Fred Smith, a testing expert who worked many years at the New York City Board of Education, has become a mentor to the opt-out movement in New York. In this article, which was published in the New York Daily News, Smith writes, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the half-truth, the partial truth and nothing like the truth? Apparently, that’s the vow press officers who work for the New York State Education Department take.”
“Why was half of Thursday’s announcement of the 2014 test results devoted to testimonials, mainly from selected superintendents, on how educational gains are being made due to implementation of the Common Core?”
Smith writes that:
“The 2014 tests were given in April and scored in May, with the results and press release issued in August. Why the delay. The same pattern was followed in 2013.
“The delay is unexplained, and it feeds suspicions that the state is sitting on the results trying to figure out the most advantageous way to package them.”
Under pressure from parents, the state released half the test questions. Smith wonders, why not release them all? By the time teachers get the test results, the children are no longer in their class. Nor do teachers learn which questions their students got right or wrong. If teachers can’t learn anything about their students other than whether he or she was rated as a 1, 2, 3, o4, of what value is the test?
The state’s contract with Pearson stipulates that test questions may not be used again, so why not release to the public the entire test that the public paid for?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, it is frightening to think that the test questions can’t be used again. How is there ever a means of vetting good and poor questions? Are they constantly in the test question development mode at Pearson? How do they write and choose questions that are on appropriate grade levels for readability and content? How will these tests prove a year’s growth? Where are the checks and balances? This entire process has holes in it that are not going to be mended by their methodology.
I would like people in NY state to know that no matter how much you opt out of testing, your child may not face consequences, and maybe, for now, even the teacher does not either.
But by law, the school district is still marked by the state for something known as a low “participation rate”, and the district is cited, put onto a “bad list”, which if not communicated truthfully and accurately to parents, will leave the absolute false impression that the school district is of questionable quality. This impacts the real estate community. It should not, but this is the culture we live in. Schools are mandated to achieve at least a 95% testing participation rate every year. That is the LAW.
Also, as a result of being on this “bad list”, the school or district can be audited by the state and sanctions are available to dole out at the state’s discretion.
Schools and districts cannot legislate children and families to ensure that they come to school to take a test or that they take the test at all while in school. We educators have all but to show up at the child’s house and drag them to school to take the test. Now, how would that play out?
We educators, I think, are not against testing at all, but the way it has been rolled out and the policies surrounding it are counter-productive. Too frequent, too many high stakes, too long, and too high level for the grade taking it, perhaps.
The school (local educaitonal agencies – “LEA” for short) is left between a rock and a hard place and that is precisely this:
The state full well knows that LEAs cannot mandate children to take tests, and at the very same test, the state is mandating that LEAs ensure that at least 95% of the testing eligible students take that test. . . . or else!
Now do you see the absurd but true and weak link in this arrangement?
If the reform movement continues to create adversity through its policies of disconnect, then what can one expect? I wish John King and Merryl Tisch would listen to this argument I’m making.
Check out the scattergrams in the Commissioner’s letter regarding recent 2014 state scores:
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=a4b385da-23ad-4139-bc39-5d6c37facc77&c=020da700-f2ad-11e3-9ae9-d4ae5292bb50&ch=0285bd30-f2ad-11e3-9b1e-d4ae5292bb50
According to the Commissioner, there is, regretfully, “some” correlation between income and school performance on the 2014 tests. But more to his point, there are high poverty schools that did perform well (despite being exceptions that prove the rule!). What I believe he does not reveal, turning to the intellectual honesty theme, is that some of these exceptions are charters that force out low performing students!
The NYSED and Pearson must be legally, politically and publicly pressed to release all questions.
Incompetence and inappropriateness is a real issue now.
This began 14 years ago and now we are asking these questions. How many politicians like Bloomberg used this false data for political gain. It will take years to turn teachers and children around from this dumbing down, provided the Common Core is eliminated.
We keep hearing cut scores were changed and then we see articles such as this: http://watertowndailytimes.com/article/20140824/NEWS03/140829377. Please I just want to hear the truth. As an educator I feel so frustrated with what our children and teachers are going through. If this keeps going on, I think you will see veteran teachers leaving the profession. Many of us do not want ten years to go by for progress. Look at what happened with NCLB. How do we keeping fighting a never ending battle? How do you all keep your strength with this?
The few NYSED phd’s earn the title “Spin doctors,” if you ask me.
Deb,
I am not advocating for the perpetuation of testing the entire school population with better-developed multiple choice tests. There are superior ways to assess educational progress over the course of time, including measuring kids on a sampling basis.
