The Pearson server crashed in Colorado as tens of thousands of students were taking online assessments in science and social studies.
It was not what you would call an opt out, but it had the same effect. The Brave Néw World of online assessment is not quite ready for prime time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What GREAT NEWS! Ooo-Lala. May the crashes continue.
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Who is contractually responsible for bearing the cost of classroom hours for the error? Pearson, or the taxpayers of CO?
The SAT and ACT are fine because they are on not using up the legal allotment of state mandated education hours. Mandatory standardized testing is on student learning time and the taxpayer dime. Time matters.
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tee hee!
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poetic justice
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Same thing happened today and yesterday in TN for Social Studies pilot test. Two total days of instruction missed thus far
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We all saw you (unfortunately with a muzzle on) defended public education. I think you should have a public debate on education and publicly (we are talking about the public’s funded schools) invite Pearson, Duncan, Cuomo (or his education cheif), Tisch, and anyone else defending Common Core (presidential candidates?) wants to produce. Yourself and other respected education expert can defend public education and expose the money grab that is going on. I expect none of the above to accept your invitiation, which can then be made public for the public to read into as they please. Word can spread through Twitter, Facebook, and any other social media site.
Personally I want to thank you for fighting for all of us!
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Great idea!
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“I expect none of the above to accept your invitiation. . . ”
Yep, “none of the above” have accepted the various invites and have actually fled from them like cockroaches in electric sun light.
KTA can fill you in on the gory details (you’re welcome KTA-ha ha!)
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Next headline should be “Pearson server got crashed when thousands of students took online tests.”
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Ah…maybe Bill Gates can get the server fixed! 🙂
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Same thing happened in Minnesota today. The kids were thrilled!
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SBAC online testing system did not work in Nevada either. It disrupted a whole day of instruction.
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At my school the crash prompted us to postpone tests. So my kids got to learn about the history of mining, distances in the solar system, how to write a comparison paragraph, and how to model division using manipulatives. I also took advantage of the time to give students additional feedback and support where they needed help.
Thanks, crash! My kids needed the time.
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Awesome! Thanks for giving your kids a great day.
Imagine that, teachers actually used time reserved for testing to teach. Somehow we have to get the word out about this to the pro-test crowd. Maybe someone can come up with an app to increase instructional time by causing crashes on a regular basis (or maybe they could just ask teacher what they need.)
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The “the pro-test crowd” doesn’t give a shit about the actual teaching and learning process, their concern is with the student $ucce$$ that goes into their bank accounts.
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Omg that is hilarious! Karma baby!
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Divine intervention?
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They’ll just make them do it again another day, causing more wasted instructional time.
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Call it “Pearson Opt Out Too!”
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“The Brave Néw World of online assessment is not quite ready for prime time.”
And it never will be because that online standardized testing suffers all the same falsehoods and errors in epistemological and ontological bases (that is the foundational concepts) as identified by Noel Wilson that renders the whole process COMPLETELEY INVALID and therefore any results “VAIN AND ILLUSORY” or in everyday terms COMPLETE BULLSHIT. To know why that is so read and understand Wilson’s never rebutted nor refuted “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.
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What teacher didn’t expect this would occur? The whole idea of having that many kids simultaneously logging in, etc creates the opportunity for system crashes.
Heck, we had trouble with Accelerated Reader tests all the time. And they weren’t “crucial’.
What about this is a surprise?
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You are so right. Anymore, we are surprised when the technology DOES work reliably. We have banked so much on technology, but our district cannot afford to support it with trained staff, upgrades or new computers. I guess they thought the teachers would have hours and hours to trouble-shoot. Ridiculous.
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Well, the really scary thing I see in Ohio is that we can’t “afford” to do what is necessary to fund anything essential for students whether it be tech support, enough teachers, supplies, pay raises, or special area staff. Why? Because a substantial number of people in this state vote to lower taxes, to not support local schools even if they are exempt from paying, and they are constantly being bombarded with negative “news” about schools and positive news about charters.
The sad result is that the backlash against PARCC and standardized testing in general results in people fleeing to home school or charter or private schools.
I am against the insanity that the testing frenzy has produced, but it seems to be used now as a tool of the Governor to advocate for choice.
Rather than eliminate this madness, our state has decided to add to it. We have had a 5 of 8 rule for years. The legislature has voted to eliminate that. It is now under local discretion to hire art, music, phys ed, media, nurses, counsellors, or other extra teachers. Before, we had to have 5 of those 8 positions provided for every 1000 students in the district. So if the taxation votes determine that districts can’t afford these services, they will not be provided. The classroom teacher will absorb the responsibilities or they will go untaught. The plan time for teachers will be eliminated, yet they will have more to teach.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but I really think that we could run effective schools using the tax monies we currently get. BUT, none of that money would go to the obscene amount of testing. Also, classrooms and teachers would get the resources they really need, not the companies that sell expensive educational products and services, i.e. snake oil.
Hire more instructional aides to provide more human-to-human instruction, feedback and support. ASK TEACHERS what they need to instruct kids. Get for-profit companies out of public education. They are just sucking it dry and blaming real educators for the mess.
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I agree. I’d love to run my own public school without all the red tape of testing and the expense of the overpriced materials. But that will never happen. We are tied to a machine. I think schools should be public, but when our hands are constantly tied by strings to tech and texts, mandates and tests, etc., what is left to our discretion? Little.
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The inevitable crashes that have plagued EVERY testing session since the “program” was conceived have been and will continue to be ignored. Those teachers “in charge” when tests have been administered are left to deal with the IT problems with which all computer based systems are rife. That Pearson has stolen instructional time to the extent already well-documented across the educational spectrum is the real crime. Pearson has, in collusion with Duncan et al., prevented an entire population of public school students from receiving an age/grade appropriate education in favor of an expensive (in more ways than one), unproven, invalid, psyche-scarring, inquiry-killing, lockstep march into the bleak future of willful ignorance. These children, our future, will never get back the years of instruction that should have been theirs. Pearson has created, and the “educational” bureaucracy has blindly accepted, a wholesale slaughter of the minds of a generation. THEY drink the Kool-Aid at OUR peril. Best to opt out until the fever passes. However, the damage has been done.
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Reblogged this on Naked Teaching and commented:
Like, seriously, a kid could have predicted this. So who gets the low score and loses their livlihood? Figure out a way to scapegoat teachers on this one?
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COMMON CORE vs. COMMON SENSE
PICK ONE!
NAAWP FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/MarkAnthonyTraina
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