Civil rights groups issued a statement expressing their support for annual testing. The statement makes assumptions about the supposed benefits of testing that are surprising. After 13 years of federally mandated annual testing, how could anyone still believe that testing will improve instruction and close achievement gaps? Tests measure achievement gaps, they don’t close them. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve. A bell curve has a top half and bottom half. It never closes. Standardized tests accurately measure family income. One need only look at the correlation between SAT scores and family income to see how closely the scores are tied to wealth and poverty. For reasons incomprehensible to me, these worthy organizations believe that children have a right to take standardized tests, even though such tests disproportionately benefit the privileged, not children who are poor or children with disabilities or children whose families have been discriminated against because of race or ethnicity. How can one look at the results of Common Core testing in Néw York—where 97% of English learners, 95% of children with disabilities, and more than 80% of black and Hispanic students failed to meet the standard of “proficiency”—and conclude that these children are well-served by standardized testing?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 11, 2015
Contact: Jeff Miller, 202-466-4281, miller@civilrights.org
Nearly 20 Civil Rights Groups and Education Advocates Release Principles for ESEA Reauthorization:
“The Federal Role Must Be Honored and Maintained”
Washington – Today, nearly 20 civil rights groups and education advocates released shared civil rights principles for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
In the principles, the groups highlight the important and historic role the federal government has played during the 50 years since the ESEA was originally passed in promoting educational opportunity and protecting the rights and interests of students disadvantaged by discrimination, poverty, and other conditions that may limit their educational attainment. The groups say that this role must be maintained in any bill to reauthorize the ESEA, along with ensuring that each state adopts college and career-ready state standards, aligned statewide annual assessments, and a state accountability system to improve instruction and learning for students in low-performing schools.
The full text of the principles is below.
###
Shared Civil Rights Principles for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
January 2015
The United States has played a historic and critical role in promoting educational opportunity and protecting the rights and interests of students disadvantaged by discrimination, poverty, and other conditions that may limit their educational attainment. For more than five decades, Congress has consistently recognized and acted on the need to promote fair and equal access to public schools for: children of color; children living in poverty; children with disabilities; homeless, foster and migrant children; children in detention; children still learning English; Native children; and girls as well as boys. Much progress has been made, but educational inequality continues to quash dreams, erode our democracy, and hinder economic growth. This federal role must be honored and maintained in a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which must ensure the following:
I. Each state adopts college and career-ready state standards and provides:
All students a fair and equal opportunity to meet these standards, including:
Access to early childhood education for economically disadvantaged children and those with disabilities (ages birth to 5 years).
Equal access to qualified and effective teachers and core college-prep courses.
Equal access to technology including hardware, software, and the Internet.
Safe and healthy school climate with inclusionary discipline best practices.
Supports and services needed by English learners and students with disabilities.
Protections for the most vulnerable children, e.g., those in juvenile or criminal justice systems, those in child welfare systems, pregnant/parenting students, and foster, homeless, and migrant youth.
Annual, statewide assessments for all students (in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school) that are aligned with, and measure each student’s progress toward meeting, the state’s college and career-ready standards, and
Are valid and reliable measures of student progress and meet other requirements now in Sec. 1111(b)(3) of Title I.[i]
Provide appropriate accommodations for English learners, who should be exempt only for their first year attending school in the United States.
Provide appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities.
Limit alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards only to students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, up to 1 percent of all students; terminate assessments based on modified achievement standards; and prohibit the use of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to measure academic achievement under ESEA.
Allow, during a transition period, alternatives to computer-based assessment for students in schools that have not yet provided them with sufficient access to, and experience with, the required technology.
II. Federal dollars are targeted to historically underserved students and schools.
Title I is used to provide extra (supplemental) resources needed by high-poverty schools to close achievement gaps and improve student outcomes.
States, districts and schools serving the highest-need student populations receive more funding than others.
Targeted funding is provided to meet the needs of the most vulnerable children including youth in juvenile and criminal justice systems; Native American children; English learners; and foster, homeless, and migrant students.
III. State accountability systems expect and support all students to make enough progress every year so that they graduate from high school ready for college and career.
States set annual district and school targets for grade-level achievement, high school graduation, and closing achievement gaps, for all students, including accelerated progress for subgroups (each major racial and ethnic group, students with disabilities, English language learners, and students from low-income families), and rate schools and districts on how well they meet the targets.
Effective remedies to improve instruction, learning and school climate (including, e.g., decreases in bullying and harassment, use of exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools, and student referrals to law enforcement) for students enrolled are implemented in any school where the school as a whole, or any subgroup of students, has not met the annual achievement and graduation targets or where achievement gaps persist. The remedies must be effective both in improving subgroup achievement and high school graduation rates and in closing achievement gaps.
IV. States and districts ensure that all Title I schools encourage and promote meaningful engagement and input of all parents/guardians –regardless of their participation or influence in school board elections – including those who are not proficient in English, or who have disabilities or limited education/literacy – in their children’s education and in school activities and decision-making. Schools communicate and provide information and data in ways that are accessible to all parents (e.g., written, oral, translated).
V. States and LEAs improve data collection and reporting to parents and the public on student achievement and gap-closing, course-completion, graduation rates, school climate indicators (including decreases in use of exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools, and student referrals to law enforcement), opportunity measures (including pre-K and technology), and per-pupil expenditures. Data are disaggregated by categories in Sec. 1111(b)(3)(C)(xiii) of Title I,[ii] and cross-tabulated by gender.
VI. States implement and enforce the law. The Secretary of Education approves plans, ensures state implementation through oversight and enforcement, and takes action when states fail to meet their obligations to close achievement gaps and provide equal educational opportunity for all students.
Submitted by:
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
American Association of University Women
American Civil Liberties Union
Children’s Defense Fund
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
Easter Seals
The Education Trust
League of United Latin American Citizens
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
NAACP
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Council of La Raza
National Urban League
National Women’s Law Center
Partners for Each and Every Child
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
United Negro College Fund
[i] This section includes requirements to ensure the quality, fairness and usefulness of the statewide assessments. For example, they must assess higher-order thinking skills and understanding; provide for the inclusion of all students (including students with disabilities and English language learners); be consistent with professional and technical standards; objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge and skills; and provide information to parents, teachers, principals, and administrators so that they can address the specific academic needs of students.
[ii] This section requires assessment results “to be disaggregated within each State, local educational agency, and school by gender, by each major racial and ethnic group, by English proficiency status, by migrant status, by students with disabilities as compared to nondisabled students, and by economically disadvantaged students as compared to students who are not economically disadvantaged.”
Contact information: Scott Simpson, The Leadership Conference, 1629 K St NW Ste 1000, Washington, DC 200061639
Diane Ravitch's blog 
what a joke! I sure wouldn’t want them speaking on my kids behalf!
Who are the moles in each one of those groups providing the persuasive arguments that tricked their leadership into not just signing on to this nonsense but demanding it?
All of them. They have to be part of “the team” to have a seat at the table where the crumbs are passed out…
When 19 major civil rights organizations endorse standardized testing as a way to ensure that all children are receiving a proper education, the situation appears more hopeless than ever. Why can’t they admit the truth? NCLB has led us to chronic over-testing and actually deprives students of enrichment and meaningful learning opportunities.
Why? Probably because of Gates money, like the Education Trust, which received $8M last year “for general operating support ” (aka he owns them). Others are probably Gates sycophants and wannabe recipients of his largesse.
See “Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership”
There used to be a photo with this article showing black civil rights leaders laughing with Gates (all the way to the bank.)
http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
Thank you for the link to that revealing article. Black leadership of today–bought. Bill Gates has bought off all opposition to his treasonous racist agenda to dismantle public schools and replace them with a tiered system of charter schools funded by taxpayers.
The country of Chile did this and their streets ended up looking very similar to the days of civil rights protests here: students demanding access to a decent education and the armored police dispersing crowds with fire hoses and tear gas.
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/08/student-protests-in-chile/100125/
The Gates Brothers…know their Roots!
Must have taken the Ancestry DNA test & …the rest is history!
One Drop, and they are Brothers.
Sealed the deal – all BLACK CHILDREN BELONG TO BILL!
Brother Bill can BUY just about anyone & he does.
I think what they are likely responding to is a perceived civil rights issue, I think they just don’t have the right solution to it. In the past, SpEd and ELL students were relegated to programs that excluded them from more challenging classroom content and didn’t count them “against” a school. This led to a politically motivated need to classify underachieving students with disabilities because they would then be moved outside the appropriate statistical category.
What these groups are responding to I think, is the perception that if the standardized controls are removed, then there will be no “true” measure of the accommodations being made for SpEd students and their progress, and schools will backslide to waylaying their harder to teach students to meet the numbers that are counted.
NCLB was partially a reaction to this with its need to meet sub-group AYP goals.
I don’t think these groups are concerned with the impact on instruction in the classroom from these tests because where their interests are concerned, there’s no other measure to “ensure” or otherwise hold accountable government agencies responsible for rendering the appropriate services to SpEd students. If they don’t have data of the deficiencies, it’s far harder to prove.
They have a different interest in data, and in this case, holding agencies accountable for providing services is more important for these organizations than the effect on teachers or classroom environment.
