Steven Singer is a National Board Certified Teacher of secondary school in Pennsylvania, he is also a parent of a kindergarten student. He didn’t want her to take standardized tests, and he went to her school to meet with the principal and her teacher. One of the tests is DIBELS, the other is GRADE. He thought both were useless.
He writes:
“I think standardized testing is destroying public education. It’s stressing kids out by demanding they perform at levels they aren’t developmentally ready to reach. And its using these false measures of proficiency to “prove” how bad public schools are so they can be replaced by for-profit charters that will reduce the quality of kids’ educations to generate profits.”
The principal said:
“I’ve never had a parent ask to opt out of the DIBELS before,” he said.
He said the DIBELS is a piece of the data teachers use to make academic decisions about their students. Without it, how would they know if their children could read, were hitting certain benchmarks?
Singer replied:
“I know I teach secondary and that’s different than elementary,” I said, “but there is not a single standardized test that I give my kids that returns any useful information. “I don’t need a test to tell me if my students can read. I don’t need a test to know if they can write or spell. I know just by interacting with them in the classroom.”
The principal looked to the teacher, and the teacher agreed! She knows how her students are doing without the standardized tests.
Singer left feeling elated.
“It wasn’t until then that I realized the power parents truly have. The principal Smith might have refused a TEACHER who brought up all of the concerns I had. He’s their boss. He trusts his own judgment. But I don’t work for him. In fact, he works for me. And – to his credit – he knows that.
“I know everyone isn’t as lucky as me. Some people live in districts that aren’t as receptive. But if parents rose up en masse and spoke out against toxic testing, it would end tomorrow.
“If regular everyday Dads and Moms stood up for their children and asked questions, there would be no more Race to the Top, Common Core or annual standardized testing. Because while teachers have years of experience, knowledge and love – parents have the power. Imagine if we all worked together! What a world we could build for our children!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, Thank you…I feel as a teacher my knowledge is subject to dismissal but as a parent of a 4th grader my input is respected. That is crazy. BUT the idea that resonated the most for me was something I have been communicating to people too, “Imagine if we all worked together! What a world we could build for our children!”
I’ve wondered when a parent would make that move on the progress monitoring.
Literally an example of why the “thought leaders” and enforcers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement refuse to engage in open and fair dialogue with those for a “better education for all.”
And exactly why such hard hitters and heavyweights as Michelle Rhee and David Coleman fled public exchanges with the owner of this blog. And why Senator Michael Johnston dodged and ducked appearing in the same room with her—because he feared he might be required to respond to something she said that would challenge the education status quo of which he is such an integral part.
It’s right out of the rheephorm playbook: deflect, avoid, clutch pearls and fall on fainting couches, feign outrage, all to derail discussion. We see it on this blog with commenters that use smear, jeer and sneer to not just avoid engaging in genuine dialogue but also to shut people down, shut them up, avoid having to deal with the truly hard questions and difficult choices.
Much easier when it’s a boss and s/he can order your silence. Lots harder when it’s a parent.
And there’s that most inconvenient person of all: a teacher that is a parent.
One of the SpecEd teachers I worked with had two severely disabled children (both adopted). The prototypes of the rheephormistas couldn’t get anything past him: as a parent with the knowledge and experience of a LAUSD SpecEd teacher he knew all the dodges and roadblocks and off-putting jargon and nonsense they used on unwary but trusting parents.
Sometimes it was very hard but he didn’t let them get away with anything. What his kids had coming, they got. *Rumor had it that he was well known downtown at HQ because he used such unfair tactics as laws and requirements to get his way.*
So hit them where it hurts, using the weapons of choice of those for a “better education for all”:
Facts, logic, decency, good sense and compassion.
Trust me, the rheephormistas loathe and fear any combination of the above.
😎
Mr. Singer perfectly described the problem and the solution. Parents, you have the power to make schools work for children, not corporations.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
This is a clear message on what Parents can do to save their children for the tests Great piece . Thnaks so much and I will share. I love your writing pieces Steven.Please continue your important work .
A principal really said this? “He said the DIBELS is a piece of the data teachers use to make academic decisions about their students. Without it, how would they know if their children could read, were hitting certain benchmarks?”
