The Anti-Testing Movement is Bipartisan and Continues to Grow Stronger

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1. lionswings says:

   November 7, 2014 at 1:51 pm

   Reblogged this on Soul Teach and commented:
   Continually feeling bogged down by the pressure to reduce my students to a test score than a person. Tests to measure them, measure me, measure education – just don’t measure up.

   Reply
2. drext727 says:

   November 7, 2014 at 1:52 pm

   Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.

   Reply
3. Chiara says:

   November 7, 2014 at 2:26 pm

   I love how they tested the Common Core on tens of millions of public school kids and then never got back to them or mentioned the test results.

   They’re not all third graders. Are they wondering why they sat for a 9 hour test?

   Did anyone in the ed reform community ask the kids who did get results if they wondered why they were passing one year and failing the next year?

   What can they be thinking about this? One year you’re a proficient 7th grader and the next year you’re a failing 8th grader, yet you haven’t changed a bit!

   It must be absolutely mystifying to the test subjects. Do they think this is completely and utterly arbitrary, “proficiency”? They have boatloads of money. Do they spend any of it talking to students, who are after all, the (supposed) point of this giant undertaking!

   I hope one of the writes about it when they are an adult; the Common Core test cohort experience. I’m genuinely curious.

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   • Threatened out West says:

     November 7, 2014 at 3:31 pm

     Utah students STILL haven’t gotten their individual results, at least in secondary. The tests were last April and May. We are being told that the scores will come faster this next year, but that almost certainly means that computers are grading all of those essays (each student, grades 3 and up, must write two essays).

     Reply
   • NYS Teacher says:

     November 7, 2014 at 3:39 pm

     Here in NY, at least at the middle-level. there is nothing at all mystifying to kids about their CC/NCLB math, ELA, and science scores. They really don’t care – and why should they? We hammer them with a relentless mix of test prep, warnings about AIS placement, and encouragement. We stress the importance of the BIG TESTS and then when they ask if it counts for promotion, we answer honestly, “no”. And when they ask when they are going to find out their BIG TEST SCORES we shrug and say “not sure” “maybe you’ll get them in the mail next fall”. As a result nothing is mystifying it is just a big wave of white noise that they can simply ignore. One of my concerns is for current 8th graders; if they “fail” CC math and ELA for the third straight year, how will the “chronic failure” label help them at all entering HS, where 9th grade CC math is now a graduation requirement. Many of the kids in my district will have experienced six consecutive years of failure in math and/or ELA. Where is the much needed confidence gained from success going to come from? Apparently it has concerned NYSED enough that they have decided to set the 9th grade algebra I, CC cut scores so that the same percentage of students (74%) pass the new CC math test as traditionally passed the old NYS Regents algebra I. For this we spent billions of dollars of taxpayer money that could have been used to purchase musical instruments, theater props, science lab equipment, sports equipment, or smaller class sizes. Seriously? For this we wasted an almost infinite number of teacher hours in useless PD; where know-nothing consultants asked us to become educational alchemists: trying to change children into college and career ready adults using bubble tests. Unfortunately, parents should not ever forgive us, for we DO know what we’re doing.

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4. TC says:

   November 7, 2014 at 3:38 pm

   The data is not reality, it is only a poor model of reality at best.

   Reply
   • TC says:

     November 7, 2014 at 3:43 pm

     And, a huge waste of limited educational resources of money and human time. True education reform is making the most efficient use of resources. Useless data collection is the exact opposite of this aim. The cult of data is pecking in circles.

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5. Robert Rendo says:

   November 7, 2014 at 7:42 pm

   The only way to fight the misuse and overuse of testing is to starve the great beast.

   Public Education has long become a billion dollar industry, according to a report put out in 2007 by Thomas Meldon, professor in the Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific in California, and editor of Teacher Education Quarterly, and Bruce A. Jones, professor and director of the David C. Anchin Center at the University of South Florida.

   In their fact finding, the two researchers found that companies producing educational materials and supplies were (then) over the billion dollar threshold, with product lines rapidly expanding. Fast forward almost 7 years later and in the perfect storm of NCLB and Race to the Top, profits are at a record high while teacher’s pedagogical autonomy and basic job rights remain at an all time low.