I think you are accurate in your assessment of why the civil rights groups want testing… what is disturbing is that they are accepting the tests WITHOUT insisting that they get the resources they need to perform well on the tests. The tests are NOT being used to hold state legislatures accountable for providing equitable funding: they are being used to show that parents of children being raised in poverty are somehow to blame for their children’s struggles in schools. Oh… and there are other ways to measure the effectiveness of schooling other than standardized tests: they do cost more money, take more time, and don’t require computers, though, so they are unlikely to get traction.
There exists within many oppressed communities, a deep seated belief that the learning gap is the fault of the teachers, the system, racism, school funding and so forth but not poverty.
They correctly see that poor kids are as smart as rich kids and therefore the problem is external to their family and community.
The incidious way poverty in the Berliner sense, has a profound effect sounds like blame the victim to poor people and their advocates.
We need to overcome this thinking.
They believe the right wing song that testing will smarten up the system and show the gap.
When I refer to those who think students with disabilities should be subjected to CCSS, I ask the following
: “If the powers that be decide that neuro-typical students have a flogging once a week, would you insist students with disabilities receive the same?” People would think it ridiculous and abusive. Well, so is demanding the abusive CCSS for students with disabilities!
How did it come to pass that these groups all signed this petition? Who wrote it? Who is “civilrights.org” and who funds them?
The bottom line question is, how much money has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pumped into each off these groups for curriculum and testing support?
This is what the head of the Urban League said about Bill Gates in 2010. The complete company line:
http://goo.gl/Bn58VF
This is what the Urban League has received from Gates over the last few years:
http://goo.gl/esNDXP
Put other organizations in the search window to see what they received.
Parents have the right to know whether or not their child is at grade-level. Excessive testing is not okay, but annual testing is not bad if it isn’t used to jeopardize teachers jobs. Why wouldn’t we want to know this information? I teach in an urban area, and I would want to know where my kids stand.
I have students in my urban community college who can hardly read. We have to reject students do this fact, and refer them to adult learning. Disproportunately, these are students who come from poor black neighborhoods/ schools. Intervention needs to happen early in edcuation, and I believe that these tests can be used to determine who should get this intervention. Over-assessing is obviously stupid, but under-assessing breeds delusion, and certainly doesn’t get kids the help they need. I would argue that opting out is a middle-class white kid privilege, and not one that urban kids can afford.
False choices from a no expert. The choice is not t sting as it has s now or no testing. False meme.
Why do you assume that the choice is test as it is now? It does not say that at all. It just says that kids have the right to annual testing. Further, it says that there should not be alternative testing without disability. I have witnessed administrators trying to get some of these kids to qualify for alternative testing so that they will not count. Obviously, this is a problem with high stakes testing, but this is not talking about high stakes testing! This is just saying, they have the right to be assessed. How can we argue with that?
Standardized assessments are fine for diagnostic purposes coupled with interpretation by a trained teacher who knows the student. But these tests are horribly flawed and do a poor job reflecting actual leaning. Tests only measure, imperfectly, what is on the test – nothing more. Parents should not put their full faith in just standardized tests as an end all, be all. To do so, is to be misled and misinformed at the detriment of their child. I would encourage parents to instead work with the teacher and try to understand the classroom. Students are not standardized.
When do teachers receive the results of annual tests? In time for teachers to help their students, or long after kids have left their classes? And is the data disaggregated, so that teachers know where to provide additional assistance? Annual testing does nothing to promote student learning.
Of course standardized testing should never be used a sole measure of a student’s performance, but there is value to the data in the context of the big picture. How standardized tests are used can be problematic, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good reasons for standardized tests.
When the results of standardized tests are not disaggregated and given to teachers before students leave their classes, as typically done with annual tests, they have no diagnostic value and cannot inform instruction.
We’ll see how you feel about annual standardized tests when they are required in colleges.
Why can’t it help for the following year?
Because you have different kids by then.
And detailed info is not passed on the next teacher, and it’s not disaggregated data, and there is no item analysis, and teachers cannot see the tests. So teachers never know precisely who had problems with exactly what.
You need to go talk to Peter Greene (Curmudgucation blog). He’s been looking for some parent somewhere who’s willing to admit they don’t know how their child is doing without a standardized test. Apparently you’re one. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/01/parents-demanding-testing.html
Not sure why you would say that. I am a K-5 educator turned 13, 14 educator. My statement that parents have the right to know about where their child stands has nothing to do with my personal life.
Many urban parents and families are distrustful of schools. They deserve to know whether or not their children are at grade-level and may not always have a clear picture. An example I have of this right off the top of my head occurred out our local urban high school that boasts that they have a large population of AP students, despite a 12th grade proficiency rate of less than 10%. 96% of these AP students do not pass the AP exam, but the district prides itself on producing so many AP scholars. This is just one example of conflicting and confusing information that parents are supposed to parse.
Yes, as a parent I would want to know if my child was not proficient on a standardized test. I would weigh that against my other knowledge about my child, and talk to the teachers to decide whether or not my child needed intervention.
Maybe Peter could get in touch with families at Sidwell Friends, Harpeth Hall, Lakeside, or any of the other uber-expensive elite private schools that administer annual standardized tests. As the head of school at Sidwell very succinctly puts it, “[Standardized test results] can help parents and teachers understand more clearly and completely a child’s balance of strengths and needs. Teachers may review the scores in detail, looking for patterns that emerge from one year to the next, and then use that information to be more effective in the classroom.”
Or maybe teachers in public schools could finally be given timely, disaggregated test results before students leave their classes, so that they too could benefit from diagnostic data that can be used to inform instruction.
Oh wait, public school teachers can’t see the tests, get an Item by item analysis etc. because they can’t be trusted and testing companies claim that’s proprietary info. There are different rules for teachers in private schools and charters than for those in public schools.
Tim – your quote from Sidwell Friends does not indicate that Sidwell Friends itself uses standardized testing – only that they support it as a general concept (at other people’s schools). My understanding is that Sidwell Friends does not use standardized testing, at least until the usual gamut at the high school level – PSAT, SAT, ACT, APs, etc. I know that they are not subject to D.C. standardized tests. Can you demonstrate that they do, in fact, use standardized tests at the 3-8 level?
Victorino Verboten, the elite private schools usually administer these tests in Jan-Feb and receive the results in Mar-Apr. While I’m sure that the current-year teachers appreciate receiving the results while the students are still in their classrooms, they are coming very late in the game.
I agree with you that every single question of every test ought to be made available to the students, teachers, and the public. Particularly in a state like New York, where up to 25% of the tests are field questions, despite the fact that the state conducts a separate round of field tests every year.
Sidwell Friends administers a six-part computerized standardized test over the course of three days to every child in fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Here’s this year’s notice from just a week ago:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:muFrmFjfrGwJ:www.sidwell.edu/news/index.aspx%3Fmoduleid%3D537+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Dienne,
I am sure that Sidwell Friends uses standardized assessments less than public schools, but they do administer the Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) in grades 5-8 in February. I see that on their web site. My interpretation is that standardized testing within their school program may begin in 5th grade since the curriculum description for 5th grade contains the following statement: “The fifth grade Social Studies program focuses on building skills in reading, research, and test taking.”
One area where Sidwell Friends may use standardized assessment more than public schools is outside their school program for the purposes of admissions. Children up through age 6 (pre-K, K, early 1st) are required to take the Weschler Pre-School and Primary (WSSPI IV). Children applying to 2nd-4th grade are required to take the WISC IV or WISC V. The Weschler cognitive assessments are sold by Pearson. Middle School admissions require the ISEE or SSAT, although the site says that 5th grade candidates my take the WISC IV or V. Standardized assessment is part of a multiple criteria admissions process, but is required.
I don’t know of any elite private school where students take annual standardized tests 3-8, or where test scores are used to evaluate teachers.
Also, the “grade-level” measure is totally fiction. It can be whatever test makers want it to be. There is no such thing as “grade-level” apart from what the average student can do.
Tests can generally only tell you if one student is doing better than another but only on that specific exam.
I just asked my friend who has a 5th grader and an 8th grader at Sidwell Friends what they do with standardized testing. He said he didn’t know. He then asked his wife…who also didn’t know. The bottom line is that the kids there are so high-level that standardized testing really doesn’t make too much difference. Pretty tough to get accepted into Sidwell Friends in the first place.
Ohio teacher –
Look at what you are saying!
“The bottom line is that the kids there are so high-level that standardized testing really doesn’t make too much difference. Pretty tough to get accepted into Sidwell Friends in the first place.”
The only high-level characteristic of a student at Sidwell Friends or any other private school of its ilk is the high-level income and high-level social network of the parents of the students. Please reflect on your comment.
Christine, you have data to support that? Would that be what separates kids from, say Stanford?
I’m sure there probabably kids at some of these kinds of schools with less than charming academic talent and with rich parents. But I would be careful generalizing – or wishing.
Christine, I knew what I was saying, and my point was that the negative issues regarding standardized tests don’t hit a place like Sidwell Friends (they simply ignore them…because they can…and go about their business…much like my excellent public school was able to do when I was a student) like they do practically every typical school that has to deal with consequences from these tests. Btw, there are kids at Sidwell Friends on need-based scholarship, so your socioeconomic point isn’t quite right.
I have great respect for the Quakers who run Sidwell Friends School, so it comes as no surprise to me that they have some scholarship students. (Middle class kids? Not so much.) Then again, what private school doesn’t? But can we seriously entertain the notion that if the Obama girls were dumb as doornails (and I emphatically do not believe they are) they would not be admitted? Schools like these (Choate, Exeter, Andover) are sieves which begin the process of funneling the “best and brightest” towards the ivies. The fact that the parents at these schools hold terminal degrees in their fields and have the wherewithal to provide every advantage to their children contributes to the illusion of merit.
