Daniel S. Katz of Serin Hall University explains here why the New York Times is wrong about the value of annual standardized testing.
The editorial acknowled that there is too much testing, but failed to acknowledge that this condition is the result of federal mandates. It credits the high-stakes testing regime with higher achievement but doesn’t recognize that test scores increased faster before NCLB.
It is hard to believe that the Néw York Times editorial board is so out of touch with parents, students, teachers, and the realities of school.
Dr. Ravitch, what do you think it was that made achievement improve at a faster rate before NCLB? What did NCLB take away?
Joanna,
In any situation attempting “improvement” the first “improvements” will be the easiest and largest. Each successive attempt becomes harder and there is less to improve. At least that has been my experiences with various forms of “improvement” over the years in business, sports, etc. . . ..
I still wish someone would join me in contemplating a “what if we never had NCLB” scenario so we can begin imagining a better reality and imagine it into reality. I’ve been asking the question for 2 1/2 years now. What should we have had? I guess that would have been a good time for someone to say, ” wait a minute, wait a minute; states have their own boards to set policy, etc”.
Achievement in school as law. I scratch my head.
Research shows that the more you focus on the results/outcome of people’s effort and trying to “measure” such outcome, the less intrinsically motivated people become in the task itself. If you’re too busy worrying about getting a good score on a test, then you’re not concentrating as much on the material itself and understanding how that material is relevant to your life, rather than simply how it’s relevant to the test (which, BTW, is often true of teacher-generated tests too). So the more we’ve focused on standardized tests, the less focused students have become on actual learning. I’m sort of amazed that test scores continue to go up at all, even if slowly, but I attribute that to the fact that students have simply gotten really good at taking tests.
If we want to improve schools and learning (and, in fact, make schools truly a place for learning), we need to focus a lot more on bringing out students’ intrinsic motivation, curiosity, desire to explore, etc. by figuring out what it is that kids want to know and using that to leverage the skills and knowledge they need to know.
TAGrO!
“Achievement in school as law. I scratch my head.”
You and me both!!
What was lost was the voice of the teacher, the autonomy to meet each child’s needs, to plan to meet the objectives as the professional education ensure, and the talent to put it all together, to motivate and facilitate learning as dictated by the needs of the children.
When top–down mandates from charlatans and non-educators replaced the professional practitioner and silence the teacher’s protest, the institution of public education failed… so “THEY’ could fix it.
Hah!
“If your school, and your school day, is not about students collaborating, connecting, and building knowledge and understandings together, why would anyone come? Serious question. If students want to learn in isolation; if they want to sit at a desk and work on their own stuff, occasionally checking in with an “expert,” they have no reason to come to school. They can do a lot better at home, or at their local coffee shop or even the public library, where both the coffee and the WiFi connection will be better.”
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-school-isnt-for-collaborating-why.html
We need to understand that the kids who are not good test takers have gifts to offer society.Until we face our cultural history we’ll continue to believe in the test score fairy dust.
Ira Socol has a brilliant post on Grit & History and it’s influence on today’s reform movement:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2015/02/grit-and-history.html
One thing to consider in looking at pre-NCLB results is the extent to which schools and districts were excluding students with the greatest challenges, due to disability and/or language proficiency, in their testing systems. Prior to NCLB, there was minimal accountability for student participation rates. In far too many districts across the states, students receiving special education services — who have a broad range of abilities — were not included in testing. English language learners were not included in testing. Other students who may not have been identified but were surmised to be poor test takers were taken on field trips on testing days or not required to report to school. If a student with behavior challenges happened to be suspended on testing days, there was no opportunity for make-up. Large percentages of students were not counted. It is estimated that one in 5 of us have learning or behavior challenges that might interfere with learning. When greater percentages of students are tested, whether for an ACT or SAT or state assessment, average scores will go down.
