Can you believe this?
“Out of the 180-day academic year, Miami-Dade County schools will administer standardized tests on every day but eight.”
“Though not every student will take every test, the number and consequences of testing are facing a growing backlash from parents, teachers and even some district officials…..
The Miami Dade School Board on Wednesday will approve its assessment schedule for the next school year — a calendar with dozens of different exams that start at preschool and even eat into summer vacation….”
““Florida has gone test-crazy. Whatever you may think about the value of some standardized testing, it’s clear we have gone way overboard. And the reaction that we’re seeing . . . is people saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, an organization that opposes what it sees as the misuse of standardized tests….”
“Miami-Dade’s testing calendar includes 18 exams required exclusively by the state, two by the federal government and five by the district. An additional 21 assessments are mandatory under a mix of district, state and federal guidelines, or are standard for getting into college — or for getting credit for advanced-curriculum studies. Those are in addition to any classroom tests an individual teacher may give.
Miami-Dade’s chief academic officer acknowledged the calendar can look alarming at first glance, but highlighted that no single student sits for every exam listed. For example, a high school senior won’t take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener, just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/01/4322452/in-miami-dade-schools-testing.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So this count includes every possible AP test? That is 38 tests right there.
At my local high school teacher generated tests in classes far outnumber any other tests that a student takes.
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“At my local high school teacher generated tests in classes far outnumber any other tests that a student takes.”
As it should be, and as it is where you teach college as well, no doubt. But fear not, standardized testing and national college standards are waiting just around the corner to strip you of autonomy in your classroom, too.
Get a frickin life, troll, and try advocating for the rights of students WITH P-12 teachers instead of always working against them.
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Victorino,
Any thoughts about a student taking all 38 of the possible AP exams? AP exams would seem to make up about 22% of all the standardized exams offered to students in Miami-Dade county.
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This is about testing throughout the 180 day school year and AP exams only account for testing in May, since that is when those tests are administered: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/index.html
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The AP testing window is only two weeks at the beginning of May. Several tests are scheduled simultaneously, and staggered throughout each day. Therefore, only a maximum of ten days of the district’s calendar would count if AP tests are included in the discussion. And that’s only if every single day has a test that the district even gives, which would be rare.
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“no single student sits for every exam listed. For example, a high school senior won’t take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener, just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.”
Maybe not in a single year, but over the course of their K12 experiences, they certainly could take all of those tests.
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Victorino,
It seems unlikely that a student would take all of the 38 possible AP tests, though it appears all 38 are included in the count.
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It pains me to have to point out to a college professor that “could” does not mean definitely “will.” Maybe you should have less autonomy in the classroom.
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“For example, a high school senior won’t take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener, just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.”
Well, that’s comforting. I think they should fill those 8 days. You can’t manage what you don’t measure! God knows what kind of craziness is occurring during those free days.
They don’t trust their staff to do their jobs, which means they also don’t trust the managers to do theirs. This is what that looks like in a workplace. Not great places to work, or, probably, go to school.
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a high school senior won’t take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener, just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.”
can’t be sure about that.
I believe the latter is what Bill Gates refers to as “College-ready Kindergarten” (TM)
And some day soon, the cut score for Kindergarten will undoubtedly be so high that Albert Einstein would be rejected.
“We’re so sorry, Albert, but despite your revolutionary ideas on play space and nap time, you have been denied admission to “Pre-Ivy Kindergarten”, but you can try again in 10 years” (the average wait-time to get a seat)
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I just checked with Pre-Ivy: make that12 years
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“Miami-Dade’s chief academic officer acknowledged the calendar can look alarming at first glance, but highlighted that no single student sits for every exam listed. For example, a high school senior won’t take the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener, just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.””
NSS! (and for you like minded AI folks-No Shit Sherlock!) Boy that guy/gal is a “god damned genius”!
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“…just as a kindergartener won’t take the Advanced Placement exams for college credit.”
Don’t worry, they’ll fix that by next year.
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“that opposes what it sees as the misuse of standardized tests”
Any use of the results of those Florida standardized tests are a misuse. To understand why read and comprehend Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted complete destruction of the usage of educational standards and standardized testing in “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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Hold on: this is the BRIEF outline?
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Yes, Tim, that is a very brief outline. Please download and read the work. Explaining the truth can sometimes take a bit when the falsehoods one is exposing are so convoluted to begin with.
