A reader posted this comment:
The excessive testing is ruining education. I taught in Germany, New Jersey, Texas and NM. I’ve taught k-12 and have experience in several areas: German, music, instrumental music, classroom teacher for grades 3 through 6, and high school math.
The testing mania is ridiculous and using scores to evaluate teachers is madness squared. According to this idea, I was a great teacher when I taught at a great school and now that I am in NM with some of the poorest and lowest functioning kids I’ve ever worked with, I am a mediocre teacher.
Teachers who work with the most difficult kids should get bonuses. No one who has not spent at least one year in the previous 5 years in the classroom should be allowed to make policy decisions on education.
Test results are not used to help individual students locate problem areas. They are not used by teachers to adapt instruction. Typically the students receive a score and move on to the next test. My students spent two hours last week practicing for the PARCC. The PARCC is intended to assess end of course achievement. This is January. That means students did a practice test covering material that they had not been exposed to yet. What a waste of time! We should have been in the classroom studying not testing. Also the reality of my school is that the disruption in the school day leads to apathy throughout the remainder of the day as students feel that the test is enough for the day and they will not concentrate in the other classes.
My students are lacking basic skills and are being forced to move on in spite of the problems. The situation will not improve at this rate. Testing them over and over on content that has not been explained or sufficiently mastered is a waste of time and money and is hurting students. Holding teachers accountable for poverty, apathy, teenage pregnancy, and the ignorance of policy makers will only exacerbate the problems in US education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Holding teachers “accountable” is a lot cheaper than dealing with the real problems of poverty on top of the inequality of income and wealth. Solving the latter to help the first would require a return to a progressive income tax, a much higher minimum wage, and higher estate taxes. None of this will happen anytime soon. Republicans are proposing increased revenues by raising regressive sales taxes while further cutting income taxes for the wealthy. I fear down the road we may come to a period of social unrest if the current economic trend continues.
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Moreover, only the powerless are held ‘to account’ under our current system. Elites need not worry themselves. As the astute economist James K. Galbraith once put it:
“Leading active members of today’s economics profession…have formed themselves into a kind of Politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule—as one might generally expect from a gentleman’s club—this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen.…
They oppose the most basic, decent and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs. And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not reexamine their ideas. They do not consider the possibility of a flaw in logic or theory. Rather, they simply change the subject. No one loses face, in this club, for having been wrong.”
Of course, he focused his criticism on the elites within his own profession, but it equally applies to the reformers or foreign policy elite. It would be funny if the ramifications of this absurd state of affairs weren’t so tragic…
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Sounds like Galbraith was talking about the Chicago school of economic thought….neoliberalism. (Milton Friedman?)
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Michael Brocoum
I think you are right in suspecting Galbraith might be describing Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economic thought – the disaster capitalism that Naomi Klein described in her book “Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. And in the absence of a real disaster, create one!
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
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The ed reform defense of testing is really confusing. A couple of weeks ago they were all (supposedly) agreeing that there was too much standardized testing and they would “listen” and reduce it.
Now they’re back to calling anyone who objects “hysterical” or a conspiracy theorist or uninformed.
What was the point of the Senate witnesses if they have already decided that anyone who objects to this is stupid or a conspiracy theorist? Why did they bother having those NY teachers testify? What was that elaborate dog and pony show about? Why waste the time of the witnesses?
I just am so, so sick of these fake-debates. It’s patronizing and insulting to the public, and incredibly disrespectful to the teachers who traveled to DC because they were told Congress wanted information on what’s happening in their schools.
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I guess the plutocrats made it very clear: If you want our campaign dollars do what WE want, not what the average voter, including teachers of course, want.
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I don’t think they should waste our time with this. They all walked into that hearing room knowing exactly what they intended to do. Testing was never on the table, obviously, because they’re now characterizing any dissent as “hysterical”.
Why put witnesses through this ridiculous charade? So the Senators can say they “listened”?
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In Ohio, the State Superintendent of Public instruction, Dr Ross, has a request in to Governor and the legislators to lighten the testing load. The “Testing Report and Recommendations” ( January 15, 2015) includes some cockamamie statements about the purposes of tests, along with some revealing stats.
Among these highlights are there. Ohio students in grades K-12 spend about 19.8 hours a year taking tests on average. Ohio students spend approximately 15 additional hours practicing for tests each year.
A chart on page 5 shows that Kindergarten students are tested for 11.3 hours on average, and grade 1 students 11.6 hours on average. These are the lowest times. Add the test prep for a total of 26.3 hours and 26. 6 hours respectively for testing. That is slightly more than the time allocation for elementary school instruction in the visual arts in the era before test-driven policies determined everything about K-12 education.
The highest testing times are in grade 3–28 hours, and at grade 10–28.4 hours, not counting the test prep. The spike at grade 3 is from Kasich’s guarantee–“read by grade three” or repeat the whole grade. Dr. Ross wants to cut out some of the current test time for reading (about four hours) by letting grade three teachers do those super high stakes at will, more than once if necessary, with a summer grade three test being decisive for students who have not passed muster earlier. This strikes me as a shell game, not really a reduction but an increase for students who are still learning to read.