Where schools are embracing the need for equitable access to general education for all students, and putting into place the supports and services, they are seeing improved results after these initial dips. Where districts are using tests to starve and close schools and are shuffling around the neediest students in order to make some schools look better, their results continue to dive. In the ed reform-y places that believe that CCCS in and of itself is universal magic and special education supports, services and accommodations are not cost-effective, there wheels are spinning and whatever gains they might believe that they have had are stuck in their mud.
Why so hard to believe that NYTimes editorial board is out of touch? Recall they supported Quinn for mayor. Talk about out of touch!
It is hard to believe that they have no journalist follow you blog, as I do for Oped.
My links, according to readers are opening the via that you provide on the debacle, and to the wonderful people who you follow and whose essays and articles you offer to a reader.
But then, real journalism is no the forte of The Times, any longer!
It seems it is at odds even with its own reporters.
Disappointing that NYT editorial so flawed in thinking on testing and student achievement in general. Maybe our fault for not communicating better with journalists and editorial writers and crafting a more credible story of what schools do well (and not so well).
NO! It is not “our fault”. That information is widely available to anyone who cares to look for it. NYT doesn’t care to look for it because as U. Sinclair states ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’ And the NYT knows who is buttering its butt, oops, I mean bread.
That’s wat I said. No journalism done there.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Daniel Katz. Thank you for another incisive, well-articulated piece. Earlier this week, I was catching up in my reading of the New York Times; at one time, I was angry at myself when I missed a day reading “all the news that’s fit to print”, but lately I have found myself reading news from the blogosphere because education news is what I seek since my profession has been aggressively under assault by corporate education reformers for several years now. I read several letters from readers in reply to an Op-Ed Contributor I had missed ten days previously who was calling for the continuation of annual standardized testing in our public schools. All five letter writers, undoubtedly culled from hundreds of letters from readers, shared their convictions that annual standardized testing is not necessary to improve either student learning or teacher effectiveness. Each letter writer had a stake in the education of children, either as a teacher, or retired teacher, former superintendent of schools and current director of leadership and reform programs at Bank Street College of Education, a professor at Teacher’s College, and finally the leader of the AFT teacher’s union; Ms. Weingarten, in fact, wrote the most carefully measured piece while still calling for change in this yearly ritual of standardized testing.
After reading the letters, I went back to read the original Op-Ed by the invited contributor, Chad Aldeman, who attempted to delineate the continued need for annual standardized assessments. I won’t bore you with his points because they are specious, self-serving, and have been repeated by the corporate education reform proponents ad nauseum. The point of my response has more to do with the lack of transparency on the part of the New York Times than the right of the writer to contribute his opinions about testing. Chad Aldeman is identified by the Times as an “associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners”, Inc., which is, according to the Times, “a non-profit educational research and consulting firm”. He had also worked as an advisor to the USDOE from 2011 to 2012 which, by the way, is a pretty short period of time when you think about it. Wanting to know more, I googled Bellwether Education Partners to learn about them. I quickly learned that they had received a nearly $2 million ($1.9 and change) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant in November 2013 “to support CoreSpring, an initiative to build a bank of shared Common Core aligned formative item and assessment resources that assure improved discoverability, availability, and interoperability” (whatever that all means). They had previously had a 2010 Bill & Melinda Gates grant for $809K “to support a national teacher leader fellowship program”. The leaders of Bellwether were predominantly culled from Bain/McKinsey/TFA, and this non-profit paid its top directors salaries and bonuses ranging from $138K to $337K. Bellwether Education Partners, Inc., works closely with the NY Center for Charter Schools, NewSchool Venture Fund, Stand for Children, and other groups allied with the continued privatization of America’s public schools.