An example? George W at Yale.
The Wechsler tests mentioned are IQ tests, not achievement tests. I don’t know what minimum cutoff score Sidwell requires, but most schools that use IQ tests as entrance exams are looking for gifted kids.
” I would argue that opting out is a middle-class white kid privilege, and not one that urban kids can afford.”
You are conflating socio-economic and city dwelling with race.
So you would not opt for a black middle-class kid to opt out, or a wealthy urban child to opt out?
Its the poverty and lack of educational attainment that correlates most strongly with poor standardized test scores.
You are right, sorry.
Sarah, I think you make a fair point. Diagnostic tests to determine where students stand and aid instruction can certainly be beneficial. However, we all know that generally, the agenda of those who push statements like this one promulgated by the Civil Rights groups is to validate and reinforce the necessity to maintain accountability for teachers and schools through testing. “The soft bigotry of low expectations” was a battle cry that led to practically unanimous passage of No Child Left Behind. And, as mentioned above, you can be pretty sure that these groups are financed by the Gates Foundation.
Failure to note the negative impact that the use of these tests have had in reality belies the stated reasoning behind the statement. As Diane ably noted, the use of these tests has been harmful for equality. They also have been harmful for the education of many. Those of us who battle the problems with current education policy are quick to see Obama-Gates-Duncan-Cuomo-Rhee propaganda in its various forms, and this statement smacks of a Gates Foundation or Department of Education press release.
We have all been brainwashed. Just hearing that we have national standardized tests that are supposed to tell us useful information about the performance of our students makes us all nod and shake our heads in agreement. To think that the standardized tests being forced down our throats are of any diagnostic value shows a true lack of understanding. We had all the tools we needed to determine eligibility for special ed services before the advent of CCSS. In fact, we had a whole slew of instruments targeted specifically for diagnostic purposes that combined with qualitative observations provided information that was actually useful in planning remediation. CCSS tests are not diagnostic instruments and would not be diagnostic instruments if anyone had bothered to determine their reliability or validity before inflicting them on us. The fact that poor performance is so highly correlated with socioeconomic status should tell us to look at the difference in opportunities provided according to income and target our responses accordingly.
It’s because of money these groups receive from various foundations that support and push testing. It’s that simple.
Each group has received funding from the billionaire boys club foundations. They have sold their souls, believing that wealth equals expertise, as so many today have done. Sad day. They have ruined their reputations and sold out the goodwill they had earned over decades.
Not discounting the impact of Gates Foundation money and other corporate benefactors, nor the lingering loyalty to Obama and his phony progressivism, I think the document looks a lot like a political maneuver. We know that Arne wants to re-write ESEA on his terms and forestall any attempt by the GOP to remove testing or let NCLB die all together. Reading the terms of the statement, I get the impression that these groups are bargaining with the Obama administration to get their terms in order to support Duncan.
Of course, given the Obama administration’s past behavior this is just another example of Lucy holding the football and promising that she’ll finally let Charlie Brown to kick it. It’s too easy for the Dem establishment to agree to the terms and the reneg by not providing the funding and support; probably by blaming the GOP (who will then blame the Tea Party) for blocking funding.
But the Progressives have been nothing if not Obama’s fools for the past 10 years. Why stop now?
Beware unintended consequences. My grandfather never finished 8th grade, but knew people. In his Virginia accent, he often repeated the saying “some people just need to spit into the wind before they figure out it is a bad idea”. These so-called civil rights leaders have to learn a hard lesson with this approach. You cannot beat every teacher into submission and relegate educators to second class status, then expect good results. Notice the irony of a civil rights banner for all, except teachers.
Teachers are seeing a no-win situation. Few people will invest in a career if they are set up to fail. By penalizing teachers working with the most challenging students, these civil rights organizations are guaranteeing failure. Of course, if they have other monetary agendas, perhaps that is the goal.
The Education Trust is funded by Gates and Arnold et. al. Microsoft has come under scrutiny by Color of Change, for its minority employment ratio. Arnold leads the anti-pension attack. The fact that pensions disproportionately benefit minorities, is apparently immaterial.
“Civil rights groups”, due to vested interest or ignorance, are promoting plutocratic agendas.
I would like to see them answer how student academic attainment and worker skill and performance will impact U.S. concentration of wealth and oligarch-driven theft of worker productivity. Jumping on a band wagon that will enrich the 1% and will not further any goal of advancement for the poor, can not be logically explained.
The statement reminds us of how much influence and goodwill those with the deepest pockets and most powerful connections can secure. Two of the most essential elements of the plan of the “education reform” establishment: mathematical intimidation/obfuscation and catchy but misleading phrases that ignore the most important problems.
Just look at the statement and its great concern with discrimination, poverty, and so on. All these are the issues that self-styled “education reformers” argue will essentially take care of themselves if we “measure and punish” based on student “achievement/performance” aka test scores; these are precisely the realities that the education establishment tries to deflect attention away from, using the results of high-stakes standardized tests that feed VAM and stack ranking, etc.
Consider the penultimate paragraph reproduced above and just focus on these two small parts: statewide assessments “must assess higher-order thinking skills and understanding” as well as “objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge and skills”—
These could just as easily have been written by employees of the Gates Foundation or sales reps of Pearson, word-for-word. They’re not statements of fact or practicality; they’re empty promises that have been repeated over many decades and never realized.
Over and over and over again, the “cult of measurement”—to use Anthony Cody’s felicitous formulations—rears its ugly head. At the end of chapter 22 of his THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH (p. 146) he makes it clear what the end result will be:
“Measurement and standardization delivers efficiency without excellence. When this becomes the driving force in a marketized education system, it both fosters conformity and channels innovation towards commercially viable solutions for those unable to purchase the sort of personalized education the wealthy choose for their own children. Measurement in education will not serve the poor. It will merely make the schools attended by the poor more efficient in preserving they poverty.”
A potent antidote to the fantastical assumptions of the statement is education. That is where this blog and others like it come in. Then there’s the upcoming NPE conference. Another antidote is activism including the opt-out movement. But this too is a type of education because it means that the whole testing culture—and the tremendous opportunity costs to genuine learning and teaching due to it—comes under scrutiny.
And the testers can’t bear scrutiny of their phraseology, assumptions, and real world results.
A small part of the above is self-education. To further that along, I present a very short list of what I found to be, speaking only for myself, essential reading when I first began to deal with the numbers runners:
Darrell Huff, HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS.
Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING.
Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US.
Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Let’s all get unfit.
And I have no doubt that Señor Swacker will be weighing in sometime soon too on his suggestions for reading…
😎
“Darrell Huff, HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS”
Incidentally, this is also an excellent book for anyone whose evaluation system contains an SLO portion.
I can go from 2 out of 30 students proficient to 4 out of 30 students proficient and be able to say with a straight face (and without lying) that proficiency rates in my class increased by 100%. Some administrators are so overworked and apathetic that they might read that a certain way.
werebat73: much said in few words.
The whole “data-driven analysis” approach of the self-proclaimed “education reformers” is literally, not figuratively, an invitation to watch Campbell’s Law work itself out over and over and over again. Ad nauseam. And painfully.
Except the data-drivel “rheephorm trigger” is often pulled against—the very people that created it! *”data-drivel”—not a typo.*
So often when caught out with bizarre statements like 100% charter graduation rates and taking one’s students from the 13th to the 90th percentiles and increasing a 2% graduation rate to 12% by leaving out the rate suppressors (the last courtesy of John “Math Made” D[E]asy)—
You get the New Jersey Charter Schools Association [yes! the same group that is after Julia Sass Rubin!] proclaiming that any numbers & stats that don’t agree with their self-serving preconceptions are “statistical gibberish.”
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/12/charter-school-gibberish.html
Uh, well, it takes one to know one, except maybe those that issue “statistical gibberish” aren’t the best ones to evaluate what ethical, honest and compassionate numbers/stats folks do.
Just sayin’…
😎
P.S. Although you can’t fault the self-styled leaders and enablers and enforcers of the “education reform” movement for a complete lack of erudition. They know about and use Andrew Lang, although I think they missed the part about the following being an admonition against rather than an encouragement for:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than for illumination.”
But what do I know? Just a math-challenged KrazyTA that’s for a “better education for all.”
As always, follow the money.
In 2003, People For the American Way published a report: Community Voice or Captive of the Right? The Black Alliance for Educational Options. http://goo.gl/SywO0P Be sure to read pages 5 and 6 to see who their funders are.
The BAEO has pioneered the promotion of the privatization of public schools. http://goo.gl/soqUVP
They are a leading promoter of privatization of public schools in Wisconsin.
The cynicism of these comments is astounding. Yes, some, perhaps many, of these organizations take foundation money that we detest. Yes, some, perhaps many, do not understand the fully-pernicious nature of the testing regime and the false-science they represent.
But children of color and their families have historically been blamed for the “failure” of their own kids in public schools and have reason to distrust public school administrators and teachers. That doesn’t mean they inherently “oppose” teachers or unions or public schools but that they have sufficient reason to “distrust” them and because many of these families have few choices about where to send their kids they want “information,” even if it’s not what we think is the “best” or most “useful” information, to use to compare schools and understand what’s happening to their children. And, yes, some of them will use that “information” to enroll their children in charter schools. And, disproportionately, they’ve seen their children relegated to special education programs that are not appropriate for them and where they are not expected to achieve to a level that their parents have reason to want.