As a classroom teacher for thirty years (1975-2005), it didn’t take a test of any kind to discover if a student could read. All I had to do was have kids read orally in class from a novel or textbook—either in a group setting where each student read one page—or me sitting with a single student watching and hearing them read for a few minutes from a book.
In fact, tests can be misleading because a student who is reading at 2nd grade level can end up fortunate to guess enough right answers to make it look like he was reading at or above grade level when he really wasn’t.
In addition, this is the first I’ve ever heard of DIBELS. Checking Wiki, I discover that it seems to have been invented in 2007, two years after I retired from teaching.
In 2007 Brant Reidel conducted a study of the effectiveness of the DIBELS subtests with 1st grade students
My gosh, how did the world of public education manage for thousands of years without it? LOL
I wonder how much money this testing company is making off its amazing discovery.
Another method to test literacy that I used was to have students do a quick write for about a half hour in class and then collect what they wrote before that class ended. You can learn a lot more about a child’s literacy level from what they write in a half hour in an essay linked to something we read in class and discussed, and these are all methods that can be used that do not cost the district am extra penny—that goes to a private sector corporation that profits off tests.
This is sarcastically LOL absurd.
DIBELS has been around for longer than eight years:
https://dibels.org/dibels.html
When I was subbing at the 5-6 grade level in the resource rooms (about fifteen years ago), the elementary special ed teachers seem to find some value in them, and I know they were using them in the younger grades. I could see some diagnostic usefulness, but I hate the idea of frequent benchmarking. Aimsweb is another one that was useful but has been compromised since it was sold to a private company (Pearson?). The repeated nature of the screening got in the way of teaching and learning and really ceased to be of diagnostic usefulness. Someone always needed to be tested, so we could fill in the tracking data. The weaker the reading, the more we were supposed to test as if the testing would improve their reading.
Then, according to you, Wiki’s history of DIBELS is wrong. Maybe you could improve the accuracy.
This is what Wiki says:
his article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (August 2012)
This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (August 2012)
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (August 2012)
This article possibly contains original research. (August 2012)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIBELS
This is what I’m thinking—get rid of all standardized tests and if there be tests, let them be teacher made tests by the teachers who use them. There is no NEED for standradized tests that profit corporations—NONE!
It’s not wrong; they just didn’t put any dates in with the early university work and the earliest reference was from 2005. Go to the link I gave you.
I clicked the link and ended up on the DIBELS site.
Is this really the best place to learn about DIBELS, since this seems to be the company that profits off of this test? I think they will be biased and willing to lie and distort facts to get at that money that is buying their American dream—or British dream in the case of Pearson.
Do we dare to trust Pearson or any of the companies that produce these mostly useless tests that are mostly being used to decide the fates of hundreds of thousands of teacher, children and our public schools?
I’d much rather read a report from a non-biased source on the merit of this test being actually useful when it has clearly replaced the traditional methods teachers have used for decades to determine similar results.
What the DIBELS test claims it does, as if it is a panacea (another word for bull shit in my lexicon) for teachers and children, I was trained to do in 1975 without help from a test like DIBELS.
I sent you there for an understanding of the roots/history. You can separate that from company propaganda.
Is it possible to sift out the propaganda and have anything left but: “We created a test we think every child should take because the money we make helps us pay our bills and achiever our American dream. In the end, the teacher could have done the same thing without us getting paid for selling schools this test.”
Lloyd, my original response to you was that DIBELS had been around a lot longer than you thought. That is all I was responding to, not the value of the current corporate product. The corporate web site included a brief history of DIBELS that provided a time frame.
If I was doing a formal case study for special education eligibility, I would not use the DIBELS for formal assessment, but I might look at that classroom data as part of a complete workup since classroom observations are very important. Teachers frequently used their own informal assessment before our worship of corporate produced data. DIBELS did not invent anything that teachers had not been doing on their own; they just standardized it which in itself isn’t bad. It’s how the information is used: how much weight it is given and how rigidly the powers that be demand that it be used. Corporations make money by creating a mystique around their products that appeals to those who are looking for the holy grail.