As a result, I am deeply troubled by the NY Times’ choice for contributor on this “hot topic” that is currently under review by the US Congress as it considers re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA] under which NCLB had been written into law thirteen years ago. As many have eloquently stated, the mandate for annual standardized testing has been in place for at least thirteen years, although many states and districts had their own standardized testing protocols well before NCLB had been passed. It has a proven track record of failure: failure to inform instruction of students, failure to close the educational gap between neighboring school districts, failure to improve school accountability and student learning. Other nations whose education policies we seem to admire do not undertake such costly and meaningless annual standardized testing. To continue such failed policies would simply be foolhardy by any standard other than that of the corporate education reform advocates, lobbyists, and entrepreneurs who seek to benefit themselves, those they represent, and those providers of educational materials to schools, successfully tapping into that $500 billion growth industry that Rupert Murdoch spoke of in 2010.
Since the NY Times is still considered by many as the “gold standard” of news reporting, it is egregious that the Times would provide a representative of a group that is fully enmeshed and highly supportive of one-side of this controversial debate unfettered access to its editorial page. Sadly, the NY Times has lost its independence as an honest arbiter of the news; it is a shame!
Follow the money! So much for truth in journalism.
I hope you sent your letter to the publisher.
I have read The Times for most of my adult life.
I, too, wonder with all the experts who Diane features here, why such specious articles are printed. But then, why does Randi Weingarten have to put up her wonderful essays as an “advertisement.”
Why was it NOT Diane Ravitch who made the truth clear?
The answer is simple… power is in the hands of those who have access. Money today has access to the people at the top of The NY Times. They dare not offend those upon whom they depend, and the truth is anathema the oligarchs who run the show.
The answer is here:
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
Annual standardized testing? What will they tell us that a half century of testing has not already told? The information is in, the conclusions can be drawn, what is the action to remedy the problem?
PLEASE everyone send your comments to the NY Times. What did NCLB do to decrease the rate of improvement of our students? Time to teach and learn was replaced by MANY days of standardized testing, test prep, and mountains of record-keeping and paperwork. ‘No test left behind’ is a more appropriate description of NCLB.
Did it ever occur to the NY Times that Big Business is actively trying to buy Education, and that the testing scenario is a part of the Big Business’s goal to own it ALL.
They want to own the Charters and they want to mandate buying their computers, their software, their instructional materials, and TESTS.
The old tests, (Iowa, STAR) were actually standardized tests so we could assess a district’s and student’s achievement.
But the PARCC and SBAC are assessments, computer adaptive and do not evaluate in scientific methodology how districts and students are really doing.
It’s not a problem to expect high standards, but Big Business taking over Education is a Big Problem and they are not at all interested in high standards, only in Big Profits.
It was interesting to note that the years that were the most effective in reducing the performance gap were in the seventies and eighties when the federal government actually enforced the desegregation laws. We should learn from this. We all do better when we learn together in a diverse setting. Separate is never equal as we know from experience.
And the next day, Paul Krugman demonstrates an understanding most of his colleagues and the editorial board have failed to show: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/opinion/paul-krugman-knowledge-isnt-power.html?ref=opinion
Thanks linking to my work, Dr. Ravitch — we all appreciate how instrumental you’ve been in getting exposure for these issues! Just a quick FYI — I’m at Seton Hall, not Rutgers!
Your post would make a great Op-Ed piece for next week’s New York Times: would they print it?
Not sure — I’m submitting a letter to the editor, but the Times board has been very closed on education issues for some time now.
The NY Times education editorials have been consistently pro-trsting, pro-charter, pro-NCLB, PRO-Race to the Top, pro-trashing public schools. On the rare occasion when a dissident editorial appears, it must be because the usual education writer is on vacation.
The bottom line is the Obama Administration and Congress have not accepted responsibility for their role in increased testing nor offered any concessions on it.
They haven’t moved an inch. They’re offering nothing.
There hasn’t even been an admission from the Obama Administration or ed reform governors that VAM drove an increase in testing. In fact, they’re all still pushing to expand VAM.
That’s why I don’t believe they think it’s a real problem. If they did believe it was a real problem, they would actually address it. At the very least, someone in ed reform leadership would admit they contributed to it. They haven’t even taken the first step.