If we don’t like this, the worst thing we can do is say they’ve been “bought by Gates” or “don’t know their own interests” or “hate teachers” or are being “willfully disingenuous in order to achieve other goals.” They believe these features of NCLB are important.
If we want them to have a different understanding about what is happening in their schools, and many people of color DO have that different understanding, we need to reach out to these organizations and make our case–not excoriate them.
It will be much harder work and much less satisfying than challenging their motivations or calling them out as willfully unaware of their own interests. Yes, teachers have every right to be angry but the sort of anger expressed in these comments is misplaced, pejorative and not helpful.
More blame the teacher. Notice the focus of the original post is on these so-called civil rights organizations, not individual families. If these organizations are accepting money from anti-teacher organizations like Gates, then they have a monetary incentive to work against teachers who DO spend everyday in the classroom. That fact should be considered. The fact you and civil rights organizations want to silence teachers as in your last sentence is ironic. It seems civil and Constitutional rights these days do not apply to teachers.
I’m sorry, MathVale. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. I am not advocating that teachers not speak up. I am simply urging teachers not to use anger and invective to “make a case” when other people who disagree with us may have a clear and honest disagreement that needs to be addressed respectfully and not by dismissing either the motivation behind the position or the position, itself.
I want “more” speech, not less speech but more importantly, a “dialogue” between teachers groups and civil rights groups where our disagreements can be addressed and understood.
Finally, almost any group with an interest in American education policy takes some money from these foundations–until recently including the AFT. We cannot automatically reduce their differences with teachers to the fact that they may take money from the Gates Foundation. If that is our response, I guarantee no one will listen to the next sentence that comes after that claim because the conversation will have been shut down before it even starts.
While there might have been some justification for the civil rights organizations to have given their support to the testing regimes embedded in NCLB – initially rationalized as a way to quantify the “achievement gap” – and was one reason why Teddy Kennedy helped shepherd the legislation through a Democrat-controlled congress. However, the destruction it has caused since then is such that they have no reasonable excuses now. They were snookered, should acknowledge that, and respond appropriately.
I agree with Harris that people must be educated, and not lectured or harangued, but the evidence of bad faith and worse practice is so overwhelming that one must question the judgement of the organizations’ leadership.
The current Black leadership class in the US, embodied by people like Obama and Booker, has shown itself to be indifferent and condescending toward, if not outright contemptuous of, the Black poor and working class. They continue to fatten off the economic crises experienced by the people they falsely claim to represent. In view of that, it shouldn’t surprise us if legacy organizations, mere shells of the proud mass organization they once were, become hooked on money from the Malanthropists.
“misplaced, pejorative and not helpful”
The voice of teachers is being suppressed, ignored, and dismissed. There are many ways to do this – eliminate collective bargaining, implement fire-at-will policies, prohibit or undermine professional organizations, demonize the profession, pursue slap suits for honest and constructive dialog, undermine the classroom with punitive rank and yank evaluations, de-professionalize education with temps and walk-ons. There is a thread of thought in conservative and neo-liberal ideology that teachers are second class citizens. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, we see laws eliminating rights directed squarely at teachers in deference to other professions. A misogynist underpinning cannot be ignored.
You may not like to face the growing anger amongst teachers, but get used to it. No sane teacher is going to spend $60,000 on a teaching degree, work long hours in the most difficult conditions only to be summarily dismissed in 3 years and career terminated due to unfair federal and state practices.
I find it hypocritical that these civil rights groups have no problem dismissing the concerns of teachers and supporting actions that restrict the freedom and speech of educators. While these groups pontificate about civil rights, teachers are being humiliated, demonized, and intimidated in ways that would make Joe McCarthy proud. It is fair to ask why.
You make some really interesting points, Harris. The timing and the rhetoric behind this statement without acknowledgement of any of the issues that the testing regime has created make it very difficult to accept this as honest disagreement. Your point about the AFT, which in the past has supported some of the very worst aspects of the Reformist testing movement, accepting Gates funding is exactly why you see the visceral reaction on here. The political process has been captured through these kinds of statements (we’ve seen near unanimous legislative approval of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core), and many of us are very upset and angry seeing the same storm clouds rising as Duncan wants to revise NCLB. I do appreciate your points, but education policymaking has not been an honest discussion.
One wonders why black organizations would want to move children into schools where young, white teachers with little connection to their communities are the teachers who in many instances have replaced career black educators who lost their jobs to engineered, public school closings or downsizings that have increased charter “market share.”
At every opportunity, we should all shout out the amount that Gates, Broad, Peterson and Arnold have spent to undermine the American middle class. If our voices have more impact and reach a broader audience, when we demand a defense, from a group that claims to speak for people in the 99%, then, we are compelled to make that point.
If it is naivete that explains why the leaders of vulnerable people think a better education, better skills etc. will give their constituents a chance to be in the middle class, they should read the abundant literature about trends in the U.S. oligarchy.
Harris, have you ever worked with these organizations?
I used to work with one until I got out because of its inherent corruption.
Given that, there is no way in the world they would listen to an outsider telling them that they have been sold down the river.
As for communities of color distrusting teachers and administrators, that’s not the case in many such communities since many teachers and administrators are the same color as the students and parents. Maybe it is in your community, but it isn’t, for example, at LAUSD. Are we to think that these good people are traitors to their communities?
The bottom line is that it is poverty not lousy teaching that is mostly responsible for what ails public education. That and the fact that as a society we have never really cared about educating the poor. Why should we? There are not enough good paying jobs out there so why increase the highly educated labor pool? Plus if they get educated they might get some funny ideas and we can’t have that, can we?
We should not confuse the civil rights groups’ membership with the leadership. Same could be said about the Democratic Party. Leaders can be bought.
Interesting that some of these groups, like the Urban League, are pushing hard against net neutrality.
The leadership of the teacher’s unions have been bought as well or we wouldn’t be this far along in this “reformation” of public schooling.
My thought as well, Dawn.
So the problem is not one of an ascendancy of faulty rhetoric or philosophy, but rather that the wealthiest among us have amassed far too much power.
This goes far beyond the walls of any school building, and the membership of any school board or civil rights group.
Civil rights groups have little power to move social and economic policy. They cannot count on members of the Democratic or the Republican Party to move on issues they care about.
The Supreme Court has enabled wealth to intervene in politics, cutting off opportunities for sustained political action on behalf of minorities. Higher education is still fighting to restore diversity as a principle in admission policies.
Public education is a large enterprise and it has been federalized. For at least three decades, bipartisan political action has led to the reification of test scores as if these are perfected measures of education, and that message has been amped by the capacity for data gathering and move toward a nationalized system of ratings.
The authority bestowed on test scores as “objective” measures is unwarranted, but It persists withing a culture eager to accept rating tools of any kind, sports, best in show dog contests, and so on.
Education is the one arena where groups traditionally classified as minorities and/or subjected to discrimination can exercise some power. But that power is limited. So, the almighty test score functions as the red flag that there a national problem.
The tests scores are the easiest annual proxy for thinking about equity, and the scores get headlines.
Teachers are actually in line to be the scapegoats for the capacity of these civil rights groups to leverage equity in economic opportunity.
The institution of public education is also the easiest target for retaining attention to inequities… much easier than challenging financial institutions and the real estate industry for redlining and predatory practices, much easier than demanding corporations stop seeking tax breaks, much easier than hitting the legal stone walls that have been encountered, even by the ACLU.
It is also true that the reification of test scores has been aided and abetted by the new self- appointed masters of Social Enterprise Policy, private foundations and investors who are portraying themselves as the true leaders of the civil rights movement by targeting funds to support civil rights organizations, promote services that seem to address inequities (e.g., charter schools, parent trigger, loans for preschool funding by Goldman Sachs and others, mentoring programs for students who are literally trapped in households and communities with few resources, and so on).
This aura of philanthropic generosity in preventing inequity, while profiting from it, is now being installed as a proxy for politically informed and democratic decision- making. These venture-capitalist solutions to “what’s wrong with education,” and the larger society, depend on score cards to report progress. Test scores as super-convenient metrics for “progress.”
Although members of these groups SHOULD have knowledge of how these scores are distorting almost every aspect of public education, and help to sustain what Jonathan Kozal called savage inequities, critcal thinking about these matters is not as satisfying as lining up and chanting in chorus that “we got have tests, more, tests, tests for everything, all the time.”
In this respect, the opt out movement can only succeed as it becomes far more representive of the emerging majority in the nation and in public schools and is also framed to address to these organizations.
I think message behind the letter comes from good intentions. From my work with the office of bilingual education, the NYSED always endorsed programs and approaches that fostered equity, access and excellence. I think this is the essence of their message. They don’t want to see students that are different be ignored or offered a second rate education, and they want to ensure that these students have access to resources that will allow their students to compete in today’s complex economic world. I don’t believe their remarks are intended to evaluate the efficacy of the CCSS. Instead, I believe their message comes from the framework of the Common Core requirement in which we live.
On the plus side, they are not blaming teachers. They are addressing discriminatory aspects of today’s education focusing on funding disparities and lack of access for many students to get a quality education. If standardized tests are given, I think the date should be disaggregated in order to see how we can improve students’ performance in the future. Where I worked we always tried to reduce the Gap, and we did make a dent in the Gap through programming shifts. There is no message about VAM in this letter, and there are some misgivings expressed about technology and testing.