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Duane, I gave it a shot. I can’t make heads or tails of what Wilson is attempting to claim, and I suspect that the paper’s general incomprehensibility has played a large role in its never having been rebutted.
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Tim,
I will be starting a “class” soon, not sure what venue, in a “close reading” of Wilson. Will let the folks here know details when I get it figured out.
Duane
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Duane,
I’m making two assumptions that could be faulty, so I apologize in advance. I’m assuming you approach your role as a teacher in the Responsive Frame and that you assign a grade at the end of the marking term to your students. Given the error inherent in all marks, how do you discuss this with your students?
Have you read any of Ken O’Connor’s work. If so, what is your take on O’Connor’s recommendations on grading practices?
I am not trying to set you up, I am genuinely curious. Thanks.
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Stiles,
From the get go and throughout the year I reiterate and reinforce the fact, and yes it’s a fact, that grades are, to put it in a more proper school language, falsehoods and bovine excrement. And, yes I do try to utilize a Responsive Frame as a basis for my classes teaching and learning processes.
Isn’t O’Connor the one who wrote How to Grade for Learning? If so, part of our being professionally developed this year is reading this book so that we to can corrupt our practices to “grade for learning” (sic) Talk about horse manure, ay ay ay.
The AP in charge said his job was to convince us that this book and its concepts are the next best educational (mal)practice since sliced bread made it easier to get through the lunch line. I told the AP that if he could convince me, I’ll see to it he gets “administrator of the year award”.
I don’t look forward to those sessions of being professionally developed-well over 100% wasted time.
Maybe I’ve got the wrong guy so let me know.
Duane
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Duane, looks like that’s the guy:
Click to access Ken%20O’Connor%20GFPS%20Aug%2013,%202012.pdf
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Duane,
Yes, that is one of O’Connor’s books. I’d have probably led with his “A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades” because then I can ask teachers if they can find one or two that resonate with them and explore those instead of tackling the topic in whole.
O’Connor partly is grounded in grades relating to standards or major course objectives and with consistency across classrooms. He summarizes his major principles here: http://youtu.be/dGcjhaQuXK8
He recognizes the error inherent in a summary grade, but believe the error can be reduced. He also values student involvement in the discussion of what is quality work with more focus on learning than the grade. You may disagree with some of his assumptions, but may like some of his discrete points.
I like that your are clear with your students about how you view the accuracy and purpose of grades. Understanding how the teacher views grading and feedback instead of it being a mystery is something students deserve.
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What happened to all the innovative and creative parts of ed reform? Remember that? We were going to get all kinds of new and exciting ideas – small, local charter schools, open source “blended learning”, “project-based learning” and on and on.
Instead we got every public school being converted into an imitation of a no excuses charter chain (except without the selective enrollment option), Amplify, K-12, Pearson, Rocketship and two giant national testing “consortiums” run by private entities..
I’m STARTING to suspect we got completely rolled in this deal 🙂
An INKLING, I have, that we may have gotten ripped off. It really doesn’t matter if one “chooses” a no excuses charter chain. The local public school will soon be one anyway.
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Those exciting ideas cost money and would lessen the bottom line for businesses.
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Of course, I don’t agree with that, but it’s what these predatory businesses are thinking.
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It seems to me they have a problem looking at the bigger picture. They should run through the schedules of students at various levels to eliminate any duplicate testing. What happens to the results of all these tests? If they just sit on a data base and aren’t mandates, what is the point? Of course, they have to give the mandated exams, but they should try to “stop doing stupid’ for the sake of the students..
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Maybe they should not “have to give the mandated exams” when professionals know they are deleterious to students. According to the article, a county in FL opted out:
“In August, Lee County’s school district became the first in Florida to opt out of state-required standardized testing, earning nationwide attention for the Southwest Florida district that includes Fort Myers. The move has been called illegal — but anti-testing advocates have likened it to an act of civil disobedience against a testing regime they say stresses kids out, makes money for private companies and gets in the way of actual learning.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/01/4322452/in-miami-dade-schools-testing.html.
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This is very disturbing!
The Dark Forces at work in Miami Dade who are pulling the strings of this buffoon masquerading as Miami-Dade’s chief academic officer can only point to Jeb and his “break your legs” group in Florida. Why would parents become such Sheep to allow this abuse to their children unless it is fear and intimidation? Isn’t this the county of many Cuban immigrant families. This is too creepy to be real!