This report also recommends that testing time be reduced by cutting tests for SLOs. “Eliminate the use of student learning objective (SLO) tests as part of the teacher evaluation system for grades pre-K to 3 and for teachers teaching in non-core subject areas in grades 4-12. The core areas are English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.”
“Teachers teaching in grades and subject areas in which student learning objectives are no longer permitted will demonstrate student growth through the expanded use of shared attribution, although at a reduced level overall. In cases where shared attribution isn’t possible, the department will provide guidance on alternative ways of measuring growth” (p.10).”
This obscure language about the expansion of “shared attribution” as a way to measure student learning is not clarified by the following statement (pp. 10-11).
”…when no Value-Added or approved vendor assessment data is available, the department gives teachers and administrators the following advice.
First, educators should not test solely to collect evidence for a student learning objective. The purpose of all tests, including tests administered for purposes of complying with teacher evaluation requirements, should be to measure what the educator is teaching and what students are learning.
Second, to the extent possible, eliminate the use of student learning objective pre-tests. When other, pre-existing data points are available, teachers and schools should use those instead of giving a pre-test.” (pp. 10-11).
The convoluted reasoning and ignorance about testing is amazing. “The purpose of all tests, including tests administered for purposes of complying with teacher evaluation requirements, should be to measure what the educator is teaching and what students are learning.” Student tests are not direct measures of what teachers are teaching. Many tests document what students have or have not learned beyond school. Compliance with legislative mandates means you can ignore undisputed facts and sound reasoning about testing.
In the proposed policy, teachers who do not receive a VAM based on scores from PARCC tests (ELA and math) and/or tests from AIR (science and social studies) or from some other VAM-friendly standardized test from an “approved vendor” are asked to get used to the idea of “sharing scores” produced by students and teachers of subjects they do not teach and state-wide scores processed through the VAM calculations. There is no evidence these tests are instructionally sensitive, meaning suitable for teacher evaluation. The state approved tests seriously misrepresent student achievement, especially those from PARCC, because those tests assume learning of the CCSS have been in place, fully implemented, with cumulative learning from prior years.
SLOs and the district-approved tests for these appear to be dead (or dying) in Ohio, not because they were seriously flawed concepts from the get-go, but because those tests took longer to administer on average than others. The “loud and clear” demands for less testing are most easily met by cutting the SLO tests (those usually designed by teacher collaboration) in favor scores allocated to teachers under the banner of “shared attribution.”
Like many other states where governors and legislators are trying to micromanage teachers, there is an unconscionable insistence that any data point is as good as another, that tests are “objective,” and that junk science marketed as VAM is not a problem.
Unfortunately, all of the talk about “high quality” this and that does not extend to expectations for fair, ample, and ethical portrayals of student and teacher achievement.
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I agree with all of this, especially the idea that these tests and the test prep waste time. They waste precious instructional time that could be spent on important things like reading and writing.
I teach at the college level and the incoming students are not good at reading and writing. More and more students are freaking out when I give them an essay test. They are so used to multiple-choice, standardized tests and wasted so much time on such tests that they can’t do much else. It is quite sad what the testing mania has done to our young people.
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I also teach at the college level, in the sciences. The average high school grades and SAT/ACT scores of our students have not changed, but many of us on the faculty have noticed a decline in intellectual curiosity, motivation, and willingness to participate in class discussion over just a few years.
I went to a reception for some of our best applicants (high-school seniors) recently, and the majority of them weren’t able to hold a conversation — they didn’t have any interests that they could articulate, and they couldn’t think of any questions for me. At the same event two years ago, it wasn’t that way at all. I have to admit that I’m worried.
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Who has time for intellectual curiosity? As an example, I coteach Global History. This can be a fascinating subject. Unfortunately, it is all about making sure that they pass the Regents exams.
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I would hope that as a scientist you would realize that your anecdotal evidence does not necessarily warrant the conclusion that you are “worried about”. Sloppy thinking, PP, sloppy.
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The politicians at the behest of the oligarchy who fund their campaigns will continue to destroy this country for $$$$$ and perks. Gross!
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On Monday, 15 February 2015, the New Mexico Senate confirmed Hanna Skandera as Secretary of Education. It took four years for the Senate to finally confirm Skandera.
Was I surprised with the results. No. This was almost a foregone conclusion to a drama that should have never happened. Skandera should have never been appointed into the position. She has never taught a day in her life and has never held any licensure as a School Administrator.