On the minus side, I think this letter shows a certain naivete about some of the sub groups they discuss. There is no way ELLs will be able to successfully take the Common Core tests after one year. It takes five to seven years to become a coordinate bilingual. (See Jim Cummings’ and Steven Krashen’s work) Secondly, how can they decide that 1% of IEP students should receive testing modifications? Where does this figure come from? Third, it is unrealistic to mandate targets without understanding what is meant by this. Are they talking about AYP? This point needs more clarification, although I believe they want schools to work towards reducing the Gap and improving graduation rates. Again, I believe these are positive goals.
This letter comes from a place of frustration focusing on traditionally under served groups. Ironically, these are the groups mainly excluded from charter school admission. What I think they want is what all parents want, a safer, challenging, enriching experience that is full of opportunities to prepare their children for a successful future.
I agree.
I actually agree as well, but we all know that this will be used by the Department of Education to support all that is wrong with Race to the Top.
I would love to be wrong, but nothing since the W Administration has suggested otherwise.
There’s a strong possibility that these can be used against teachers, but I don’t see the intention in the letter. If anything they are indicting the federal and state governments that pay lip service to equality while creating a system of inequality. I hope they see that charters perpetuate the unequal system and that so much money allocated to more testing is wasteful. We need to put the money into resources for these students, not tests that enrich Pearson.
” If standardized tests are given, I think the date should be disaggregated in order to see how we can improve students’ performance in the future. Where I worked we always tried to reduce the Gap, and we did make a dent in the Gap through programming shifts. ”
Why?
I don’t accept this framework for judging our students’ competencies. Aside from the insistence that scores must always be growing and if they remain flat it is some kind of disaster, there is the reality that these tests will ALWAYS return a gap. It is what they do.
Wait, what?? There must be a mistake somewhere.
One of the essays in MORE THAN A SCORE (“Standardized Testing and Students of Color” by Brian Jones) speaks to this issue and, as Harris indicates above, the need for caution. Historically blacks have often seen testing as an “objective” way of overcoming discrimination when decisions are made more “subjectively”. He gives the example of the civil service exam. Before the advent of that exam, blacks had almost no hope of getting government jobs. Once government jobs were based largely on exam scores, even though the black community recognized that the tests themselves could be biased, at least it became possible for blacks to pass the tests and the government thereby became one of the biggest employers of blacks. Again, I think blacks do, of course, recognize that tests can be and often are biased, but they need to have some assurance – which would be difficult to find historically – that any other system would not actually be more biased. This country has an awful lot of talking, repenting and working through to do when it comes to race.
I agree.
I have watched minority parents on some of the parent advisory council meetings for our state, and many of them do believe the testing keeps white teachers honest and on their toes. They don’t consider the testing to be an affront, but rather a protection. Also, many of them like charters.
There’s a debate like this in criminal justice over sentencing rules. No one likes the rigid guidelines because they reduce the discretion of judges and others to take individual factors into account and they often lead to ridiculous and counter-productive results.
However, there’s absolutely no guarantee that judges and others would apply “discretion” equitably, so adding more subjective measures increases the risk of bias.
It’s a “be careful what you wish for you might get it” dilemma. Reduce rigid objective measure and you increase risk of subjective measure being applied in ways that are biased.
Dienne and Joanna Best: thank you for bringing up thorny issues.
Again, education clarification explication! And remembering the audience you’re addressing: a Broad Academy/Gates Foundation bully like John Deasy is not the same as disadvantaged pro-charter parents that are desperate for any option, however slightly better it appears, that will help their children.
I will not excuse myself. For example, it was not that long ago that I thought the phrase “if you’re going to teach to the test, make sure it’s a test worth teaching to” sounded good. It seemed to smack of objectivity and hard data and non-discrimination and good sense and practicality.
I was wrong on all five counts. IMO, embarrassingly wrong. And that doesn’t even take into account such considerations as opportunity costs—what gets displaced when student “performance/achievement” [to use the psychometric terms] aka test scores become the be-all and end-all of teaching and learning? Even more telling, what gets displaced from people’s hearts and minds, e.g., how much longer will people endure and accept as the new normal, the continuing cuts to athletics and dramatic/fine arts and all the other supposedly unimportant [under rheephorm standards] subjects?
One of the most telling arguments against the entire “education reform” project is provided by Governor Chris Christie—he simply refuses to discuss what he ensures for HIS OWN CHILDREN and explain why it is so different from what he mandates for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
Give parents the options that wealthy people have? Just have folks that think they are pro-charter go to the Lakeside School website. That’s the sort of education everyone should have the option/choice of sending their children to.
No excuses. Of any kind. Choice and voice for all, even steven. [thank you, Chiara!]
Again, thank you for your comments.
😎
All students should have access to a comprehensive, enriching education, not some test prep academy with a narrow curriculum.
Peter Greene has a cogent discussion of the issue here: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/ (with a link to the Brian Jones essay I mentioned). As usual, Greene nails it.
Let’s not forget that these groups are more likely to lean to the Democratic Party. So the message they get is the Arne Duncan education storyline. Same thing happens with Democratic legislators. Can one say DFER?
I’m talking about leadership, not those of us who are Democrats.
At some point, the membership becomes responsible for the actions of its leaders, assuming that the leaders are in any way elected.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
NY Times wrote about this this morning and was also “struck” by the discord between civil rights groups and their stances on testing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/education/arne-duncan-says-administration-is-committed-to-testing.html?mabReward=R4&module=WelcomeBackModal&contentCollection=Real%20Estate®ion=FixedCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article
I think standardized testing part of the accountability agenda. We always had the CAT tests in starting in third. Before that we gave in house tests that measured progress in math and reading each report card period with results available to parents each quarter. We also had some other required state tests. While teachers may have been questioned about results, nobody had their pay reduced or lost a job. That is more than enough testing! Nobody turned everything over to Pearson! The consensus was that the most useful assessments were those made by the teachers.
I thought this was a good piece on testing. It starts out with the usual sequence- low schools, miracle improvement. But it’s much more complicated than that when they interview the teachers who got the test score increase. They’re really conflicted about how they’re getting those scores and they’re not at all confident the tests are valid measures:
“Frazier theorized that the tests required “an entirely different skill set that they didn’t have in place.”
So she and Moller designed a test preparation curriculum that explained, for example, how to read test passages with an eye for answers and how to navigate a computer-based exam.”
I think it’s great the teachers were so honest about what actually happened here. They COULD have simply taken a bow for the test score increase,”yes, I’m a miracle worker!” but they didn’t. They’re really not comfortable with what they’re doing, and they’re not at all sure the scores mean anything.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/poor-hispanic-school-focuses-on-test-prep-sees-huge-gains-but-can-it-be-replicated/2015/01/10/5a65ca1c-5b95-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html?wprss=rss_education
I realize that there is some debate over whether NAEP is norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, or some sort of a hybrid, and I can’t speak for any other states, but NYSED’s tests are absolutely not norm-referenced (bell-curved). An individual child’s score is in no way influenced by or adjusted to the scores of his or her peers.
I’m guessing that the civil rights groups have a better long-term memory and a different perspective. Sure, it’s easy to take for granted now that there are gaps, but prior to Federal-mandated testing, no one had any idea how large and persistent the gaps were. Perhaps in that context testing is seen as an important reality check.
Even if a test is not explicitly norm-referenced, I think all standardized tests are to some degree. If you have a criterion-referenced test that all students passed (which would indicate that all students knew the required material), people would quickly squawk that the test is invalid precisely because all students passed it. I think there’s an expectation that a certain percentage of kids are going to fail any given test, which, at least indirectly, makes all standardized tests bell-curved, norm-referenced tests.
Dienne: that needed to be said.
Exactly as you put it: if everyone passed, then the general public would say it was too easy. That’s putting a curve on it, however inelegant and distasteful that may seem to the “professional” test makers that in a formal sense made it criterion-referenced.
Same thing with objections that the rheephorm numbers & stats people raise about their handiwork producing “winners” and “losers.” No, they say, it’s just a score spread, don’t blame them, that’s what the client demanded, it’s out of their hands, blahblahblah—or to speak in their lingo, their parsing comes down to what on standardized tests are called “distractors” and “decoys” and “misleads” aka “plausible wrong answers” and “deliberate traps.”
Meaning, they’re wrong. Three deviations below the normed average. Really. And they can’t spin it right no matter how Rheeally hard they try, even if they exert themselves strenuously in the most Johnsonally sort of way…
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
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NY tests are “normed” by grade levels… and as Mike Metzger, an earlier commenter noted,
“…the “grade-level” measure is totally fiction. It can be whatever test makers want it to be. There is no such thing as “grade-level” apart from what the average student can do.”
If we used diagnostic criterion referenced tests we would find that student learning rates in various subject areas, like their physical growth and/or maturity rates, vary from year to year and from individual to individual.
Tests aren’t the problem: the purpose of the tests and the way they are used IS the problem.
As others have mentioned in this thread, if we followed the money from this civil rights group, I’m sure we would run into Bill Gates.
