Susan Chyn, who worked for many years in the testing industry and now tutors students in writing and English language arts, left the following comment after reading Russ Walsh’s review of the readability level of sample questions of the Common Core PARCC examination:
Reading level is but one issue. There are many other reasons to worry about PARCC, if the practice tests are representative of what the students of NJ will face in March. Having developed relatively rigorous tests at a standardized testing company for over 20 years, I am rather shocked by the quality of PARCC questions. Reading passages are presented out of context (i.e., no prefatory blurbs like “The Red Badge of Courage is a story about the Civil War,” easing test takers into the texts). The multiple-choice questions are often unclearly (ambiguously) worded; the intended answers, arbitrary. And my experience so far is that the A-B format, though trendy, leads kids to the very worst kind of back-and-forth second guessing. Suffice it to say, I have a queasy feeling about how the students I tutor (who run the gamut ELA skillwise) will fare. I hope I am wrong, but right now, I feel bad for the public school teachers, the parents and students who all will be judged by this very blunt instrument.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just gave a PARCC PBA test today. It was truly awful. For my students, I estimate that it is about two grade levels above us. It makes me sick, and I cannot wait to retire. I can’t watch my students go through this abuse anymore.
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Given the 20 year history of ed reform and the absolute obsession with test scores is it hard for me to believe they are not going to put all kinds of weight on this test.
It just defies logic to sell this test as hugely important and essential for everything from national security to economic growth and then tell kids and parents “it’s just one measure to see where you are!”. I don’t think people will take it that way. They shouldn’t, really. That’s not how it was presented to them.
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While I support the idea of a common core, I don’t think the PARCC or the CCSS was written with human development in mind.
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I see no reason we shouldn’t take Bill Gates at his word regarding the purpose of CCSS and PARCC:
“When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products”
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In response to Joseph Addison’s comments –
Is this the same invisible hand of the free market that created the banking crisis? I personally have no issues with the common standards – but I have major issues with the evaluation and use of the data from the standardized tests. The scores are not a true measure of ability when students do not put forth their best efforts (and most do not on these types of tests). The scores are not a measure of teacher effectiveness when a multitude of variables have an enormous influence on student performance. These types of tests are pseudo-scientific productions with the intent of blaming teachers for all the problems with schools. Ironically, the tests contribute to these problems because they take money out of the classroom and consume valuable instruction time. The Gate’s Foundation has certainly done more constructive work than I could do in a million lifetimes of public service – but Bill Gates is simply wrong when it comes to education reform. Show me any education system that has nurtured success through belittling and blaming teachers. Why would any good teacher work in an environment that practices unjustified culpability? Good teachers will simply leave high-risk areas, or get forced out of teaching as a result of unwarranted putative policies. How does that serve the most disadvantaged students?
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My 8th grade Massachusetts daughter will NOT be taking the PARCC!
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Join in for Common Core lobby day on Beacon Hill https://m.facebook.com/events/1004874312874581/
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No context needed according to David Coleman self anointed expert on close reading and self proclaimed architect of the common core. Just the text, also the proprietary Lexile scores that are supposed to identify challenging by grade-appropriate text.
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You have to love how they’re giving them two tests which they have cleverly labeled “one test with two components” Okey-doke.
I expect this to catch on in ed reform circles. In 5 years it’ll be “one test, 4 components” 🙂
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I agree completely because I also tutor students for the Common Core. I tutor fifth graders and an 8th grader. Not only are the passages too difficult, the concepts are significantly beyond the experience level of these students. One passage from a well-known publisher in a test prep book was an excerpt of the Declaration of Sentiments from the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. It gave no context about where this text came from. The mid-19th century vocabulary and word usage made the passage impossible reading for my student. I literally had to translate every single article of grievance in the document to 21th century English. Tell me which 8th grader can really comprehend this:
• He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.
