The Néw York Times posted a blog debate about how to “fix” NCLB.
I was one of the contributors. My view is that the best way to fix the law is to remove its testing and punishment mandates. Testing is a state function.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests national and state samples of students. It reports state-to-state comparisons. It disaggregates data by race, English language learners, gender, disability status. It reports on achievement gaps. In effect, it audits learning in every state.
Restore ESEA (aka NCLB) to its original purpose: Equity. Sending money to poor kids’ schools. Helping the neediest children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Testing should be a LOCAL rather than a state or national function. State and national politicians can’t seem to resist the urge to control schools. It’s addicted them and is a habit that needs to be broken.
Let local school districts decide what national test (singular) they wish to use to compare their students to others around the nation and leave it at that. We were better off with no state tests – no high stakes – no narrowing of the curriculum – fewer people leaving the profession – more love of learning.
We discovered wonderful vaccines, built weapons that won WWII, and sent men to the moon, all without high stakes standardized tests.
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I think you got it right. Beyond removing federal mandates for testing, the federally mandated uses of the test data should go – as in rating teachers and schools.
All test aren’t evil when used appropriately, as in AP, Sta, ACT, some state End of course tests. Teachers assess all the time.,so it’s all nuanced.
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“All test aren’t evil when used appropriately, as in AP, Sta, ACT, some state End of course tests.”
I guess that depends on your definitions of evil.
All standardized tests suffer all the egregious errors in epistemology and ontology that Noel Wilson has identified that render the standardized testing malpractice COMPLETELY INVALID!
My definition of evil includes the concept that it is not okay to use false premises and falsehoods for any human interaction. To do so is EVIL as it confers on the user an undeserved/unearned advantage over those who have to succumb to the users desires through no fault of the users’ own (think students). As soon as the falsehoods and non-truths/half truths become known ethical/moral behavior demands to abandon using said falsehoods.
It’s far past the time that the falsehoods of educational standards and standardized testing have been proven (with no rebuttal/refutation whatsoever by anyone) by Wilson for most to not understand it.
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And what is that proof?
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
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Oh Duane.
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I have to confess, Duane, I still don’t know what most of this means. To be clear, though, it’s clearer than Wilson’s article.
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“…true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story…”
Testing serves as a “useful” myth, in the fine art of producing
concocted authorities of mythical expertise.
“Myth is a peculiar thing. Like symbolic language, out of which it is built, it seems to be what sets us apart from the lower animals. Certainly a man and an ape may appear to have a lot in common, but one could not imagine a gathering of apes around a campfire telling tales imbued with symbolic meaning.
But what is myth? What does it do? And how does it work?
What is Myth?
The Structuralist school of anthropology argued that myth is the means by which we organise our world. Some anthropologists stressed the social aspects of this; others emphasize the fact that mythic or symbolic structures were important in shaping our perceptions.
Social structure as mythic or symbolic is easy to imagine. As Hamlet says in a moment of lucid madness: “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.” The king is a social or symbolic function, not a physical thing. A particular king – say, James II – is no different biologically from his fellow men, yet he puts on a crown, sits on a throne and assumes a symbolic position of authority. It is from this place, backed by a mythic structure (divine right, for example), that the social structure itself borrows its substance.”
– Sylvia Plath, ‘The Death of Myth-Making’
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Swacker’s Teapot.
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Tim,
No, I don’t have a teapot although I’ve been drinking tea for all my life. Having a cup o’ tea right now!!
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Peter,
Not sure to which of my comments your comment of “Oh Duane” is in response. And I’m not sure of what it means. Please explain.
Thanks,
Duane
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What is Mr. Henderson’s evidence for the claim, “Since these provisions have taken effect, the achievement rates for every group of children, including black, Latino, and low-income students, have improved”? The link he provided had no evidence, just the same claim.
Is this considered sound research to the NYT?
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Scores in Newark are not improving.
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“. . . the achievement rates. . .”
Don’t give a damn about “achievement rates”. They’re based on falsehoods and therefore any results are as Wilson states “vain and illusory” or as I say 100% Pure Grade AA Bovine Excrement.
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my comment about what Mr. Henderson had to say included a word I thought was appropriate….but it might have been deemed as profanity. “Resegregation”. My apologies to the Times and whoever had the chore of making sure my comment did not appear.