“Corporations make money by creating a mystique around their products that appeals to those who are looking for the holy grail.”
True words. Too many people (I’d say Americans but there may be people in other countries that are the same so I don’t want to focus just on fools in the U.S.) seem to always be looking for the easy way out for just about anything.
This test was after my time. I retired in August of 2005 after summer school ended, and I survived for thirty years without this test or any of the standardized tests for that matter.
From my experience, I never gave a standardized assembly-line test that benefited me as a teacher or contributed to what my students learned—if they did the work to learn.
Tests are a way to fill time and keep busy.
In fact, I think all standardized tests achieve nothing but make someone else rich. If Finland can succeed without these assembly-line tests, every country can succeed. All a country has to do is support its teachers and offer them the best training possible.
In my experience, the only good thing about these standardized tests was my classrooms were quiet and there were seldom if any behavior problems to deal with. It seems we have conditioned our children to think these tests are worth more than learning—more than life.
Because the students were so focused and quiet as they bubbled in the answers, I had a lot more time to catch up on correcting their work.
:o)
The real problem with DIBELS is that it measures the speed of oral fluency instead of the reader’s comprehension of text. So a child who races through each word gets a higher score than a true reader who takes the time to understand the meaning. Scores can easily be upside-down.
Also, the development of DIBELS is an interesting story. Seems that the people who created NCLB were sometimes the same ones who presented DIBELS as a product to fulfill the requirements of NCLB. Follow the money.
As a teacher, DIBELS has provided very little useful information about a child’s reading. There are some reading assessments that do, and I use them for reliable results.
Kris,
Here is a short video to help you “follow the money” based on M.C. Escher’s Mobius Strip II.
I know I am in the minority here by I don’t think opting out is the answer. Our salaries here in Texas are going to be based on those test scores. Our evaluations already are. By opting kids out it’s hurting my chances of keeping my job. I give standardized tests in Kindergarten, and as much as I hate the process of preparing for it, there is a baseline set to judge their growth in years to come. Most parents like to see where their child ranks in regards to a national percentile. At least Dibels is a one-on-one test and much more accurate than giving them a multiple choice test. It may be the cynic in me, but I think all that data is here to stay.
UUUUUMMMMM GGGGGOOOOOOOODDDD!!!!!
Dat koolade shure taste goooood!!!! Can I have some more, masta??
You should ask for your money back from the teacher education program you went through.
Oh, I see, TFA doesn’t have a real teacher ed program.
Which one is your real issue? Your job or the well-being of the kids? From what I understand of Dibels, it “measures” (sorry, Duane – got a better word?) speed of reading, not necessarily understanding, so it doesn’t really give you a useful “baseline” for anything. And, as far as parents wanting percentile ranking, that’s, at best, nonsense, at worst, evil. It’s just another “my kid is better than your kid” sort of thing that we need to put to rest.
The idea in measuring speed is that fluent readers, those that read at a reasonable rate (with expression), are more likely to comprehend what they are reading. Comprehension tends to be lower when the reading is labored and slow. Many of my ESL students were fluent readers; the problem was their comprehension was poor. They were strong phonetic readers with weak vocabulary understanding. Conversely, I had a student whose reading was very slow and labored, but whose comprehension was exceptional. That information did lead me to get her vision tested. Since her eyes did not converge on the same point, she was struggling to see the words on the page. (Cross your eyes and try to read this blog and you will get an idea of what she want confronting.) A lot of published material can be used to help a teacher make informed decisions about instruction, but when someone comes in and mandates its usage according to their one size fits all plan, it loses its effectiveness. The messiness of teaching and learning screws up the marketing plan.
Yes, Dienne, perhaps something to the effect: “attempts to assess” or “purports to measure” or perhaps “purportedly attempts to analyze”. I could come up with a lot more than that but the fact is is that it doesn’t “measure” what it supposedly assesses as there is no agreed upon standard and scale, therefore there can’t be a “measure”.
Dibels isn’t one and done, it’s beginning/middle/end of year with plenty progress monitorings in between test prep to maximize the potential of desired outcomes.
