Peter Greene is a problem for me. He can easily toss off two or three hilarious, original posts every day, and I can’t keep up with him. I keep trying. So ignore the original publication date.
In this post, he live blogs the experience of taking a sample PARCC test. What strikes him and the reader is that the questions are often confusing and usually very boring.
This is how he begins:
“Today, I’m trying something new. I’ve gotten myself onto the PARCC sample item site and am going to look at the ELA sample items for high school. This set was updated in March of 2014, so, you know, it’s entirely possible they are not fully representative, given that the folks at Pearson are reportedly working tirelessly to improve testing so that new generations of Even Very Betterer Tests can be released into the wild, like so many majestic lion-maned dolphins.
“So I’m just going to live blog this in real-ish time, because we know that one important part of measuring reading skill is that it should not involve any time for reflection and thoughtful revisiting of the work being read. No, the Real Readers of this world are all Wham Bam Thank You Madam Librarian, so that’s how we’ll do this. There appear to be twenty-three sample items, and I have two hours to do this, so this could take a while. You’ve been warned.”
The first six questions are about DNA. Greene screams with frustration as he imagines his students tuning out.
If you want to know what our government spent $180 million to develop, read this. It may be coming to your children or students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Funny line: “Do you remember frames, the website formatting that was universally loathed and rapidly abandoned? This reminds me of that. ”
After the high quality graphics our children are used to, they are going to feel like they are playing Pong from the 80’s!! But I’m sure they will have the grit, tenacity and perseverance to finish it.
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Diane,
Thank you for a hilariously funny day!
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Try the PARCC grade three reading test, as I did, but get yourself into the mindset of a kid in OHIO who has been told over and over that the reading tst is really really important becaue if you fail this test you do not get to go into grade 4.
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“. . . becaue if you fail this test you do not get to go into grade 4.”
Child Abuse????
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There’s watching Uptown Funk, then there’s watching a PARCC instructional video.
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How do I get the test items What do I click??
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Here’s the link: http://parcc.pearson.com/sample-items/
You click on the green buttons. There might be a brief pause when you first click on one, briefly showing a log-in screen, but if you wait a couple seconds, the test items come up.
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I am super curious to know what other school district opt-out forms look like. I tried to post my child’s district form in the comment section but cannot. We have to choose between “disability” and “religious beliefs.” Any typos are mine.
My child does not have a disability. So, my choice has to be based on religious beliefs. Not only do we have to mark a box stating, “This request is to accommodate my student’s sincerely held religious beliefs” we also have to initial two additional statements:
“I understand that the purpose of the regulation’s exemption for religious beliefs is to accommodate families in circumstances when sincerely held religious beliefs conflict with a state-required program, including statewide tests. Religion, while broadly interpreted, usually is a comprehensive set of beliefs that concern ultimate and fundamental ideas about life, purpose and death. The term “religious beliefs” means religious, moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong that are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious convictions. Merely wishing to avoid testing, or having political or social objections to testing not based on a sincerely held religious belief, do not meet the requirements for the exemption.”
Followed by initialing the following statement,
“My student has sincere religious beliefs against statewide assessments and I request an exemption from statewide tests for my student for the 2014-15 school year.”
How is this legal? How can a district deny or approved based on any form of religious belief or value system? How is it legal for a district to even ask such a personal question for the purpose of test? Does it not seem odd that I have to sign off on my child’s belief system, too?
Thanks all for your insight or comments!
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In my state, Utah, opting out was made official by law last year. In the past, I’ve had to write a letter to the principal of each of my children’s schools in order to opt out. Now, the district has a simple, one-page form where we put the students’ names, our signature, and we check off the high stakes tests we don’t want our children taking, and that’s it. Quick and simple. And I haven’t had the push-back and attempts to convince us to have our children take the test this year. My oldest, age 16, had to take a practice test for CC, and he wrote an entire essay on why standardized tests are bad!
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Parents can refuse on the basis of being parents. Jon Pelto explains more here: http://jonathanpelto.com/2015/01/28/parents-can-consider-opting-children-common-core-sbac-tests/
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Thank you
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These tests are a disgrace. It is shameful what we are doing to children.
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To a Teacher Whose Work Has Come to Naught
Consider Ms Jones, putting her best suit on,
chalking her name once more on the board last September,
and think of that first giddy moment a kid connected
to a Sexton poem. Think of the difference it made!
There above are the computers crimping verse into rubrics
and here are the shocked admins pumping past the doomed classroom
and think of the innocent test-
takers who are not doing well.
Larger than software, over the fog
and the blast
of the econometricians, she goes.
Admire her reckless bravery!
Feel the Gatesian fire at her neck
and see how casually
she gazes up and is caught,
a deer momentarily blinded
by ed-reform’s headlights. Who cares that
she scored inefficient?
See her acclaiming the poet and
come tumbling down
While her sensible principal
replaces her with a TFA.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_essay_scoring
“How it works:
From the beginning, the basic procedure for AES has been to start with a training set of essays that have been carefully hand-scored. The program evaluates surface features of the text of each essay, such as the total number of words, the number of subordinate clauses, or the ratio of uppercase to lowercase letters – quantities that can be measured without any human insight. It then constructs a mathematical model that relates these quantities to the scores that the essays received. The same model is then applied to calculate scores of new essays.”
And my personal favorite quote:
“Peter Foltz and Thomas Landauer developed a system using a scoring engine called the Intelligent Essay Assessor™ (IEA). IEA was first used to score essays in 1997 for their undergraduate courses.[13] It is now a product from Pearson Educational Technologies and used for scoring within a number of commercial products and state and national exams.”
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My colleagues and I took the SBAC ELA sample tests and had reactions that were very similar to Peter’s. Who the heck knows what these tests are really measuring? Is it background knowledge, doggedness, test-taking skills, knowledge of metacognitive reading strategies? A combo of all? If so, what proportions of each? No one knows. This is pseudo-science masquerading as science. The only thing we know for sure is that these tests are migraine-inducing.
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” Who the heck knows what these tests are really measuring?”
Antsy student squirming around, wildly waving his hand “I know, I know, I know. . . . ”
Okay, Johnny, what’s the answer?
THEY MEASURE NOTHING!!!
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Peter,
If you come to Chicago in April, find me and I’ll buy you a beer for having been through that tortuous exercise!
Duane
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