Having recently viewed Selma, I reflected that sixty have passed since Brown v Board of Education, the same number of years that passed between Plessy v Ferguson and Brown… and sixty years after Brown we have the worst of all worlds: schools that are separate and unequal and de facto segregation that is worse than existed in 1954. I empathize with the African Americans who want to make sure their children are held to the same standards as everyone else’s children because there is no evidence that anyone in Washington or all but 5 state capitols is interested in ensuring equitable schooling for ALL children.
Being from a lower-middle-class family, I do understand this.
Standardized test scores put me in the same category as those who attended the best private schools, despite the great difference in parental income and parent level of education. It allowed me to prove that I deserved an Ivy League education, too. Don’t take that chance away from today’s lower-income youth.
Standardized test scores, if used ethically, may show that more resources need to go to poor schools.
Standardized test scores also allow parents to know how their kids are doing, relative to others in the country. Every parent and student deserves to have that information, in my opinion. I have seen a large drop in shocked parents who cannot fathom why their very-low-skilled son/daughter is getting a D in my class when “she always got A’s in elementary school!”
I appreciate you very much, Dr. Ravitch, but I am not always with you now, just as I was not with your support for NCLB back at the beginning. Choice is good and important; it’s the way it’s being implemented that stinks, and standardized testing has an important place in education, though not the absurd place that it has been given in the last decade.
Thank you for being so articulate. I really believe this is important, too. I personally think we should be focusing on how to fix the problems with the implementation and usage of testing instead of declaring testing the enemy. The framework of these discussions is just too extreme to be productive.
I haven’t seen anyone on here suggest we should do away with standardized testing like the ACT or the SAT. And standardized testing didn’t begin with NCLB or RttT. Justateacher, are you calling for more testing than when you were a student?
Sarah, I admire your positive attitude, but there are huge implications to accepting the testing regime that has been implemented by W/Obama/Duncan, and Secretary Duncan has recently made a call to repeal and revise No Child Left Behind with maintaining all testing for teacher evaluations as his one non-negotiable. He’s a mouthpiece for Gates, and this Civil Rights statement is certain to be used to bolster the testing agenda.
I’m glad you understand what I was getting at.
Excellent call, Ohio Algebra II Teacher!
The tests that are used by colleges, such as the Ivy League justateacher referred to, in order to determine acceptance, are the ACTs and SATs, but this has nothing to do with those kinds of tests.
“Standardized test scores, if used ethically, may show that more resources need to go to poor schools.”
Couldn’t we know that without standardized tests? Shouldn’t we?
And why does any parent need to know how their child is doing relative to other children? Isn’t it enough to know their child’s strengths and needs on their own terms? What’s with the need to stack and rank?
To address the second part of your question: I believe it is an issue of honesty. It is dishonest to have children get As all the way through school only to get in to the school of their dreams and not be prepared and fail out. Standardized testing widens the picture and provides national context. I personally think it matters, but I guess everyone has an opinion.
To your first question, I think this data could provide a clear picture of the type of resources that would be beneficial.
How many students actually get As all the way through school and then fail out of college?
Except that standardized testing really doesn’t correlate well with later performance in college, much less the rest of life. Test scores really just tell us how well students take tests, which itself is highly correlated with family income/socio-economic status. Teacher assigned grades are much more predictive of later success. Project-based portfolios of work would be a much better method for making college admissions decisions. More and more colleges are realizing that.
Old fashioned grades based on the traditional sorts of tasks did a fine job of predicting success in higher education. Where I appreciate project based learning, I don’t see any real reason for college applicants to be submitting portfolios of work nor do I suspect that colleges are interested in poring through thousands of portfolios. I shudder to think of the process of making sure that thousands of students keep building a portfolio. All my children managed to graduate from college (and we are all still paying for it). If a portfolio had been a requirement, at least two of them would have never made it in. In case nobody has noticed, the high school years seem to be a time of rebellion that is not always conducive to making decisions in one’s own future self interest. Upping the ante with new and creative hurdles is not going to make them any more ready to assume responsibility for their own futures than is normal. Are building portfolios of one’s educational career any less onerous than than the current horrendous testing obsession?
I am obviously overstating the potential drawbacks of portfolios. Forgive me, Dienne. No personal attack is intended. I am just so tired of inventing ways to hold students, teachers, and public schools accountable for some ill defined future benefits. Keeping a running record of the progress of a project can be a useful exercise. That’s all it needs to be. Who cares if it meets/fulfills Standards I, II, II, IV parts a, b, c and d as spelled out in the carefully written unit plans!? Someone who has taught fifth grade for ten years is perfectly capable of knowing whether their students are growing as learners without endlessly proving it with mindless paperwork and testing.
“Someone who has taught fifth grade for ten years is perfectly capable of knowing whether their students are growing as learners without endlessly proving it with mindless paperwork and testing.”
Sounds terrific! Get back to me when you’ve figured out how to monetize that.
“How many students actually get As all the way through school and then fail out of college?”
It happens all the time, particularly with low-income, first-generation college students who attended poorly performing K-12 schools. This piece by former NYT reporter and reform critic Michael Winerip may give you an idea.
The HS GPA vs. SAT debate is far from settled. The predictive value of HS GPA, it turns out, is highly dependent on the quality of the HS–https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/27/study-finds-impact-attending-poor-high-school-follows-one-college.
I’d like to see the colleges that are patting themselves on the back for making the SAT/ACT optional also make it optional to submit the name of the high school a student attends. A 4.0 from New Trier ought to be the same as a 4.0 from Marshall, right?
Sorry, reposting the Winerip link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/education/24winerip.html
Ironically. the most popular reader comment on the Winerip article that Tim cites is from a CUNY prof who basically says because of NCLB, the students like the ones in this article only know how to prep for tests.
Yes, we could. Yes, we should.
My experience is that many parents thought their children had much higher skills, based on their grades, than they actually had, before my district made it a point to call parents in for conferences to share test scores.
Teacher grades are all over the place. A number of teachers I’ve seen have given what I call “happy grades.” They do not reflect a student’s actual understanding or level of mastery of the curriculum. I think parents and students have a right to more assessments than teacher grades.
Additionally, as I mentioned, standardized test scores proved that I, a lower-middle-class student, was smart and capable enough to handle the work at the “best” universities. Without those scores, how would that have been shown?
As for the need to stack and rank, that is with us when we apply to colleges. I’m grateful that I was stacked and ranked on the top, academically, despite my parents’ income. Other lower-income kids deserve the same.
I am concerned about the negative reaction to my post. There is a place for standardized tests, as far as I’m concerned, and I made it clear why. I am concerned about extreme ideologies and positions, in general. No standardized testing is not the answer to extreme standardized testing.
The problem with standardized testing as has been implemented since NCLB came around is that it has been designed to stack-and-rank. In the past, the biggest argument against standardized testing available then was that the test contents were geared to the upper middle class. Yes, there were always outliers like you who were able to “prove”, because of a high SAT score, that they “deserved” an Ivy League education.
I too did not see much wrong with the SAT as a gatekeeper for college. (Let’s not get into why poor students could never get to the SAT in the first place. That’s a discussion for another time.)
But that was then and this is now.
The techniques used in designing and scoring a SAT have been translated into tests that are given to the entire school population, not just college-bound juniors or seniors. The tests are alleged by some to demonstrate “grade level” preparedness and, in California, used to have about 70 questions. How can you use 70 questions to determine if a child is at grade level? And then, by stretching the raw scores, come up with a Gaussian curve where the “proficient” level is set at the average, year in and year out? If the California tests were indeed measuring grade level mastery, it would have meant that half the class would have to repeat the year. What school system can support this? Why didn’t anybody ever talk about this? Instead, people like Deasy have claimed that this is due to poor teaching!!
Even worse, when LAUSD graphed the various achievement bands versus classroom marks for a limited number of grades, they found that the distributions were essentially identical for 5th graders both in math and ELA regardless of their classroom mark. The same distributions held for all those getting 4s as those getting 1s! That means that the test is useless when compared to what the teachers of these 50,000+ students thought of their classroom achievement.
The same distribution held in middle and high school, except that it was only constant for A students. The B,C,D, and Fs students recognized the racket for what it is and essentially refused to go along with the idea that they should put maximum effort into answering the tests. (Yes, this echoes the recent statement from that official about “we can’t force students to take the tests.”) Was this ever brought to the Board? No, it was alleged that grade inflation and deflation was occurring simultaneously in LAUSD high schools. Unbelievable.
Given all that, I have no confidence whatsoever on standardized tests because they are useless. Not because the theory behind them is unsound but because of the way the science of testing has been prostituted to serve other ends.
I’m not sure what your quotation marks mean. (Yes, there were always outliers like you who were able to “prove”, because of a high SAT score, that they “deserved” an Ivy League education.) I guarantee you that my time at an Ivy League school was very demanding, and many students with lower scores would not have made it.
There is a level of academic ability necessary for some schools and programs. SAT scores are one indicator that is used. Sorry, but I don’t think that’s terrible.
@justateacher: the quotation marks here mean that the words can be interpreted in various ways.
In my opinion, a high SAT score does not “prove” but merely indicates the possibility of doing well in college. As for “deserving,” how many other students deserve to be there and yet are no admitted? Surely you know that the size of the entering freshman class at these academic temples is somewhere around 1,000 per. How many graduating high school seniors are there in the country that are equally deserving? For that matter, the Ivies are not the only schools that are demanding, so why are they hyped so much?
Anyway, the point is that engaging in stack-and-rank and then ruthlessly weeding the cohort is not a very good way to run a company (plenty has been written about Microsoft’s use and abuse of the process) let alone a school system (unless, of course, that is the desired result).