Thank you so much for posting this on your blog, Diane. Your support means the world to me. And thank you to everyone who has been responding. This was a very personal moment for me. I was so scared, but I had to do right by my daughter. She’s the most important person in my life. The outpouring of support has been so moving. I truly hope everyone does this. Even if one more person opts their child out of standardized testing prompted by something I wrote, this will have been worth it. We really can win this one, if we all work together.
stevenmsinger: no, thank YOU for sharing your experiences with us.
Opt out? Don’t?
Homegrown talent reminds us:
“If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.”
Benjamin Franklin was right then. He’s right now.
If he could help lead the fight to opt out of servitude to the King of England, then surely we can opt out of servitude to the test-and-punish magnates.
😎
I get to see my son’s principal this Friday. I have opted him out for years, but now they want me to meet with the principal and fill out a packet of forms. I have taken the day off and plan on being there. I plan on telling him that I do not care to have the SBAC attempt at creating an artificial intelligence adaptive blueprint of my son’s thinking taken. They admit that these tests are not grade level summative, they do not measure what he has learned in comparison to grade level as we knew it, and they will not be useful in formulating lessons for him. He will not participate this year either. He is rather stubborn, if they try and coerce him. In writing he wrote his last class practice test in German as a manner of protesting the fact that his time was being wasted.
OT
1. It is a hardship for a parent to take off work to meet re testing/refusal. Hope you have Board members who will recognize that.
2. Jawohl! How terrific that your son wrote his practice test in German. Maybe Dr Ravitch will start a Creativity Corner citing students who respond with panache to a frustrating system.
StevenMS
Ringer – you did the right thing!
Enough is enough!
The DIBLES is another set of tests that make testing companies rich. Kids are DIBLED throughout the year, pulled out of class, tested in noisy hallways & stairways, data entered in computers, yield glitzy colorcoded graphs, lables and ranking every student. At Risk lables galore!!
Administering the DIBLES is disruptive, especially for the little ones. Older grades take tests in whole class groupes, tying up large numbers of proctors, reading & math fluency tests are done 1:1 in every corner or closet of the school.
The program is not cheap and they always sell more & more components, including Math. These scores are also used for RTI & special ed referrals.
You did the right thing for your little one.
Talk the Talk & Walk the Walk!
Lloyd is correct, AimsWeb is used regularly across the Nation. More $M.
I wrote earlier about DIBLES, but accidentally wrote about AimsWebs, also. With so many tests they are starting to run together. How much testing & data do we need before we continue to measure the fact that we are robbing children of valuable instructional time. Now, that is The Big Data we should continue to write about. Loss of Instruction.
Not only is it a waste of time for the kids, but also for the teachers. At my kids school they DIBEL 3-4 times a year. They PULL teachers from their own classroom to administer school wide. These teachers lose 7-10 teaching days in their OWN class. Yet their evaluation rubric PENALIZES the teachers for taking days off for illness or doctor appointments . How screwed up is that?
This is really inspiring, I love how honest the teacher was and that she agreed! I completely agree that if all parents were educated and stood up for their children and against standardized testing, it could possibly phase out. I wish more parents were aware that their kids have the option to opt out; I think if they were aware, they may take the opportunity and save their kid the unnecessary stress.
I live and work in a poor community which has been oppressed by NCLB and the over-testing, but trashing DIBELS and other assessments is a knee jerk reaction that swings the pendulum from one to another equally useless extreme. Effective teachers use formative assessments that run the gamut from listening to a child read to administering a normed test in order to adjust instruction to meet kids’ needs. We need assessments. We need tests. They are valuable tools in our toolbox. Just let teachers and schools decide which ones they need and when! Quit trying to micromanage us.
Disagree with you about using DIBELS. I was a K teacher and it was a very quick assessment showing the gaps in a child’s learning that allowed a teacher to pinpoint skills needing work. I did not like time away from instruction but using DIBELS was worth it.
Disagree with you about using DIBELS. I was a K teacher and it was a very quick assessment for kids who can’t read showing the gaps in a child’s learning that allowed a teacher to pinpoint skills needed to become a reader. Big difference between standardized and assessment tests.