But, as you seem to want, there are ways to produce more defensible tests via the embedding of field test items. It’s been standard practice in the test-making industry for decades, but Albany seems to have stumbled upon it in the last 4 years–and makes it a point of pride to announce that items were implanted in the operational tests. Hallelujah!
The problem they now admit is that they tried out too few items on too few forms and had to resort to stand-alone field tests given in June (2012, 2013 and 2014) as a flawed and compromised way to come up with acceptable test material. The approach was discredited in 2009 by SED’s own technical advisor–yet has been followed every year since.) And the item statistics–used to select items for future operational tests–generated by the far inferior stand-alone approach became the basis for the lousy core-aligned exams,
Thus, the 2013 results that SED has called the baseline for performance vis a vis the Common Core Standards and the 2014 tests just given in April, the results of which have been spun into measures of progress against the flimsy 2013 exams (er, the baseline) are nothing more than smoke being compared to fog.
SED knows it will have problems if it ever exposes the items and item statistics to review–so they keep spinning the story of the transition to the common core and posting more and more stuff on EngageNY as if the sheer volume of their verbiage will address the mess, and dribbling out as little information about the test items as they are forced to. And they hope that we will go away satisfied.
It is the publisher’s and SED’s burden to develop tests appropriately. If they can’t, then the junk they have been selling us needs to be exposed. Any money Pearson is getting from SED is money being stolen from the treasury of education.
OK. I agree with you. My comments were concerning the lack of validity of these tests because no one has any reason to believe that the tests are grade level appropriate, use the correct vocabulary, are devoid of confusion, or are “well written”. I don’t want anything from these tests. The only preference I have is for diagnostic tests to show the teachers where the student needs to receive intervention. I never looked at a beginning of the year test and thought that a child had a poor teacher the year before. The misuse of tests is unfair and inaccurate.
>Thus, the 2013 results that SED has called the baseline for performance vis a vis the Common Core Standards and the 2014 tests just given in April, the results of which have been spun into measures of progress against the flimsy 2013 exams (er, the baseline) are nothing more than smoke being compared to fog.<
The 2014 ELA test was drastically different from the 2013 version. The 2013 test seemed like a transition between or a mix of mostly old NCLB and some new CC items. The 2014 exam was the full CC monty. trying to test abstract and subjective thinking skills with objective MC items was a recipe for disaster. Smoke to fog is being too kind.
Advocating for more of the same? No way. I personally don’t think there are enough intelligent graders available to evaluate the plausibility of various well-thought-out solutions to an open ended essay question. Certainly, there are few to none who want to do so for $8/hour. The ability to scan an essay for true accuracy using some limited siftware is something I would not bank on. We are kind of at a crossroads where these tests serve no real purpose than to muddy the waters until all the “old school” types are caught in the undertow and retired. The purpose is to deprofessionalize teaching and lower salaries.
This resentment has been going on since the 1980s. How dare teachers call ourselves “professionals” they say. If we were truly professionals we wouldn’t need to “hide behind” a union. When our salaries became acceptable, the brakes were then applied. What better excuse than to shove the professionals out the door and usher in paraprofessionals or IT temps? I mean, who do we think we are?
I am surprised that not a single commenter has noticed that the owner of this blog has [not surprisingly, given her sly sense of humor] snuck in a trial Pearson test item.
😉
So I am going to get the top rating on this one!
The answer to the question in the posting is: NO!
😱
And would you believe this is a Pearson essay exam question?!?! Man o man alive, talk about breadth and depth and critical thinking and world-crass [er, world-class] teaching and learning.
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” [Mark Twain]
😎
P.S. Duane Swacker: and you said I would never win the Noel Wilson Quality Award! Hah! Shows you what CCSS ‘closed-minded’ er ‘closet’ reading can lead to.
Although, to be honest, it is part of a batch of trial items that are part of something called the Laconics, a subset of the Moronic Series. When I mentioned this to Socrates, the old Greek guy got very agitated with me. He put on his very worst ‘non-party’ face and threatened to haul out his not-party toga and that little vial of something unnamed to put in my next drink. And then something about my knowing nothing is not in any way shape or form the start of wisdom but that I just Rheeally [in a Johnsonally sort of way] don’t know anything anyway anyhow.
I don’t like upsetting him. What did I do wrong?
😳
LOLOL
What’s worse are the Pennsylvania Keystone Exams. They have not published a single question from any exam given nor any questions from the Classroom Diagnostic tests, practice tests for the Keystone. Instead they have only published a few sample questions some of which are poorly written. When asked about this, an official said that the sample questions were reject questions that would never be used on the exams. Basically students and teachers are being kept in the dark about these high stakes exams which will be used to determine if a student can graduate or not, how a school district is rated and how a teacher is evaluated.