Yes, standardized testing has been around for a long while in US schools, but, as you note, it is not what it used to be. And that is precisely the point: nobody complained too much when it was used as a college gate-keeper, but now it is being done to every one and if “those people” had their way, it would be done starting in Kinder. Our children are human beings, not lock washers coming out of a stamping machine.
As someone else wrote, we need a system that works for everyone, not just a few.
I respectfully submit that no amount of tweaking and improving will fix standardized testing.
From Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING (2003 publication of the 1964 edition of the 1962 original, pp. 29-30), regarding the “problem of testing”:
[start quote]
Two facts dominate the problem. One is that testing must take place. And the other is that, except in the simplest situations, there is no satisfactory method of testing—nor is there likely to be. Human abilities and potentialities are too complex, too diverse, and too intricately interactive to be measured satisfactorily by present techniques. There is reason to doubt even that they can be meaningfully measured at all in numerical values. Yet measurement, assessment, estimation, guesswork—call it what you will—can not cease.
[end quote]
Just from the practical standpoint: it has been over 50 years since the above was written and the professional testers aka psychometrician have had all that time to refine their eduproduct and they still haven’t found the promised cures!
From the foreword by Jacques Barzun, same book, pp. 9-10:
“[T]he carefully documented recital Mr. Hoffmann gives of the way in which the manufacturers of tests defend their product takes on a new importance. For it shows that in contemporary societies the trappings of science are readily used, in good faith, to produce disastrously false results. These results become the stock-in-trade of vested interests. When doubts are uttered, money and prestige are threatened, and indeed all of society is shaken, at least in its easy assumptions. As Mr. William White showed in The Organization Man, testing in personnel work does something very different from what was generally thought; and as Mr. Hoffmann shows in the book before us, testing in school and college does the very opposite of what was hoped. In the one case the method represses individuality; in the other it misreads performance.”
I end with one last thought. Slightly tweak the above two excerpts and they could have been written yesterday—or today.
That should be a frightening thought.
Thank y’all for your comments.
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In the narrow sense of our present K-12 standardized testing, he’s right.
But do we mean all assessment? Medical boards? AP and IB exams? Teacher made tests?
I think when we get on a bandwagon we have to be definitive.
I have issues with measuring potential. But I think the question is not whether we assess what students have accomplished, but how. And what we do with the results.
Peter Smyth: I much prefer your approach, i.e., let’s be thoughtful…
Before setting up the opaque statistical machinery that feeds on any kind of test scores, one needs to discuss values and goals and define “success” and “failure” and whether or not progression toward or regression from those goals can be measured at all in numerical terms. Plus whether or not it’s even possible to put a number on a quality.*
Plus whether or not non-numerical assessments and judgments might be more useful and practical and accurate. And just what might they be, if there are such?
Not to mention that different types of activities and skills might or might not require different sorts of measurement and assessment.
That’s just for starters.
Thank you for your comments.
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*Señor Swacker: notice how I brought in a reference to Noel Wilson?*
Standardized testing when I was young was not like it is now. I do think it can be fixed. The phrase, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” comes to mind.
Justateacher, you’re arguing against something that no one is saying. No one on here is saying to get rid of tests like the ACT or SAT or AP tests which can help anyone anywhere show they are every bit as strong as any other student. I don’t see anyone here saying to get rid of the old testing system which might have been of some value to parents and teachers (but surely had nothing to do with your Ivy admission). The issue the vast majority of readers and commenters on here (maybe including you) are enraged by and see persisting is the over-testing and misuse of testing.
I’m willing to respectfully agree to disagree, but from your responses, it’s difficult to see if and how much disagreement there really is. Many of us on here see the Civil Rights statement as something which will be twisted to maintain the myriad of testing abuses that we’ve seen for the past 13 years.
Before testing kids, test the test room for carbon dioxide CO2. High levels of CO2 depress adult critical thinking skills to dysfunctional levels, so what do you think those levels do to kids’ ability to think clearly and quickly? And understand that the poorest kids have the schools in the worst conditions and thus are more likely to have more indoor air pollutants (CO2 +++) that create barriers to learning.
Most people do not understand how standardized tests are constructed nor what the statistics actually describe. Therefore, they believe that it measures what a teacher taught and inspired the students to learn, not taking into account that the curriculum taught may not built on the students’ existing knowledge. Most people think education is incremental when it is exponential. The amount of effort required by an individual to make up for any missing gap in his/her knowledge base is woefully misunderstood.
Read what these “champions of civil rights” have endorsed….gun toting police to deal with behavior problems, referrals to law enforcement..
Under the banner of civil rights, these groups have proposed the following language reflecting their “Shared Civil Rights Principles for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act”
Require…..
“Effective remedies to improve instruction, learning and school climate
(including, e.g., decreases in bullying and harassment,
use of exclusionary discipline practices,
use of police in schools, and
student referrals to law enforcement) for students enrolled …in any school where the school as a whole, or any subgroup of students, has not met the annual achievement and graduation targets or where achievement gaps persist.
The remedies must be effective both in improving subgroup achievement and high school graduation rates and in closing achievement gaps.
This is clearly over the top thinking, not just inept language.
I cannot believe that the signers of this document thought about what they are endorsing.
They agree that, if teachers are working in a school where the annual–annual test scores for every subgroup and school as a whole do not close the achievement gap, then three legitimate and “effective remedies” to improve instruction, learning and school climate are:
USE OF EXCLUSIONARY DISCIPLINE POLICIES (probably illegal under IDEA usually a cause civil rights suits, now viewed as remedy)
USE POLICE IN SCHOOLS (this a tribute to the NRA? gun-toting protectors of civil rights )
REFER THE KIDS WHO ARE CAUSING THE LOW TEST SCORES TO LAW ENFORCEMENT (boot-camp anbd “scred stiff” solutions for students who: fail to past tests in English within one year of starting to learn, have developmental delays, do not have the right stuff to pass tests where cut off scores are rigged to assure failure, etc).
The proof of the efficacy of these methods will be: filling the jails with kids,
barring the school house door to kids who do not help meet FEDERAL requirements (shades of George Wallace, but this is for students who are not yet of age), and preventing all efforts to educate students in a school based on absurd and deeply flawed concepts of “annual achievement,” “achievement gaps.”
These groups have endorsed a pitiful vision of education, stripped free of any reference to civic engagement and the principle of continuing the quest for equity.
These groups just want to tweeking the failed policies of NCLB. They have uncritically accepted the pathetically thin but heavily marketed package of “college and career” goods, and associated tests, marketed by Bill Gates and his friends in high places for more than a decade.
From my point of view, all of these organizations have signed a document that throws a once glorious civil rights legacy into the garbage can of history.
Using exclusionary policies and endorsing police tactics in the name of up-holding civil rights…
Unbelievable.
Did they read and understand what they signed?
Unfortunate misreading, Laura. It’s about “decreases” — The groups are saying they want DECREASES in all of the following: bullying and harassment, use of exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools, and student referrals to law enforcement.
wow…. but,
I am still appauled at the endorsement by these groups of tests in grades 3-8 as the cornerstone of accountability and the causal assent to college and career readiness.
Most Americans believe in a meritocracy. It is a fairytale told to us in our cribs. It is why people from across the world immigrate to strive for that “American” dream. People have been conditioned to believe that standardized tests are a reliable proxy for measuring merit. I do not doubt that some of these groups have been bought out, as has the national PTA. But other individual leaders believe that because they have gained access by means of these tests, they are valid measures of intelligence and human endeavor.
Teachers take (at least in my day, took) classes in education measurement, which lead to an understanding of just how unreliable test scores are. Most outside the profession simply have no clue.
Well said.
I used to work closely with one of the organizations signing this statement. I left after discovering that the organization is a paper tiger led by people only interested in their own advancement.
Their signing this statement dovetails perfectly with my prior experience: they have all been corralled to support the administration and have dutifully produced what their handlers have ask of them.
Why are we surprised?
As for the tests being a proxy for becoming part of the meritocracy, yes, that was the reason behind the establishment of the SAT (read Nicholas Lemann excellent book on how we got the SAT, “The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy”). Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
BTW, the fact that the SAT allowed many to “escape” poverty because they were able to impress Ivy League schools into allowing them come in is exactly what the SAT was supposed to do: bring in the best. But we know now that since the SAT is geared for people with higher income, well, why are surprised that the majority of college students came from a privileged background? Then came Affirmative Action and the cram schools which have upended the apple cart. In fact, that was the reason for Lemann writing his book: he wanted to see whether the claims of Proposition 209 supporters were true and the SAT truly is a measure of college aptitude. But I digress…
Yep, I totally get it now. So curious that most of the proponents of standardized testing and status quo public education policy are legal defense funds. As it’s now written, public school policy is pretty much the “full employment act” for lawyers. So sad.
Wait, WHAT??? I would hope that some–no, ALL–of these groups–send representatives to the United Opt Out National Conference to be held January 16-18th on Ft. Lauderdale, FL. (Go to the United Opt Out website for further details.)
