The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education commissioned a study comparing MCAS, the 20-year-old state assessment system, and PARCC, the federally funded Common Core test. It concluded that PARCC is superior to MCAS in preparing students to be workforce and college ready.
This is a surprising conclusion, since MCAS has been in use for two decades and PARCC is not only untried but very controversial. When Arne Duncan handed out $360 million to create two consortia to develop tests for the Common Core, PARCC enlisted 24 states and DC. Now, only 10 states and DC are sticking with PARCC.
Even more surprising are the reports about a lack of well-prepared workers. Massachusetts is by far the most successful state in the nation, as judged by NAEP test scores. Maybe test scores don’t translate into the skills, behaviors, and habits that employers seek. But how do these business people know that PARCC will be better?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the Study….: “employers representing a wide range
of industries across Massachusetts told us that our education system is
out of sync with their expectations and needs.
So the education system is supposed to satisfy the needs of the business community? Silly me, I thought it was supposed to satisfy the needs of the children being educated.
I have a good friend who pointed out to me that employers do not want to have to spend any money on training. I guess they expect the schools to be “training centers” for them.
I heard G Gordon Liddy say one day on his radio show, there’s a big difference between education and job skills.
The power is becoming more and more concentrated and controls become more damaging and intrusive when studies adhere to the federal takeover of public education.
The conclusion of this study was most likely predetermined before any analysis was performed. Perhaps the results were interpreted based upon what the business group wanted for the conclusion……
We can remember what happened in Iceland years ago when the banking community paid the economists to perform studies that were intended to show the banking community as being strong in Iceland. Then later on the reality set in and the biases were recognized that had led to erroneous conclusions.
To answer your question, Diane: They don’t know, don’t have a clue how to evaluate both and therefore should be derided as being deluded.
It’s just too easy for political and business leaders to blame all economic ills on public education.
I don’t even think adults should have to be told this. Political and business leaders have an obvious self-interest in promoting this idea. It takes the onus off them.
The skills gap theory (and it is a theory, although they repeat it as fact) was wildly popular among powerful people for a very good reason: it’s an explanation that doesn’t implicate them or their actions or inaction.
Public schools are just too easy a target for me to swallow this whole.
Let’s see: should we blame politicians, business leaders or public schools? Come on. That’s a no-brainer if you’re a politician or a business leader.
Rich people are also smarter.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly?frsc=dg|a
These guys may know something about business, but they don’t know jack about education and testing. But why not offer to give them the entire battery of tests and also ask their children to also participate? Just a thought.
I think that’s a genuinely good idea. They should take the tests. If they really are committed to it it would be great publicity and perhaps very humbling, and “humility” seems to be in short supply among this crowd 🙂
I admire the USA Today reporter who took the 3rd grade test and admitted it was difficult. Good for her. Nothing like first hand information.
“Know something about business” ? In the year 2008, they didn’t. As long as the financial sector drags down GDP, they obviously don’t.
I agree with Chiara. The 0.1% are deflecting from their own failures.
Most employment growth comes from small business. If multinational oligopolies were threatened with nationalization, for their refusal to repatriate offshore profits, the USA, in spite of Guiliani and Obama, would be strengthened.
G.E., $110 bil., Microsoft, $76.4 bil., Pfiser, $69 bil., Apple, $54.4 bil., Exxon Mobil. $48 bil., Citigroup $43.8 bil., Google, $38.9 bil., Goldman Sachs, $22 bil., Walmart $19 bil. (Mother Jones March-April 2015)
Maybe it’s good. Maybe the public school bashing will end now that ed reformers are micro-managing every public school in the country. It’ll be difficult to continue to blame everyone under the sun now that we’ve “voluntarily adopted” their entire agenda.
At some point the public has to say “hey-hasn’t The Movement been in charge for two decades now?” I look forward to “accountability”.
You would think, but several school systems in NJ (as in other states) have been run by the State for years w no discernible improvement, yet we are expected to believe that their adoption of CC/PARCC will be just what schools need! Uh-huh.
Gee, I wonder if there should be more disclosure?
To The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education:
Please swear to your own conscience that your children, grandchildren and your relatives’ ones have followed your recommendation for the past 12 years.
Last but not least, please remember that in army, General cannot survive without soldiers. Likewise, business owners cannot be rich without workers and consumers who are workers, themselves.
