Alyson Klein of Education Week reports that the powerful in Congress are beginning to hear the massive discontent of parent, educators, and local school boards about the excessive testing imposed on the schools by No Child Left Behind, and multiplied by Race to the Top. Some districts are developing standardized tests for pre-tests and post-tests. Some are creating standardized tests for pre-schoolers. Since most of the testing is going to be online, the tech industry is beside itself with joy. The testing industry is clapping its hands with delight. But parents are furious. They don’t see why their children spend so many hours taking tests. They don’t understand why their schools have cut back on teachers of the arts and on librarians and nurses, all to fund the new testing. Teachers rail against the loss of instructional time to testing mandates, which then require periodic assessments and test prep.
It is amusing that the article finds only one defender of the regime of nonstop annual testing: Sandy Kress, who was not only the architect of No Child Left Behind but is a paid lobbyist in Texas for Pearson whose nearly $500 million contract is being reviewed now.
My view: how about a 5-year moratorium on standardized testing, except for diagnostic testing that has no stakes for students or teachers? Let’s find out what it feels like to have standardized-test-free zones in schools. Let’s find out what happens when teachers write their own tests, based on what they taught. Let’s follow the example of Exeter, Andover, Lakeside Academy, Sidwell Friends, and other great schools where standardized testing is kept to a bare minimum if used at all. Dream, imagine a better world, make it happen.
How can we make it happen sooner? Opt out. Don’t let your children take the tests. Let them take as many tests as they give at Lakeside Academy and Sidwell Friends. No more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Since you mention the elite private schools, I have another experiment for Bill Gates to try. Let him experiment with some elementary schools in high poverty areas. His money can fund the level of teacher training and support, auxiliary services, amenities, etc. at the selected schools, cutting class size to the same level as the elite schools, providing intensive intervention and tiny classes for special ed, etc.
The school must serve all kids from the neighborhood, and cannot “counsel out” or expel any student, but must find a way to work with even the most challenging students. No tests may be given unless they are also mandated at the elite schools you mentioned. If the funder also chooses to work with parents, well and good.
The Foundation needs to make the local, high poverty (above 80% free/reduced lunch) school equal in every way to the elite private schools. Let the “experiment” run for at least five years before evaluating it in detail. Hopefully, the students’ educational experience will be positive, and if the experiment is “successful” according to current metrics, then all those rich folks will know what works and what it will cost.
In the meanwhile, I’m keeping my eye out at the mall for Elvis…….
En B. Cee: I am sure you will join me in condemning, as the new civil rights violations of our time, the following that is occurring—THIS VERY WEEK!— at Lakeside School.
Yes, the very place Bill Gates went and where his children go now. I know you will shudder with panic-stricken horror at the mind boggling useless expenditure of time, energy and money, but just look at the athletics calendar for Oct. 13, Monday to Oct. 18, Saturday:
Monday: Volleyball (JVC), Volleyball (JV), Volleyball (Varsity)
Tuesday: Gold (Boys Varsity), Gold (Girls Varsity), Swimming & Diving (Girls Varsity), Soccer (Girls JV), Soccer (Girls Varsity)
Wednesday: Volleyball (JV), Volleyball (JVC), Volleyball (Varsity)
Thursday: Golf (Girls Varsity), Golf (Boys Varsity), Cross Country (Coed Varsity)
Friday: Swimming & Diving (Girls Varsity—against two different schools!)
Saturday: Soccer (Boys 8th), Soccer (Girls 8th), Soccer (Girls 7th), Soccer (Boys 7th), Soccer (Girls 5th/6th Maroon), Soccer (Boys 5th/6th Maroon), Soccer (Boys 5th/6th Gold), Soccer (Girls 5th/6th Gold), Football (Varsity)
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/athletics/calendar?rc=0
And don’t get me started on their visual arts, performing arts and media arts time-wasters! Bottom pits of uselessness!
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I am sure you will join with me in urging all the shills and trolls that visit this blog to join together in a rescue team to save the little tykes for the all-important cage busting achievement gap crushing test prep and test-taking opportunities that they are being ferociously denied. After all, this is the 21st century, dontcha know…
Said EduSWAT team being organized by Michelle Rhee, but only in a Johnsonally sort of way. Her children, sadly[?], are offered the same sorts of indignities at Harpeth Hall. *Which is apparently where, according to her, they learned to “suck” at soccer.*
As for yourself, perhaps you might join like to join Señor Swacker and Linda and Ang and myself down at Pink Slip Bar & Grille. Socrates always likes to join in with the “healthy mind in a healthy body” crowd, especially when drachmas and ouzo flow freely and critical thinking is allowed outside of CCSS ‘closet’ reading.
Be there or be square. And thank you for your comments.
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Hear, hear! A 5-year moratorium. That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while.