Obviously, the text had no introduction which described the context of this very important historical document. By the way, one short response question asked which of the grievances depended on the importance of the first grievance, which was the right to elective franchise. To answer such a question, the student needed to know that “elective franchise” meant the right to vote and also the understanding that for any law to be passed, such as giving women the right to property, they needed the ability to elect people who would change such laws. I doubt most 8th graders have the historical sophistication to answer such a question when social studies takes second fiddle to test prep.
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We use pieces from the Declaration of Sentiments in our AP LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION CLASS!
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Ms. Chyn sure feels sorry for the students who have to take the test, and her $ympathy seems to be going a long way for her.
Cha-Ching, Ms. Chyn. How much are you per hour?
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The above comment is uncalled for. We have no idea what her story is.
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Well Jill, if you think Robert’s comment is uncalled for don’t read mine. Her “story” is that she has helped perpetuate nefarious educational malpractices and gotten paid for it.
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Jill and Duane,
There is a human face and side to every story, so you’re both right. Jill, you are referring to one person here, and Duane is referring to the masses.
Maybe Ms. Chyn is barely employed and needs to put food on the table and a roof over her head and for others as well. It’s not illegal or unethical to work to earn money. Or, maybe her needs as I describe don’t’ exist. Maybe she is an opportunist and a snake with empathy and sympathy as her selling point.
On the other hand, even if true, she does contribute to a reformist system that ultimately acts against children.
I am not focusing on Ms. Chyn in this moment nearly as much as I am seeing how the “system” is set up, how it permeates the culture, and how it has produced a scenario such as Ms. Chyn’s line of work.
I feel it on a micro and a macro level, and I am not in a good place in either realm.
Jill, I did not mean it as a dig. . . . . but these are a sign of the times . . . .
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Thanks for clarifying.
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Mr. Rendo, please note:
Mostly, I tutor students in what I love most–writing. I teach students how to write critical essays that are clear and (relatively) error-free. How to write narrative essays that express complicated personal feelings.
I show learners how to discover the subtleties of Hemingway’s “Cat in Rain”; the passion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, the fiery souls in the Raisin in the Sun.
I require teenagers to read luminous blog prose– Michael Chabon’s “The Old Ball Game,” for example. I ask the littlest ones to read a “chapter book” each week. And then I ask all these learners to write about what about what they have read, using their own words.
Mr. Rendo, I can’t even imagine prepping someone for PARCC. That would be a very cheerless way to spend time.
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Ms. Chyn,
I do stand therefore corrected and hope you will be amenable to my apology.
I was once in private practice for three years as a reading tutor. I cut my fees dramatically because I serviced a very blue collar population in New York City.
From what I read based on the post, it sounded like you tutored for the PARCC, and even if you had, I did mention that there is a human face and mindset for every situation.
In a way, for those schools and adminstrations that are not sophisticated enough to teach reading and writing well as a result of narrowing curriculum, jumping onto programmed one size fits all approaches to reading, and feeling the pressures of high stakes, there will be a growing demand for tutoring. Yet those with the most resources can always have the most of the best, and if our schools were truly funded the right way, tutoring would be done in-house.
Nonetheless, you provide a valuable service. Teaching kids to love reading is in some cases harder than to teach the mechanics of reading . . . . .
As an interesting aside, teachers in NY State are prohibited by law from tutoring any child attending their school and in some districts, any child attending the district due to what NY State defined as conflict of interest issues. This is an interesting topic, but I will not digress.
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Chyn’s words “Having developed relatively rigorous tests at a standardized testing company for over 20 years,” and Diane’s “and now tutors students for the PARCC”.
I have met the enemy and she isn’t us. . . yet.
Susan Chyn, if you are reading this, I challenge you to refute and/or rebutt what Noel Wilson has proven about the many epistemological and ontological errors that render any results COMPLETELY INVALID in these educational malpractices (from which you earn a living) that discriminate against and harm many many innocent children. Feel free to email me (dswacker @ centurytel.net – take out the spaces) those refutations/rebuttals as I’ve been looking for over 15 years now and have not encountered any legitimate ones. In the mean time here’s a starter: “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
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It is sad but no surprise to see that we have tutors for tests like PARCC.