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they changed their minds……
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I strongly second what you suggest about ESEA/NCLB. And so, I believe, would most teachers. But what does a humble school teacher’s opinion count for, in the social/economic/political climate we live and work in, especially in most of the schools (public, charter or private) in NY City and probably elsewhere? Next to nothing — both before the current “reform and privatization” wagon was set rolling and of course even more so after it had begun rolling and gained momentum. Even when we succeed, we are pilloried.
An example of this is the recent situation in NY City, where, with the calculation set so that the state-exam score (MOSL) overrides the observation piece (MOTP) in a teacher’s evaluation score, some 90+% of teachers came out rated “effective” or “highly effective”. Instead of hailing this achievement by the students and their teachers, for whatever such a flawed measure is worth, our governor, Andrew Cuomo, blasted us. We can’t win, even when we win the race while being forced to carry heavy weights and other impediments!
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The testocrats are in full court press of late.
LATIMES, op-ed by two rheephormistas: “Jon Cowan is president of the centrist think tank Third Way. Lanae Erickson Hatalsky is director of Third Way’s Social Policy & Politics Program.”
The piece is entitled “No Child Left Behind test requirements deserve support from both parties.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0204-cowan-no-child-left-behind-20150204-story.html
They use NAEP results to demand more testing:
[start paragraph]
The stance of anti-testing-and-accountability Democrats is even more puzzling. After decades of stagnant school test scores and yawning achievement gaps, No Child Left Behind spurred tremendous academic gains, especially among low-income and minority kids. Just a few of the many examples: According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the largest ongoing nationwide assessment, 57% of low-income students were “below basic” level in fourth-grade math the year before No Child Left Behind was enacted. Today that rate is 27%. For African American students, the rate went from 65% to 34%. For Latinos, it went from 59% to 27%. Today, the average 9-year-old African American student scores at the math level an African American 13-year-old did in 1973. The same is true for Latino students. Students with disabilities are making educational progress as well — and for the first time, those gains are being tracked systematically.
[end paragraph]
I well remember the spurious NAEP-based claims made in A NATION AT RISK (1983).
Generally speaking, I find the above paragraph unconvincing for very basic reasons like the following: if a large percentage of students in a certain group moved from slightly below a set threshold to slightly above it—and the categories in which they were placed and labeled were relatively few (and hence contained large numbers/percentages of people)—it could give the misleading impression that great progress had taken place. In other words, the tiny upward movement of a large percentage of a group could appear, on first glance, to be quite promising and large and meaningful when it reality it was simply a way to use numbers & stats to mislead and deceive.
Plus, IMHO, there is the usual confusion of genuine teaching and learning with student achievement/performance aka standardized test scores.
I invite anyone with specific knowledge of the NAEP to comment on the above paragraph.
😎
P.S. The five op-ed pieces in the NYTIMES are well worth reading. I would urge viewers of this blog to note particularly the fifth piece by “Stephen Lazar, High School teacher.”
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Wow–equity in access! That would be a great focus for the federal government rather than pursuing a course that decreases interest, resiliency and persistence in the highest need students–where do I sign up?
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Does most of the money for testing come from the feds? My child’s school is a Title 1 school and we do receive more $.
When the feds report spending for NCLB do they show how much is used for testing vs how much money is used for other purposes (ie is money earmarked for teacher’s salaries, etc).
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Something interesting I’ve been seeing among the defenders of testing is the argument that the mere act of reporting disaggregated scores is sufficient to shame schools/districts into doing more for their low-income and minority students. That may or may not be the case, but let’s say it’s true. Could we keep the reporting requirements and get rid of the sanctions? In other words, could we have no-stakes tests instead of high-stakes tests? I haven’t seen the testing advocates come out in favor of closing or reorganizing “failing” schools, so how about if we just get rid of that part of NCLB? If schools did not face sanctions for their test results, perhaps they could just take an annual test and be done with it, instead of spending the whole school year prepping and making students take “diagnostic” tests and practice tests — all because the principal is fearful of losing his or her job.
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“. . . is sufficient to shame. . . ”
Scarlet A, anyone?!?!?!?
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“. . . all because the principal is fearful of losing his or her job.”
The principal is bullied by the district, the district by the state the state by the feds. Who is on the bottom of that pile?
No, not the teachers but the students.
Maybe all the students should be calling all those bullying hotlines.
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