Chiara,
As long as there is VAM, there will be overemphasis on tests. You are right. Duncan considers VAM his centerpiece.
This blame-shifting and dodging started months ago. Both Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee blamed state and local actors for over-testing.
There’s very little accountability in ed reform. Their default position seems to be “blame someone else!”
Congress writes federal law. Why would the NYTimes identify part of the problem as the Obama Administration and then order states to fix it? Why shouldn’t DC be accountable?
I believe it was Larry Summers, Obama’s former economics advisor who said, “never admit you are wrong” or words to that effect. That’s precisely what they are doing.
Which is why Lily Eskelsen Garcia called DOE an “evidence free zone”. I could see being intrigued by VAM at the beginning, but heavens how can anyone cling to it at this point is beyond me.
That’s why I don’t believe they think it’s a real problem. If they did believe it was a real problem, they would actually address it. ”
I AM POSTING THE REST OF MY REPLY on the larger comment section, as I do not want it to crawl along the side of this blog.. See it here Chiara, but then, you have heard me say all this before. I know fighting VAM is the good fight that must be fought, and which can be won now that Diane and Anthony are making it the target, but….
I say that here and everywhere, but in reference to a problem that is NOT being addressed for political reasons. The UFT cannot address it, and other than on the sites of the activists who talk about it, for a decade, who offer the evidence of the collusion and corruption, who tell the stories of trauma of tens of thousands of dedicated Americans when that first assault took out tenure BEFORE VAM.
To Chiara and others who marvel at the mendacity of th eNY Times:
It is a conspiracy with deep roots my friend, 85 people own more wealth that the rest of the world combined. They need to dumb us down, in order to maintain power. The mendacity we see, the lies and propaganda are swallowed whole by gullible, uninformed citizens who re-elect the same corrupt charlatans.
Teachers like us who really educate children are anathema to the oligarchs.. ALL the media is purchased.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
Diane wrote 2 books that described the onslaught on the children’s right to learn.
Activists have been telling of the civil rights abuse of Americans who happen to be teachers for over a decade.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=7534
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
http://laschoolreport.com/a-turbulent-year-in-la-unified-our-top-12-stories-of-2014/
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
http://protectportelos.org/allegations-against-me/
ednotesonline.blogspot.com/
http://endteacherabuse.org
http://www.whitechalkcrime.com
The story is OUT there…they are purposely muddying the waters by showing ‘both sides’ of a story that has only one side…that to the children.
Where is Jack Anderson, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather? Instead we get this (from my local paper –
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/2014/02/15/process-of-disciplining-troubled-teachers-faster-cheaper-after-major-state-reforms/5523139/
Moyers got it right:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/opinion/sunday/the-growing-shadow-of-political-money.html?emc=edit_th_20150125&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/22/5-signs-dark-money-apocalypse-upon-us/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=94370722aa-Midweek_0924149_24_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-94370722aa-168347829
Where is Michael Moore? I wrote to him.
I don’t think it’s “mendacity” so much as a general consensus that kids are “coddled” and people are just whining.
The part that amuses me is how all these adults were coddled! Not a one of these people took a 9 hour test when they were in 3rd grade.
From what great heights of rigor are they lecturing us?
Yes. Joanna Best’s “scratching my head” comment had me scratching my head. Way to hyperbolize reasonable dissent. The whole country of children, teachers, and parents are whining because “achievement is law” in school. How disingenuous. Lol. Is there a troll school for Broad as well as a Sup one.
The so-called decrease in the achievement gap is based on faulty data. If you spent most of the year teaching to the test, score do improve. But it does nothing to improve cognitive growth. And many students who do well on the elementary level fail miserably when they get to middle and high school. Because of testing, we are ignoring remediation. We are ignoring social factors. We are ignoting the whole child. Thankfully many of the comments questioned the validity of that statement.