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In our district, many students other than the ones being tested are affected. Our guidance counselor gets pulled to help administer. We already share with another building. Last spring she was unavailable for an kind of counseling for six weeks due to OGT, CoGAT, OAA, and PARRC, That is over 400 students with no individual counseling, no group for children of divorce, no social skills for students on IEP’s and no classroom guidance. As she often says to me, ” I got into guidance to help students, not to administer tests.”
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That’s sad. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to total up the costs (time and money) in an individual public school and give it to parents?
A number for THEIR school might get their attention.
It’d be fun to add “opportunity costs” – as you did – the measure of what people are NOT doing because they’ve been reassigned to test duty. I’d like to know that.
They could value “testing” generally and still find the “price” is too high. Cost/benefit is an ordinary analysis that people understand.
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This is a consequence of the continually testing that is overlooked by those not in a classroom setting. Schools don’t get assigned any additional personnel to coördinate testing protocols and distribution of materials. The schedule of non-tested students is thrown completely out the window because the other classrooms are incomplete. How can the Spanish teacher move forward when 11 kids are missing from period 1 on Tuesday for ELA and a different 12 are missing from period 1 on Thursday?
A couple of years ago, the state sent materials to my school that had been miscounted. We were short one test booklet and one student response booklet. The administrator in charge of materials immediately notified state authorities of the discrepancy. She was mandated to recount every single piece of paper we had received and they sent out three people to recheck her verification. Of course, our admin was not available for any of her other duties as this went on. She was also concerned that she might somehow be tarnished by all this. What a colossal waste of time, money and energy.
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OH Music Teach: what you describe could be termed “opportunity costs.”
It’s not just the immediate or specific cost, it’s all the other things that are used up/lost/neglected/abandoned in order to serve the priority of standardized testing.
And just what do the bidness minded “education rheephormers” say about their hazing ritual for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?
Let’s go right to the source of all EduExcellence, Michelle Rhee:
[start quote]
Those test-crazed districts need to be reeled in. But a new study by Teach Plus, an organization that advocates for students in urban schools, found that on average, in grades three and seven, just 1.7 percent of classroom time is devoted to preparing for and taking standardized tests. That’s not outrageous at all. Most people spend a larger percentage of their waking day choosing an outfit to wear or watching TV.
[end quote]
Uh, she’s reliable and trustworthy when it comes to numbers & stats, right? You know, like taking “her” students from the 13th to the 90th percentile?
😒
Jersey Jazzman points out an inconvenient fact:
“Let’s be very clear: in direct contradiction to Rhee, the Teach Plus report specifically says the 1.7 percent figure does not include test preparation time.”
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/why-is-michelle-rhee-wrong-about.html
Not to mention other opportunity costs.
As in so many other matters, the data-driven decision makers who are the “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time”—
Can’t be bothered to read the reports they cite or pay attention to what comes out of their mouths.
It doesn’t add up.
Go figure…
😎
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Yes, and in my school we cannot use the computer labs or the library (there are computers in there as well) for the entire testing window. This last school year, we could not use the library or computer labs for the last six weeks of school. This year, with new tests being added, it may well be longer.
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Like most things, the best intentions have produced a monster We need to force this issue into the governors race and state legislative races This testing rampage is not educating. Why not see how much we spent on testing in our K-12 schools 2 or 3 years ago and what we are spending now? That is where your answer lies. It’s a education money grab – and everything else will suffer. We need to vote out any politician who doesn’t know, doesn’t care, won’t say – no matter what party. My kids have always liked school and I only have one with 3 years left. He can’t wait to dual enroll so he can get out and away from the tests. He grew up with FCAT – and said this is ridiculous and out of control and now they learn nothing but to take the tests. Shameful!
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I am no math genius, but I don’t know that her numbers support what she is saying. 180 days – 8 days = 172 days. When it comes to tests required 18 state + 2 federal + 5 district + 21 mixed = 41 total tests. I can only assume that means that many of the same tests are scheduled on multiple days throughout the year (most likely to differant students, in differant languages, through differant formats, and at differant locations). I am shocked that someone as reputable as Ravitch would purposely be this misleading. 172 days of testing does not mean 172 tests. Remember that Miami-Dade is one of the largest districts in the country, so a district calendar is a very inaccurate measure of what an individual student may experience.
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