The only people profiting–er, I mean BENEFITING–from the current standardized testing scenario are those connected with Pear$on (Always Earning, NEVER Learning, to correctly paraphrase their motto)–the Koch bros.(&–in reference to “Selma,” remember the Wake County school board elections, whereby–against the wishes of the residents–the Kochs attempted to buy those elections to resegregate the schools–fortunately, a failed effort) Bill Gates and the Waltons–& their ilk. Pear$on is the “golden arm” (you know, like that Frank Sinatra film, “The Man w/the Golden Arm,” whereby all his money goes into the heroin he shoots up?), wherein ALL our taxpayer-generated education dollars go. Billions of dollars, wasted on nonsensical “Pineapple” question tests that teachers and parents aren’t even allowed to see, much less use for diagnostic purposes.
And last–but most certainly not least–test-teaching & constant testing results in the reconfiguration of curriculum (such as the near-removal {eventually, total removal} of subjects such as History and Civics, in order that no one ever need know about Selma, genocide, bullying or the Holocaust)–so dumbing down whatever public education is left as to graduate students who are “career ready”–to be minimum-wage, part-time/no-health-insurance or benefits Walmart associates.
Shame on all these groups that signed onto this statement, for you are sealing the fate of the very children who depend on you for the protection of the U.S.Constitution, which guarantees our rights as citizens.
The “testing will level the playing field” argument has been disproven by practice: wealthy kids, privileged kids with resources do better plain and simple. In China and Korea the testing that was to introduce meritocracy has created a culture where poorer children and families are slaves to a testing system that lets few through to college and then only at enormous personal and financial cost. What are these defenders of liberty thinking–could they possibly still not know? Is it money?
Of course rich kids will always have advantages. My point is that standardized testing gave me an opportunity I never would have had without it. I could show that I was as academically capable as the kids with all the money and advantages. That’s important for kids who do not have money, but who do have adept brains and a strong work ethic.
Yes, but that only means you are exceptional. We can’t accept a system than only works for exceptional kids. We need a system that works for almost everyone.
We are ignoring the elephant in the room. The data has its own value, separate and apart from any academic feedback it may give the district or the state. The taking of tests and the collection of testing data gives the state an excuse to create a huge data mining program that encompasses personally identifiable information on every child from pre-k to college and beyond in every state in the union (which makes it a national data base which is prohibited under our laws.)
Part of the RTTT application was the agreement that each state would create a longitudinal data collection system. This system is accessible to other states, the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, state and local law enforcement, future employers, and any third party vendor that wants to use it for free.
This system was created to track students. It can be used for all kinds of labeling and sorting of “human capital” as UNESCO refers to our children, a scary thought when the driving force behind all of this seems to be Bill Gates, Mr. Depopulation.
This system was also designed to sort and punish teachers and principals. We are part of the data mining project as well. They need some kind of statistical nonsense to justify the mass firing of teachers and shutting down of neighborhood schools they want to accomplish.
Of course, Pearson is making money hand over fist on tests. And all kinds of CC aligned curriculum companies are making money on test prep and materials. But the big money is in the data mining.
After reading the list of organizations ‘supporting’ this notion, I have to wonder: did anyone in those office actually READ this drivel, and have they seen what goes on in classrooms these day? Really, how can MALDEF, CDF, Easter Seals, AAUW support this madness?
Education is systematically being destroyed, turned into an unrecognizable caricature of itself. I am planning my exit, as soon as possible, to another field of employment where at least young lives are not at stake with every asinine decision. I never thought I would be saying this, but if this is what teaching has become, I want no part of it. This isn’t what I signed on for. I have to look myself in the mirror.
Thirteen years of failed, test-and-punish reform, with minority, sped, and ELL failure rates near 90% and their response is: Bring it on! Please sir, can we have some more?
Thirteen years of failed, test-and-punish reform and not a single shred of evidence that suggests that it has benefitted minority (or any) students. Too ignorant to understand the damaging effects of chronic, institutionalized failure. Please sir, can we have some more?
Since when is permanent failure a civil right?
Thirteen years of failed, test-and punish reform and what do we have to show for it? The neediest schools defunded, scripted lessons and best practices ignored, field trips traded for test-prep, class sizes ballooning, the learning gaps widened, narrowed curricula and staggering opportunity costs, billions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted on snake oil promises, toxic classroom environments, students frustrated and bored, teachers stressed and demoralized, crappy standards and tests designed to fail all but the most advantaged. Please sir, can we have some more?
Thirteen years of failed, test-and-punish reform for the sake of sub-group data? Seriously? Test score data that will never build a state of the art science lab, fill the band room with new instruments, lower class sizes to teachable levels, or air condition the hell holes that pass for inner city classrooms. This should be a national scandal as Bill Gates plays the modern day pied-piper leading a generation of students into a land of smoke and mirrors. Please sir. we have had enough.
My guess is that few of the signers have read the CC standards or have seen the tests that are designed to fail and are then used as weapons against teachers. The advocates who signed off on this have been blinded by their self-importance and ambitions should be embarrassed by their own ignorance. Utterly disgraceful.
Only classroom teachers make decisions based on what’s good for kids. Notice that most of these groups supporting the status quo are lawyers and legal defense funds. Current Ed policy is the lawyers full employment act – absolutely disgustingly!
Thumbs up!!
Hmmmm… Gates gave $400,000 to Mexican American Legal Defense: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/…/Grants/2009/08/OPPCR048
and $1 million to NAACP http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2011/06/OPP1033306
It suddenly occurred to me that standardized testing as a way to prove merit, promote educational excellence, and create a putatively worthy “meritocracy,” is not an experiment to be tried.
It’s been tried. Over many hundreds of years. Quite thoroughly and effectively. It’s doesn’t work the way people think it works. Among other things, it reinforces inequities, blocks widespread social mobility, and discourages individualism and creativity.
There’s a whole book devoted to the subject. By a genuine expert on the subject and the subject “area.”
Yong Zhao, WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD DRAGON: WHY CHINA HAS THE BEST (AND THE WORST) EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE WORLD (2014).
Previously recommended on this blog. I recommend as well.
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There is some thing so misguided about this. We are not talking about “testing”, but overtesting and the proper way to use these scores. Right now the majority of school days are devoted to test prep and numerous Pearson assessments given during the school year. Now these same tests are being used as weapons against teachers and schools. I also see a lot some comments here blaming teachers. Yet, I don’t see any comments that will help students succeed like calling for social services within the schools. Lowering class sizes. Alleviating overcrowding. Updating schools. Offering coursework that interests students. Enhancing the Arts. Instead the comments focus on academics rather than the whole child. These organizations are not addressing real issues and I find that suspicious. Once again, someone should follow the money because these organizations are rubber-stamping an issue they don’t seem to fully understand how it’s being misused including the profits being made by these testing companies. Monies that are not going directly to the students in areas that would bring the equity these groups claim to want.
Very much agree.
What can tests test? My son, who is a senior in White Station High, the supposedly best public high school in Memphis, tells me that none of his tests in orchestra were in playing his instrument. Not one! In fact, they were all written tests. I presume, this is because “how well a child plays his instrument to produce beautiful music” cannot really be evaluated by numbers—so let’s test something that seems testable.
But some may say “music is different, and here we are talking about more relevant subjects, like math, which are clearly testable”. So let’s talk about that. What can a math-test test? Can we test what’s truly relevant and important to y’all, namely, can we test UNDERSTANDING of math? If anybody has an idea, please let me know. In the meantime, I claim that what a math-test tests is how accurately a child can recall formulas and can calculate. Is this important?
If we think this accuracy in recalling information is of fundamental importance, we should be honest, and we should change our language: instead of talking about our smart children with great knowledge, we should change our language and brag or talk about the truth like this:
“The school principal told me yesterday that my Johnny is in the top 1% of most accurate kids in his school!”
“Wow, that’s impressive. I cannot complain, though: My Jenny got the ‘freshman regurgitating the most scientific data in 1 hour’ award.”
“This is great guys. You children probably won’t have any problems scoring high on the newly mandated College Precision Data Recollection test designed by Pearson and McGraw-Hill.”
“I am embarrassed, guys. My Kylie just doesn’t do well on any of these tests; her teacher tells me that she is thinking too much.”
“But that’s the problem! Thinking slows her down. The best way to make sure this doesn’t happen, is signing her up to the online version of the Pearson & McGraw-Hill college prep program. It’s only $99 for a full month, and your Kylie will learn to whip out answers, without mobilizing any brain cells, in no time.”
“Thanks a lot, guys. I can’t wait to turn my depressingly smart and thoughtful Kylie into a precision test-taking machine.”
“You are welcome. Let’s drink a decaff grande latte to our kids’ future to be rich in tests and meticulous information gathering.”
Reblogged this on Ogo Okoye-Johnson and commented:
I wanted to share this blog because as an avid multicultural education practitioner, who believes in the provision of quality education for all students, it is important that social justice organizations who advocate for students ensure that the proposals they support which ultimately impact the groups they advocate for is research-based and will ensure for the welfare of all students. Share your thoughts and comments.
You left out the piece about testing having its origin in the eugenics movement which makes it even more stunning.
I offer another possibility for the surprising support: A dozen years ago, when I lived in Illinois, we science education folks learned very quickly to demand high stakes tests; social science didn’t demand such tests and so they weren’t required. This was followed in short order by a great reduction in the number of class minutes per week devoted to social science. Hence, I would dutifully fight for science tests. (Then I would go home and scrub vigorously to get rid of the slimy feeling, as I don’t actually want to support the testing.)
Perhaps these civil rights groups feel much the same way: They hate the testing, but it appears to be the only way they see to keep equity, and the dollars devoted to supporting under-served students, on the table right now.