallacy in the interpretation of the tests that I have had to use in Ohio is that they aren’t actually so much based on a curriculum as based on vocabulary and processes. This, by some, is interpreted as using critical thinking skills, but it is more about test taking skills than anything else. Some of the passages used for fourth graders are truly uninteresting and the questions are worded poorly. No amount of specific curriculum is helpful, but practice test questions give students insights into the kinds of things they will be asked, how to search for vocabulary boxes, how to juxtapose questions and text, etc.
It isn’t really interesting or enjoyable to students. I have used some practice passages to teach lessons for science, etc. in order to provide connections for students.
The test questions aren’t always clear or well- written.
After years of : ng with these tests, I found out in 2012 that the boxes on the tests are graded by scanners that can’t “see” beyond the box frame, so that is why they need to write inside. No one at our district had been told this. I learned about it at a Social Studies state standards development meeting. My principal had no idea. She was on committees to examine test development.
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The testing obsession is only one example of the poisonous pedagogy created by CCSS authoritarian behaviorism as a means of “training” children, which is a destructive substitute for authentic teaching.
For years as a school counselor, I observed the increasing chronic stress in the elementary school environment to be related to the soaring increase in anxiety, depression, and other disorders impacting children and young adults mental health. We need more mental health experts to demand intervention for this toxic school environment. I agree with the “tip of the iceberg” hypothesis shared by Richard Eckersley in the article mentioned below.
Richard Eckersley says:
If health professions accept the ‘island of misery’ hypothesis – that is, mental health problems in youth are the price of progress, making life better for most people but at a cost to a small minority – then societies are justified in focusing health intervertions on the minority of people at risk. If, on the other hand, they choose the ‘tip of an iceberg’ hypothesis that I have argued for – that is, modern Western societies are harming a substantial and growing proportion of young people to varying degrees because they are failing to meet basic human needs – then societies need, in addition to specific interventions, a much broader effort to reform, even transform, themselves.
…(Sorry I don’t have a link for his article and can’t post a pdf on this blog, but here is his contact email if you would like to request a pdf copy of the entire article.)
Early Intervention in Psychiatry 2011; 5 (Suppl. 1): 6–11 doi:10.1111/j.1751-7893.2010.00233.x
Troubled youth: an island of misery in an ocean of happiness, or the tip of an iceberg
Australia21 Ltd and The National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Corresponding author: Mr Richard Eckersley, Australia21 Ltd. and The National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, 23 Goble St, Hughes, ACT 2605, Australia. Email: richard.eckersley@australia21.org.au
Declaration of conflict of interest: The author has no conflicts of interest.
Received 7 September 2010; accepted 6 October 2010
INTRODUCTION
As a broad generalization, perceptions about young people’s health and well-being fall into two clusters framed by two questions. Are those children, adolescents and young adults with serious health problems a small minority, while life continues to improve for the majority? Or do the serious problems of the few say something about young people as a whole, including the possibility of a decline in health and well-being over successive generations? With respect to mental health in particular, are troubled youth an island of misery in an ocean of happiness, or the tip of an iceberg of suffering?
6
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
of suffering?eip_
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“I personally am not opposed to standardized assessments that inform our instruction. . . ”
Well the author should be because the information that comes out of the standardized testing process is COMPLETELY INVALID.
To understand why read and understand Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation “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. And 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.
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This correlates with current research on personality disorders, which begin at about the age of five, but manifest in early adulthood. How a child perceives himself/herself in their environment will become their identity. The current CCSS environment is causing children to develop low self esteem and self punishing behaviors from their perception of “never fully measuring up”, which is the cause of Borderline Personality Disorder (Ref: UW Linehan).
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