As far as I know, I am the only one who is standing up and saying, “Yes, we need unions or they would murder us, having incarcerated and tottered us already, with impunity BECAUSE THE ONLY LEGAL LEGS WE TEACHERS HAVE COMES FROM THEM, BUT we need teachers to lead that union to do the right thing, and to rid the union of th empower-brokers and cronies who were complicit in the first assault on teachers, which took out ALL the veteran teachers while the media screamed “incompetent, bad teacher.”
I experienced it. I have spoken over a decade to hundreds .of others. VAM is only step 2, and until the truth is spoken about everywhere, nothing can change.
This truth is simple… and I have said it before, and will say it again, even if I am a lone voice here…. teachers were deprived of their civil rights in a way that no ethnic minority would tolerate, and yet nowhere in the media, and not here, does anyone STAND-UP and say: THE UNIONS LET THIS HAPPEN.
I have a contract on my desk with the UFT, which outlines the grievance procedures.
None of the steps in the procedure were in play, and the union MANHATTAN BUREAU REP silenced me on that day when a superintendent took it upon her self to issue a “found Guilty’ LETTER” with no investigation, and no chance for me to hear any allegations, no putting out of charges so i could defend myself.”
Randi knows this, as the UFT attorney Adam Ross, who saw all my evidence of the site reps collusion and the Bureau chief’s ‘incompetence’.
We will continue to be so much fodder for those gunning us down, until the unions are reformed, until teachers demand theySTEP UP AND ENSURE OUR SITH AMENDMENT RIGHTS, AS OUTLINED IN OUR CONTRACTS AND IN THE LAW OF THE LAND!
ONLY THEN, can no one allege our incompetence, when EVIDENCE is the rule. VAM will die in the courts because it is not based on observable reality, on evidence and it ignores the rights of an American to stand up and say, “Hey, that is pure horse-poop. HERE IS THE EVIDENCE OF MY COMPETENCY.
I wrote this in 2004. I have published it here and everywhere many times.
I was famous. I was the teacher everyone wants. If you have never read it, then read it NOW , and know it is no rant… every word is true…
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
This happened to ME! And as Betsy Combier documents, to the veteran teachers of nyc.
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
How do you think they did this to the largest school district in America.
Because the union is absent, it continues to this day… as Francesco Portelos knows. Read what they did to this American, because they COULD, HAVING destroyed his practice, and even as he was made into a lowly sub, he refused to leave… as I refused under harassment that nearly destroyed my mental health.
http://protectportelos.org/does-workplace-bullying-continues-my-33-hrs-behind-bars/
and go here and see Portelos fight back:
http://protectportelos.org/allegations-against-me/
He is suing, something I did not do… I ran for my life, as thousands of others did, abandoning a career, a calling that I Loved.
Hey, they applied this process of abuse, to Lenny Isenberg in LA (in 2002 which is 12 years ago)
http://www.perdaily.com/2010/02/yesterday-i-was-removed-from-class-in-handcuffs.html
when he blew the whistle on social promotions.. This happened in this cesspool of bureaucracy, because without the unions THEY ARE LAWLESS!!!!
and go here and see Isenberg fight back and sue the UNION.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/has-utla-rank-and-file-been-told-that-im-suing-utla-why-not.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2013/11/lausd-gives-me-a-chance-to-be-a-hero-for-student-teachers-and-families.html
and read his post which will help youth grasp why teachers never win
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-and-utla-collude-to-end-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-teachers-part-2.html
and if you don’t believe it . go to this 2015 POST as he tries to build a grassroots movement there to end this.
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html post which shows how it is ongoing in LAUSD, even to this day. 10,000 teachers charged and fired with no recourse to justice.
So continue to DAMB VAM, but know THIS — the profession is under attack on a much more serious level AND until those who can, actually do step up and point a finger at the travesty and tragedy that continues across the vulnerable grunts on the line in 15,880 districts…NOTHING WITLL CHANGE.
Too busy of late redesigning the Sunday magazine.