The Republicans just rolled over bowed down to Governor Martinez and her wishes. Several Democrats took the easy way out. Many just wanted to confirm Skandera because Martinez wanted Skandera. Google Skandera and you will find a person who should not even be in the world of education. Skandera believes the only way to improve the schools of New Mexico is through Common Core, PARCC, retention of third grade students who do not meet her standards in reading, a school grading system that cannot will not work, etc. She is buddy buddy with Jeb Bush. A member of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. A member of Chief for Change. Look her up if you want a good laugh or want to cry to the kids in New Mexico.
My question is why have a confirmation process at all. Just let the Governor, regardless of who it is or which party, just pick who they want on the Cabinet and let it go at that. Why should the Senate or the people of New Mexico give a damn about who is serving at the head of all the NM Departments? Why should the people of NM care how these fools are spending our tax dollars? The legislators apparently don’t care who serve as Department heads.
Skandera and Martinez believe they now have a blank check to do as they please with education in this state. They will be answerable to nobody, no legislator, no parent, no teacher, no student for any action they will take regarding education. The only people they will answer to the is Republican Party, Pearson, Connections, K12,Inc., and other big corporate donors such as the Koch Brothers, Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, and, of course, Arne Duncan, US Sec of Ed. As noted in several NM Departments ( Health and Human Service are two that quickly come to mind) accountability is not important. Apparently it is not important in most of the Departments because these Departments have not balanced their books in years.
So, look out New Mexico. Skandera and Martinez now have the freedom to tell the Legislators kiss their a…… when it comes to including the Legislators in any decision process pertaining to education. All these two want is for the Legislators to agree to the education budget as they propose without any questions ask and put most of the educational funding below the line so that the Public Education Department (Skandera) can control all the spending.
I really wonder why a Teacher with the experience as mentioned above would want to come to New Mexico to work under a Secretary of Education who is a bully, a dictator, and one that refuses to listen to the wisdom of the Professional Educators of this state. Many Teachers are retiring early. Many Teachers are leaving New Mexico for positions in other states.
There is going to be hell to pay in next four years and it will be children of New Mexico who will pay the biggest price because of Skandera and Martinez.
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Reblogged this on onewomansjournal and commented:
Over-testing is ruining our young’s education and joy of learning.
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Many outsiders seem to question how an educational reform movement based on high-stakes testing can actually “harm” children.
How do I harm thee? Let me count the ways:
1) Narrowed curriculum emphasizing math and ELA = lost learning opportunities
2) Emphasis on test scores distorts the true meaning of “education” and is counterproductive to the goal authentic teaching and learning. It inhibits critical thinking and devalues creativity.
3) Test-prep imbues the false notion that learning is all about finding the one right answer, and that all other options are wrong. That is the wrong message for young learners.
3) Billions of dollars wasted dollars that could be buying instruments, art supplies, science equipment, athletic gear, field trips, or more teachers (smaller class sizes)
4) The use of is intentionally confusing, tricky, frustrating, and often developmentally inappropriate tests is unfairly branding many children as failures and is causing untold and often irreparable damage to their pysches. Chronic, institutionalized failure is extremely harmful and this reform is purposefully placing 70% of our young learners into this category, year after year, after year. This is especially true for learning disabled, dyslexic, and ELL students.
5) The false claim that CC will close the learning gap, diverts attention away from the true problems of generational poverty and the hopelessness it breeds. The ridiculous claim that fighting for the CC is the new civil rights movement is misleading too many minority parents into investing in a snake oil solution that will never benefit the disadvantaged.
6) The pedagogy required by Common Core is making kids dislike math and ELA more than ever. Boredom surrounded by academic beat downs inspires no one.
7) The associated teacher evaluation plans (VAM, SLOs, SGOs) are stressing and demoralizing many teachers. This in turn is corrupting classroom learning environments.
8) The total amount of teacher, parent, and student hours (TIME) wasted chasing lies and the bogus claims of the test-and-punish reformers is a form of theft that is morally unacceptable. These are critical years for students and the time wasted can never be recovered. The academic and psychological cost of this “time lost” is incalculable
9) Micromanagement and related stress from threatening test-and-punish policies is resulting in the premature retirement of good teachers. The negative climate is also inhibiting talented young people from entering the profession
10) The major emphasis on testing has absorbed all of the time and energy available, closing the door on many other initiatives that could benefit schools and their students. Ideas and solutions that will never be born are a seldom referenced opportunity cost.
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“. . . how an educational reform movement based on high-stakes testing can actually “harm” children.”
Through invalidly sorting and separating students into categories and then attaching that label to the students. Wouldn’t you love to be labelled an “F”-an effin FAILURE. Students “internalize” these labels. And then some are rewarded and other sanctioned. Since when has the purpose of public education been bastardized to sort and separate and grade students?
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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““So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true.”
With sufficient [yearly] repetitions, the creators of these academic death traps some call tests, the know-nothing reformers will have stigmatized and mislabeled as chronic failures, 60% to 70% of our CHILDREN. These are only 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 year old children in their formative years. A generation of children wrecked by tests produced so adults can profit.
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Amazingly, in Louisiana the DOE is now trying to blame overtesting on the districts.
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