Any short term gain (= train young generation to be modern submissive slaves) will ultimately yield long term pain (= foreigners will invade and occupy your business sooner).
In conclusion, if The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education deceitfully and intentionally promotes PARCC tests regardless of many researches and studies of its harmful consequences, then the future of American Public Education will suffer and so will the American Economy due to the serious shortage of human creativity. Back2basic
Did the workers have any complaints about poorly-prepared managers?
That will be in the next study, right?
Presumably, most of these people attended public schools. If the workers are dopes is it safe to assume the report’s sponsors in management are dopes too? Our Failed and Failing Public Schools turned out most of the members of both groups, correct?
I think we should look to US managers and executives. Let’s analyze their performance for a while. Are we as disappointed in their performance as they are in ours?
Hi Chiara:
Here is one article of a 5 part series from NYT to answer your inquiry of US managers and executives’ performance including legal and public administrative officials.
In my previous post, I shall add “conscientious and critical analysis mentality in soldiers and in workers” through learning and training from the transparency in public Education System.
We cannot put the blame on parents or the general public for being naive and trusting their life saving in the hand of corrupted leaders.
TOWERS OF SECRECY
Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite NEW YORK Real Estate
By: Louise Story and Stephanie Saul
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html?emc=edit_na_20150207&nlid=69487484&_r=0
Here is the paragraph that may satisfy your inquiry:
The high-end real estate market has become less and less transparent — and more alluring for those abroad with assets they wish to keep anonymous — even as the United States pushes other nations to help stanch the flow of American money leaving the country to avoid taxes. Yet for all the concerns of law enforcement officials that shell companies can hide illicit gains, regulatory efforts to require more openness from these companies have failed.
“We like the money,” said RAYMOND BAKER, the president of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington non-profit that tracks the illicit flow of money. “It’s that simple. We like the money that comes into our accounts, and we are not nearly as judgmental about it as we should be.”
In some ways, officials are clamoring for the foreign wealthy. In New York, tax breaks for condominium developments benefit owners looking for a second, or third, residence in one of Manhattan’s premier buildings.
Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG said on his weekly radio program in 2013, shortly before leaving office: “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here, it would be a godsend.” [REGARDLESS OF THE ILLICIT SOURCE OF MONEY from organize of crime! Or culture of fear will impose on all political authority]
People suffer the national destabilizing economy from leaders without conscience and talent. Similarly, if Public Education System suffers from elementary, to high school and post secondary education, then we should question the cowardice and talent-less educational leaders who let the culture of fear invading too far and too deep into democracy. It is time to draft THE decent and transparent LAW or ACT in order to bring us humanity and civility in practice rationally and compassionately. Back2basic
.
I can’t get past their conclusion that a test prepares students to be workforce and college ready. A test does that?!? Really?!? I’ve been teaching for 20 years and apparently wasting my time and my students’ by planning lessons and reteaching and enrichment activities to develop my kids’ reading comprehension and communication skills. Dang! I should’ve just written, administered, and graded a test. Silly me…….
This Has Been a Perfectly Objective, Paid Commercial Taste Test …
Uh, oh. I knew this was coming:
“One of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s significant accomplishments—which even his critics can’t completely take away from him—is the improvement in the high school graduation rate. It now stands at almost 70 percent, up from 58 percent when he was first elected in 2011.
But a joint investigation with Catalyst Chicago and WBEZ’s Becky Vevea has found that the district is on a troubling path toward that goal as it turns to new, largely unproven, mostly online alternative schools to educate more students. In the process, the bar for graduation has been lowered for some students, and the groundwork is being laid for thousands more students to receive what some experts contend is a lower-quality diploma.
in general, these options schools rely on computer-based instruction, with little or no classroom teaching and discussion. In a week or month, students can whiz through a course that would take a year or semester in a traditional school. A 17-year-old boy told reporters he finished the equivalent of a semester’s worth of work in three days.
Options schools mostly offer half-day sessions. Students fulfill the state requirement that they receive 300 minutes of instruction by promising to do work at home.
Three of the four new multi-campus operators are out-of-town, for-profit providers and are already reaping hundreds of thousands in profits. CPS budgeted about $50 million for these schools this year, including generous startup funding.
Options school budgets are filled with questionable expenses. One operator budgeted, and then paid itself for, more than $400,000 per campus for educational materials.”