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Yes, the tutors will have their work cut out for them. It will be tough to get their student two grade levels ahead. It’s unbelievable and extremely depressing.
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That’s what is needed…a PARCC test writer whistle blower! Someone from the inside.
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The whistle blower is Noel Wilson. He worked for many years developing standardized testing in Australia. He has shown/proven just how erroneous and nefarious the educational malpractices of educational standards and standardized testing are. See above for a reference to his work, or see this: “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at:
Click to access v10n5.pdf
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I see that many view people who tutor kids for these tests as being unethical in some manner. Unfortunately, the kids I tutor have to deal not just with these tests but with a curriculum built on these tests. I am against these tests and write against them all the time. However, what do you do with a learning disabled student who now has to manage material and daily test prep lessons maybe three-four years above their true reading level. What I do is keep their head above water. I tell many of the parents of the students I tutor they can refuse the test. Unfortunately, they are afraid to buck the government because of the culture they come from.
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While I am not tutoring at the present time, I used to tutor struggling students who were primarily receiving special education services. It was hard enough for these students to learn age appropriate material without the added burden of obsessive testing. Anyone who thinks tutors are bottom feeders has forgotten the very real need these students have for extra support. Even if we are only discussing the needs of supposedly average students, if you pay more than lip service to the idea of differentiation, then you know that some students benefit from the extra attention. Sorry to jump in here, liberal teacher. You very ably explained the productive, supportive role that a tutor can play without my slightly defensive addition.
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No, 2old2teach, I am very glad you commented. I always have mixed feelings about tutoring students to pass these exams. On the one hand, I am fighting to destroy this curriculum and these horrible assessments. On the other hand, how can we not try to help these students attempt to make it through school with a modicum of self-esteem intact. Unfortunately, only LD kids who parents have some means can afford the extra help. Those who cannot afford tutoring are at the mercy of these tests. Obviously, students who live in poverty have no chance of getting such help.
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I am fortunate enough to be able to tutor reading once a week in a public school serving a poor neighborhood in the city. I get much more out of it than the students do, but the program definitely makes a difference. As you can see, I suffer from those mixed feelings as well.
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Let me clarify….I’m not upset with the tutor; I just think it’s sad that there is a need for this these days.
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That kind of was my point also.
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This was just sent out in a PARCC update:
“How does PARCC make sure reading passages are grade-level appropriate?” It’s a question we hear often. We asked Bonnie Hain, PARCC’s director of English language arts content to explain:
PARCC test items go through a rigorous multistep process before being selected and approved. Grade level classroom teachers and other educators are involved at nearly every step in the process and review all items before they make it onto a test. More than 30 people – mostly classroom teachers and other educators – review each item. Items are field tested, results are analyzed. Teachers and other educators also review items for cultural and other bias or insensitivity, to be sure that the content of a question or the way it is worded does not put any group of students at a disadvantage.
At any point in the process, an item might be sent back to the drawing board or thrown out entirely.”
Bonnie Hain is serving double-duty these days. Not only does she work for PARCC full-time, but she is also the Director of Language Arts K12for Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland.
I’m not sure how she does both jobs adequately since both are full-time. It also explains why we are being pressured so much in BCPS schools to collect student responses and focus so much on the PARCC test in our instruction; we keep being told that we are collecting material to share with PARCC (as if this justifies how many things we are eliminating from our curriculum to administer practice assessment after practice assessment to collect data and field test items).
I’ve been told that there is no conflict of interest, but I worry that she is using BCPS schools, teachers, and, worse yet, students as a lab for PARCC at the expense of our energy, money (I’ve been paid money personally to collect anchor papers, and the money came from BCPS, not PARCC), and time…time we should have to focus on students, not refining a standardized test for the benefit of someone else’s second full-time job.
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It sounds like you are those teachers who have reviewed the questions.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys and commented:
These tests must be stopped.
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