Opting out of tests also needs to be seen as an opt out of all teacher evaluations based on test scores and perhaps the whole system of federal and state micromanaging put in place with monetary bribes for compliance with absurd rules that reflect a dangerous and arrogant impulse to exercise authoritarian control over the education of this generation.
Opting out also needs to be connected to the principle of limiting the use of computers for data-mining, especially under the auspice of federal grants or by companies set up to target students as customers (this gets harder every day).
Principals and educators at all levels need to assert that kids must not be treated as a captive audience always at the ready for exploitation as profit centers and cockamamie experiments not authorized by those subjected to the. There are longstanding rules for “experimenting on human subjects” increasingly for other animals as well. Where is there evidence of these being enforced, or even agreed to on moral grounds.
Parents and citizens from all walks of life need to make it to politically dangerous and unprofitable for ALEC and state legislators, corporations and surrogates for these, and members of Congress, plus Duncan and Obama to keep on assuming they can use this nation’s children and teens and teachers and as if they are lab rats.
Same for the National Science Foundation enchanted with big data hunts for computer-based “intelligent decision makers” to replace teachers… as if computer based training that inexorably leads a student to a correct answer or “proper” conclusion is the same as education. It is NOT… Education is about asking questions for which the answers are not yet known, or known with the imprints of meaning a student has and will acquire when leaning is graced with some degree of respect for the student’s experiences, affinities, and aspirations.
The USDE effort to micromanage education is not just producing absurdities in classroom practice, but undermining the institution of public education, and totally misdirecting educational research into a quest for trivial “evidence” of this or that minute increment in some metric–as if these ups and downs in numbers from test score data “speak truth.” Not so of course, but here is the risk.
“We are more susceptible than we may think to the “dictatorship of data”—that is, letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting something is amiss. Or that we will attribute a degree of truth to data which it does not deserve. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 166.
Now go to Mercedes Schneider’s website and see her demolish the reasoning in a recent think tank report with all of the clarity and the abundant patience and wit of a superb teacher, including the not-to-be-missed idea of using VAM to judge “jockey effectiveness.”
Thanks Diane for such a poignant piece. I think there should be a moratorium on high stakes testing for every year that NCLB has been around. It is going to take a long, long, long time for this enormous “corporate ed reform” cloud to dissipate.
Why a moratorium? What’s going to change in 5 years or 10 or 20 that will somehow make high-stakes testing okay? Are we really thinking that there will, someday, be a foolproof way to evaluate schools or teachers through student test scores?
Why not just chuck the whole idea and bury it in the landfill with the ebola patient’s burned belongings – toxic waste with toxic waste.
“Why not just chuck the whole idea and bury it in the landfill with the ebola patient’s burned belongings – toxic waste with toxic waste.”
Exactly, Dienne!!
And we’ve known for quite a while that educational standards and standardized testing are ILLOGICAL, INVALID, and UNETHICAL EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICES.
Noel Wilson has pointed all the epistemological and ontological errors in the conceptual foundation of those two malpractices in his 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.
By Duane E. Swacker
Dienne.. you are right – scrap the whole entire testing industry!
Here’s a link to FairTest’s new proposal for an indefinite moratorium on high-stakes testing, including a Q & A on how it would work: http://fairtest.org/time-real-testing-moratorium
Bob,
That’s a decent start for Fair Test but the devil is in the detail and it appears that Fair Test is still advocating for using state standardized tests, albeit, in a limited fashion, and also relying on “state standards” upon which to evaluate the schools/districts. Those state standards and testing still suffer the same epistemological and ontological errors that render ANY standards and standardized testing regime completely invalid. See above reference to Wilson to begin to understand why.
I would love to see Fair Test take the next steps and condemn those two invalid educational malpractices for what they are-unethical abominations.
I so agree. Opt out.
I think that there are some good things happening in our district, but testing doesn’t make it better.
I believe that much of the additional testing serves the purpose of finding a way to “evaluate” teachers as well as to ensure that the students in lower grade levels are ready for the 3rd grade reading guarantee. But, all in all, it serves no good purpose for the students.
I agree that diagnostic tests are useful and can assist in bringing students up to grade level. Punitive tests are dispicable.
Jason Stanford should get credit for his laser-like focus on Sandy Kress:
“Along with rolling back testing requirements, Texas made it illegal for lobbyists for testing companies to serve on advisory boards and to make campaign contributions. It is not local custom to make it a crime to give a Texas politician money, but everyone knew that the provision was aimed at one person in particular — Sandy Kress, the architect of No Child Left Behind and, coincidentally, a Pearson lobbyist who served on several state advisory boards.”