The same is true in Ohio. How many other places?
http://catalyst-chicago.org/2015/02/options-schools-raise-questions-of-quality/
The tail (tests/graduation requirements/teachers) will never wag the dog (students/family/culture) in large scale educational systems. The only way to improve test scores or graduation rates is to make them easier. The inertial mass of 50+ million (P to 12) students and their efforts and attitudes can only be budged with long term cultural changes. I had an excellent psychology teacher back in college and when we asked him what he thought it would take to fix the many societal ills we talked about, he responded, “one thousand years of cultural evolution”
this so-called report made our NPR station a week ago yesterday; by the weekend it was in local newspapers….. I left several comments on the Lowell Sun… This is what one article in the newspaper stated: “Norton Superintendent Joe Baeta said educators do not have results from the PARCC yet so they have no way of knowing if it is better than the MCAS.
The PARCC test has just recently been used in a limited number of pilot programs. Without a large number of test scores and an indication of how those student will do in college, it cannot be determined if PARCC is more difficult and better at preparing students than MCAS, Baeta said.
“The idea that all of a sudden this test is going to better prepare them for college is just a theory,” he said.
Norton, he said, is taking a slow approach toward adopting the PARCC to see how it works in pilot school systems.
He said his district will wait until the state Board of Education mandates the PARCC before switching over to it.
David Sawyer, assistant superintendent of Attleboro schools, said he believes “there is some truth” to the notion that the MCAS is not demanding enough.
But, he said the MCAS is still the toughest test in the United States, and Massachusetts students excel, compared with those in other states.
————————–
I wrote to the commissioner’s office in emails and got a response from cconaway; she said she had forwarded my email to the “chief of staff” of the commissioner’s office… I also sent several emails to the firm in Dover NH listed on the study but it looks like Sir Michael Barber is so-called author of the so-called report. I got an email back from the Globe stating what we know “there are no data to report” so there is nothing to cover…
Mass Business Alliance says there is another “report” coming down the pike this one from Fordham Institute and HUMRRO to verify the PARRC etc… if you have any heads up on that would you let me know? Thanks
I’ve sent this fellow about 20 emails blasting the “so called report” smarion@nciea.org, he is at this firm NCIEA in Dover NH… they affiliate with West Ed and CRESST… the “report” is a marketing piece for Pearson: “Mr Studebaker says that Studebaker will make the best cars” in the future….. The whole R&D system is thrown by this WESTED/CRESST/NCIEA and the places that used to be independent (granted with a to of political hacking) are now turning out puff pieces for marketing. M. Chester Commissioner is a full time marketing agent for Pearson…. We need to bill Pearson for all the time Chester spent on the agenda to push PARC in the states…..
this is one of the emails I sent to cconaway “Study finds new PARCC test superior to MCAS in measuring high school readiness, but educators not convinced
——————–
MBAE accepted funds (from more than one source) to hire “Brightlines” and Sir Michael Barber (I refuse to recognize his distinguished title to mean he knows anything about Massachusetts education.) The NH firm is involved with a citation on the first page; their rates go about $1900 per day.
I am one of those educators who is NOT convinced. It is the typical expression of graft and corruption and , as in only DiMasi went to jail, people are covering up.
Are you one of the persons covering up for this kind of fake study? What was your role.? I see your name is near the end of the report as a contact at the State Department of Educatino. I am also writing to the Globe.
jean e sanders
Haverhill MA
The report from the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education will the issue of what tests to use is filled with retrospective data about current tests in Massachusetts and “promises” offered up by PARCC–a product that has no publicly available information for legitimate comparisons except the hype. Descriptions of the existing tests, with item distributions across grade levels by subjects are provided, but there is nothing comparable for the PARCC tests other than publicity. The “study” is worthless for making any final decisions.
The report has this weird assertion… “In spring 2015, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
and the Human Resources Research Organization(HumRRo) will conduct a full-scale evaluation of how well aligned PARCC, MCAS, and other national assessments are to the Common Core State Standards and the extent to which they meet the criteria for high-quality assessments established by the Council of Chief State School
Officers (CCSSO).
I can assure you that the American Psychological Association will be surprised that the CCSSO has become THE AUTHORITY on test design..What nonsense… And that says nothing about the contractual obligations of PARCC to align the tests with the CCSS from the get go. Who is monitoring that contract? It looks like the Fordham has appointed itself to do the job.
Now add some more information to this strange and strained effort to make Massachusetts’ educational policies even more friendly to business.