   Ultimately, children absorb this “system” as they’re being jam packed into assembly line style teaching with frequent and numerous tests. The extent of testing narrows the curriculum by paying far less attention to the arts, foreign languages, athletics, and civics. It thumbs its wart-ridden nose at the child’s holistic makeup.

   The high stakes testing culture created by the ruling power elite, most of whom are not educators or cognitive scientists, stands only to de-prioritize any discipline not measured by a standardized test. And it stands to reason that among the cruelest ironies of all is that standardized tests, which are empirically full of flaws and distortions, can never capture the truest, most accurate picture of a child’s abilities. Yet, they dominate the landscape of a student’s and teacher’s worthiness. For now, the testing companies conjure up the imagery of a crass monster, a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to expire, thrashing its psychometric tail in a frenzy of might and will.

   Upton Sinclair’s “The Concrete Jungle” described the horrible working conditions inside Chicago’s Meat packing industry, but the educational testing complex is fast producing the same tone of darkness, productivity, and obedience inside public schools. The love of learning is left to fester in the thick and grimy heat generated by the sweatshop of test-to-death academics. Such vapid curriculums will only dumb down future generations, marginalize labor rights, and fatten the pockets of upper end executives of these so called “education products and service” industries.

   For fiscal year 2011, Pearson alone pulled in over one and a half billion dollars in income from its testing and publishing services. GOd only knows what it’s profits are currently. Add Pearson to other educational service companies, and one can realize an industrial complex that costs taxpayers several billion dollars annually while compromising the quality of education for the masses.

   Public education is supposed to promote democracy, but as it becomes adulterated by pecuniary interests, it is destroying democracy. Ultimately, it will be alliances between parents and teachers only, and not government or the anemic education unions, that will, to some degree of hopeful probability, reverse the trends in education policy. While there is hope for real change and an expansion of equality, there is also the inevitability of a long, drawn out fight. One defers to the GOP storming the Senate Bastille.

   And as with any battle, one is not immune to the consequences of excellent teachers being faultily measured and characterized by a hastily thrown together and overly polticized system. Equally bad are the consequences of a poorly educated society. Catalyzing those unthinkable consequences are many corporations and “think tanks” that have jumped on the “reform” bandwagon to fulfill agendas that have little or nothing to do with equalizing educational opporutnity. The very factions that purport to defend the poor and vulnerable, like the Walton family and Eli Broad to name a few, are the same ones who advance class stratification.

   Is this class warfare? You decide.

   In the meantime, I am one of many, many natives who pays taxes to fund public education and I am getting very, very restless . . . . .

   Are you?

   Reply
   • Dienne says:

     November 8, 2014 at 7:01 am

     “The only way to fight the misuse and overuse of testing is to starve the great beast.”

     Yes, I think we should “shrink it until it’s small enough to drown in the bathtub”. With all due respect, of course, to Grover Norquist.

     Reply
     • Robert Rendo says:

       November 8, 2014 at 9:04 am

       And respectively of the NGA, where so many of the members are anti-tax. . . .which is code for tax the middle, working, and lower classes and tax not the wealthy. . . . . Be careful” Grover wants to take away your Medicare and SS . . . . .

6. Kimberly Kunst Domangue says:

   November 7, 2014 at 8:36 pm

   The issue with the Louisiana testing is that 1) many individuals wrote to the DOE/commented in “Comments” of digital papers re: how third and fourth-graders would not have the keyboarding experience necessary to adequately answer the questions if the tests were computerized; 2) there are still HUGE issues with wireless availability given LA is a primarily rural state. If I’m not mistaken (and it does happen on occasion), there seems to have been issues with computers “locking-up” during some form of a trial run of a PARCC-like test in the spring. So, the decision was made by the DOE last week to not use the computerized version of PARCC to assess our third through eighth grade students.

   The DOE still intends to use “high-stakes testing” (as opposed to “standardized testing”) to measure teacher effectiveness, which many agree is an invalid instrument for such. Nothing has changed with the push for privatization, charters, vouchers, the Chambers of Commerce buying spots for school board candidates, and the like.

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7. Old Teacher says:

   November 7, 2014 at 8:42 pm

   Nevada is just getting started! They have no regard for any evidence that might contradict what they “know.” They believe that they will educate themselves out of our economic hole. We will have the best educated McDonalds and WalMart workers in the country here. Our teachers will be competing for those jobs.

   Reply