They passed a LAW in Texas barring Sandy Kress, and still he is considered an education expert in ed reform circles. I don’t know what we have to do to get him away from public schools. Pay him off? Give him a monthly stipend to stay home? It might save money in the long run.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-stanford/pearson-new-york-settlement_b_4469167.html
All the focus on testing and data is USELESS and destructive. High stakes testing definitely needs to go NOW before we destroy the educational lives of our youth anymore! This nation has become so obsessed with DATA that we are consumed with minutia and lose sight of reality that comes from human dialogue… yes communicating, listening, asking questions answering questions and responding. Whether it is a teacher teaching in a classroom or a patient in the doctor’s office. Who among us has not received a lengthy read out of every detail spoken to your doctor during your physical from a hang nail 5 years ago to a rash even more years back? I was struck how similar education is to medicine in so many ways when I read this piece recently on how the Ebola patient who recently died could have been released from the hospital or why a patient must explain over and over and over the same story to a zillion doctors and nurses… everyone is forced to enter data and be totaled consumed by it such that nobody sees through the DATA FOG! Here is the article that got me saying… yup… I understand… teachers are basically proctors not educators and get all kinds of data on their students but could not even tell you what a student would read if he/she could because of top-down policy enforcing what needs to be known FOR PURE DATA ACCUMULATING’S SAKE and keeping teachers so busy they barely have time to do anything with their students that matter.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/with-electronic-medical-records-doctors-read-when-they-should-talk/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
“All the focus on testing and data is USELESS and destructive. High stakes testing definitely needs to go NOW before we destroy the educational lives of our youth anymore!”
Double TAGO!!!!
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Read about Michigan’s zany school ranking system:
“The state also offers an accountability scorecard for individual schools and districts, delving into how each was scored. The measurements were developed as part of Michigan’s approved federal No Child Left Behind flexibility waiver.
That scorecard assigns one of five status colors to both districts and individual schools based on the amount of points they received among the student group categories.
From lowest to highest, the color status scores are: red, orange, yellow, lime, and green.
What bothers the local educators is that a district such as Marshall, which still is state-designated with mostly “green” individual schools, still would be labeled “red” because of a statistic reflecting a wide disparity between the best- and worst-performing students.”
I love, love, love that they have both “lime” and “green”.
No one pays attention to it because no one understands it. I hope the ed reform consultant got paid!
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/local/2014/10/04/superintendents-see-red-confusing-ranking-system/16668397/
“From lowest to highest, the color status scores are: red, orange, yellow, lime, and green.”
Or basically from bullshit to bullshit!
I wonder who got to pick the color scheme!?!?!
I worry that the powers that be will double the # of tests children have to take, then pretend they are listening and announce they are reducing the number of tests children have to take by 50%.
Interesting that when CTA Picks YOU AS A MEMBER FOR THEIR LEADERSHIP GROUP collaborating with the Stanford University Group then you are immediately invited to attend and become a member of Students Achieve, the Gates Funded Group paid to write the Common Core Standards. Is CTA NOW WORKING FOR BILL GATES? WOW! MONEY CAN BUY ALMOST EVERYTHING INCLUDING A UNION’S LEADERSHIP! I hope we do not invade Poland in the near future.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Max Wagner
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Becoming a Core Advocate
Dear …
Student Achievement Partners is excited to invite you to our “Becoming a Core Advocate” conference at the Renaissance Chicago O’Hare Suites Hotel on November 15-16, 2014.
During the convening, over 150 educators from 14 states, will gather together to build a strong foundational understanding of the content and rationale for the Common Core State Standards, discuss the political landscape and current state of CCSS implementation, practice storytelling and communication techniques during hands-on training, and strategize about local implementation efforts and advocacy work with colleagues from your state. We hope you’ll choose to join us!
I’ve attached the mission statement of the Core Advocates program and a formal invitation that you can share.
To Register: Please complete this survey and click “submit” at the end. To confirm your participation, please register online no later than Friday, October 17th. Our records indicate you will be participating in a Math breakout session.
Once we receive your registration, we will book you a room at the hotel for the nights of 11/14 and 11/15. All participants will be expected to check in on the evening of 11/14 and check out on the morning of 11/16.
You will receive a confirmation email once you have completed registration and selected your transportation option. Student Achievement Partners will cover all the costs of flights, lodging, materials, and breakfast and lunch during the conference.
Feel free to contact me at any time with questions!
Hope to see you soon.
Warmly,
Max
Max Wagner
Program Manager
Student Achievement Partners, Inc.
58 E. 11th Street, 7th floor
New York, NY 10003
206-661-5756
wagnerm@studentsachieve.net
Web: achievethecore.org
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Who does all this testing serve? It does not serve the teachers or the Principals, because they get the test results back so late that it is useless to plan instruction. The amount of time that it takes to to prepare for these tests, not prepare the children, but prepare for all the security issues and special testing accomodations is outrageous. In the meantime who is held accountable. All the people in charge of schools, above the principal still remain in tact. There are many superintendents who lead large districts who have a high portion of underperforming schools and yet they still remain in their jobs year after year offering little if no support to their schools. If we are going to test then we need to use the the data to drive instruction, help building leaders and teachers and evaluate support from supervisors like superintendents. Otherwise there is only so much that teachers and Building Leaders can do, if they do not have support from their supervisors.