For what it is worth, the US Chamber of Commerce. ranks Massachusetts high in business-friendly indicators. These are laid out in the 2014 report called ” Leaders and Laggards” prepared for the Chamber of Commerce Foundation by The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), headed by Frederick Hess.
“The research used in Leaders & Laggards focuses on performance measures essential to operating and improving complex organizations in any sector. This combination of data is particularly applicable to systems that are responsible for building a competitive workforce. the metrics of Leaders & Laggards 2014 comprise the following:
Academic Achievement: Student performance on NAEP, including gains from 2005 to 2013
Academic Achievement for Low-Income and Minority Students: Student performance on NAEP, including gains from 2005 to 2013; disaggregated for African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students
Return on Investment: NAEP scores divided by state education expenditures, adjusted for cost of living
Truth in Advertising: Student Proficiency: State-reported proficiency rates compared with NAEP proficiency rates
Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness: Advanced Placement (AP) exams passed by the class of 2013, high school graduation rates, and chance for college at age 19
21st Century Teacher Force: Preparing, recruiting, and evaluating the teacher workforce
Parental Options: The market share of students in schools of choice, and two rankings of how hospitable state policy is to greater choice options
Data Quality: Collection and use of high-quality and actionable student and teacher performance data
Technology: Student access to high-quality computer-based instruction
International Competitiveness: State scores on NAEP compared with international benchmarks, and AP exams passed by the class of 2013 on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and foreign language exams
Fiscal Responsibility: State pension funding. ”
The writers of the Leaders and Laggards report have the audacity to assert the state-by state ratings are ”not designed to push a particular set of reforms or justify particular policy positions.” The very next sentence contradicts that assertion. The “purpose is to inform the debate with timely information and the opinions of groups focused on individual education policy areas (such as Digital Learning Now!, the Data Quality Campaign, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the National Council on Teacher Quality). Then, in double speak, the authors say “As such, there are some inherent biases driven by those rankings we chose to include and those we did not. Any such ranking would be subject to this limitation.”
The Leaders and Laggards report has recently added STEM and foreign language instruction to its ratings because the Chamber and AEI view these subjects and skills a “national security issue, “ based on a March 2012 report from Council on Foreign Relations , written by Joel I. Klein, Julia Levy, and Condoleezza Rice (U.S. Education Reform and National Security).
The 2014 Massachusetts ratings from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are on page 66 in http://www.leadersandlaggards.org/
this is all I got back from the State Depat. of Ed…
“Thank you for your feedback on this work. I have shared your comments with the commissioner’s chief of staff, and we appreciate your input.
Carrie
Carrie Conaway
Associate Commissioner for Planning, Research, and Delivery Systems
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
75 Pleasant St., Malden, MA 02148
781-338-3108 cconaway@doe.mass.edu
one person commented in the Lowell Sun Newspaper in reply to my comments so I thanked this person… I don’t think the bill was completely paid by MBA they had some Rockefeller money; but the NH firm bills at $1900 a day and you can be sure Sir Michael has a higher billing rate.
quoting from Lowell Sun: I thought it was odd for the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education to commission this report but it makes sense now that I take into consideration your comments. I read the Executive Summary and have the full report on my reading list but it’s evident it’s another one of those reports written to prove a pre-ordained conclusion. The good news here is the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education is the one footing the bill for the report. The bad news is taxpayers will definitely be footing the bill to implement the new PARCC tests. The problem is Massachusetts has too many nonprofits shaping the parameters of public debate. So instead of having a real, informed debate we have useless agenda driven reports like this one receiving publicity as though it’s an independ ent analysis. Then we end up with someone waiving this report at a public hearing resulting in decision makers giving the report undeserved credibility. The public really can’t win when this is what passes for a report. We can win at all.”
this is what I got back from the Globe: “Subject: Re: why is Michael Barber writing reports for Massachusetts
Thank you for your note. The report you are referring to was actually commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and it was prepared by the Center for Assessment in Dover, N.H. I decided against writing about the report because I don’t understand how you can objectively compare two testing systems — MCAS and PARCC — when you only have results for the MCAS. ”
So I am hoping this writer will do something if more parents and taxpayers speak up (p.s. it’s not Scott Lehigh — I get no satisfaction from him at all)… I sent it to the business editors at NECn and heard NOTHING back.
this is the Dover NH group (I also sent an email to West Ed and haven’t heard anything back; my contact in OK says they West Ed is doing the accountability thing with tests where she works)… WATCH OUT coming to a state near you with Sir Michael in tow…. Is Arne Duncan paying for all of this?
Center for Assessment Dover NH….”The Center works directly with states (current contracts include more than 35 states or entities) and has working relationships with several national research and advocacy organizations such as the National Center for Educational Outcomes (NCEO), The Center for Research on Student Standards and Testing (CRESST), Achieve, and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Some sample current projects of the Center include:
Business is short sighted and operates in crisis mode. You can find dusty 5 year plans in the bottom drawer of any executive desk right next to the mission statement. Education operates on a longer, strategic timeframe and needs stability. Education should complement business, and vice versa. Not education serve business. Business executives are grossly unqualified to dictate education policy, but hubris replaces sense. However, I do think a classroom teacher could teach a CEO or two about time management, motivation, and planning.
Not only are business leaders unqualified, they act with extreme prejudice against public education. They use access and influence to manipulate mandates and rules to suit their agenda, privatization.
I was disturbed to find out that this statement was distributed to my town’s school committee chair. I hope the members have the common sense to question it.
the Mass Board is set to review the
“so called study” at the March 15th meeting; it ail be a “fait accmpli” and they will use it to force more districts to use PARRC
Hopefully they’ll have the common sense to READ it. I found my eyes glazing over as I read page after page consisting of three data-free points repeated many times in different formats.
This Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education study has Bill & Melinda’s name all over it! No surprise there! Scratching just below the surface of the slick, CCSSO-like, 36 pages of “cherry-picked” data and opinionated findings, the study comparing MCAS (which was never intended to measure college and career readiness) with PARCC as to which is a better indicator of college and career readiness was flawed from the start. Although the study was supported by a grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Project Director and the identified Project Staff all work for the Center for Assessment (also referred to as the National Center for the Implementation of Educational Assessments) who have been frequent beneficiaries of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the Project Staff members had been a co-chair of the CCSS Validation Committee and authored the 2012 NGA & CCSSO’s report Reaching Higher: the Common Core Validation Committee. The Project Director himself has co-authored and presented a number of papers on assessment that have all been funded through “generous grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation” with disclaimers, such as “the views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation” or “this support does not reflect an endorsement of the opinions and recommendations presented in the paper.” Another of the Project Staff members lists the College Board on his curriculum vitae; the same College Board whose President is commonly-referred to as “the architect of the Common Core State Standards”. Also, two additional contributors were cited for their valuable input. One is a former TFA “teacher” who had gone on to “develop and implement education policy” for Education First, the same non-profit lobbying group that was founded in 2006 by a former grant maker for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The other valued contributor is the Associate Commissioner for Planning, Research, and Delivery Systems for the MA Department of Elementary & Secondary Education who had been instrumental in securing $250 million in RTTT funds for the state; she has no teaching credentials with degrees in sociology, policy analysis, and labor policy. There is no way that this study can be an independent, impartial piece of research. It is disgraceful that this MBAE study will be passed on without thorough review by media outlets who are hungry to report a few sound-bites on this story. It took only a few taps on my keyboard to learn that this study reads like a Who’s Who of corporate education reform. I hope this information will be useful to anyone pushing back against the lies and deception perpetrated on the citizens of MA who should remain proud of their fine, highly recognized, public school system.
John Bestor
Sandy Hook, CT
Thanks, John… I notice the Boston College professor who is on the Board of the Dover NH assessment center is also on the board/advisory committee for Pearson — these same people keep their thumbs in many pies; an interlocking directorate. I haven’t been to a Mass Board of Ed meeting in 4 years but maybe I should go to the 15th; I could take a bibliography of references and hope at least one newspaper has a person there… most of the newspapers and media take the press release from Mass Business Allliance and run with it….
From the executive summary of the report:
“Of course, it is not possible to know with certainty how much of that promise will be fulfilled. The first full-scale administration of the PARCC tests is months away. The process for classifying students as college- and career-ready at the end of eleventh grade or on track to college- and career-readiness at grades 3 through 10 will not be implemented until the fall. Parents, teachers, and administrators will not begin to delve into the first set of PARCC results, data files, reports, and interpretive materials until well into the 2015-2016 school year. It willbe several years before the first cohort of students to take the full battery of PARCC high school tests graduates from high school and enrolls in entry- level, credit-bearing courses in college.”
So in other words, we don’t know if this thing actually works!!!
Never try a new thing. Ugh it may work!!
Raj, no one fears trying a new thing. What educators are saying is stop doing the same thing over and over, long after it has failed. NCLB left many children behind. Race to the Top was more NCLB. 13 years of failure is enough.
Try walking away Raj. Don’t know why you come here to whine. Be gone.
Non-sequitur. Latin for “it does not follow.”
😎
My point is that they are endorsing it and yet there is no data to support any of the propaganda.
Alice’s point is very well taken evey fight is important. Another aspect is the Mass Business Alliiance/Chamber of Commerce/Corporates selling products have taken over the political system….. The fact we are in this “fight” to stop PARRC indicates how far down the path of corporate takeover of democracy we have come and how much the professional knowledge and professional autonomy of teacher has been attacked. It is a worthwhile fight to try to stop it here; the battle is different in every state, I was bury for 5 years on the recession and getting money into the food bank and the homeless shelter for women and children all the time Arne Duncan was destroying things while I had my back turned; and we had to fight off Scott Brown saying the federal money was of no use and his attacks on Elizabeth Warren for her heritage; EVERY battle is important it all depends upon what expertise you have and where you can make a stand. Is that the hill I want to die on? no, others might think it is a waste of time but putting all the different fights together in the different states helps to build a coalition across sates.
Raj reminds me of the patronizing and the ridicule we are seeing of the “hysterical suburban moms” by Duncan and now Petrilli. When I make a comment and the response infers I am scared of change I just reply “no, I am not scared I am angry and here is wjhy”…..
remember the play by Lillian Hellman, “Little Foxes nibble at the grapes”…..
I guess the next time, the Business Alliance should have their members try a new drug based on the pharmaceutical company’s promise that it is better than the drug it is supposed to replace. They must have “faith” that the new drug will work. If the drug kills you, “Oh well, we thought it was better.” No harm done!!!
Experimental pharmaceutical drug tests on the 1%, is an excellent idea. The plutocrats claim they’re mentally superior and risk takers so, it’s the perfect testing ground for new life-threatening products.
(If the reformers like Gates used their children as guinea pigs for Common Core, they wouldn’t be such hypocrites and so transparently, “greed is good”).
This is the wrong fight. The question isn’t whether MCAS or PARCC is better–the question is why are we using ANY standardized tests at all?
I lived and worked in MA (both as a K-12 reading tutor and a community college adjunct instructor) when MCAS was being implemented as part of NCLB. The whole system was roundly condemned by people who cared about education. Why has it suddenly become such a wonderful tool?
Maybe this whole PARCC vs. MCAS debate is a way of getting us off track.
“. . . the question is why are we using ANY standardized tests at all?”
YEP!!, that is the question as we know that any and all standardized tests contain so many fundamental conceptual errors (epistmological and ontological) that any results are COMPLETELY INVALID. To understand why see Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “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.
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
Duane: I am perfectly happy with observation and performance assessment if we can have enough teachers with “clinical” judgment. The standardized tests I was comfortable with were measure of achievement and were given maybe once every three years. Title I required tests annually in order to prove that the students were gaining (the federal money was being well spent). We also had “sustained effects” studies in Title I so that you could determine if the students kept the gains or if they “fell back” later; this has been the decades long discussion of whether or not Head Start was worth the funds…. So this has developed out of the accountability “are we getting value for the dollars we spend.” I remember one year training teaches in 15 school districts on how to read essays ; another 5 years we worked with nurses and teachers to develop checklists and assessment scales ; when schools in this region adopted Pat Suppes Math programs there were routine checks on their math for the check up on progress they were makin; math would show gains in one year with the Pat Suppes math and it took two or more years to show gains in reading…. For all of these purposes it was necessary to have something that would be a measure that people could agree upon across different cities/towns. There is no way we will eve get rid of the “standardized’ tests but I would like to have alternatives that incorporate the teacher’s judgment . We should be finding more alternative ways to show progress rather than focus and spend money on “national ” tests. I don’t agree with that approach at all but I still think we need “tools”.
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
I found an interesting blog that gives some insight on the history of education reform. http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/archives/Dec1999/threads.html
And some speaking about the history of MCAS
http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/mcas.htm
http://www.dennisfox.net/politics/mcas.html